Author | Francis Cleetus |
---|---|
Original title | Cartoon compilation published by Hachette. |
Language | English |
Genre | Cartoon |
Publisher | Hachette India |
Publication date | August 2013 |
Publication place | India/US |
Pages | 156 |
ISBN | 978-93-5009-624-6 |
It's Geek 2 Me is a tech cartoon [1] about people and their off-center relationships with technology created by Pittsburgh-based cartoonist, Francis Cleetus. He was inspired to draw the very first cartoon by a frantic intern who rushed into his office and asked where the any key was on a computer keyboard. The cartoon evolved into a series when Cleetus worked as a creative director at J. Walter Thompson, Hong Kong on the Hewlett Packard brand.
Cleetus chose Pittsburgh [2] as the location for the cartoon's imaginary setting 'Paradox Software Corporation' because it has a large tech community, over 1,600 tech-based companies and the Carnegie Institute of Technology, which is ranked among the top five engineering colleges in the country by the U.S. News & World Report.
The first compilation of It's Geek 2 Me cartoons was self-published by the author in 2012 as a paperback titled Wish Your Mouth Had A Backspace Key in the United States via Amazon.com. [3] In 2013, a second compilation titled Total Timepass Tech Toons [4] was published by Hachette India for the Indian subcontinent.
The diverse and colorful characters who star in the cartoon were inspired by real people that Cleetus worked with during his professional stints in India, Hong Kong and the US.
Loginder Singh: Lanky Sikh from Vancouver, Canada, currently lives in a badly-lit cubicle at work. Talented Systems Analyst who's occasionally fixated with complexity. Enjoys flaunting his collection of designer turbans and matching sweatshirts. Eligible bachelor who’s fond of exotic wines and nightly hacking binges. He’s been in an on-and-off relationship with his coworker Emily for three years.
Emily Facebrook: Charming Office Manager who was the captain of the cheerleading team at her high school in Nashville, TN. She speaks with a soft Southern drawl that is almost as drawn out as her daily to-do list. Never forgets to send herself a stuffed animal on Administrative Professionals' Day. Her love life is a roller coaster where the brakes wore out years ago. She just loves Loginder’s Indo-Canadian accent.
Bill Googli: Flamboyant Marketing Director of Paradox Software, known for his chic business wardrobe. Born and raised in New Orleans, LA, by mixed parents (African-American and French), Bill grew up around a family bar and restaurant. He has been popular with the ladies since he was featured on Food network for his Creole Margaritas. Designs and builds robotic reptiles to impress coworker Mona.
Spam Murphy: Cheap Executive Officer as well as Chairman of Paradox Software. He fondly refers to his staff as 'humanware' and treats them like secondhand hardware. He's a seasoned Los Angeles born venture capitalist whose capital flow dried up along with his libido. He’s also a founding board member of the dubious São Paulo based wildlife charity, the James E. Williamson Iguana Fund.
Linux Cooper: The company's Top Bean Counter or CFO who's dedicated to reducing payroll while increasing his annual bonus. Joined the company as an independent financial analyst and gnawed his way in. A CPA (Compulsive Puzzle Addict), he holds a master's degree in the history of tavern puzzles. The Securities and Exchange Commission has investigated him since he owned a pawnshop as a teen in Phoenix, Arizona.
Mona Dos: Quality Assurance Director and unofficial water-cooler gossip chief at Paradox Software. She’s a divorced single mother of a 10-year-old named Rio who likes to hang around her office on weekends. Is passionate about her son and the blood-red tulips in her backyard. She moved to Dallas, TX, from Kolkata, India, after a grand but ill-fated marriage to her school sweetheart, a narcissistic urologist.
Icon Murphy: Spam Murphy's son, New Business Director and heir apparent to the throne at Paradox Software. Holds a PhD on the hazards of texting with ancient Greek symbols while driving, from the University of Cyprus. He’s fluent in six languages including Mandarin, Tagalog and Prolog. Likes to spend weekends taking his single-engine Cessna for a spin. Hopes to turn Paradox into a Fortune 500 company.
Ram Patel: Father figure to all IT professionals of foreign origin at Paradox Software. Sports a bristly white beard to compensate for the lack of hair on top. Mastered technology when a personal computer filled an entire room. He heads the Maintenance Division at the company and the ‘Courtesy Flush’ poker team in the suburb where he lives with his art museum curator wife and Dalmatian Coco.
Irfan Linkudin: Vice President - Tech Support at Paradox Software and technically head of the division. Technically, because nobody reports to him. He grew up in Istanbul, Turkey, and moved to Buffalo, New York in the 1960s. His wife of 16 years left him after the dotcom company he founded went bust in 2002. He can single-handedly reassemble the V-turn engine of his Harley-Davidson bike from scratch in under 30 minutes.
Cad Myers: Corporate Security Director in charge of real and virtual security at Paradox Software. A former Major of the US Army's Field Intelligence Unit, he’s experienced in Hacker Interception and Electrocution. Lost his left pinky on active duty as an intelligence officer during Operation Desert Com in 2001. He oversaw the implementation and management of all the security at the gold mines on Mindanao Island in the Philippines.
Benny Lan: Sr. Programmer who picked up his cackle, chopsticks and COBOL at a tender age in Wan Chai, Hong Kong. Has a wry sense of humor that's reflected in the random bug he leaves behind in software. He can survive for months on a staple diet of Chinese takeout, Japanese toys and American music. Received a complimentary life membership from Workaholics Anonymous.
Robert Cobolobo: Human Resources Director, stationery watchdog, and annual holiday program organizer, all rolled into a small South American frame. Found himself in the US after a nubile Texan student succumbed to his charms in Cancun, Mexico. He worked as a Floor-hand in an oil field until he got his MBA in HR Management and worked his way into the lofty corridors of corporate power at Paradox.
Tweetsie Williams: Management Trainee who thrives on gadgets and technology. She likes to flaunt her master's degree from Virginia Tech and her tough upbringing in Brooklyn, NY. Is the only daughter of a Vietnam veteran who was awarded a Medal of Honor. Her paycheck’s disproportionate to her experience and is solely based on her future potential. She'd give anything, including her blinged out laptop, for a date with Icon.
Rio Dos: Mona’s 10-year-old son and unpaid tech support guy to all new hires at Paradox Software. He currently holds 14 world records for Desert Commander and is two grades ahead of his classmates in every subject except civics. In addition to English, Spanish and Bengali, he’s also fluent in colloquial Hindi, thanks to the bi-weekly dose of Bollywood films his mom rents from the local Indian grocery store.
The National Cartoonists Society (NCS) is an organization of professional cartoonists in the United States. It presents the National Cartoonists Society Awards. The Society was born in 1946 when groups of cartoonists got together to entertain the troops. They enjoyed each other's company and decided to meet on a regular basis.
Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner are a duo of cartoon characters from the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies series of animated cartoons, first appearing in 1949 in the theatrical short Fast and Furry-ous. In each episode, the cunning, devious and constantly hungry coyote repeatedly attempts to catch and eat the roadrunner, but is humorously unsuccessful. Instead of using animal instinct, the coyote deploys absurdly complex contraptions to try to catch his prey. They comically backfire, with the coyote often getting injured in slapstick fashion. Many of the items for these contrivances are mail-ordered from a variety of companies implied to be part of the Acme Corporation. TV Guide included Wile E. Coyote in its 2013 list of "The 60 Nastiest Villains of All Time".
Marc Lowell Andreessen is an American businessman and former software engineer. He is the co-author of Mosaic, the first widely used web browser with a graphical user interface; co-founder of Netscape; and co-founder and general partner of Silicon Valley venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz. He co-founded and later sold the software company Opsware to Hewlett-Packard; he also co-founded Ning, a company that provides a platform for social networking websites. He is an inductee in the World Wide Web Hall of Fame. Andreessen's net worth is estimated at $1.7 billion.
Bonkers is an American animated television series and a spin-off short series called He's Bonkers which mainly aired in Raw Toonage. The show originally aired from September 4, 1993 to February 23, 1994 after a preview of the series aired on The Disney Channel from February 28 to June 6, 1993. The 9 episodes of the Disney Channel preview aired in October 1993 in the original syndication. The original syndicated run was available as part of the programming block The Disney Afternoon. Reruns of the show continued in syndication until 1996 and were later shown on Toon Disney until late 2004.
Argon Zark! is a webcomic, created by cartoonist and web site designer Charley Parker. The strip, drawn using a graphics tablet and computer graphics software, first appeared in June 1995. A collection, billed as a "Dead Tree Souvenir Edition", was published in December 1997. The strip was last updated in September 2019.
Check Point Software Technologies Ltd. is an American-Israeli multinational provider of software and combined hardware and software products for IT security, including network security, endpoint security, cloud security, mobile security, data security and security management.
Mona the Vampire is an animated children's television series based on the children's book of the same name written and illustrated by Sonia Holleyman. The series aired in Canada on YTV from September 13, 1999, to February 22, 2006; in France, it first aired on France 3 on October 30, 2000.
Howard Post was an American animator, cartoonist, and comic strip and comic book writer-artist.
Toon Boom Animation Inc., also known as Toon Boom, is a Canadian software company founded in 1994 and based in Montreal, Quebec. It specializes in the development and production of animation and storyboarding software for film, television, the World Wide Web, video games, mobile devices, training and education.
Arifur Rahman is a Bangladeshi-Norwegian political cartoonist, illustrator and animator. He is a self-taught cartoonist who is renowned for his contribution to cartoons both on the internet and in print media. In Bangladesh, he is best known as "Cartoonist Arif" for anti-corruption cartoons. He's won multiple awards for Anti-Corruption cartoons from Transparency International Bangladesh and the Daily Star. He was the first and former guest cartoonist of International Cities of Refuge Network (ICORN). He is a publisher of cartoon magazine Toons Mag and the organizer of international cartoon contests and exhibitions.
The Language Technologies Institute (LTI) is a research institute at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States, and focuses on the area of language technologies. The institute is home to 33 faculty with the primary scholarly research of the institute focused on machine translation, speech recognition, speech synthesis, information retrieval, parsing, information extraction, and multimodal machine learning. Until 1996, the institute existed as the Center for Machine Translation, which was established in 1986. Subsequently, from 1996 onwards, it started awarding degrees, and the name was changed to The Language Technologies Institute. The institute was founded by Professor Jaime Carbonell, who served as director until his death in February 2020. He was followed by Jamie Callan, and then Carolyn Rosé, as interim directors. In August 2023, Mona Diab became the director of the institute.
Spaced Out is an animated series, co-produced by Alphanim, Tooncan Productions and Cartoon Network Europe, in association with several other companies and television networks. The series had one season with 26 episodes.
Filipino animation, also known as Pinoy animation, is a body of original cultural and artistic works and styles applied to conventional Filipino storytelling, combined with talent and the appropriate application of classic animation principles, methods, and techniques, which recognizes their relationship with Filipino culture, comics, and films. It also delves into relying on traditional and common Filipino "sense of going about things" or manner of coping with Filipino life and environment.
Sivaramakichenane Somasegar is an Indian-American technology business executive in the Greater Seattle Area. He is a Managing Director at Madrona Venture Group, a venture capital firm based in Seattle. Somasegar joined Madrona in November 2015 after a 27-year career at Microsoft, where he most recently was corporate vice president of the developer division and overseeing the global distributed R&D centers at Microsoft.
Pinterest is an American social media service for publishing and discovery of information in the form of pinboards. This includes recipes, home, style, motivation, and inspiration on the Internet using image sharing. Pinterest, Inc. was founded by Ben Silbermann, Paul Sciarra, and Evan Sharp, and is headquartered in San Francisco.
Francis Cleetus is an American cartoonist, painter, and sculptor. He is also a creative director, graphic designer, and copywriter, who has worked at various ad agencies including Foote, Cone & Belding, Ogilvy & Mather, J. Walter Thompson and Doe-Anderson in India, Hong Kong and the US.
Back to Backspace and Pillywags' Mansion are a pair of animated television pilots produced by Cartoon Network Studios for Cartoon Network. Back to Backspace was created by Dominic Bisignano and Amalia Levari, while Pillywags' Mansion was created by Sam Marin. The pilots were released on the network's official website in November 2014, to positive critical reception. Bisignano and Levari's pilot was nominated at the 42nd Annie Awards, although it did not win.
Tracy Chou is an American software engineer and advocate for diversity in technology related fields. She previously worked at Pinterest and Quora with internship experience at Google and Facebook.
Toons Mag is a cartoon magazine that offers a global online platform for publishing editorial cartoons, comics, caricatures, illustrations, and related news. It is a multilingual publication and organizer of an international cartoon contest and exhibitions. It was founded in 2009 by cartoonist Arifur Rahman, based in Drøbak, Norway.