Love those Lizard Pushups! Jack Comics!

Click on the drawings for a closer view, so you can see very nuance!  (Love those lizard pushups!)

Thanks to Chris Ruggia of Alpine, we can once again share a bit of his Jack Comics!  From Chris:

"The Greater Earless Lizard (Cophasaurus texanus) has two appearances in my comics, thanks to two great information sources.

 Before I really began making my comic, the late and greatly missed Dr. James F. Scudday (co-founder of the Chihuahuan Desert Research Institute and Distinguished Professor Emeritus at Sul Ross State University) graciously offered me an hour or two of his time discussing the animals of the Big Bend region. In addition to recommending resource literature, he gave me a great overview of animals I might consider as characters and offered many observations on their diets, population dynamics, odd behaviors, etc.

 His account of the earless lizard's penchant for warming itself in the middle of roads led to its own 3-page comic, Center Stripe ( http://jackcomics.com/sketches/centerstripe1.html ). This short story stands on its own and features a rabbit who is not Jack, but looks amazingly like him.

 A couple of years later, after the comic was well underway, I attended a Big Bend Natural History Association Seminar on the snakes and lizards of the Big Bend, presented by BBNP Interpretive Chief David Elkowitz. David offered a fascinating account of a study on the territorial behavior
of earless lizards, which in turn became Episodes 25-29 ( http://jackcomics.com/episodes/25.html ) of Jack.

 More than any other character, my earless lizard owes its existence solely to these in-person contacts with experts rather than to printed or online reference sources.

More episodes of Jack: Adventures in Texas' Big Bend can be found at its web site ( http://www.jackcomics.com/ ) and for more frequent sketches and status updates, follow the Jack Facebook page ( http://www.facebook.com/jackcomics )!

Thanks again to Alpine's Chris Ruggia for introducing his Big Bend characters of Jack Comics!

Jack Comics' Mel, the Kangaroo Rat!

From time to time, we ask photographers and artists to share their work on the Daily Photo.  We featured Chris Ruggia's Jack Comics on June 16...and here's more from Chris!

Mel is a Kangaroo Rat. There are several Dipodomys species in the Big Bend area, and I never did settle on just one. There is a small species (Merriam’s - Dipodomys merriami) that lives where my story takes place, but I also gave Mel some of the more complicated social interactions from a larger species (Banner-tailed - Dipodomys spectabilis) that occurs a bit farther North.

 The hook that really got Mel’s character started was the idea that the small rodent is the biomass that drives much of the desert food chain. If they had human thoughts and feelings, I thought, they’d be bound to feel put upon, and so Mel’s conspiracy theories were born.

 Much of his character revolves around this resentment of predators. He schemes of ways to organize and fight back, and has several dream sequences with various fantasies of power.

 After I’d got started, Nature Conservancy biologist John Karges loaned me his copy of Special Publication #10 from the American Society of Mammalogists, Biology of the Heteromyidae, which outlined almost everything known to date about kangaroo rats.

 Mel’s interactions with his family (episodes 20, 21, and 30), the cheek pouches where he stores seeds for later use (episodes 42, 43, and 50), and even the detailed choreography of his fight over a burrow with another kangaroo rat (episode 33) all come from notes I took while reading this book.

 John Karges was consistently encouraging and helpful to me in developing Jack. In fact, he suggested the Grasshopper Mouse as a subject, which let to a whole comic book of its own. Be sure to thank him for me if you run into him!


Read more of Jack: Adventures in Texas' Big Bend at http://www.jackcomics.com/, or follow it on Facebook at www.facebook.com/jackcomics

Thanks again to Alpine's Chris Ruggia for introducing his Big Bend characters of Jack Comics! 

Jack Comics!

Click on the comic for a closer view!

From time to time, we invite folks to share their images of Far West Texas and the Texas Mountain Trail region...today, it is cartoonist Chris Ruggia!

In January 2005, Alpine-based cartoonist Chris Ruggia launched the first episode of his natural history comic, Jack: Adventures in Texas' Big Bend.

Since then, he has followed along with Jack (a black-tailed jackrabbit) and Mel (a kangaroo rat) as they've encountered other Chihuahuan Desert denizens -- and done their best to avoid being eaten by them.

The story is set in the desert scrub near the base of the Chisos Mountains in Big Bend National Park (take the Paint Gap road early in the morning and you'll probably see a few of Jack's compatriots), and wherever possible each character's personality is based on the actual life cycle, diet and behavior of its real-life counterpart.

The comic just posted its 50th installment at http://www.jackcomics.com/ and a new facebook page (http://www.facebook.com/pages/Jack-Comics/194114093968657) features a peek at the comic in progress and announcements of new episodes.

Two printed comic books featuring Jack and his world are also available at jackcomics.com, as well as the following shops in the area: The Murphy Street Raspa Co., Front Street Books, the Chihuahuan Desert Nature Center , and the Panther Junction Bookstore in Big Bend National Park (http://www.bigbendbookstore.org/).

 "Stay tuned...in the future, we'll ask Chris to come back and show us Mel, (the  kangaroo rat), the earless lizard, and spadefoot toads!"