While admiration for a job well done is appropriate, the cartoonists among us will inevitably be tempted to do our own inelegant riff on the painting should an opportunity present itself — as exemplified by Laura Weinstein’s promotional graphic (at right above) for Lit Graphic: The World of the Graphic Novel, the exhibition of comics art that opened on November 10 at the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, Massachusetts.

To be fair, snobbery hasn’t always been the culprit. Sometimes it’s just been habits of thought. Various of my perfectly open-minded art-loving friends acknowledge that they’ve never felt called upon to give much thought to Rockwell, thus allowing the widespread condescension toward the man’s accomplishments to go unexamined in their minds. One can’t keep up with everything, after all, and the need to worry about George W. Bush’s presidency has more urgency, perhaps, than any need to reevaluate the artistic legacy of a popular illustrator who, it must be said, never suffered from disdain among everyday folks.

Maybe I’ve got a personal agenda at play here. As the target of much (to my mind undeserved) condescension during my Barefootz years, I’ve always felt an affinity for the underrated Norman Rockwell. We schoolyard outcasts have to stick together.

Fortunately, time seems to be rendering a fairer verdict about Rockwell than have some art critics in the past. Decide for yourself. For sheer pleasure in looking at richly imagined pictures that have interesting stories to tell, the Rockwell Museum is the place to beat. And the Museum is assembling a big Rockwell exhibition that’ll soon be touring around the country as well, so original Rockwell paintings may not be as out of reach as you think, even for people who can’t make the drive to western Massachusetts.

I view the man as a master visual storyteller who knew how to portray characters that made ordinariness fascinating. Cynics may bristle at the unabashed "neighborliness" of those images and personalities made famous in the course of the artist’s long partnership with the SatEvePost, but those of us who like telling stories with pictures and aspire to do it well know when we’re seeing a fellow cartoonist in action.

Even if Rockwell’s stories were told on canvases instead of comic book pages, the man was clearly playing in our ballpark.

As was true when JM#1 hit bookstore shelves a couple of years ago and CNW brought together a panel to celebrate the occasion, WGBH Forum Network was on hand to videotape the proceedings. The newest recording will ultimately be posted on the WGBH web site (keep your eye on this spot for that); meanwhile, if you’d like to see the video of Jen, me, and Joan Hilty doing similar panel duty back in 2005, here’s where to find that little archival gem.

Typically, thanks to the usual crush of professional tasks that persist in preventing me from making blogging the core of my existence, it’s taken me a full ten days to post photos taken during this most recent Cambridge gabfest. But better later than never; here are a couple of the many images snapped by Jen’s beloved lovergirl and occasional photographic documentarian Emmalee Aliquo. (Not being a media whore like the rest of us, Emmalee has no web presence that Google or I could find; hence her name bears no hyperlink. But take my word for it, Emmalee is one cool chick and you should get to know her sometime.)

Tucked in among our audience, by the way, were two distinguished theatrical personages from the Boston area, Ed and Charlotte Peed, who just happen to be old college-era friends of mine on whom I hadn’t laid eyes in many a long year. Much fun was had as we lunched and caught up on our lives for a couple of hours before the panel began.

I got to observe Ed’s skills at close range in a play or two, though. Especially memorable was listening to him and occasionally viewing him in action from the vantage point of the garbage can I occupied throughout BSC’s 1967 production of Samuel Beckett’s Endgame. Since I only popped into view a time or two during the play, otherwise snuggling in darkness amid mentholated cough syrup fumes (I got sick during the show’s run), I mostly experienced the auditory rather than visual aspects of Ed’s performance as Hamm. But I could tell, even from the odoriferous blackness of my trash container, that his performance was holding the audience rapt throughout the evening.

My dramatic high point in the show was getting to fearlessly eat a Milkbone dog biscuit as onlookers gasped. It comes with the territory if you’re going to play poor, legless, garbage-can-dwelling Nagg in Beckett’s black comedy of desolation, hiring a stunt eater being frowned upon in the world of serious theatre. Ed, who was cast in a more prominent role than mine, ruled the stage as a magnificently throne-bound Hamm. And in case you’ve never tried them yourself, I’ll spare you the trouble: Milkbones, while not actually tasting "good," aren’t quite as unpleasant to the taste buds of a non-dog as one might expect.

I don’t seem to have a photo of Ed in his Hamm role, unfortunately, but I do harbor a yellowing photo (see below) of him portraying one of the four somewhat spooky young men who spent two hours giving a fellow named Manchester Wintergrey the jitters in my 1967 Playwright’s Lab play The Sixth Story.