The first IPad created episode of Cartwheels!

Anika Watches a Monster Movie

Since upgrading to the new iPad, the Brushes app has taken a huge performance hit for me. I switched to Procreate for this piece and so far I love it!
-IZ

 

 

 

 

Annika Wants a Puppy!

See me create this sketch live on YouTube!

Episode Three: Where are we from?

This is just a quick one to get the ball rolling again.  Poor Annika.  She sees the world very simply.

Episode Two: Candy Man

My wife Donna would be defined as Caucasian or white. She’s gorgeous in the dead of winter but in the summer she tans nicely. In fact she is darker than my mother right now and she doesn’t tan excessively. My mother would be classified as black. I see a problem there. My father is darker than I and my siblings and I all vary in skin tone. So don’t be surprised when I tell you that growing up in a household that obviously had a multi-racial background, the terms black and white with regard to people never quite made sense to me. I’ve taught my daughters to use descriptive terms to describe the various aspects of the people they know. My skin is about the color of a good milk chocolate. It’s descriptive, accurate and it leads to funny situations every now and then.


Episode Two: Candy Man

Episode One: Crooked Hair

This is the first strip so I'm taking the opportunity to be a little more verbose than I will be from this point forward. I shall endeavor to leave the majority of my commentary to the non-strip posts.

Within the African American community there has been a dialogue for longer than I've been living about hair. I wasn't born with "good hair". What is good hair? It's of course a subjective determination but in my neighborhood and school it was straight hair. Before you render judgment however, please do some research on hot combs. In the struggle to emulate the larger segment of society, brown people have set metal combs on open flames and run these through the course hair of our birth granting us for some limited period of time the long flowing locks that we saw on magazine covers and in movies. Today of course there is a laboratory of chemical means to the same ends but I've seen what happens however when the comb accidentally turns into a branding iron. Swirly kids can have all sorts of hair, from the dusty brown kinky my little brother was born with, to the thin straight hair my youngest daughter has or the frizz factory that her older sister deals with daily. I never use the term good or bad when it comes to hair. In my home we use descriptive terms to describe people. You will undoubtedly read many of them in the coming cartoons. In any event if a child knows her hair isn't straight, how would she describe it?

Episode One: Crooked Hair

Introducing Cartwheels!

Welcome to the Cartwheels WebComic Blog. As the father of two lovely "Bi-Racial" teenage daughters, I've been amazed at how people see them and how they see the world around them.
I've thought for years about writing a book about our experiences but as a cartoonist I've finally committed to creating a visual tribute to all of the often misunderstood "swirly" kids out there. Sit back and enjoy. I'll try to post new strips on a bi-weekly basis.