More 3D Dragon Comics

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I'm not sure if this was really worth waiting for.

I’m not sure if this was really worth waiting for.

It’s pretty sticky here after a day of weird and constant monsoons, and I thought I might take a night off from the blog, but around midnight I got kind of itchy about it, like drawing comics is some kind of ingrained habit. Or chemical dependency. I couldn’t relax until I made *something* even though my head hurt and my eyes were swimmy and all I wanted was to relax. Sometimes I have to remind myself that I’m doing this for me, not for clicks or likes or money. So it’s OK if I produce something that isn’t funny or informative or meaningful to anyone else. It just has to be meaningful to me.

This one went along fairly quickly, once I created a new template, although somehow I messed up the text size so you really have to click on the image to see it clearly, because each panel ended up being as big as my normal single panel comics, and I didn’t adjust the lettering. It’s too late. My head hurts too much. Click on the image if you want to know a few things from inside my head. You can also just admire the pictures, with which I am fairly satisfied.

I was outside the public library at 1:45 a.m. again, due to the fact that I have been, as Mrs. Kitty says, “Cox blocked,” and mysteriously lacked sufficient Internet to upload a single image, despite my paying these people $70 a month, every month, for high speed access. Unfortunately, I couldn’t even get online there, for whatever reason. It looked like they had changed their network completely; I hadn’t used it in a couple weeks. I’ve been trying to post this thing for well over an hour and am too tired to drive to the next place I know I could get online.

***

Now it is the morning and my Internets have magically returned. Hooray. Here’s my blog.

How to Fly Higher Than an Eagle

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You are the wings beneath my wings.

You are the wings beneath my wings.

This Isaac Newton quote probably refers most particularly to the work of 2 great scientists who came before him: Johannes Kepler and Galileo Galilei. Although Newton is still regarded as one of the greatest scientists to ever live, having made major contributions to the fields of mathematics, optics, celestial mechanics, and of course, the study of gravity, over 300 years ago, he had to acknowledge that his leaps would not have been possible had he not studied the foundational works of those who came before.

In other words, read a book.

A crow riding an eagle

A crow riding an eagle

As for the image, there are fairy tales that involve smaller birds flying higher and farther than stronger birds by riding on their backs, and there are several sets of photographs of this phenomenon which you can Google at your leisure. It’s a documented fact that little birds sometimes hitch a ride on bigger birds.

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Close up on the wing. Somehow, my freehand drawing shortened the back wing considerably, which I didn’t notice until after I cut it out, andI ended up having to add 2 pieces to make it big enough, but that was OK, since eagles have those layers of feathers anyway. it looks better this way.

The kerning on this one is off, because I only had a really limited time to work (I actually wanted to put in clouds, but as it was it took 30 minutes longer than I wanted) and didn’t measure properly. The letters were cut pretty haphazardly, no guidelines, no rulers. I just counted the occurrence of the individual letters and cut them of folded paper, so I only had to do each shape once.

In addition, I spilled a 1/4 bottle of rubber cement all over my shirt/the cement without noticing. That’s a first for me.

When Good Moms Go Bad

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Dad thought he had the situation under control until 9:30 pm, when someone remembered that they had to build a scale model of the Great Wall of China out of sugar cubes before second period tomorrow.

Dad thought he had the situation under control until 9:30 pm, when someone remembered that they had to build a scale model of the Great Wall of China out of sugar cubes before second period tomorrow.

If you’re like me, the question, “What’s for dinner?” fills you with terror and rage. It’s not that I mind sharing descriptions of my culinary genius with my family; it’s that this question is actually a prelude to prejudgment. Since I already know what the kids like and what they don’t, I’m well aware which dishes will be greeted with cheers and which are likely to result in disgusted faces and half-hearted whining. And I don’t care. I don’t care about your weird macaroni fetish or the fact that there is only one texture of food that you find palatable, which is mushy. There are more than 6 foodstuffs available for human consumption. The ability to eat countless dishes, comprised of many different ingredients and many different flavors and textures is one of the great benefits of being an omnivore and grownups who enjoy good food shouldn’t be held hostage to an undeveloped palate.

So, really, “What’s for dinner?” is a dangerous thing to say to someone who’s spent an hour in the kitchen.

Of course, when you’re a kid, it’s wholly innocent. It’s only 30 years later that I understand why my mother would get so bent out of shape about it.

The Mountain Where I Make My Stand

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Baby, I was born this way. And I plan on dying this way.

Baby, I was born this way. And I plan on dying this way. But, I promise, not in the immediate future. 

This script took almost 2 weeks to work out, and the last 2 panels weren’t resolved at all until tonight. It’s hard to talk about. So this is a source of contention in some of my relationships, i.e. those people who have to deal with me when I haven’t got enough spoons to even fake it.

Visually, this one pleases me. I’m never sure whether the story hits until someone else appreciates it, though. As for the subject matter, there’s nothing left to say. The comic is the statement.

Funny comic tomorrow 🙂

And here’s the link to my article on Panels, “3 Webcomics for People Who Find Kinky Sex Hilarious.”

A Bold Triangle Mandala

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This mandala would probably appeal to hippie Jews. Also, hippie Rastafarians. Although in my experience that phrase is basically redundant.

This mandala would probably appeal to hippie Jews. Also, hippie Rastafarians. Although in my experience that phrase is basically redundant.

All weekend I kept telling myself, “I’m going to get 1 or 2 comics finished this weekend so that I’m not driving myself crazy trying to beat midnight deadlines after crazy days all week.” Friday night we actually got in early–10:30, which is an early Friday for us–and then spent 3 hours playing Words with Friends. OK, there’s still Saturday. No, Saturday we were frantically cleaning the house in expectation of some guests, and once they arrived we went out with them, and didn’t get back until 10:30 again, at which point I had other work to catch up on for the next 3 hours. But there was still Sunday: we only had brunch plans and then had the rest of the day free. Except I had to bring soup to a sick friend, and there were a lot of things to talk about with a lot of people, and now it’s after midnight, I’m still updating a mandala post, and so far I’ve got 3/4 of a script for tomorrow and nothing else.

Monday Mandala was a good idea, but it’s removed some of the urgency of Sunday nights.

I should have an article on Panels entitled, “3 Webcomics for People Who Find Kinky Sex Hilarious.” Will update later with link.

3D Dragon Comics #1!

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You were probably expecting something with a little more depth, but that's just a matter of perception.

You were probably expecting something with a little more depth, but that’s just a matter of perception.

There’s a type of psychological intervention known as Sand Table Play Therapy, which basically involves arranging objects and figurines in a tray of sand. Sand is nice, but it also goes everywhere and I don’t really think it’s all that integral to the actual symbolic actions that comprise this treatment, which is basically about forcing rigid adult minds to become malleable enough to throw off the limitations of maturity engage in meaningful play. I’ve got a million of these little objects–I could easily have created dozens of different tableaux using stuff that’s already in my office–and it really is soothing to rearrange them sometimes. It’s also nice to justify owning all these tchotchkes.

I’d been thinking about doing this type of 3-dimensional photographic comic for a long time, even before I started this blog. Reading Dave McKean’s Pictures That Tick made it seem like time to try. For some reason, I thought this would be faster than actually drawing a comic, which was not in any way the case. It took twice as long as Dragon Comics usually take. But it was more fun, and got me away from my desk.

It would be really nice if there was some easy way to build a model that didn’t fully set: one whose features couldn’t be smushed, but whose arms and legs could be repositioned. And then I wish I had the equipment and knowledge to make stop motion animation films.

Anyway, I wasn’t really ready to do a comic about my demons, even though creating them yesterday also inspired me to do this. Maybe one day. I’m still puzzling over my comic about depression. It’s funny: seems like everyone gets depressed, and yet depression is a really personal and idiosyncratic experience. At least mine is.

Opening Pandora’s Box: Meet My Demons

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From left to right: Chronic Pain and Insomnia, Foggy Delusion, Insatiable Desire, Crippling Self-Doubt, and Winged Hope

From left to right: Chronic Pain and Insomnia, Foggy Delusion, Insatiable Desire, Crippling Self-Doubt and Depression, and Winged Hope

Felt like working with my hands and taking a break from the tablet and webcomics, so I reached for the Sculpey, and, as inspiration tends to steer me, went to the weirdest place.

Sharp spikes, massive fangs, throbbing veins, bloodshot, wide-awake eye

Sharp spikes, massive fangs, throbbing veins, bloodshot, wide-awake eye

Here we have some metaphorical, 3-dimensional representations of my demons: Chronic Pain and Insomnia, Foggy Delusion, Insatiable Desire, and Crippling Self-Doubt and Depression. And then, because I have read the classics, I added Hope, who is either the blessed relief vouchsafed mankind by kindly deities, or else the worst curse in the box. Either interpretation is considered correct. It simply depends on your philosophical outlook.

General cloudiness, tentacles of disordered thought

General cloudiness, tentacles of disordered thought

Now I can also make 3-d comics about the physical embodiments of all the emotional handicaps that have held me back in life. Ha ha. Although first I guess I better make a Monica figurine for these guys to plague.

Greedy gaze, hungry mouth, probing tongues

Greedy gaze, hungry mouth, probing tongues

To tell the truth, working on the computer all the time kind of makes me lazy, both in terms of the way I lean on the myriad available tools rather than my own artistic sense along with the overall degree of creativity I expend on a particular idea. I might try to get some stuff done on paper, with a pencil, in the near future.

Formless hopelessness, one hand covering shame, the other reaching out for help

Formless hopelessness, one hand covering shame, the other reaching out for help

There’s a school of thought that suggests welcoming in weakness interrupts its power over you. If you accept problems, instead of combating them, you can move on with your life.

Gossamer wings, sweet curves wrapped in sunshine and warm breezes

Gossamer wings, sweet curves wrapped in sunshine and warm breezes.

I sort of started storyboarding a comic about depression, but it almost feels exploitation and derivation. Everyone does depression comics, right?

I’ll write a depression comic. Later.

When Sallie Mae Comes Calling

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The Bard does not approve.

The Bard does not approve. Then again, the Bard never went to college.

This gag is actually an old joke of the Rabbit’s. We used to laugh so hard. What’s the worst thing that could happen if you default on your student debt? You can’t, as the expression goes, get blood from a stone. You can, however, get it from a head wound. But despite the central premise of The Merchant of Venice, there’s really no meaningful gain to taking a financial obligation out of a human body.

This comic is for the many, many people I’ve watched claw their way out (or not) of the rough burlap sack of the lowest levels of academia. The ivory tower is a sink or swim proposition. At this point, I don’t know that many people who are still adjuncting–most of them have gotten tenure track jobs or gone into some other lines of work–but I do know a few, and at one point I knew dozens. It’s basically thankless, low paying work that people do in the hopes that it will lead to more prestigious work with better pay and also job security, but it only works out that way for a select few.

Aside from The Man’s largesse and faith in me, one of the reasons I am able to do what I do is that I never had any student loans, since I am essentially 1 1/2 steps away from being a trust fund hippie. I mean, I don’t have the cash, but I do have the safety net. But I have friends who have been making well over their minimum payment for over a decade. I have friends who have been paying the same undergraduate education off for almost 2 decades. It’s crippling. You could get a mortgage in some parts of the country for what some people pay every month for the privilege of education.

In some places, it’s considered a right.

You can run. You can hide. But you can’t escape Sallie Mae and Freddie Mac. Or Dr. Biff and the Brain Repo Man.

Your Marital Narrative

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We'll also be exploring mace as a therapeutic option.

We’ll also be examining the efficacy of pepper spray as a therapeutic option.

Hey! I drew a comic about going to therapy. Can I be in the New Yorker now? Or is my wit not dry enough? I tried to draw the therapist’s smile kind of forced and tight-lipped, but she still looks kind of happy, so maybe the art isn’t there. Yet. The Man believes it’s getting there.

The therapist comic seems like such a staple. So, whenever I have an idea for a comic, there’s always this voice asking if I’ve really had an idea for a comic, or if I’m just remembering something that someone else did years ago, that I read and forgot about, but which has been hanging around in my subconscious for all this time. How do you know? It’s not like there’s a big database of comic ideas and you can type in keywords and see whether or not someone’s already thought of the same gag. In face, I’ve seen different artists do essentially the same joke lots of time, and they’re probably not stealing, intentionally or otherwise.

If a musical genius like George Harrison can commit “subconscious plagiarism,” what hope is there for anyone? Am I funny, or am I just repeating someone else’s joke?

That’s the one-panel gags, obviously. The big comics about my bizarre life are mine alone, of course. And maybe if I get a Patreon and/or a Kickstarter and start making money off of comics I could do long ones every day. Still, the one-panel form is an important one.

I guess the secret is to make everything absolutely as personal as possible. No one else has my life experience. Not even remotely.

Probably, no one’s done quite this comic. Originally I wondered if the man and the woman shouldn’t be the banged up ones, but implications of domestic violence seemed like they would detract from the joke. They’re not trying to hurt each other. Things just got out of hand and the therapist got in the way by mistake.

Special thanks to The Man for his suggestion that the glass on the diploma be shattered.

Just Another Mandala Monday

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Although I do favor certain colors, I also have this weird thing about using the crayons equally. It’s hard to incorporate white crayon into anything. 

Happy Monday, mandala lovers (and all others who grace my page with their clicks).

This mandala feels very balanced. I like the sunny feeling, as if light is streaming in through a rose window. It’s full of lemony sunshine goodness.

We had a busy weekend with nonstop excitement. I thought I would work Saturday night but I ended up spending it all with The Man, who thought he was going to work Saturday night, but ended up spending it all with me.

There are more comics in the works for later this week, thought!