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Page 166 now online.

Well!  Welcome to 2010, everybody.  It makes me a leeeetle bit ill to think that this will be year 4 of Family Man and me only at page 166, but then, this comic was designed to be a learning experience and an ongoing project rather than an efficient StoryBlast.  I’m an immensely better artist and stronger storyteller than I was circa 2006 thanks to the weekly grindstone this comic offers (and the feedback you provide).  Thanks for your continued interest, those of you who follow along at home.

I’ll be hauling up to Seattle to take care of my pops, who got his whole dang knee replaced this week; I look forward to many amusing conversations involving the influence of painkillers and many exotic therapy routines performed with rainbow-hued rubber bands. Next week’s page is a simple one, so I’ll be updating while away, although the page for the 20th might come in late.

If you have any store orders, get ‘em in within the next 12 hours, or else it’ll just wait for me to get back.

Cheers, all!  Happy New Year.

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Small Wonder on DVD

Say it ain't so.

For those who may not have experienced the wonder of Small Wonder:



Check out the 3 minute mark. Boy howdy, who knew programming voice recognition software was so doggone EASY!?

The acting is super plusgood. My sister and I used to think this show sucked ass. You know an 80's sitcom is bad when even a child knows it's shit.

This weekend I'll be at the sunny Santa Barbara/Ventura SCBWI Region Retreat 2010, teaching one or two or three of the following . . .
A) Blobbing
B) Sobbing
C) Blogging
D) Clogging

The other presenters for the Cyber Promotional Tools for Published Authors/Illustrators Conference include these industry experts . . .

(That's Greg Pincus, Anastasia Suen and Harold Underdown)

I predict the weekend will be so successful that movie studios will be clamoring to make it into an IMAX feature film. One that'll rival AVATAR in box office boffo.

Peepy and I will play ourselves, of course . . .


But in the other roles, George will play Greg, Julia will be Anastasia, and Brad will take on the role of Harold . . .


The conference is being put together by SCBWI Regional Advisor Alexis O'Neill who will be played by Ashleigh Banfield . . .


I'll be blogging LIVE from the conference, but in the meantime, here are the rest of the Rose Parade float photos I promised you. They were all taken the night before the parade . . .

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For those of you who like your horror squamous, rugose and tentacley, full of blasphemous, unnameable terrors, I've just written a new article for io9.com on the intersection between manga, anime and H.P. Lovecraft (1890-1937), arguably the 20th century's most influential horror writer. (At least, I obviously like him, I have drawn pages and pages of comics based on his stories...) Behold The Long Tentacle of H.P. Lovecraft!

Over on my sketch blog, I'm taking the plunge: one sketch posted per day for the next year, a la Cory Walker's challenge. (Check out Cory's links to others who are also on board.) I'm two sketches behind so far this year, but better late than never. I won't be posting most of the sketches here on my LiveJournal, since I have to host the work I post here and I'd keep running out of space. However, here's my first official "Sketch-A-Day" image: the X-Men's Dazzler (costume courtesy Silvestri's run).



I wasn't sure whether to give her large breasts or small, so I tried both. Small breasts fit her frame better, and appear less exploitative, but since she's a girlie, insecure rock star, I figured she might have gotten a boob-job to boost her career, or might even have been well-endowed from her early teens, resulting in her superficial self-image. My wife maintains that Dazzler is the busty type, and I'm inclined to agree, but given her thin frame and scant costume, a large bosom almost seems too much. Thoughts?

(The careful reader will also note that I seem to have solved my signature dating problem: by connecting the base of the '1' with the final '0,' I can disconnect it from the letters above without leaving it floating awkwardly in isolation. Unfortunately, this won't work for '11,' so my scientists will have to develop another solution by next year.)

This Gentle Surgery

Once more the bright blade of a morning breeze
glides almost too easily through me,

and from the scuffle I’ve been sutured to
some flap of me is freed: I am severed

like a simile: an honest tenor
trembling toward the vehicle I mean

to be: a blackbird licking half notes
from the muscled, sap-damp branches

of the sugar maple tree . . . though I am still
a part of any part of every particle

of me, though I’ll be softly reconstructed
by the white gloves of metonymy,

I grieve: there is no feeling in a cut
that doesn’t heal a bit too much.

– Malachi Black
photo by dannyeastwood

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Thank you very, VERY much to everyone who responded to my last post--I appreciate your comments and thoughts more than you can imagine.

A few more links for you guys, because I meant to include some of them in the original post, and because I've found some other sites that are helpful. I promise this will be the last time I bring this up here!

( Read on if you'd like more information! )

just_ann_now reminded me that today is the anniversary (108th, I believe) of J. R. R. Tolkien's birth. That, in turn, reminded me that it is also the anniversary of Paula Rankin's birth. She was also a professor, of English, at Hampton University, and while she did not write epic fantasy, she was a published poet (in many literary magazines and in four collections and, I think, a posthumous retrospective).

I lift my glass for them both: To the Professor and to the Poet!

J'explore le concept de gesamtkunstwerk de Wagner. Mais ce qui m'intéresse vraiment ce n'est pas son application à l'opéra et aux arts connexes (comme le pense Wagner) mais bien aux musées, comme Paul Valéry l'a suggéré, ou encore à d'autres domaines complètement différents comme le cinéma d'animation. Du côté pratico-pratique je me demande si je peux me servir de ce principe pour la décoration intérieure de ma remise de jardin.

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I'm looking into Wagner's gesamtkunstwerk "idea". But I'm not interested in its application in opera and other related arts, as Wagner suggested. Instead I'm interested in its application in museums, as suggested by Paul Valéry. I'm also interested in its application in completely different fields like animated films. On a more pedestrian level I'm wondering how I could use this for my yard shed's interior decoration.

Oh aren't they lovely!

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Hooray, it's the first blog of the 2010!!!

Hey, guess what? That's what. No really, for the 2009 Golden Fuse Awards, in the ultra uber prestigious Favorite Trend of the Year category, the distinguished winner was: Pet Fish With Minds of Their Own . . . and that included Bobby Vs. Girls (Accidentally) - Bobby has a fish named Rover who does tricks . . .


(Insert clever transition here.) In a past life, I used to write and produce the Disney parade TV specials. Can you find me in these photos?


(In the above shot, I am hiding under the flowers that are in front of Ben Vereen and Joan Lunden. I have a headset on so when they are live on-air, they can hear me telling them to say.)


(In this cast/crew photo, I'm the short person with the longish black hair. Regis Philbin's also in the photo, can you spot him?)

Speaking of parades (see, that was a pretty smooth transition wasn't it?), last year, last blog, that would be in December 2009, we were admiring Peepy's hard work on our hometown Rose Parade Float. Well, here's the finished float . . .


Remember those empty vials? Well they were filled with flowers everywhere!


Every year, Peeps and Moi hit the Rose Parade float line-up area at midnight. That's were all the floats are staged before they ride down the televised route. We ring in the new year, plus get to see ALL the floats up close and personal.

Here are some of the Rose Parade floats (not all are finished and there's usually a last minute rush to get all the flowers on). Plus, if a few look broken, they're not. They are so big they are built in pieces so they don't knock down the power lines and trees when they journey to the route . . .



How did we get such great access to the floats? Well, let's just say that Peepy knows people . . .


(There are a lot more Rose Parade photos, and they wouldn't all fit here. So I'll post some more on my next blog.)

BTW, my New Year's resolution is to do less. Have you figured out yours yet?

Peepy's resolution is to go to fewer parties. Here she is on New Year's Eve after celebrating a tad too much . . .


Oh! and I wanted to add, that over at Tales of the Rushmore Kid, my "Writing Tip of the Day" was one of the most popular post of 2009! You can read it here.

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For tofarawayplaces

Now it's your birthday.

Graphics & Myspace layouts

Here's my drawing of a character from a French RPG. As you can see, I haven't yet worked out how to incorporate the new year into my signature. Usually I stick the year numbers to the undersides of the letters in "HAMM," which works fine with zeros or twos or nines (see my Alpha Flight sketches, below), but a "1" won't read well stuck to the bottom of any of those letters. Needless to say, my scientists are hard at work on a solution. (And before you ask, I hasten to add that we've already used my time machine to consult my 2001 self, but he had nothing useful to suggest.)

Oh, and I am open for commissions, FYI. $35 for something like the drawing above. Just don't expect me to include the date with my signature.