Terminal Moraine
Original comic art by Adam C. Prato

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Wacky computer. Home returns you to this page.
Episodes gives a list of the cartoons.
Characters describes the regular characters.
Links connects you to other websites.
E-mail your comments about this site.

Updates

Cactus preacher and his disciple. New episodes were added on October 21, 2004. For a complete list, visit the episodes page.

About Terminal Moraine

Terminal Moraine is my original comic art. It's set in a rather smallish community populated by people, animals, vegetables, and minerals. Oh yes, and an extraterrestrial who rules them all.

On not being a cartoonist

A pair of breasts. Flamingo. I've always wanted to be a comic strip cartoonist. Some of the characters that appear here have been with me in some form or another since I was a child. I don't know of any extant cartoons from my childhood. I know my earliest work was Superbird, a superhero comic from perhaps as early as my pre-school years (I remember dictating the text to my dad). Superbird was a typical alpha-male protagonist with small assistant named Cuckoo, and an evil-genius arch-nemesis pig. He also had a girlfriend who was always being tied up by the pig-villain. I had such a good grasp of superhero clichés that I even knew enough to draw large breasts on Superbird's oft-distressed sweetheart. I continue to draw breasts and birds today, but never together.

Superbird was my last superhero comic. I moved on to newpaper-style comic strips. And by newspaper-style I mean panel-bound pencil sequences on the backs of the scrap papers my dad brought home from work. I think I first ripped off "Tom and Jerry" when I was around seven years old with a cat strip called "Zig Zag." But then I created a character called "Phil the Lizard." Phil was heavily influenced by "Garfield," of which I was quite a fan. The latter-day version of Phil is depicted at the right. Now he is more of a chameleon. I will try to fit him into Terminal Moraine wherever possible.

In sixth grade I compiled my most extensive opus of cartoon drawings: Chickenland. Chickenland was great. It was not a strip, but a full page (8.5 by 11 inches). It was always divided horizontally into three sections: Chicken Heaven, Chicken Earth, and Chicken Hell. It had a pretty rich cast of characters. My favorites were The Chicken Devil and His Son Junior. Junior was an absolute idiot who tormented his father physically and emotionally with his bumbling. I produced perhaps fifty Chickenland episodes, but threw them away when I was in high school. I still regret that. The modern incarnation of The Chicken Devil and His Son Junior are at the right; they will appear in Terminal Moraine as well.

The original and best Karate Fungus ever. By high school, I had abandoned sequential comics in favor of random cartoon doodling. I also learned how to draw "for real." But while researching college programs and careers, I discovered that cartooning was a pretty lousy way to make a living. I lasted about a year as a visual arts major before I switched to the liberal arts. I kept my sketchbook, though. Even as I pursue my career as park ranger, I sometimes jot down ideas or scratch out thumbnail sketches. Terminal Moraine is the (slightly) more refined version of those scribblings.

Semi-morphous blob. But I am not a very disciplined artist. I don't like to paint and I have little patience with ink. My best and most expressive work comes from my hasty and infrequent thumbnail sketches. If I can get away with drawing Terminal Moraine in dark pencil, I will. I also can't draw people, horses, or buildings very well. You'll see them here as semi-morphous blobs— cartooning taken to the extreme.

My favorite comic strips are Bloom County, Calvin and Hobbes, Krazy Kat (that's right, check it out some time), Mutts, and The Far Side. I'd have to say that Bloom County's author Berke Breathed has the finest sense of visual timing of any cartoonist. Terminal Moraine is closest to Bloom County, but with a touch of Krazy Kat's surreality.

I hope you enjoy Terminal Moraine.

Accessibility

Terminal Moraine is desinged to meet the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0. I recommend using Microsoft Internet Explorer 3.2, Netscape Navigator 7.1, or newer versions. If Terminal Moraine is not accessible to you, please let me know.

Copyright

Everything within Terminal Moraine, original comic art belongs to me unless otherwise noted. Please ask me for permission before reproducing any part of this site.