Category Archives: dragon comics

Dragon Comics 159

Leave a reply
dragon comics 159_edited-1.png

I hope you packed a harpoon gun, just in case they do release the kraken.

This is me: Let’s spend about an hour or so drawing a very simple comic tonight so there’s time to work on other projects before bed. This is also me: Let’s draw rainbow-colored nudibranchs. I hope the 5 hours I spent on this (wait, what? how?) was worth it. My hand hurts. Nudibranchs are the best though. Some of the most colorful organisms on earth, and they have no sensory organs that perceive color.

There was supposed to be one tentacle in panel 1, maybe reaching out for The Man’s head or Dragon’s bindle of holding or something like that, but this comic got quickly out of hand.

It really didn’t feel like 5 hours but the clock says it’s almost 3 a.m., and Netflix played 2 entire films while I drew.

At least I don’t have to get up in the morning. Yesterday I woke up 5 minutes before I was supposed to read to kindergarteners 3 miles away. Miraculously, I was only 10 minutes late, but I was busy the entire day without rest. It’s probably time to stop blogging now.

Dragon Comics 158

Leave a reply
dragon comics 158_edited-3

I keep all my cephalopods hidden away from prying eyes. 

Giant octopuses are only the first layer of weirdness. In this direction, at least. That’s why it’s fun to take the roundabout rout: so you can catalog the anomalies you might otherwise miss. There’s a lot of accounting to do in here.

Dragon Comics 156

Leave a reply
dragon comics 156_edited-1.png

They mostly just eat toast anyway.

Sometimes the journey inward is the scariest one of all. If there are things you’ve hidden from yourself, you can guarantee figuring them out will be an unpleasant experience. Speaking of unpleasant experiences, today I got a cortisone shot in my hand. The PA told me I probably shouldn’t draw tonight but obviously there’s no helping me. We’ll see.

Dragon Comics 155

1 Reply
dragon comics 155_edited-2.png

It’s a matter of communication.

Sometimes it’s hard to remember: love is an act of resistance in a culture of hatred. Why should it be easier to turn against strangers than to find a place to meet in the middle? I wrote the script for this comic in the early afternoon but didn’t actually finish creating it until well after midnight, and now I have nothing left to say for the blog. I’m tired.

Dragon Comics 154

Leave a reply
dragon comics 154_edited-1.png

As I overheard an old leftie saying during the Women’s March, “Every time we won a battle there was still another battle to be won.” 

According to Facebook, I was wrong, and some people did notice my lack of comics, but I guess they were all people who were too polite to say something about it. And I missed my comics. I miss expressing myself in a public forum where I can see that my words have been read by 100s, and sometimes 1000s of humans/sentient creatures trapped within humans. And the people who like my comics the most seem to prefer Dragon Comics to my better-illustrated work. I actually wrote a not-Dragon comic earlier in the week, but it will keep until Dragon works out some of Dragon’s issues.

The line about the kitty litter also went over very well on Facebook, where I used it, in a slightly different form, to describe what middle age could go do. Seriously, when you are still about 9 1/2 inside, it’s disconcerting to hear the words “shingles” and “astigmatism” from 2 different medical professionals in the same week. Also shingles medication is terrible. The pills are 800 milligrams and the side effects can also eat a bag of kitty litter. (Yeah, shingles are bad too.) I declined the prescription to correct the impending near-sightedness because I can still read books without issue, and I can barely afford prism lenses, let alone bifocals, and because I am in denial about this middle age thing.

 

Dragon Comics 153

Leave a reply
dragon comics 153_edited-1.png

I don’t need anything but my precious, precious gold. 

Last night was a mini-insomnia night: I got enough sleep to access basic functions for part of the day. In the afternoon I worked on my Linda Addison project but by the time I started thinking about a comic there wasn’t much charge left in the battery. What little I actually drew of this comic seemed very difficult. Even typing it took a ridiculous amount of time. Tonight will be better.

The funny thing about taco trucks is that you can barely throw a rock around here without hitting one. So you wouldn’t really need directions. You would just need to pick one direction and walk 1d6 blocks, scanning the desert for a truck with a taco sign on it.

Seriously, how great must it be to achieve the level of greed and selfishness needed to be happy about American politics. I almost wish I had a billion dollars and no conscience, because it’s kind of a massive to burden to have feelings all the time and actually care about the world around me.

Dragon Comics 152

Leave a reply
dragon comics 152.png

I don’t have proof that the pen is mightier than the sword, but I do know the pen is the only weapon I know how to wield proficiently.

There used to be this old joke about how writers, like squids, released vast clouds of ink when threatened, but, in the way of rotary phones and cursive handwriting, the idea that writing is linked to ink will fade from the collective conscious. Is there an animal that released warning flashes of light? Everything is pixels. Anyway, I’ve always done this, whether I felt that danger was imminent or not. Creation is a compulsion.

But I do feel threatened. The news reads like an episode of Black Mirror. And not the “San Junipero” one.

Ms. Kitty reminded me that making snarky webcomics is an action. Maybe not on the level of Nazi-punching, but better than rolling over and pulling the covers over my head. In fact, I’m not hiding anymore. By and large, I’m fully exposed. Kind of a risky strategy, but I feel like I can stick my neck out a little more if it seems to be helping others.

Dragon Comics 151

Leave a reply
dragon comics 151_edited-1.png

Disclaimer: the baseball bat is for self-defense. Dragons are an endangered species.

I think we’re all gonna need to put some hot sauce in our bag, swag. This is not my typical M.O., being more of a hide-beneath-the-covers and hope-it-all-goes away type. That Desmond Tutu book has, unfortunately not granted me as much serenity as I’d hoped. But maybe this prayer/affirmation will guide me through whatever monstrosities rear their heads in the near future.

Anyway, even if I can’t move into the paradigm shift into insanity known as America, 2017 powered by a fighting spirit, at least my alter-ego can bust some windows. Metaphorically speaking. Dragon does not advocate destruction of property. Although the people of Prague figured out a more humiliating window-based protest, which is to throw people out of them: defenestration. Isn’t that both terribly and poetic?

Any measure of serenity, courage, and wisdom that can be summoned should be summoned. Let’s get in formation.

Dragon Comics 150

Leave a reply
dragon comics 150_edited-1.png

Seriously, though. I really hurts.

Trying to remain upbeat. Let’s call that the theme for 2017. Trying to remain upbeat in the face of overwhelming downturn. Not taking it personally.

For example, today I got a takedown notice on a T-shirt design based on Dragon Comics 35 because, apparently, you’re not allowed to dress cartoon characters like Billy Gibbons of ZZ Top to make a joke about how only the guys from ZZ Top look cool doing ZZ Top. My personal understanding is that fair use dictates that artists have every right to use the likeness of famous musicians in satire, and if I had half the money of ZZ Top I could hire a lawyer to sort this situation out. But I haven’t made any money off this particular design and am unlikely to ever have the reach and power of Bravado International Group Merchandising Services, Inc. and their team of overzealous content protectors.

It drive me crazy on general principle. Poor Dragon has used up all of Dragon’s good fortune and now must suffer indignity after indignity as the Wheel of Fortune crushes Dragon’s will to live. Ha ha. Just kidding. It’s just that everything rubs me the wrong way.

Tomorrow is another day, as my mom always said. Tomorrow I won’t feel paranoid and cursed and as if I already used up every iota of my deserved fortune in life.

Man, it’s not even a picture of Billy Gibbons. It’s a picture of The Man wearing Billy Gibbons’s beard and clothes. I thought it was hilarious when I drew it.

And there you have the Wheel of Fortune.

Dragon Comics 149

Leave a reply
dragon comics 149_edited-2.png

I need all the friends I can get.

This long-neck brontosaurus (I was delighted to read that “brontosaurus” is no longer considered a misidentification) is a friend of the Fox’s who often attended his writing parties. However, for various random reasons, for months and months we never managed to attend the same writing parties, and by the time we did meet, she was already planning to move out of state. And it takes me so long to really become friends with people. She is cool, but she is planning her going-away party.

It’s so weird that I live “out west” and yet people I meet here just keep managing to move farther west.

Thinking about tonight’s comic, and my new friend’s leave-taking, I remembered that she once told me if I ever drew her in a comic she thought she should be a dinosaur, that other people thought she looked like a dinosaur. Everyone agreed she should be depicted as a brontosaurus, so that’s pretty easy to draw.

It just occurred to me that a meeting/friendship between a dragon and a dinosaur is both natural and comical.