An idea from KaiYves: a thread for discussing what we think are some of the most memorable moments that have happened here on the ‘blog and in the magazine, to celebrate a decade of all things Muse!
An idea from KaiYves: a thread for discussing what we think are some of the most memorable moments that have happened here on the ‘blog and in the magazine, to celebrate a decade of all things Muse!
To break the ice, I’ll go first. (Magazine related)
10 questions I have had about the muses for awhile that will never be answered! Part 1 of 10
1. Does Mimi have an Australian accent?
I’ve had this question fo a while (ever since I read Mimi’s website profile years ago) I’ve tried to solve it with logic. First my opinion was “Duh, Mimi has an Australian accent! She’s from the land down under!” “But she’s from ANCIENT Australia, and the Australian accent comes from Britan” “But she must have been living in Australia when the accent, so she has an accent” “But Mimi’s from the outback, which has a small population!” “But Mimi likes people-” I usually have a headache by now.
Any opinions?
Come on, SOMEONE must have an opinion on my accent ramble. I’m a very impatient person (as you can tell)
YYS: I pondered this very question and related ones when I was writing my Muse/Harry Potter crossover fanfiction for the blog some years ago. I decided that Mimi usually chooses an Australian accent when she speaks English, because (1) most people expect her to have one and (2) most people like Australians, but that she can adopt other accents if the occasion demands it. When she speaks other languages, she will naturally slip into whatever accent or dialect she judges most likely to put her listeners at ease and make them like her. She is the Muse of Getting Along with People, and she’s very good at her job.
Thx
more tomorrow on accents. I’m REALLY tir-zzzz
*in a fake Aussie accent*
G’night mates!
Thanks for the input!
I have a whole list of Mimi questions that aren’t AS deep, but are still confusing. Here goes:
1. Can Mimi play the didgeridoo? (That’s an ancient Australian instrument that makes a wow wow wow sound.)
2. What the heck is her VERY AWESOME head dress?
3. How come Mimi is so… Disorganized?
4. What do rock paintings and kangaroo meat (This is what the Mimih did in dreamtime legends) have to do with getting along with people?
5. Someone once told me that in a very early comic (maybe margin) Mimi had a cat name Angle. This could be wrong like that urban legend about Bcdfghjklmnpqrstvwyz, but any input?
First off, hello there *pies*
I wanna say that she can speak the Aboriginal Australian language, but she’d speak English with a contemporary Australian accent. And that then leads into the question of how the Muses became Muses in the first place. Why do they still dress so anciently, yet understand modern life? And like in the case of Aeiou; where in ancient Mongolia do you come from to be so good with technology?
I don’t know if there’s a canonical answer beyond that one response to a letter that said Urania’s sisters had all retired and now live in a nursing home.
We might speculate that Urania or some higher power traveled the world seeking out local characters to take their places because humanity will always need the Muses, but that’s only theorizing. (In the fanfic I started but never finished, Urania and Larry Gonick recruited the New Muses to save her sisters, who had been captured by an evil force, and in truest superhero fashion, they decided to stick together afterwards because they realized they made a great team.)
Attack of the Smart pies lightly brushes over the topic. If I remember correctly, Chad and AEIOU started the muses “awhile back”.
I thought Nick Fury created them for SHIELD.
Aw, c’mon! Now I really wanna read it! I have a FanFic of my own involving Mimi&Urania that I’m gonna write (This takes place before Koko&Co, so no “other new muses”) The plot is pretty twisty. Let’s just say (contrary to your sister saving fanfic) that Urania and her sister Terpsichore are banished to Australia after refusing to help Calliope and the other muses take part in a “evil plan” teaming up with some of the most notorious deities to take over the world! (OK, I’ll come up with something more creative then that) After they are informed by a local deity (Mimi!!!) of a substance found in Ayers Rock that could knock sense into Calliope. Of course the 3 goddesses have to go on a “epic quest” through Dreamtime mythology, Greek mythology, and the world between.
Should I write it?
This a response to Kai!
I didn’t get any farther than the recruitments of Kokopelli, Feather, and Aeiou, but you can read it in posts 155, 157, and 73 here: https://musefanpage.com/blog/?p=1434
Please don’t bring up my mistake with Mr. Gonick’s name in the first part, it was embarrassing enough at the time.
I just read it. YOU HAVE TO FINISH IT!!!
Well, er, perhaps someday, my story queue’s pretty long as-is because I have a bad habit of starting one story before I’ve finished another. Finishing the first episode of The Whitford Collection is my top priority at the moment, though. (I stayed up much too late last night trying to make a museum floor plan in Photoshop.)
Unanswered question 2:
How can AEIOU type with sleeves?
Muse magic.
Crraw types for her.
How does he type with wings?
I’d assume he pecks the keyboard.
(I just made that up. It wasn’t based on inside information.)
I think Larry said that in one comic at some point
Once when Crraw answered a reader for Aeiou on the letters page, I asked Larry (by email) why that was necessary in print. He didn’t reply, but I could hear his eyes rolling way over there in San Francisco.
So Gonick writes the “muse mail” answers!
Not anymore.
Unanswered question 3:
Why is Urania the only “old muse”?
I’m sure we’ve all asked this question.
Well, Calliope had her own magazine (which should have been named Clio, but I know they explained that at some point.)
The eight other original Muses made a cameo appearance in the tenth-anniversary issue in 2007. All of them looked just like Urania, so we know that even if they’re retired, they’re not decrepit.
I remember that!
Question 4: (Feel free to muse about the other questions)
Why is Feather obsessed with donuts?
Oh and I’m just wondering, what’s YOUR favorite muse? (I’m asking this to everyone)
Maybe because gardeners love holes?
why wouldn’t anyone be obsessed with donuts? donuts are completely amazing.
also aeiou
Yes, I agree on that!
And, if anyone’s wondering, my favorite muse is Mimi
Urania, which should not be a surprise.
I have the Urania side curls. Today was school picture day. During locker break, I noticed that my side curls were acting very Urania-ish. So, as a tribute to my second favorite muse, I put my hair in a ponytail. (a bun would have been more authentic, but locker break is like, 3 minutes) and pulled the curls out. I was a semi, dirty blonde, Urania!
I WOULD have worn my hair like Mimi’s (does Mimi have hair?) but 1) I don’t have anough hair 2) Even though it would be AWESOME, these are yearbook pictures, and I do NOT want someone going through there yearbook 30 years from now with there child and they point to my picture and say “Oh that was YinYangSpirit12. She was strange”
Aeiou, always
I also like AEIOU. In one of the very last comics (like, 2 months ago) AEIOU’s house is shown. Instead of a vase of flowers, she has a vase of electrical cords.
To be honest, my first thought on reading this was “maybe that would be a good way to organize the electrical cords in my apartment.”
The main problem here is that I don’t own a vase. I’m not THAT adult yet. (Though the couch I bought should arrive on Friday and that’s like +1000 adulting.)
Ever seen the Lego Movie? If so, remember the “double decker couch?” If not, look that up. Whenever I see a couch. I think “Double Decker Couch!”
Sadly, my apartment is too small for a double decker couch. The single one is barely going to fit!
A double decker bookshelf, on the other hand…
How big is your apartment?
I looked it up, and apparently it’s about 650 square feet, which means nothing to me. We have a living room, a bedroom, a kitchen, a bathroom, and two small closets. It’s big for a one-bedroom apartment in New York City, I think, but maybe I’m just consoling myself with that. It’s all the space we need, I hope.
I honestly would be worried that Feather would come over and absentmindedly water them.
Bo! Mostly because she’s just chilling out, telling us some cool facts and munching on the occasional letter from the FMP. Just a nice, calm factoid cow.
Everyone makes such a big deal about letters (muses, editors, readers) and the ironic thing is that Bo eats them. BO POWER!!!!!
Robert the GAPA, do you have any inside info on the muses?
Just odds and ends that Larry Gonick has let slip over the years.
YYS, if you like Mimi, you might enjoy the third chapter of my Harry Potter/Muse fanfiction:
https://musefanpage.com/blog/?p=4679
“Take your stick back. But no more fireworks please” I know of a Harry Potter fan club at my school. I’ll use that one day.
What kind of odds and ends?
Well, for example, Larry once told me that Feather was inspired by Churchy La Femme, the turtle in Walt Kelly’s classic comic strip “Pogo.” (Here’s a picture; Churchy is the confused one on the right.)
Tell me more insider info, oh great and mighty GAPA
I can totally see that (had a pogo anthology when I was young)
Question 5: How come Bo knows everything?
Because she ruminates.
Ba-bum-BUM!
The first issue of Muse I ever read was the Fairy Tales issue (I think circa 2002 or 2004). It blew me away! It felt like the magazine had been specifically designed for lil Kagy. And it’s still the issue I think about the most.
Bo’s factoid page was also my favourite part of the magazine in general (that & the comic).
One of the things I remember really clearly about my days on MB was the year the GAPAs disney-fied the blog for april fool’s day. That was hilarious.
I love the comic from the fairy tales issue!
Kagcomix:
If you ever get a craving to hear the Kokopelli march again, it’s still on the blog at https://musefanpage.com/blog/?p=1293 .
Haha thanks, Robert! That’s golden!
Our Muse Contents page says the Fairy Tales issue was April 2004.
That reminds me: for the sake of completeness, we ought to bring that page up to date through the last issue of “classic” Muse. Would any current subscribers like to help? YinYangSpirit12?
Ok! I found 54 muse back issues on EBay this summer, (2007-2012) and have some digital back issues (2013) and my personal collection (2014-present)
Ok the Bo question was LAME!! So here’s ANOTHER Bo question a little higher the flamablamblous factor:
Question 5: Do Urania and Bo ever stare into space together? (This isn’t original. Everything else has been. I thought this question was funny though)
Now that Muse-as-we-knew-it is history, you might be interested in knowing a little more about how it came to be.
Like many other oddities in our culture, Muse was the brainchild of a passionate rich eccentric — or in this case, a pair of them. The seeds were planted in the early 1960s, when Blouke and Marianne Carus returned from a year in Germany and enrolled their son in an American elementary school. They were appalled at the poor quality of his reading primers — picture books with mindlessly simple words and sentences and boring stories.
Most parents would have shrugged and let education take its course. Blouke and Marianne, however, decided to do something about it. They started designing textbooks of their own, aimed at revolutionizing reading education in the United States.
The Caruses had resources that few other parents could match. In the 19th century, Blouke’s ancestors had founded a chemical company that made a fortune in zinc and permanganate. They were also interested in philosophy, especially in finding common ground among world religions, and had founded a publishing company, Open Court Publishing Company, to spread their ideas. (Among other things, it helped introduce Buddhism to the West. You can read more about it at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Court_Publishing_Company and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gospel_of_Buddha .)
Together, Blouke and Marianne Carus began compiling textbooks. Their “Open Court reading program†was designed to hook young readers with excellent stories, including many classic tales drawn from Greco-Roman-European culture. Marianne also started a children’s magazine, Cricket, based on the same principles.
The textbook series didn’t catch on (for reasons you can read about here: http://educationnext.org/the-triumph-of-looksay/ ). Cricket, however, was a huge success. Several spinoff magazines followed. In the 1990s, the Caruses decided to create a nonfiction counterpart, Muse. They took their plans to New York to run them past a bunch of magazine editors, including me. I loved the project and signed up to help with it on the spot.
Carus Publishing continued to grow. In 2000, it bought another children’s publisher, Cobblestone Publishing, which had its own stable of magazines, including Odyssey. Then in 2011, the Caruses sold their company and all of its magazines to a Canadian company, ePals, which up to that point had been online-only and had specialized in connecting kids interested in working on science projects together. Then ePals changed its name to the Cricket Media Group. Last year, the new publisher decided to “merge†Muse with Odyssey — in effect, giving Odyssey a makeover and renaming it Muse, while retiring the original Muse and its eponymous Muses.
And that’s where things stand today.
Wow. So, we’re you in on the muses from the beginning, or did that come later?
The Muses had already been chosen by the time I came on board. Blouke and Marianne auditioned several cartoonists by inviting each of them to draw up a roster of New Muses. Someone showed me the portfolio of the rejected candidates once. Some were interesting, others … unfortunate. Larry’s were by far the best — no contest.
Just wondering, can you remember the Patheon of New Muses from the comics?
Do you mean the ones that didn’t make it? I’m afraid not. It was a long time ago. But you could have some fun by imagining what they might have been.
Ok. I’ll use my fancy new stylus and my fancy new art app to draw some “reject muses”
I think there was a contest to imagine rejected ones WAY back when MuseBlog hadn’t properly been created and instead there was a fan page called the Gaboomba. One of those reject characters, Boo, the Muse of Scary Stuff, returned as a villain in the Muse Academy RPG.
I remember once, not actually that long ago, a “forgotten” Muse showed up in the Muse Mail. Bland, I think he called himself.
Seems silly to remove the aspects of Muse that made it distinctive and memorable. I guess it was too good to last forever.
Question 6: (This one will not be oh so lame) How come Pwt is scared of everything? I have a list of Pwears (Pwt fears) from one of the comics. I’ll put that up next. Also, as a bonus, how do you pronounce Pwts name? (I say it like pet, but with a W)
I say “Pyuht”.
Once I told another writer that I thought “Pwt” sounded like a faucet dripping. He said no, a cat hissing.
Maybe he has an anxiety disorder? Whatever it is, I can relate. I get scared and paranoid of things at the drop of a hat.
I say “Pwit.”
Fun fact: “pwet” is Tagalog for “butt”.
…so, personally, I think of it as pronounced “poot” or “pyoot”.
Oh gosh. Well however it’s supposed to be pronounced, I can imagine he gets teased for it. The “butt” thing included.
I never thought of a good way to pronounce it so I just started saying P-W-T. Pee double-yoo tee. And now that’s stuck in my head forever.
SFTDP, but if I had to choose another pronunciation, I would just do “poot”
I also say it like pet with a w, but (for no logical reason) with a German w. So basically a cross between “w” and “v”.
I also pronounce it p-w-e-et. Like, Pwe, and et as a second syllable.
If Mr. Gonick’s intention was to reproduce how it can be confusing to figure out how spoken Ancient Egyptian words sounded because it’s written without vowels, he succeeded. For example, “Kemet” is how we usually write the name the Ancient Egyptians called their land, but in heiroglyphics, all that’s written out is “kmt”.
Yp, I sspct yr rght.
So it’s the earliest for of “srsly? u r awsm” text talk?
I suppose it is its very distant ancestor. I’ve read that some modern languages from the same family as Ancient Egyptian such as Arabic and Hebrew can also be written without vowels, but I don’t speak or write any of them.
Arabic writes long vowels (which double as consonants) but usually ignores short ones, though there are special diacritical marks for writing them when you need to.
Hey, Robert, I have another question about the “muse contributor lifestyle”. Do the editors have pictures of the muses up at muse HQ and stuff like that, or do they just think of the muses as something they put in the magazine?
Muse was very much a lifestyle for the editors I knew. I suspect that has changed.
If anyone hasn’t read my comment (It’s more appropriate in this thread) here it is:
2 of the new muse characters are returning characters from Odyssey (O and Aarti). I kid you not. According to Johanna Arnone “This is a tribute to Odyssey” or something like that. Forget muse being dominated by Disney, we’re being dominated by Odyssey!
Also, I thought these were “New” characters in a “New” comic. That’s false advertising, people!
I now have a desire to see Urania and Jack Horkheimer crossover fanart.
I’m on it!
Yes, please!
Question 7: Today we shall dedicate this question to “Kreator of Koko! The User of Urania! The Praiser of Pwt! The Master of Mimi! The One who thinks Craww is Cool! The Boss of Bo! The Comicer of Chad! The Adder of AEIOU! The Founder of Feather!” AKA Larry Gonick. What would you ask LG if you could interview him? (Muse related)
I’d ask him what the heck is up with Kokopelli and Urania. Like why they don’t always get along, and what happened in a super old issue when Koko proposed. I really want to know their backstory together.
What issue was that? I’d say it’s A) because Koko likes Urania B) Koko thinks Urania is full of herself. My best bet would be C) All of the above
You can find the issue in our “Muse Contents” list (https://musefanpage.com/blog/?page_id=1800) by searching for “propose”.
Could you post the dialogue from the proposal scene? (Kinda curious now)
“Urania, will you marry me?”
“WHAT?”
“Please?”
“Well, Kokopelli… If I say ‘yes,’ you wouldn’t have to buy me a ring — I already have this beautiful diamond from my grandmother.”
“I know! give it to me!!”
“Oh, I get it now!”
“C’mon!!”
“You want to be the first Muse in history to take the ring AWAY from the bride!! NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO!!”
[Pwt]: “Yes, gems can make people behave strangely…”
[Mimi]: “Strangely? Who?”
Not to mention Eldar and Valar…
Yeah! “She almost accepts, but things go sour.”
What happened?
Any chance of all the Koko and Co’s being collected into one book along with some interviews, memorable muse mail, and stuff like that? It probably won’t happen, BUT it would be awesome!
From her comments on the Cricket Media web page, I’d say the new editor wants everyone to forget the Muses as quickly as possible.
Yeah. Have you read the blog post comments? I’m under the name of Kitty.
I wondered whether she might be you.
Nice going as Kitty, YinYangSpirit–eloquent and important comments. All of the new editor’s comments about “It takes time to like new thinks! Think about meeting new friends!” are sort of infantilizing. It doesn’t actually mean anything and it’s frustrating to read as a repeated response to actual questions.
She might consider that she is addressing people trained in skepticism, irreverence, and pie-throwing.
Anyone else who wants to see what “Kitty” has to say may visit Cricket Media’s blog at www . cricketmedia . com/2015/09/04/introducing-new-muse/
It would be fun to have a collected archive in book form, like the bound yearly volumes the National Geographic library has… But nowadays I guess it’d be cheaper and more hip to sell it as a set of DVDs. I think Astronomy magazine has something similar.
This is a pretty good idea! A Muse compendium. I’d definitely buy a Kokopelli & Company collection for a cute coffee table book (not really sure I’d want reader letters).
Who owns the rights to the new muses anyways?
I think the publisher, Cricket Media, owns the rights. Larry Gonick probably isn’t allowed to draw the Muses anymore.
“The Cartoon guide to Hopi, Greek, Aboriginal Australian, and Mesopotamian Mythology, American Ornithology and European Bovinology, and the people of Niger, Egypt, and Mongolia”
I think that’s right?
(There’s a group of mesopotamian farming gods in Cartoon History of the Universe who look EXACTLY like Feather)
Why wouldn’t Feather’s relatives look like Feather?
Speaking of muse relatives, was anyone still subscribing in October 2011? In that Koko & Co, Mimi and Kokopelli preform a séance so that Mimi can “reconnect” with her dead mother. As always, things go sour.
That was actually my first year of subscription. The Harry Houdini issue, right?
One of my favorites!
My first issue was the Big Foot 2014 issue (Not sure if you were still on board) That was my first muse experience. I was blown away. In fact, here’s my muser ORGIN story:
So, we do these magazine sales for Girl Scouts, and I was given some discount on a Cricket magazine group magazine. Muse was the only one that looked interesting. So, I ordered Muse.
(Here’s the part where it gets interesting) While I had bought a Muse subscription, they sent me the wrong form. I got a “You’ve ordered Odyssey! Have fun enjoying adventures in science!” form. I felt doomed. I had seen Odyssey advertisements online. Not my kind of magazine. So, while I was prepared to face Odyssey for a whole year, (That’s a wee bit dramatic) I ended up getting Muse!!
The first Koko & Co I read was a classic Koko vs Urania. Yay!
Hey! World of of musers! What’s your muser ORGIN story?
My first issue was November/December 2004! “What’s Inside the Earth?” I was in fifth grade and liked the issues I saw sitting around in my classroom, so my parents got me a subscription for Chanukah.
Is LG still an active cartoonist, or is he retired? He finished the Cartoon Histories (I think) and muse is gone
And was he “let go” or was it partly/mostly his idea to leave Muse? I can’t imagine that he would just leave like that, or that he was fired….
Cartoon Guide to Algebra came out in January, and an updated Cartoon guide to Statistics came out in February.
Hey, Robert the GAPA,
Who’s your favorite muse, and which Koko & Co is your favorite?
Question 8: Where does Chad get the billions of dollars for dog counters, cat counters….
Guess who comes next SPLAT!!
Hypothesis: As the Muse of Hardware, he can materialize tools and components as needed and thus never needs to buy them.
The final unanswered question. This is the deepest one yet.
WHY DOES KOKOPELLI THROW PIES???
It’s one of the greatest mysteries in the universe
Kokopelli is a trickster deity, so you would expect him to keep up with the practical jokes and pranks mortals invent and borrow the ones he likes. Pie-throwing happens to be one he likes a lot.