Cartoon Skeletons: Pigpen and the Dead

From Artist Michael Paulus' Website:
"A character study of 22 present and past cartoon characters (including Pigpen)".

Speaking of skeletons and Pigpen, here is an interesting letter to the editor published the NY Times:
THE GRATEFUL DEAD
When the Bad Trip Began
To the Editor:
Seth Mnookin gets it right concerning the decadence and decline of the Grateful Dead, and ultimately of the music itself as the band became too popular to play in anything smaller than stadiums ["Now the Dead Will Always Be With Us," last Sunday]. What he gets wrong is the timing. The beginning of the end was already chronicled in Tom Wolfe's "Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test" in 1967, with Mountain Girl, Jerry Garcia's girlfriend at the time, bemoaning the introduction of hard drugs into the Haight during the "summer of love." In addition, the death of the original band member Ron (Pigpen) McKernan in 1973 marked a significant change in the musical direction of the Dead.


The throngs of urchins, burnouts and hangers-on at the huge arenas was a shallow echo of the close-knit atmosphere of the earlier concerts, where you saw the same faces in the crowd and felt like part of something unique, American and ours.
AL DOYLE
Brooklyn
Published: April 24th, 2005