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.

 

If You Add the Digits of My Age Together You Get 5

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birthday_edited-1

Also, presents. Lots of presents. And I like my cake gluten free, and with no white sugar, but make it taste like it has gluten and sugar in it. And I could surely use a massage while I’m waiting. 

Tonight, I said to Mrs. Kitty, “Birthdays are like Santa Claus. When you’re a little kid people go out of your way to make you believe they’re magical, and then one day you’re grown up and nobody cares.” Really, some people care, but you aren’t supposed to make a big deal about it yourself. Because that’s selfish and immature. But why shouldn’t everyone have at least one day a year during which everyone has to be nice to them?

Maybe it’s better to have low expectations. That way, if someone does care, it seems magical again.

While Mrs. Kitty and I were hanging out, we decided to make some art, which I’m going to hold back for next week because it will be more perfect then. But it is delightful. Her exact commentary was “kawaii!”

Anyway, yes, it’s my birthday, and this drawing is my present to myself. But feel free to use it too, if it’s your birthday, and you think everyone ought to be nice to you.

I Love Endless War

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i <3 war_edited-2

I forgot the very best part, which is how war enriches those who already have power and inflicts suffering on the people who are already marginalized.

There’s this old story–I can’t recall the origins–about a righteous man who is given the opportunity to see hell, which is presented as a long banquet table, weighted down with the most scrumptious and delectable of foods. Everything looks tasty and enticing, but the sinners, seated along both sides of the table, have their arms encased in rigid sleeves. They can see the food, even touch and it and pick it up, but they can’t bend their elbows, so they can’t get it into their mouth.

The righteous man then asks for a glimpse of heaven and is surprised to find that it’s the exact same scenario–table, food, unbending sleeves. The difference is, in heaven, people are feeding their neighbor across the table.

That’s the world we live in, actually. It’s heaven when we care for those around us, and it’s hell when we selfishly think only of ourselves.

But this is all beyond the people with the power to make big decisions, it seems. Being hugely sarcastic seems to be my only remaining defense in a world increasingly populated haters and those with zero regard for anyone else. More guns, more war, more class stratification, more needless consumption of nonrenewable resources. Why not?

Many of the people with the power to make big decisions–a frightening number, really–want war, for financial or religious reasons. The only defense against this type of thinking is to point out, repeatedly, how ridiculous it is, how the suffering of some brings suffering to us all.

Trying out some different cartooning styles. Photoshop makes it easy to get lazy and my intention is to become a better artist. I don’t need any practice being lazy. I saw a comic where the artist drew black and white characters with colored hair and it looked pretty cool there, and here, too. This is me, of course, and Mrs. Kitty with her unicorn hair.

 

Narrow Tolerances

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tolerance_edited-2

It’s one ten-thousandth of a inch, not a sliver more, and if anyone has a problem with that, we’re switching to Angstroms, do you hear me?

The Man assures me that no one is going to understand this comic, but I’m not personally an aerospace engineer, and I wrote it. Furthermore, I’ve read every single xkcd comic, even though I have a liberal arts degree and haven’t even attempted to learn anything about coding since giving up on BASIC in 1982, and Randall Munroe specifically states that his work may not be appropriate for me.

The Man does work in this industry, but the idea of a 1/10,000 of a inch tolerance is kind of mind-boggling to me. He doesn’t have to actually measure the 1/10,000 of a inch himself–he programs robots to measure for him–but if it’s not right, back it goes. Some things won’t function properly if they’re, say, 1/1,000 of an inch too big. People could die. Or not die, as the case may be in that industry.

Math is sort of a foreign language to me, once that I’ve tried to learn on numerous occasions, and failed miserably every time. The only math class I ever did well in was statistics for the social sciences, and 100% of everything I mastered in that class vanished like morning mist as soon as I finished taking the final exam. Otherwise, I probably would have gotten a BS instead of studying psychology, which is an interesting, but inconclusive discipline. My parents would have been happier to start with, but probably more disappointed when I gave it up for art, which is what I told them I wanted to do to begin with. Imagine how much farther along I would be if I had ever in my life taken a drawing class instead of learning to calculate standard deviations.

Triumvirate Mandala

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Next slide, please.

Next slide, please.

Reddit is so unpredictable. I can put the same comic into 2 different subreddits, and one link will get 2 upvotes and the other will get 147. Come on! Do I suck or not, people? Make up your minds. Friday’s comic was not my best work, I don’t think, but it’s gotten almost as many views in 24 hours as my bullying comic, which has been getting steady traffic for weeks. But neither of them got much play in /r/comics, which leads me to believe that people who read /r/sadcomics and /r/webcomics are simply more intelligent and discerning readers.

I like today’s mandala, which is unusual in that it is based off a 3-pronged symmetry, and also looks like something you would use to summon demons, or a portal into HP Lovecraft’s brain.

Posted my article on Tucson Comic-Con and am halfway through tomorrow’s comic. Sold a T-shirt. Also: paying work this week. Still scratching away at some bigger projects and…um…thinking about novels.

Integrity

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I only signed up because I loved that freeze-dried ice cream when I was a little kid.

I only signed up because I loved that freeze-dried ice cream when I was a little kid. 

Where this comes from, there’s no way to say. Just pure ridiculousness, I guess, like a vegetarian butcher or a Republican presidential candidate calling for tolerance and diversity. Ah, there it’s gone and gotten political. Maybe I just wanted an excuse to draw astronauts, although now I wonder if the astronauts should have been bigger. It would have been more fun drawing bigger astronauts. Then again, maybe it’s funnier if you get the vast perspective of being so high above such a large expanse of the Earth. Maybe adding the ISS was a mistake. Maybe this comic is only a qualified success. It wasn’t the best day for my art, to be honest. I wanted to block out 2 hours to write an article, but instead I accompanied The Man on an unusual but informative adventure. And here we are.

You need urgent care after you get the bill

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If you think WebMD is bad, whatever you do, don't subscribe to the CDC's mailing list where they send you updates on all the latest and deadliest diseases you might have.

If you think WebMD is bad, whatever you do, don’t subscribe to the CDC’s mailing list where they send you regular updates describing in graphic detail all the latest and deadliest diseases you are probably suffering from right now.

It was the Rabbit who told me about the CDC mailing list and diagnosed herself with every global pandemic for a year before she realized that this in itself probably didn’t constitute healthy behavior and unsubscribed. Personally, I don’t like going to the doctor because my experience is that doctors typically don’t listen to or help me. Usually they tell me there’s nothing wrong, and if they do treat me, it has minimal effect. Fortunately, I do have good health insurance, courtesy of my wholly legal marriage to The Man, who is gainfully employed.

As for WebMD, it’s really fairly useless for diagnosis, when you get down to it. If you want to look up the course of a particular disease, it’s an OK resource, but if you search your symptoms, you pretty much always have cancer.

Kids can’t play doctor anymore, anyway. If they get caught, they have to have psychiatric evaluations and become registered sex offenders. And why would they bother looking at each other when they can just Google porn?

I’ve been trying to spend less time online. The real world has some things to recommend it, too.

Etiquette 2015

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What I'm saying here is that technology has really transformed every aspect of our lives.

What I’m saying here is that technology has really transformed every aspect of our lives.

Some relationships are just closer than others. Or maybe some people are more forgiving. I have a couple friends who fall into the third category. All this constant communication technology is a huge imposition on my life, and if people want to v-chat me, they have to do it on my terms.

We’re talking really good friends.

This is easily the grossest comic I’ve ever written. Or am every likely to write. But the fact of the matter is, 20 years ago the idea of bringing a computer into the bathroom was unthinkable, and using the telephone in there was really reserved for teenagers with really long cords and no other privacy options, or for people staying in fancy business hotels. Now it seems totally normal. For some people, not bringing their smart phone into the bathroom would feel weird. Friday night I was at a party in a really loud bar, and I got overwhelmed, and went and played Words with Friends in the bathroom, and that was a totally unremarkable thing to do. No one looked twice.

At any rate, this comic should discourage people who don’t know me well from v-chatting me.

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.

So Many Circles Mandala

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Hey, even the Earth is slightly egg shaped, really.

Hey, even the Earth is slightly egg shaped, really.

How is that I’m still awake? I had a press pass to Tucson Comic-Con this weekend, so I felt compelled to spend almost the entire 3 days at Comic-Con. I only left Saturday because I had to go to a birthday party, and I only left Sunday because I wanted to march in the All Souls’ Procession, and I like to hang out downtown for 3 hours before the procession starts to just be in the middle of everything. So I walked a LOT. Plus, I wore combat boots for 10 hours today. My feet are kind of complaining. The introvert side of me was actually kind of freaking out about these plans, and there was a moment on Thursday when I thought, “I can’t do this.” But I did it. I took some great pictures and talked to plenty of artists and cosplayers and writers and publishers and I will write a sweet article and next year maybe I’ll get the press pass to the (MUCH larger) Phoenix con. Maybe I’ll even have enough cache for San Diego. Stranger things have been known to happen.

Dragon Comics tomorrow!