Speaking of canons, I’d dust off a place for Dan Zettwoch in mine. Half of it’s me being a homer, half me liking familiar people and places. The other half’s that his characters have the old can-do spirit of the US in the Depression, the wars, maybe just mowing down the wilderness for suburbs and parking lots so Kevin Huizenga can have something to draw.

One more half: they might use their can-do spirit to cut down trees with their chins, not knowing it can’t be done. That’s how he draws them, the football blocks in his Kramers spread, the ’37 flood’s boatman, or the actors in his painting on the cover of the new Cinefamily brochure (detail):

That it’s of Jerry Lewis, the seminal infantile American comic now widely loathed and painful to watch because he’s so damn naked, even better. His sketches are all angles and elbows, the final version softer, with Lewis’ wound-up energy below the surface.

(I like his Sanford & Son drawings even better, since that’s my middle name.)