Why I don't do conventions naked

I wrote an article recently about cartoonists reading and performing, and made a reference in passing that while most people have stage fright, I have just the opposite feeling. Individual conversation gives me anxiety but I have no fear of talking in front of a mass audience. I mentioned in one sentence that I have no fear of being seen naked. I am by no means an exhibitionist. It's not as if I'm a crazy, unpredictable loose cannon that will do anything for a laugh. There are plenty of things I'd be embarrassed to do. It's only that I don't care what complete strangers think. It's not as if I'd go around exposing myself, but if somebody were to walk in on me in the bathroom or catch me dressing, if I cover myself up it would be out of respect, not embarrassment. It's not as if I have body parts nobody would expect me to have (I don't think). This all comes back to a throwaway line I made in an essay. After I wrote that, somebody said I should be nude at my next convention appearance. Sorry, I will have to kindly decline and here's why:

1) I want to be known for my work. If I were to do it, people would know me as “the guy who appeared naked in public” when I'd rather be “the guy who drew a funny comic”. I've written things on internet message boards, had letters printed, and unintentionally harmed others to my regret, and it's taken me years to overcome people meeting me and saying, “Oh you're the one who...”. I worked on the most famous TV cartoon ever and all some people know about me is those other things.

2) What if I get a hard-on? I know I said I have no shame and it's not as if there's something about me nobody knows exists. Everybody's private parts become engorged, so it would only make sense mine do too. I know that if I were to appear naked, even people with no sexual attraction to me (i.e. 99.9999999% of the world) would try to provoke me, and I don't even know myself what might set me off. Could be something I'd be ashamed of. Could be something innocuous like a soda can. If it were an animal, people would talk.

3) I don't need to do stunts for publicity. I've seen plenty of people do distracting things at conventions to make up for mediocre work. From giving away candy to shouting at passersby. (Sorry if you're one of them. Don't do that.) That's just not my thing. Back to point number 1 again.

4) It's too fucking cold without clothes. There's a reason besides modesty and appearance that people wear clothing.

5) Management wouldn't like it. The next convention I'm doing is in a church, and just because I'm an atheist doesn't mean I want to make Jesus cry. It's also where the mob goes for service and I wouldn't want them to “make me disappear.”

6) You're a pervert. There's something wrong with you if you just want to see me naked out of curiosity. I might make an exception if you ask me very nicely, though, and if it were an incentive to buy something from me.

7) I've written and posted things while naked before. Doesn't that count?

Valentines for Creeps and my two cents

I drew these last year and the year before for Valentines' Day. Here are some new ones in addition to previous ones, this time made so you can actually print them and give them out.

And nobody gives a shit about my opinions, but it's my blog, and I'll do what I want.

If you're on social network sites like me, you know every day there's a new cause du jour. This weekend it's outraged comic fans talking about Marvel Comics.

As I understand it, writer Gary Friedrich has been forced to pay legal costs for a countersuit. He sued them initially over rights to the character Ghost Rider he created for them. They have a new movie coming out and they won't be giving him a cut. Marvel has a history of screwing its creators (or their estates) and forcing them to legally acknowledge that Marvel Comics, and not they, are the true authors of the works. From Jack Kirby to Steve Gerber to Marv Wolfman.

Legally, I don't believe he had a leg to stand on. He signed his rights away years ago when he created the character. I think Marvel used to even have the contract on the back of their checks so you'd have to sign it in order to get the money. If the checks were never endorsed, then the true rights would be questionable, though I doubt that ever happened. When you do work-for-hire, you sign your rights away. If you have a creation you want to own the copyright on, negotiate the terms or better yet, do it for another company more friendly to creators and lets you keep the copyright.

Back to Gary Friedrich, not only did he lose his lawsuit against Marvel, they sued him back forbidding him to call himself the creator of Ghost Rider at any appearances, similar to how Clayton Moore was not allowed to wear the Lone Ranger mask. People like Lou Ferrigno are allowed to cash in on their involvement with Marvel's characters, but Gary Friedrich is not. No surprise that he lost the lawsuit, because that's what corporations do, dick over employees. Companies often don't just have lawyers on retainer to protect their trademarks, often they hire lawyers to look for suit-worthy situations they otherwise wouldn't know or care about. In this case, Friedrich not only lost the lawsuit they filed against him, he's forced to pay their legal bills to the tune of $17,000. Now the internet's exploding with a call not just to boycott the upcoming Ghost Rider movie but saying that Nicolas Cage, who's starring in the movie, should pay the legal fees, chump change for him, if he has any conscience.

I'm all for that. Corporations may legally be in the right to fuck over creators, but morally I feel they're in the wrong for building an empire an individual created for them. The comics are basically an ad for the movies and merchandising. They don't have to, but giving a creator a piece of the pie is the right thing to do. If corporations are people, that means they should have feelings.

For the most part, I've been boycotting Marvel since 1987. But only for the same reason I “boycotted” the Superbowl or the Top 40. I just don't care about them anymore. I still buy some of their product when they reprint old stuff or to see how someone like Peter Bagge handles the characters. They're not exactly for me. I'm an adult and the comics are for kids. I have a fondness for a lot of what they did in the 70's not because they were better then, but because I was the right age at the time. I like the first three Star Wars movies only because they were a part of my childhood. I wouldn't expect anyone over 50 or under 30 to see them the same way, though. People always argue when something like Mad, Saturday Night Live, or anything long-running was at its best and I always counter that often things don't jump the shark, your tastes change as you get older.

If you choose to boycott Marvel, I support you, but only if you go all the way. Don't just refuse to buy their comics, refuse to buy anything at the store that sells them. Marvel is a subsidiary of Disney, so you should also boycott all other subsidiaries, and any trademarks like the Muppets. It's not enough to refuse to see any movies with their characters, boycott everything the studio makes or anything starring those actors. And any theater showing their movies. Otherwise it's not really a boycott, it's just venting.

My own stand on this? I strongly side with creators on owning what they create, but it's a smaller issue than bigots running for President and people who believe in ghosts having a say in reproductive health. I'll support a smaller business and not a chain when I have a choice, but like I said, screwing people over for maximum profit is nothing new, it's what corporations do.

Comics: What's Up With That?

Here's my anti-comics manifesto, which it turns out is actually not one.

I wrote this thing a while ago and it seems to have gotten a response. It's one of my many rants about comics which includes a lot of what I've said here.

So I just did this convention. The people who organize it are great and it's always good to see old friends again, see what's new in the world of comics, and have conversations more than 140 letters. It wasn't like most comic conventions that smell like fast food full of guys without social skills, and the pageantry of conventions you always see on TV was thankfully absent. I'd do it again in a second.

BUT (you were waiting for that, weren't you? The word that negates everything you just said. Instead I'll surprise everyone by saying...)

THAT SAID, there must be more than seeing the same 200 people for the past 15 years. There has been some new talent and new fans in the intervening years, but it's few and far between. For the most part, everyone in comics I know now was in the twentieth century as well. It starts out like a fraternity hazing then eventually gets to be like Groundhog Day. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy the company and often the work of all these 200 people, but it seems so limited, not branching out, too much of a ceiling. Someone just said “You can't be responsible for the scene. Just keep doing what you do.” That's completely true, though doing what you do can sometimes be frustrating in a world where the audience doesn't change or expand, and it won't get any bigger than it's been.

Most people think of comics as heroic fantasy for teenage males. That is the bulk of the product. There's also another side, kind of the equivalent of independent cinema. I find that too to be similarly marginalized in its own way. While I like mopey comics about leaves falling as much as the next guy, I still find it stifling regarding my own status as a cartoonist.

I do silly surreal non-sequitur humor. Granted, the death of the periodical comic has kept me out of the public eye and I'm not as prolific as I once was, but I never left. People like what I do and it means a lot to me when someone tells me how it influenced their life. When someone says they've shown my work to other people. It has sometimes opened doors many of my peers are jealous of. I can see how it can be insulting, though, to someone who spends months working on a graphic novel and it gets the same attention as something I've spent three minutes on, sometimes directly in ink. It's not something in anyone's top ten canon when they think of comics, though.

I'll admit it, I can't draw for shit. What I do relies more on sense of humor and intellect and not skills. It's still legible. Nobody has ever said they can't tell what something is, only that it's not drawn as well as it could be. That doesn't matter to the general public, though. Walking out in the street, I see dozens of hipsters and every one of them would appreciate my cartoons if they knew they existed. No offense, but more so than something fully rendered with more substance. There are those like Chris Ware, Seth, and Daniel Clowes, all exemplary cartoonists I envy, but having a fine art and literary aesthetic I don't think would resonate with the general public. I find more of an affinity with people like Michael Kupperman, Tony Millionaire, and Johnny Ryan, all of whom are better than me at draftsmanship yet people who don't quite fit in to the general consensus of what “indy comics” are. The average person (I'm talking about our own circles, not red-staters that shop at Walmart) doesn't care about that kind of thing. They're not going to gamble with a $25 hardcover when they can take their chances with something for $4. Anyone who's seen Sullivan's Travels knows that people don't want to watch an arty picture, they want belly laughs.

I'm often told when I pitch projects that this is not what the market wants. I never tell them, but I don't think that they don't think it will sell, it's just that they don't want to be the ones to deal with it. I think ultimately it's a polite way of rejecting me. I don't blame them, since what I do is neither blockbuster material or prestigious. But most of all, it's not what the market wants mainly because they don't know it exists.

I guess what I'm trying to say is... I need an agent.

It seems to have been misunderstood as an anti-comics manifesto or declaration of my quitting comics. If anything, it's to get more people reading comics. I include myself as one of those “same old 200 people” and want to stay in that world. I'm only speaking for myself when I feel my own work is more comedy in comics form than “comics” and think there are venues other than the comics world. Think outside the pull box, if you will.

Going back to the incestuous world of comics, the eleventh issue of Smoke Signal has been published, with a cover by Charles Burns. There's also a six-pager from Michael DeForge and Benjamin Marra in material by Tony Millionaire, Kaz, Bill Griffith and Harvey Pekar, Zak Sally, Matthew Thurber, John Porcellino, Julie Delaporte, The Trubble Club, Jonny Negron, Travis Millard, Gary Lieb, a color centerfold of Michael Kupperman's
Moon 69, a back cover by Tim Hensley, and myself.



Sometimes I get weird unsolicited things in the mail. A few months ago I got this painting:


The return address is from “Scott Boyd” but the cover letter was from “Jimmy”. I don't know if they're the same people, but maybe he/they want to keep it that way. I'll send him/them a copy of FREE ICE CREAM.


But that doesn't mean you'll get one, though. Remember they're only $3 and make the perfect stocking stuffer. You can get it by clicking three buttons instead of one, but in the future you'll be able to order things through thought transference.

I was wr... I was wr...

I've been wrong in criticizing things before, and likely will be again.

I'm not one to be prudish while pretending not to be. I'm not one to add “but” in saying anything about shocking humor, especially since I'm guilty of it myself. Some things I don't like for whatever reason. I'm sure it's happened to you. I've given all sorts of things a second thought and had a different opinion from my first impression. It's like when you recommend a TV show to someone who won't give it a try, and when they finally do it's always the worst or least representative episode.

When I first saw South Park I hated it. To me it was just a show about gratuitous vulgarity and nothing else. I said that and people kept telling me that wasn't entirely the point, that the one I saw wasn't the best one. I respected their opinions of other things, so I thought I'd give it another try. While I find the show very inconsistent in quality, I get the humor more and realize it's not just the creators seeing what they can get away with.

Family Guy was something else I didn't like upon first glance. To me it seemed like a Simpsons clone and another example of shock for shock's sake. I've looked at more of it online and though I still feel they rely too much on cheap laughs most of the time, one out of five gags is pretty funny. That's still a higher ratio than most sitcoms. Using the “even a stopped clock is right twice a day” principle they're so rapidfire that every episode has at least one moment of brilliance. And Seth MacFarlane is usually funny when he does talk shows.

I still think the design looks like shit. And when Peter Griffin says something politically incorrect, I realize the joke is not the slur but that Peter is stupid for saying it, but that's probably lost on the average frat-boy who only has their prejudices reaffirmed. I don't hate the show anymore though.

I do hate when people quote catchphrases or wear them on their T-shirts, though, and you'll never change my mind on that.

That brings us to Hoofjob. A few months ago I was doing an ego-surf on Amazon. When you look at anything there, they'll always suggest a similar book you might like. I was horrified when they suggested this book.

My immediate reaction was that the author, Geoffrey Sanchez Reed, was trying to imitate me. I put up an angry post on Facebook saying so. Additionally I felt insulted because I haven't been on peoples' radar the past few years myself. The responses were all like “don't worry about it, he's not as funny as you” and trashing him. I was also annoyed because of criticism I've received in the past from people (most of whom have never actually read them) who thought this was what my comics looked like.


Within hours Mr. Reed contacted me. He said that he was glad to have received feedback from me, even if it was negative. He explained that he wasn't trying to copy me at all, but was just a big fan. He had no aspirations to be a professional cartoonist. It was just something he did to amuse himself and his friends. He preferred to do music.

I took back what I'd said when I realized it wasn't a competition to see who's the best. My ego is such that adulation can make me do a complete 180. It doesn't matter if someone is a millionaire movie producer or a 13-year-old copying my drawings in his notebook, it flatters me equally no matter who it is if I'm an influence in any way. Flattery will get you everywhere. As a friend once aptly said “cartoonists are all self-deprecating narcissists.”

A few days ago, cleaning out my browser, I saw his work again. Even though things were fine between me and Geoffrey, I still felt bad telling him he should shoot for polish when he told me didn't consider himself a cartoonist foremost. I take what I first said back. I wouldn't point him out as an up-and-coming cartoonist if someone were to ask me who I liked, but I still laugh at his work occasionally.



I still feel justified in my initial knee-jerk reaction. Years ago a few people showed me something from a runner-up of the annual SF Bay Guardian cartoon contest. This was clearly an imitation of me. The judges were friends of mine and one of them thought it was me submitting as a joke, especially since the person's name, Extra Maat, didn't seem real. A few people met him and he claimed to have never heard of me. To this day, I don't buy it. I shouldn't stay mad at him, though. For years I was able to pad my comic with a “contest” allowing readers to send in their imitations of my comics.

(I had to request the cartoon below on Twitter since I couldn't find the comic this was printed in. Thanks to Jason Dupuis for coming to the rescue. Yes, it was originally pixillated like this.)


Once in a while, someone will point out something similar to mine, sometimes it's a blatant copy, more often it's someone influenced by the same things I was. In one particular instance where the case was the latter, a girlfriend at the time urged me to threaten to sue. I'd like to use this opportunity to apologize. And it would be hypocritical if I actually followed through, since as I've said before, I feel it's a mockery of the courts to settle petty squabbles between cartoonists.

Shifting gears, if you're in the NYC area, especially if you have kids, here's info on one of the Carousel events I participate in every few months. We did one for kids last year. With everyone else, I'll be reading some of the pieces I've done for Nickelodeon which will hopefully finally be collected from Top Shelf in early 2012. I know I've been saying it'll be out soon for the past two years. It's been finished and camera-ready all that time and scheduled to be released many times, they've even promoted it, but they keep saying they don't have the funds. So whatever the case, I can't say it's my fault.

And did I mention there will be audience participation at this show?

I was a bit disappointed in the way the Carousel for Kids flyer turned out. R.Sikoryak didn't use my suggestion. Oh well, you can't win 'em all.

I suppose that in order for last paragraph to have been grammatically correct, I should have ended it with a semi-colon and close-parenthesis.

Nerds and assholes

The passing of Steve Jobs reminded me of the theory I've had for a long time that everyone's a nerd. Anyone who's not is an asshole. Maybe I just want everyone to be a nerd. Maybe it's my only way of feeling superior. No matter the case, it's just how I feel. I'll tell you why.


When one thinks of a nerd, it's usually someone with glasses, smart, bookish, socially awkward, and likes science fiction. A more detailed portrayal often has zits, tape on the glasses, a slide rule, messed up hair, and a nasal laugh. I've never seen Dr. Who or played Dungeons & Dragons, but nobody would deny my nerdiness. Years ago I did a cartoon showing that even within that subset there are different kinds such as dweebs, geeks, etc. Whether or not someone's a nerd is not black and white. There are many varying degrees. I'd add that jocks are also a kind of nerd.




William Shatner SNL skit Get A Life 1986-12-20 by efly2020

Jocks are often thought of as the opposite of nerds. Strong, dumb, males into sports. They're nerds too. Just nerds who can beat you up and get laid more often.

Nerds just the same. Star Trek fans are seen as fanatical devotees. But how is that different from fanatical devotion to sports? People chanting at games painting themselves blue? It's equally pathetic. “Who are you calling a nerd?”, you may ask. Well, for one thing, you're associating with me, so that automatically makes you one. That's non-negotiable. You still say you're not a nerd? Okay, then you're an asshole.


Revenge of the Nerds is often seen as a paean to the oddness in us all. But seeing it again through adult eyes the opposite sides are really just the same. They go to the same college and take the same classes, so they must have similar aspirations. They're both in fraternities, which is not the majority at most colleges. The nerds take the jocks' Barbie-doll girlfriends (the one-dimensionality of women in teen movies is an entirely different topic altogether) and dump the ones they have. They both compete in the same events. The nerds are just jealous that they're not the jocks themselves. Both are assholes when it comes down to it.


I defy anyone to find someone that's not a nerd or an asshole. I brought this up on a Facebook thread a couple years ago, and someone said Dean Martin is neither. He was in the middle of the Rat Pack pecking order, not pushy like Frank and not wimpy like Sammy. When he was teamed with Jerry Lewis he was the superior male, though often not a cockblocker like Bing Crosby. People who worked with him may beg to differ. When he did his TV show he didn't rehearse with the rest of the cast. But most of them are dead so we'll never know. But in the meantime, everyone's a nerd, asshole, or both.

Hail, seizure!

I hate to sound insensitive, but I can't wait until after tomorrow when this shit is over and I won't have to put up with it for another ten years. I will every year in my lifetime but not as much as anniversaries that are a multiple of ten. No offense to the thousands who lost their lives, but I think a peer dying and other peers winning awards, two things that happened yesterday, are bigger priorities in my world.

It's now been six months since my last seizure. This isn't to say you can't place bets on when it will happen again, but it's a start. Too bad they don't have coins like with AA.


If you didn't know already if not witnessed it in person, I'm epileptic. I never know when a petit-mal breakthrough will happen or what causes it. I've had MRIs and EEGs and gone to hospitals and they haven't figured it out. It's been happening every few weeks or months since I was 25. I'm fully functional otherwise except that I'm not allowed to drive. That and you could be talking to me and I'll suddenly fall down and pass out for a few seconds, and it seems like several minutes. Someone once said I was unconscious for half an hour when it was actually fifteen seconds. They're not dangerous unless I'm doing something like operating a forklift. They're more embarrassing than anything else. There's no need for medical help if I'm not bleeding. All I need is to sit down for a while.


I've been told it's like when your computer shuts down for a second. It can be turned right back on but takes a few seconds before you can use it again while it figures out all its programs.

What happens usually is that I'm in the street surrounded by strangers. When I come to it takes a second to figure where I am, which doesn't help when a dozen people you've never seen before and will never see again are staring at you. My brain works completely clearly but my mouth doesn't. Some Chicken Little will call an ambulance and I'm whisked of to the hospital before I can fully tell them what happened. I don't hold it against anybody because I'd probably react the same way. Paramedics ask me a bunch of questions I can't answer, like my name. Then I come to and everyone thinks I'm a crazy person when I tell them it's all unnecessary. I don't need to remove my glasses. Or my pants, as one stranger said once.


Before getting health insurance, I'd be a deadbeat for not paying $600 for oxygen. You don't have a choice on whether or not to get medical attention. Imagine if you were forced to have a McDonalds hamburger they charged hundreds of dollars for and you didn't want it but had to pay for it anyway. I don't buy any stories about hospitals in other countries having long lines or any stories on either side about the experiences “a friend of a friend” had with the medical system. First-hand experiences only.


I sent one place a check for 1 cent in protest once and they actually cashed it. I sent another one a check for “a million billion trillion jillion dollars” and never heard from them again. I didn't switch medicines for a long time because it was so much more expensive paying out of pocket. Part of the reason for being upstate is that I get better insurance up here. I don't have to pay for medication anymore and now with different drugs I no longer have extreme moods or receding gums.


It's still annoying to do all the paperwork even with everything free. So I now wear a sign around my neck when I go out. I might get it notarized. I had medic alert jewelry but that didn't work. It was either the sign or never leave the house. Someone suggested I have pencils on my person that say “leave me the fuck alone”.



I've been told Albert Einstein and Lou Costello had the same condition so I'm in good company.

As lame as it gets

When my friend Mike Rex and I were roommates we joked about how one day people would be nostalgic for the 1990's. The joke was that such a time was so far away, but it's no longer a joke because inevitably it eventually happened. Maybe we can sell some of the things we wrote then as something “retro”.

Someone I hadn't talked to in a while told me one of his favorite strips of mine was one about a gluetrap. I was trying to remember which one he was talking about then realized he must be referring to this one I did quite some time ago.

This was in the seventh issue of the xerox version of Magic Whistle in 1994 and later reprinted in Humor Can be Funny. Not to be talking down to anyone, but it just occurred to me that people who were just born when I drew this are now seniors in high school. You might not think anything of the fact that it shows my age, but it shows yours too. Either way seventeen years is a long time. This was when everything was done entirely on paper. Instead of doing all coloring on computer, I had to pay a stat shop $12 (extra if it had to be shrunk) to make a transparency from my original and pick it up the next day, then paint the back of it with acrylics and wait for it to dry. Either that or sometimes buy ruby-lith or zipatone and do layers with an exacto knife entirely on paper. I lived in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, which had none of that so I'd have to go to Soho. It wasn't like it is now where you can stay in Williamsburg without ever having to be in the city. It was a pain-in-the-ass to make such a trek, but on the other hand, I wouldn't get lost like I do now when I had the World Trade Center as my compass.

There was also less room for mistakes doing pieces “the old way”, and days later I'd find bits of adhesive half-tones on my person even after showering several times. That still was easier than a mimeograph being the only means of production for most the generation before me. Wait a second for it all to sink in while I see if Twin Peaks dated well.






I got glue traps only once. With the regular springloaded kind when the mice were killed they'd bleed all over the floor, and with glue traps I figured there'd be less mess. They turned out to be worse, but not because of the suffering they cause. The propaganda does tell you that when the mice get trapped, they stay alive and scream, but it doesn't tell you that this will keep you up all night. When I caught one, I had to put the trap into the toilet so the mouse would drown and shut up. There were two in the package and when one got caught in the second one the next day I actually did throw it out the window. It landed on top of a car parked below. I had to go outside and get it so an altercation like I drew wouldn't really happen. The good thing about the traps was they also caught roaches. I eventually learned just keeping the kitchen area clean prevents mice and roaches from coming in the first place.

Speaking of those days, I just found out that New York Press just folded. Even though none of its original staff remained and it was a former shadow of itself, I give it credit as one of the venues that helped launch my career and so many others. It was one of the few places that had illustrations and not photographs. Now there's one less place to find out where you can get a tranny handjob.

Once bitten, twice comics

A friend of mine once bit me. That's all there is to it. Nothing else to the story.

Okay, you twisted my arm. I'll give you more detail.

It was New Years' Eve, 1997. We had been drinking too much and it was time to go home. Before I go any further, it could very easily have been the other way around. I'm not trying to incriminate anyone or dish dirt. It's kind of funny, is all. I actually wish it were the other way around. If anything, the whole thing was kind of sweet, and showed his playful side.

Anyway, what was I talking about? Oh yeah. He kind of lived near me and I offered to bring him home. We were both pretty drunk, I only less so in that I knew where we both lived. We were both throwing up every few minutes, including in the cab on the way home. I'm surprised any cab was even willing to take us, let alone travel from Manhattan to Brooklyn. Maybe because we were both so plastered the cabbie thought they could get more money out of us.

When we stopped at his house, I don't think he even knew we were in a cab or that he was home. I had to carry him out of the cab and up five flights of stairs while he kept saying “Please, God! Kill me now!”. Not that I was feeling any better, but somebody had to pretend to be the more sensible one. I had to play the role we've all played of making sure someone got to their destination because they might otherwise be hurt.

So here's where he bites me. While making sure he got to his bedroom, his cat came out. I went to pet the cat and it bit me, which I would have known would happen had I not been so drunk. My friend suddenly came out of his unconscious stupor to laugh at the whole thing, and because his cat did, he decided to bite me as well. Then he went back to sleep.

Waking up the next day fortunate that I hadn't pulled a Jimi Hendrix in my sleep, I noticed a cat's teethmarks on one side of my hand, and human teethmarks on the other. It took a while to put all the pieces together and remembered what happened.

I actually didn't remember the story until corresponding with someone and finding out we knew him in common. When I told this story, she said, “I often get the sense he's on the verge of biting all of us as soon as we let our guard down.” Maybe he already did and we don't know it. Again, not a character assassination or even the least bit as sensational as I implied. Just a snapshot of the way life was fifteen years ago. It's also a good ice-breaker. “Oh, you know him too? Did I ever tell you about the time he bit me?” This guy is a contemporary and it would be funny to show up at his signings and appearances with a bullhorn telling people waiting in line about how outraged I still am all these years later. Act like it was a terrible injustice. I'd be the only one that would find this funny, though. I think people would probably be more amused by the idea that either of us was ever drunk.

Dyna Moe covers Magic Whistle

I think part of my Achilles is constantly complaining about not getting recognition, even though I sometimes do. (I could be a multi-trillionaire from my comics and still find something to complain about). This is why I was pleasantly surprised when looking at the Covered blog to see my own comic being done. There's proof that despite conventional wisdom, people still think of a particular comic that's mostly humor and gags after ten years. Even though I've been at this for decades, when you spend 90% of your time alone doing comics for yourself sometimes you wonder who sees what you do. I do anyway. It's even more flattering when someone you've heard of but never officially met is a fan, let alone acknowledges your existence.

The cover is by Dyna Moe, probably best known for the Mad Men app that everybody was using as their Facebook avatar a couple years ago. I'm familiar with the feeling of one's most famous work being something you're proud of, but at the expense of eclipsing everything else. I didn't ask her but I'm guessing this may be the case. She's also done several illustrations, and videos for Channel 102 and Funny or Die, which can be seen perusing her site. If I was still doing The Magic Whistle as a regular series, maybe I'd ask her to do a cover.

Here's the original.

My drawings are done quickly and it shows, but makes people think anyone can do it. I spend more time getting the dialogue and pacing right and then when I'm finished I think of how I could have done it better. My originals have paste-ups and white-out all over them (except the ones for sale). In this case I spent a lot of time drawing straight lines from everyone's eyes to the main guy's shorts in pencil so I'd get the eye contact just right. The original sketch is long gone.

I've been working a lot on Hippie Days. It's not that much of a departure from what I've been doing all along except it doesn't have things like talking animals or people spontaneously combusting or anything supernatural like that. It'll appear regularly on Act-I-Vate, which seems to get a lot of traffic, including publishers and editors, so I'll be posting it there every Thursday instead of here from now on.

With the periodical comic dead I need to work on something full length to keep staying in print. Publishers are loathe to invest in something that would cost $4 when they can make at least 5 times that with a longer book. Paperbacks less than 150 pages don't cut it anymore. Some people say I'm “slumming” continuing to do comics, but I consider higher-profile work just another job that pays better. Anonymity is a double-edge sword. With comics at least I don't get relatives thinking I had anything to do with the merchandising.

Even having done comics for more than twenty years and being printed everywhere I still feel new to comics. I'm told people don't want to buy anything with the hodge-podge of stories, gags and short bursts I've been doing all my life, despite my belief that in the long run those type of things sell better than most “graphic novels”. I hate that term, it's like a pimp calling himself an “adult recreational consultant”. It's a necessary evil, though, since it's a euphemism that keeps artists and readers from being ridiculed. I'm also told people prefer Spiegelman-inspired comics rather than straight-out humor. I like all that stuff too, but I don't expect a lot of it to be remembered in ten years. Chris Ware and Dan Clowes are but two exceptions. Ask a random person in the street to name the most famous comic of all time off the top of their head, most likely they'll say Peanuts. Or if they don't know we have 50 states or that WWII came before Vietnam they'll say Garfield. And what genre are they?

There are only seven non-comedy comic strips in syndication right now versus the hundreds of others. I'm told people like Tony Millionaire and Johnny Ryan's books don't sell as well as they used to, but it seems they resonate more with the general public. I'm glad Michael Kupperman is doing well, though his success seems to ultimately be from the comedy world. Maybe telling me humor doesn't sell or saying “I like it, but...” is just a way of turning me down politely. Do humor comics sell? Like the great George W. Bush once said, “Only time will tell about my legacy.”

It doesn't have too much to do with hippies. I just like the pun. Even if nobody under thirty will get it. Years ago, a girlfriend had a niece visiting. She was watching something like Law and Order with Henry Winkler as the guest star. Walking by, I said “Hey, it's the Fonz!” and she said “Who's the Fonz?” It was my first experience feeling old. Maybe I should have said “It's the guy from Arrested Development” instead.

Yes, I was actually “walking by” the TV. Drew Friedman once pointed out that in his class, Will Eisner used to always say “I was walking by the TV when...” without ever acknowledging he was sitting down and watching it.