I will not be able to update the comic today on account of I haven’t colored it and want to do it right.  Time management and I have been on the outs lately, and real life has entertained me far more than it usually does.  Hey, real life, thanks.  But I’ve got a job to do.

So I wanted to compensate by posting something on the blog today.  And I’ll start with a little inside baseball into why I do my comic in the format I do:  I decided to use the standard newspaper strip format because I originally intended to submit my comic to newspaper syndicates.  I did so only once, a few months back when my act was noticeably less together, and it was rejected.  So up until I introduced the stoner character I was still operating under the assumption I’d submit again when I thought my material was good enough.  But lately I’ve been less interested in that direction and am becoming more content on doing whatever I want with my comic here, on this site.

The 3-4 panel format has always terrified me because everyone knows you have to dump a joke in the last panel, and I always feel like I’m under a lot of pressure to work in a rigid format.  So I may change the format of this comic up a bit in the coming weeks.  I noticed that when I started the graphic novel I’m working on, my brain felt so free and unencumbered by structure.  Updates to follow.

Other than that, the song remains the same.  I hope you’ll forgive me my gaffe, and maybe you and I can take solace in the fact that the next comic represents a leap in progress.  I don’t know what happened but I’m becoming better at picturing things.  Legitimacy is within reach!

Real life for me has always been averaged out not by living a bland life, but by extremes.  My lows are painfully low, and my highs are painfully high.  The last couple months has been one of the unusually eventful periods, and it came right on the heels of a large chunk of routine, which has been good for my life experience and bad for my productivity.  Luckily I have been getting more ideas for things than I have in a long while, and I actually had the damn fool sense to record much of it down in a notebook, so at least I’ll have something to feed off during those lean imagination periods.

As of this posting I am on a little needed but much accepted vacation in Las Vegas.  If the hedonism goes as planned, I will have died of alcohol poisoning already and this will be a posthumous blog post.  If this has failed to take place I can only turn my back on my prudishness in revulsion.  If I don’t die, I will return back to San Francisco and instantly have to start looking for a new apartment.  I have moved in with my friend Rick, a fellow cartoonist.  The brain trust I had predicted hasn’t been formed yet due to cramped living quarters, but at least we have succeeded in bringing out the substance abusers in one another.  And my parents said I wasn’t capable of anything…

I have yet to ink anything for my graphic novel, and the presentation date is quickly approaching.  Luckily, I’ve come up with a fitting title for my tale of young love.  So, dear reader, keep your peepers peeled for “Boobs on a Calculator.”  Trust me, it fits in.  And if I get disgusted by my immaturity I’ll change it to something pretentious like “Punctuated Equilibrium.”  My art, like my life, averages out by extremes.

I’ve been wondering whether or not I should actually think of myself as an artist.  I don’t yet feel like I have the chops to do so, especially in a place like San Francisco where even the janitors have had pieces published in literary journals.  But as time goes on I feel more like an artist and less like a person who could live a realistic life.  And I came across a quote by someone I forget recently that advised me to “define yourself before others get a chance to do so.”  Or something like that.  But it helped me remain true to my guiding principles of chaos, and for that I am indebted to you, nameless dead armchair philosopher.

Holler if you hear me.

x

The observant or obsessive may have realized that I haven’t posted anything as of late.  This isn’t because I’ve lost my revewed interest in what I do.  No.  Quite the opposite,  my enthusiasm for comics has been rejuvenated and it’s pretty much all I’ve been doing.  My social life, which was never sitting too pretty, has been utterly decimated.  My personal hygiene, usually admirable, has devolved into a slovenly lifestyle unfit for a bomb-building hermit living in the woods.  I don’t eat, I don’t sleep, I just live and breathe art and music and other breatheables.

This has let to output though.  I’ve been working on my first printed comic, which has turned out just to be a collection of strips with extra art and things to justify the cover price.  It’s coming along nicely and I should have it printed and for sale in about a month.

My compatriot Rick and I are planning some local San Francisco-related comic events.  In tandem we drew a picture:

Things are happening.