Dirt is relative. Stink lines are definite.

The first comic since I got this new computer, and it’s drawn in pencil. In hindsight, it would have worked better in the other style. Maybe the funny ones should be digital and the serious ones in pencil? I’ve been drawing webcomics for over 4 years now (four years!) and I’m still working this stuff out.

Anyway, this one, obviously, is based on a true story that I hear pretty much every day. You know how I know if the dishwasher is clean or dirty? I look at it. Then I use my powers of perception, primarily sight, but also smell to some extent, to determine whether or not the dishes therein are soiled with food particles. The same skill you use to determine that 1 part per octillion of your fork tine hosts a speck of foreign matter, except what I’m looking at is discernible with the naked eye.

This one harkens back to Superhuman Abilities Endemic to Childhood, except this is like a subhuman ability. Kids, amirite?

I should also add that I am speaking on 7 (seven!) panels at Tucson Comicon. One of the panels will actually be about comics. (The other 6 will not. The con’s tag line is “Pop culture for all!”) I am a bit apprehensive about the comic discussion: it’s the only one that I’ll deliver on my own, plus the time slot is not desirable. It’s just when the con really kicks off, early Friday evening, and last year I did another panel in that slot, which happened to be during the first big-name guest’s autograph session. What I mean to say is, nobody came to our panel, because everyone went to meet Billy Dee Williams. True story. Actually, one guy came: the official con photographer. He thought Billy Dee Williams’s people were being dicks, and he was cool enough not to mention the fact that we gave a 50-minute presentation to a empty room, and he told us a funny story about how Stan Lee owes him a beer, and he took this picture of us, which the con is using for publicity on social media.