Middle-School Cartoonist Draws on Animal Insight
Seventh-Grader's Cockapoo Provides Inspiration for Her Comic Strips

By Ian Shapira
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, September 7, 2008

Prince William County seventh-grader Crystal Wormack owns a sliver of renown in the U.S. Copyright registry: Registration No. VAu 952-280. Title of work: "Angel the Puppy."

Neither deluded classroom doodler nor widely published wunderkind, Crystal, 12, occupies a lowly but eccentric place at the intersection of her chosen profession and her status as a middle-schooler. Her cartoon, based on her family's cockapoo, Angel, has not been published as a regular serial. But Crystal, the daughter of a pastor and a Mary Kay representative, strives in a manner uncommon for an age group whose goals tend to be oriented toward honor roll and good cafeteria tables.

She has been preparing for her more public emergence this fall. Crystal hopes to sell her comic strips -- she has dozens -- in books that she will self-publish and offer at Prince William churches, libraries, maybe her school and on her upcoming Web site, http://www.angel-thepuppy.com. (A portion of the book's proceeds will go toward the training of therapy dogs, the family said.)

She is so serious that she established a limited liability corporation: Wormack Productions and Creations. She wants to approach newspapers soon.

"I developed the idea when I was 8, and I used to read a lot of comic strips and thought, 'Why can't I do that?' " she recalled recently, preparing to bang out a new strip while watching "SpongeBob SquarePants" on the living room television. "I was at the library and saw Garfield and Peanuts. I kept reading it over and over again. Some of the physical violence -- when the cat kicks the dog off the table or when the cat scratches his owner -- I kind of like that stuff . . . yeah, physical violence."

Her mother, Tracy, doubling as Crystal's handler/spokeswoman, interjected: " Fictitious violence."

Crystal, smiling, continued: "Since I'm a nice person, I have to find a way to release my anger."

"Angel the Puppy," a three-to-six frame comic strip, chronicles the fights and mishaps between Angel and her nemesis Gwydon, a male cat. The two play pranks on each other and often display the humor, savvy and failures of humans -- in other words, the same model seen in most cartoons with animals. Sometimes other characters, such as their human owners, Tracy and Yosarian, and the couple's twin daughters, Heather and Tara, make appearances. Then there's Angel's best friend, Trixie, a Lhasapoo, and Shelbie, a turtle.

Plot lines vary from the mundane to the absurd, and Crystal draws upon cultural literacy, with the animals referring to sushi, yoga, popular films or even commonly mocked psychological issues.

In one strip, the first frame shows Gwydon chasing a fly with a fly swatter, yelling "Yaaaargh!!!!!" while Angel stands by, frowning. The second frame shows Gwydon still in pursuit, but Angel's expression has turned mischievous, as if she is about to commit some prank. Finally, the third frame comes, but instead of Angel disrupting Gwydon's chase, she ponders aloud, in the effete words of an analyst: "Gwydon is described in 3 letters: O, C, and D."

Asked about the root of that particular cartoon and her apparent knowledge of obsessive-compulsive disorder, Crystal said: "Sometimes I watch 'Monk' [a TV show about an extraordinarily fastidious detective]. I don't really like it, but I just watch it whenever I go to my mom's friend's house."

Sometimes strips hint at personal feelings. In one case, Angel is taken to a shopping mall, and she falls for a soda vendor. "Here's my number. Call me sometime, baby," she coos. The owner, Tracy, says: "Naughty doggy," and begins walking away, while Angel's paws are scratching the vendor's countertop. Angel shouts: "Do not fret my love! I will be back for you!"

Crystal does not think highly of boys; she might reconsider when she gets older. "They're mean at school. And annoying. None are decent," she said, flatly. "And I'm not ready to have a boyfriend at this age."

At Pennington Middle School, Crystal's work is revered. Her visual arts teacher, Jill Holmes, said she admires Crystal for her reliance on the fundamentals.

"I like that she's using basic skills -- the concept of line and contour drawing," Holmes said. "She's showing her friends that you can achieve high standards at a young age."

Holmes said she learned about Crystal's work last school year while perusing her class journal entries. "It's not unusual to see students doodle, but I saw she had a copyright symbol next to her [doodles], the little 'c' with a circle around it, and 'all rights reserved.' It was so cute."

Crystal's schoolmate Alyssa Gates, 12, said that kids crowd around Crystal during lunch -- breaking the no-mingling rule, but whatever -- and pore over her albums of comics, giving her ideas and encouragement.

"We'll enter the cafeteria and get our lunches -- there's different stuff every day, we usually get the chicken -- and we sit down and talk for a little bit," Alyssa said. "Then we beg her for her comic books."

Alyssa has her favorite: "It's the one where Angel finds a bun warmer in the kitchen and sits on it. The owner comes in and scolds her, but Angel says, 'But you said it was a bun warmer.' "

Back at her Prince William home on a recent day, Crystal was able to use her time off from school to start writing new comics. She broke out some paper and her trusty blue ruler and began drawing each frame's margins. She flipped open her laptop, clicked on YouTube for music, and settled in.

First frame: Angel looks at Gwydon and says, "Gwydon, you stink." Second frame: Gwydon asks, "Why?" Third frame: Angel walks away and says "Just because," and Gwydon, with a blank expression to the reader, says, "I will NEVER understand women."