Category Archives: Comics

Dragon Comic 50

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Halfway to something.

Some things are just over her head.

Some things are just over her head.

It’s late. I’ve been drawing all day while gorging on gingerbread and forgot that I’d never scheduled this post even though the comic was drawn last weekend. Also today I sliced off the top millimeter of my left thumb with a knife. This never happens. I never cut myself with knives. Tin can lids, broken tiles, shards of glass, sure, I injure myself with those things all the time. But usually I’m in total control of a kitchen knife. Now my thumb is a minor inconvenience, I’m sick from too many cookies, and it’s late.

 

Dragon Comics 49

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In relationships where one partner is more resilient than the other, it's not uncommon that the weaker partner can gleefully say and do things to the stronger partner that would be devastating if the stronger partner said or did to the weaker.

In relationships where one partner is more resilient than the other, it’s not uncommon for the weaker partner to gleefully say and do things to the stronger partner that would be devastating if the stronger partner said or did to the weaker. Emotionally speaking, that is. 

As mentioned last week, I actually enjoy being suspended by the ankles, but there’s a limit to everything, particularly inversion, which can become dangerous in certain situations over long periods of time. There are many benefits to inversions, and I’ve even heard yogis suggest something to the effect that every minute of ones life spent in inversion adds an extra minute of right-side-up time to life. Of course, I’ve also had veterans assure me that, after a certain point, inversions can be deadly. So let me reiterate: after a minute or two, the health benefits of inversions are limited to inversions you accomplish using your own muscles, under your own power. Being strung up by the ankles and left for dead is not healthy.

Of course, neither is laughing at your friend’s inadvertent misfortune, regardless of how hilarious their situation might appear to you, particular if you are reminding them about something that happened years ago, and especially if you actually played a rather large part in their situation. Just remember that.

Meanwhile, the poor fox is pieless and in serious danger of starving to death.

Dragon Comics 47

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Ah, the classic pie-in-the-face-gag. Never gets old.

Ah, the old pie-in-the-face-gag. Never gets old.

A new twist on an old classic! Cliche + technology = modern comedy. “Gluten free” and “vegan” are hilarious buzzwords, too. Personally, while I prefer a gluten free diet, veganism seems unnatural to me. Please pass the butter and the eggs please. Meat is more of a convenience than a necessity, but I don’t want to live in a world without butter. I do try to eschew sugar, although, at this time of year, it’s almost impossible. I already promised the kids we could make gingerbread and the 3-parties-a-day holiday schedule has begun.

 

Dragon Comics 46

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Big red button means it's SERIOUS!

Big red button means it’s SERIOUS!

Drawing comics is great, but after a year of drawing, I really miss writing novels. It looks like 2015 will see more of that, and maybe short stories, and hopefully more literary submissions, but as long as I maintain my stride, that shouldn’t stop me from drawing 3 comics a week. For now, I want to get a couple weeks up on the strip, so that I’m not putting finishing touches on something at quarter of 1 in the morning, 45 minutes after I wanted it published. I’ll be taking another vacation from the comic between Christmas and New Years’ Day, but unlike the break I took Thanksgiving weekend, I hope that I will be conscious and healthy and able to draw and write the entire time.

The Fox asked if I was accepting Dragon Comics fanart, which, of course, I am. So look forward to a guest comic from a mind equally twisted as mine, but twisted in a different way.

 

 

Dragon Comic 45

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Stand back! He's going to try engineering!

Stand back! He’s going to try engineering!

I added The Man’s name to the copyright information on this comic because this gag and half of the text was his idea. The machine, of course, is my own devising. If he had designed the machine, he would have gone for some degree of verisimilitude and not attached a Wankel rotary engine to a set of pistons an an egg beater, let alone had the brilliant idea to power it with a hamster wheel. I guess the solar panel only runs the water heater? Apparently he does not find the Wankel rotary engine as hilarious as I do. There was no doubt in my mind as to what kind of engine this machine would require.

Drawing the electricity arcing off the Tesla coil was a lot of fun. I’m not sure yet what the mousetraps and the pinwheel add. Perhaps one is for style and the other is to protect the machine.

In fact, this machine is not quite finished.

I’m a fan of Rube Goldberg devices from way back, and I suppose this comic could have taken that path as well, but that would have required a lot more forethought than I would have put into the machine. Furthermore, Rube Goldberg devices are meant to accomplish some particular task.

Does this machine has a function? Is is dangerous? Can it make Dragon’s life easier? Tune in next week for the answer to these and other exciting questions!

Dragon Comics 44

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And we’re back!

We all know that feeling. Thus concludes this treaty on gluttony as a cultural imperative.

We all know that feeling. Thus concludes this treaty on gluttony as a cultural imperative.

A couple years back, the Fox, The Man, the Cats, and I were driving to Tucson from Death Valley and I had the clever idea that we should stop for lunch in Las Vegas. Specifically, I thought the Fox, who had never been to Sin City, would get a kick out of the buffets. Stupidly, we chose the cheapest one on the strip, which, at the time, was Planet Hollywood.

I didn’t even feel like I ate that much much, but apparently I did. The Cats and the Fox were perfectly happy to nom all the things. The Man and I did not fare so well. The man literally threw up. I was not even so lucky as that. All I remember is lying on the floor of a casino bathroom crying because I wanted to throw up, but couldn’t, and then finally demanding that we leave Las Vegas immediately, so that I could vomit on the Hoover Dam.

Sadly, I was unable to effect reverse peristalsis on one of the greatest modern marvels of the 20th century. Instead, I spent 7 hours crying to myself.

Since then, I’ve only eaten myself into a stomach full of angry bees once. Typically, I’m pretty moderate about what I eat; even if I eat a lot, I rarely eat things that my stomach can’t tolerate. As I was completely sick this Thanksgiving with a perfect storm of what appeared to be 3 separate microbial invasions, I couldn’t have overeaten if I tried. We’ve been really conscious about not cooking too much food, not going overboard with the Thanksgiving meal, for some years now. Still, hanging out with the Cats and the Fox, I am offered a lot of opportunities.

Dragon Comics 43

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HAPPY THANKSGIVING CATS AND KITTENS!

Only in America could we transform a celebration of gratitude for not starving to death into a celebration of Dionysian excess ushering in a month-long period of accelerated capitalism.

Only in America could we transform a celebration of gratitude for not starving to death into a celebration of Dionysian excess ushering in a month-long period of accelerated capitalism.

In brief: after 9/11, although I have never loved New York and didn’t know a single person there in 2001, I was one of those Americans who sort of lost their minds. For 3 days I did nothing but listen to NPR and freak out. I had to leave grad school in the middle of the semester to go home to my mom for a week. I was treated for PTSD. And then one day I woke up and said to myself, wait a second, I’m a fantasist. I can escape this world any time I like; I just need to go back to my novel.

We live in trying and complicated times. All QWERTYvsDvorak can offer is a moment of (hopefully) comedic escape. This is my first attempt at a purely visual gag. This Thanksgiving, I will offering gratitude for myriad blessings, and remembering those less fortunate and those whose lives, by a trick of fate, are so much more difficult than mine.

QWERTYvsDvorak will be taking the week off to enjoy time with family and recover from whatever bacteria has settled in my lungs. Comics and updates resume Wednesday, December 3rd. Be good to one another, people. We’re all we have, really.

Dragon Comics 42

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Seriously. You should try it sometime. You'd be surprised how well it works.

Seriously. You should try it sometime. You’d be surprised how well it works.

Right now I’m grateful that I actually finished this comic. After 4 days of nonstop holiday cleaning, I find myself sick like a little kid, with an actual fever and everything. So if this comic makes no sense, blame it on my 100.5° temperature and my inability to breath the air that remains after you run the cleaning cycle on an oven where you regularly roast entire chickens. Not to mention my allergy to pretty much every cleaning product ever. My house is now toxic to me, and the sad part is that it doesn’t look substantially cleaner than it did before we started.

This is another comic that’s more about me than the kids. In reality, the Girl is something of a Pollyanna, with a strangely sunny disposition and a powerful ability to love her family. Although she also loves butter, sugar, milk, salt, cheese, and Taylor Swift. The redundancy of dairy products is due to the fact that The Man really did grow up on a dairy farm.

Not sure how many more comics I can write this week, since there’s family coming and also I am now the walking dead. We’ll take a little break for the holidays. Web traffic drops off like crazy at the end of the year, unless you’re selling holiday gifts.

Dragon Comics 41

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Don't think about it too hard. Time travel is still completely nonsensical.

Don’t think about it too hard. Time travel is still completely nonsensical. In some reality, the cats are just passing the earring back and forth between panel 2 and panel 3 for all eternity, like a moebius loop. 

You know how it is when someone really wants your help, but you’re so sure that the thing they’re asking couldn’t possibly be helpful to them. You want to be a good friend. You want to comply with their request. At the same time, you know that it’s a waste of time, yours and theirs.

Maybe trying is better than doing nothing.

Time travel remains nonsensical.

 

 

 

 

Dragon Comics 40

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My medium is metaphor. Mixed metaphor, I guess.

My medium is metaphor. Mixed metaphor, I guess.

It’s merely a coincidence that this 40th Dragon Comic publishes on the day on which the world marks my 40th trip around the sun. I assure you that this has no bearing on my maturity level. I do like how this arc comes sort of full circle, from satisfaction with art, to dissatisfaction with art, to depression about art, to straight up depression, to comedy about depression, and back to satisfaction with art.

There’s something classically right about black humor (thus, Dragon holds a copy of Hamlet, one of the best examples of gallows humor, in panel 1) because as long as we can laugh at our terror, our pain, and our uncertainty about life, we know that these things have not yet consumed us. When Hamlet fools with Yorick’s skull in the graveyard, it gives him, at last, the presence of mind to consider his own inevitable death while stirring in him the sensations of life. Ophelia’s death, and the clowning around it, spurs him on to the death and violence of the play’s conclusion. We all die, so why not keep merry? Whether or not Hamlet avenges himself on Claudius, he and Claudius and everyone else will die, like his Yorick, like his father, like Ophelia. Love cannot save us from death, but humor can save us from fear.

I’m 40. I’m mortal. I’m going to die. But until then, I’m going to laugh. Even when I’m depressed, I’m going to laugh.