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Dragon Comics 125

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No children were bitten in the making of this comic. 

One day, one of the kids is going to read this. It’s a joke! We mean you no ill will! Ha ha. Kids are hilarious. And they taste like chicken. Joking! Ha ha! Modest proposals aside, there’s a flash fiction I wrote a couple years back on a related subject, which I think I figured out how to turn into a 1 or 2 panel comic. That will be for tomorrow, since it took me until 11 p.m. to even have an idea. And then, of course, I had 2.

Anyway, cannibalism is always hilarious. It was the topic of my senior thesis in college. Chew on that. Or don’t. I’m not sure why that subject sang to me, but it didn’t sing that loudly. I just had to pick something to graduate, and the truth was that I was graduating in the wrong major, and had therefore come to the end of my undergraduate education with very little interest in the field they wanted me to write about, which was psychology.

The topic my advisor had originally suggested I do was “a cultural history of LSD.” No joke. I went to a rather unusual school. I didn’t take her suggestion because it seemed like a really exhaustive subject, to which I felt unqualified to do justice. I wasn’t interested in doing that much work. Not that kind of work. I read a minimal number of books about cannibalism in different forms and struggled to bang out 30 pages at the end of a semester in which I didn’t even take any other classes.

Compared to my master’s thesis, which I worked on throughout my entire 3 years in grad school, and was 600 pages.

Neither of them were great works, but the cannibalism thing was embarrassingly bad. Unfocused and produced almost entirely without guidance. My MFA project was flawed, but full of good pieces too. Mostly because my heart was in it. I feel like I have to throw my heart like that into everything, but I don’t always succeed. Still, my track record improves.

Happy New Year!

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happy new year

Dragon and Marzipan Bird wish you well from their winter wonderland.

QWERTYvsDvorak is going on vacation. Or staycation. Whatever you call it when you don’t update the website until January 3rd because things happen too quickly at the end of the year and you really need to take some time off. That’s where QWERTYvsDvorak is going. But before I go, I’d like to say how grateful I am for the people who’ve been reading, upvoting, and sharing my blog posts. Like my whole freaking life I’ve been sharing original stuff with the world and finally someone who isn’t my father thinks that’s it’s worth looking at.

I’m not much of a Christmas person, but I do believe in the totally arbitrary celebration of the new year, the reviewing of the past year, and the setting of expectations for the year to come.

In short, things can only get better.

Happy New Year!

Dragon Comics 124

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Money, religion, politics. Just keep your mouth shut. 

Thus concludes the tale of the dragon and the troll, a complete journey from innocence, to experience, to rage, to remorse, to empathy, to remembering what caused the rage in the first place. It’s important to engage in meaningful with individual who hold a variety of beliefs, but it’s also important to do so with respect and, when needed, restraint. A little empathy helps. We need to be able to talk to each other rationally, no matter how much we disagree.

Otherwise, it’s best to walk away.

But it’s better if we can talk.

Peace on Earth. Good will to everyone. And if you can’t manage that, if you can only communicate your point through insults and puerile behavior, maybe your point isn’t as firm as you believe.

Dragon Comics 123

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The OED has a 1000 household uses. In addition to beating trolls with it, you can also use it to insult them. It’s actually full of rude words. 

Ha ha. Love that Compact Oxford English Dictionary with quirky bubble-shaped magnifying glass. The Fox gave it to me a couple years ago, when he was downsizing everything in his life, which he’s done like 3 times in 4 years. I don’t know if he even has any stuff left. He certainly doesn’t have as many giant dictionaries as I have.

I mean, if it were absolutely necessary, I could pack what I need into a couple bags. But I happen to like living in a library. I thought about that too, during his last purge. Foxy was reading some kind of Japanese extreme cleaning manual that advised only keeping things that bring you joy. After some consideration, I determined that while some individual books might not bring me joy, the library itself does.

And so, the troll-defeating fantasy continues.

Dragon Comics 122

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The problem that I have with myself when dealing with issues such as yesterday’s troll-baiting, is that I am a pantheist. I wanted to link to an interview I did on this subject, but it seems to have disappeared. The important part about being a pantheist in this context is that when I believe there is only one thing in the universe: we are all one thing, you and me and people we don’t like and people we do like and blades of grass and quasars and everything. So if I tear a ignorant little troll to shreds on Reddit, I am also tearing myself to shreds.

We’re the same, and it’s only the veil of material illusion that causes us to think we’re separate. So that’s sort of senseless and demoralizing. Why should I put so much energy into proving other people wrong? I know they’re wrong. Everyone who hears them knows they’re wrong. Possibly, they know they’re wrong, but either way, what does it matter? Am I really going to set someone straight? If the best I can do is make them feel bad, shouldn’t I feel bad about it too? Especially if it makes me feel good?

This is how it always goes when people rub me the wrong way. Because I love the universe in a general sense, but some of the elements of the universe are a trial to tolerate. Not you, though. You’re cool.

Dragon Comics 121

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Or skinks. You might also be thinking of legless lizards. But not dragons.

Some guy called me an idiot on the Internet and I eviscerated him with words.

He probably didn’t realize that he was reading original content on Reddit and that the author would see his comments. He definitely didn’t realize he was the idiot in the scenario. A couple people tried to point out the flaws in his reasoning, and then they just downvoted him into oblivion, so that the site hid his comment.

But…uh…I didn’t let it go.

Something snapped and I dug in and tore him to pieces, pointing out over and over again how ignorant he was. To his discredit, he kept responding, which only made him look stupider, and I kept ripping him to shreds until he actually apologized for insulting me and started sobbing about how mean I was.

And the thing is, I was mean. I was vicious. Because people who go around insulting people anonymously usually do it because it helps them feel superior, and usually no one has the time to knock them down, so they just go around being jerks and thinking they’re right and everyone else is wrong. But every once in a while one of them bumps into me, and I happen to have a little time on my hands, and a more impressive vocabulary, and ability to use logic, and understanding of how to argue, and they learn that once you wake the dragon, the dragon just presses forward until the opponent is destroyed because dragons do not like waking up.

And this guy was destroyed. I almost felt a little bad. I almost thought I should say, “Yeah, sorry, I took it too far,” because when he finished Googling all the big words, he probably felt way more insulted by the thread than I was by him calling me an idiot, especially since my insults were based on his actual intellectual shortcomings while his were based on an utter lack of understanding of anything. But I didn’t apologize. Instead, I picked his last shred of dignity and finished him with a final humiliating truth bomb that, I imagine, helped him understand just how outclassed he was.

So…I actually felt kind of bad/weird about excoriating a common troll in such a nuclear fashion. Blame it on the dragon part. I may be but little, but I am fierce. I try to be nice, all the time, to everyone, no matter who or what they are, but sometimes, something else takes over and I stop feeling like everyone deserves compassion, and get punitive instead. When I have this kind of cognitive dissonance, it always ends up in the Dragon Comics, and there are probably 2 more days of this thread, because I feel bad about feeling good about it.

 

Dragon Comics 120

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There are trolls everywhere. You can’t avoid them.

Pretty straight forward here. Usually I ignore the trolls, but every once in a while it amuses me to troll one back. Only if they start it. Clearly, I’m adept at arguing, but I try not to exercise that skill. After the immediate thrill of pointing out how terrible another human being is passes, it doesn’t feel good to engage in that kind of exchange. Once you realize someone is deliberately baiting you, versus just possibly being uninformed, you have a choice about whether or not to wallow in the mud.

That said, there may be more trolls in Dragon Comics.

Yesterday: best ever traffic in a single day on this blog, almost 5000 page views. Even my RedBubble store is seeing some bounce. Appears that I am doing some things right. Feeling hopeful and fortunate.

 

The Thanksgiving Machine

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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.

On my own, I tend to eat reasonable portions of healthy food, but put me into a situation where everyone is overeating–in a restaurant or a food-centric holiday like Thanksgiving–and it’s like someone else is moving that fork from the plate to my mouth. And then getting up for seconds. And thirds. And dessert. And seconds on dessert.

This comic is actually a rerun from last year (cf the copyright date), but it bears repeating. There are people like the Fox with a high tolerance for the effects of gluttony, but the older I get, the more uneasy they make me. So much conspicuous consumption. And the older I get, the more I tend to participate in it.

I’m not as bad as the Bear, though. he despises Christmas and Valentine’s Day and pretty much any type of popular celebration, but his business is mostly gift-based and he sells most of his art between Thanksgiving day and until whenever he stops taking orders because he can’t guarantee that things will be made/shipped by Christmas.

All of which leads me into the real point, which is that I had intended to work up a great ad campaign to launch Wednesday, and fund it and everything, but I was sick for most of October and everything fell to the wayside. Now the holiday week is here, none of the photos I took for tomorrow’s page came out right, and my family has begun to arrive.

So listen: if you’re reading this, if you are a quirky person, or a person who buys gifts for quirky people, consider purchasing a holiday present from my online store. In addition to Dragon merchandise, I offer a number of lovely and whimsical designs on a wide variety of products: Tshirts, hoodies, skirts, leggings, blank books, travel mugs, prints, electronic cases. There are a lot of designs on a lot of products, and if you see a design you like and it’s not on the product you want, let me know, and I’ll get it up for you. RedBubble offers a lot of sales, so if you look at the top of the page, you’ll often find a coupon code.

Not sure where to begin?

For the artist and lover of beautiful things, there’s the “Perfect Passion Flower” studio pouch, just right for carrying pencils, pens, and other small supplies.

Cat lovers seem to enjoy “Kitty Sees Three Fishes,” available here on a greeting card, a perfect accompaniment to any feline-themed gift. Hypoallergenic. Does not shed. No animals were harmed in the painting of this picture.

Feeling dangerous? The “Punk Rock Raven” pillow is soft and hard, all at the same time, for when you want to decorate with a little edge. (If you’re buying RedBubble pillows, keep in mind that the print is on a pillowcase, which can be purchased with or without a pillow, so you need to double check what you’re buying or you could end up either with a pillow you don’t want, or with an empty pillowcase on Christmas Day.)

If you’re more of a dog-person and less into commitment, “Johnny the Australian Shepherd Paddleboards Roosevelt Lake, October 2014,” on a sticker livens up any unornamented surface on which you have permission to stick funny dog paintings. Johnny is a real dog, and this painting is based off a photograph I took of this dog actually paddleboarding. Your outdoorsy dog-loving friends will appreciate it.

Finally, kids who love ponies love My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, and kids who love MLP:FiM and have a good sense of humor love the Princess Sealestia, Ruler of Aquastria Tshirt. If your bronies are too big for kids’ clothes, you can get this in adult sizes, too.

If you don’t want any of these items, but you still want to support a starving artist, please consider clicking “favorite” on any of my RedBubble designs, sending links to people who might like to buy them, or scrolling back through this website and repost any comics that amuse you. My traffic has increased 10x this year, and if I can increase it 10x more in 2016, I’ll have reached my goals. Every little bit helps.

Dragon Comics 118

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It’s a full time job, keeping me down. Decades of man-hours.

This script was actually written a week ago in a moment of self-pity, but I had a great birthday and now I’m feeling all positive and upbeat about myself. Still this remains Dragon Comic 118, the vast global conspiracy against Dragon.

At first I was a little irritated to wake up and discover that a photograph of some lemons I posted on Facebook yesterday had 50 more likes than I had wall messages wishing me happy birthday (I’m not joking: it was a photograph of my hand holding 3 lemons and it got 90 likes and 1 share, proving once and for all that I really don’t understand people) but as the day progressed, my birthday greetings overtook the lemon likes by a wide margin, because I am actually awesome, even though, as this comic illustrates, that fact is sometimes hard to grok.

When I went into the kitchen, I found that The Man had filled it with flowers and chocolate. Then I looked around online some more and discovered that an article I wrote about Comic-Con was published, and that people were trying to contact me across a variety of platforms. While talking to a friend I hadn’t communicated with in a while, I heard a suspicious noise in the back yard, which turned out to be Mrs. Kitty coming in to wake me up, followed by the Fox, and they took me out to lunch at a fancy restaurant, where the Fox gave me the macro lens I’ve aways wanted. He said he specifically told the guy at the camera shop, “something for taking pictures of bees.”

For dinner, The Man took the kids and me to another fancy restaurant.

Since we all shared all the food at both meals, here is a list of all the animals I consumed today: cow, lamb, duck, chicken, shrimp, swordfish, lobster, scallop. I also got free fancy restaurant birthday dessert (i.e. fancy dessert with a single candle stuck in it; no singing) at both places: a chocolate peanut roulade and a huge slice of apple pie.

So, while I may have eaten way too many animals in a single day, I feel very loved.

 

Dragon Comics 117

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Who has time to read when there's a Buffy sing-a-long starting in 10 minutes?

Who has time to read when there’s a Buffy sing-a-long starting in 10 minutes?

Honestly, I think one of the nicest things about Comic-Con is that it’s a venue for the weirdos to let their freak flags fly, and to see that they’re not alone. I get that this subverts the intended purpose of the Con, but we live in a tough world, and if spending 3 days out of the year dressed at Pikachu is what you need to survive, I wholly support that, and will work to make the Con a safe place for you to do so.

I love comics, obviously. I don’t buy a lot of them, because I am poor, and because I am partial to graphic novels/trade paperbacks, having little patience for story lines that are doled out a dollop at a time over a space of years, and because I have very little shelf space left and would rather borrow comics from the library or a friend and not have to store them if I don’t love them enough to make them part of my permanent collection. The allure of that type of acquisition eludes me, as well. If I buy a comic, I’m damn well going to read it, and I’m going to use my bare hands to turn the pages. I maybe even dog ear it as I do so. But I’ve known serious collectors, and I support that madness too.

There were probably fewer than a half dozen straight up comic book dealers at this convention: we have 3 major independent shops in this town, all of which were represented, and maybe 1 or 2 retailers came out of Phoenix. Most of the vendors weren’t selling comic books. They were selling swords and wigs and T-shirts and plushies and stuff that’s of interest to people who come to comic book conventions. Even the artists weren’t primarily selling comic books, but were instead selling paintings of dragons, or their own drawings of popular characters, or books with more words than pictures.

But comic books are the catalysts. And while the Star Wars area was bigger than the Marvel section, and I don’t even know what to make of the replica cars from non-comic related movies and TV shows, there’s room for every fandom at a good Con.