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Dragon Comics 152

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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.

Your Picture in the Paper

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In case you’re wondering, my performance at the Dan Quayle rally did not go over well among his supporters. I’m lucky I’m cute, or I’d probably get beaten up a lot more often.

To be fair, the TV station must have figured out their mistake because they appear to have added 2 women talking to the clip and cut out 2/3 of my friend’s interview by the time I wrote this comic. But we had a good laugh about it Saturday night, my friend being the first to point out the irony/institutionalized sexism. Also to be fair, my friend is a very cool white guy, and very well-spoken. But there were a LOT of other voices KGUN9 might have chosen to air.

A lot of people’s favorite sign on the internet seemed to be the one that read, “So bad even introverts are here,” and that really resonated with me. I have strong beliefs, but I find social action terrifying. Even calling my representatives fills me with dread, but the last few weeks have inspired me to take more a participatory approach. I did call my senators, and emailed them, and had a letter I wrote (printed on paper and signed) hand-delivered to my congressperson. And I forced myself to get up and march, even though contemplating the act was nerve wracking and anxiety provoking. And I ended up having what I’d consider, under any other circumstance, a really unflattering, and somewhat misleading picture of myself circulated to 10s of 1000s of people because for a split second I looked the part, even if, for 25 years, I haven’t really acted it. I mean, I write, I talk, I educate individual people here and there who seem receptive to opening their minds, but there are so many folks who have consistently done so much more. I admire them, but I don’t know how to force myself to act like them.

I am a lot more comfortable behind my keyboard. Today I was invited to this National Write Out action, with the theme “What’s worth fighting for is worth writing for.” But, of course, that’s all backward. Writing is easy. Going out and making noise is hard. Still, if someone wants me to hashtag something for the good of humanity, it’s almost the least I can do.

The Right Two Bear Arms

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You think Sarah Palin had to put up with this sort of thing as governor of Alaska?

Education is at the heart of this; when fully funded schools are considered luxuries reserved for certain classes, education becomes devalued. When education is no longer a priority, the most vulnerable populations suffer. And when people are miserable, they are easily led by liars and demagogues and charlatans with the agenda of using people’s own lack of understanding against them.

I cannot get past this woman and her refusal to answer basic yes/no questions, her utter lack of understanding of what students of all socioeconomic classes need to succeed. Or perhaps she does understand, and she’s deliberately advocating to leave huge swaths of American children behind, because that is the result of her love affair with charter and religious schools, which are not required to retain students who lower the curve. She wants to set up a tiered system wherein kids who aren’t at the top of their game receive fewer resources, where public schools become corrals for children marked for failure.

If bears are a huge threat to America’s schools, I hope the Department of Natural Resources will involve themselves in the crisis. Public schools already have enough on their hands without requiring faculty and staff to prepare themselves for bear hunts on campus. Think of how many pencils you could buy for the cost of a single bear-shooting weapon. Of course, I’m not a fan of shooting bears to begin with.

Bears are fun to draw, though.

Betsy DeVos should not be confirmed for anything except a plane ticket home.

Random Animal Facts

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La la la I can’t hear you and if I can’t hear it it doesn’t exist.

It just gets worse and worse, and although the Rabbit reassures us all that everything will turn out fine, it’s still hard to hear. Today was not in the least a funny day. I made the observation on Facebook that we’ve moved through Orwellian to Kafkaesque. There isn’t actually an evil order behind events. There is a complete lack of order whatsoever. Nightmare chaos despair insanity stubborn pernicious confusion. Reason no longer exists in American current affairs and we citizens can expect no better existence than the lives of despised giant bugs and no reward greater than the release offered by death.

Ha ha! Just kidding! Or am I?

Random animal facts have greater meaning than the news. Just read an article on a new book about octopus intelligence in The Atlantic, even though I already know a lot about octopuses. Did you know that octopuses have 3 hearts? And, in effect, they have 9 brains: 1 big one in their big squishy heads, like us, and 8 nerve bundles, one for each arm, that are big enough to be analogous to little brains, in my opinion. Even the longest-lived octopus species only live a few years. The males become senescent almost immediately after they mate and then die shortly thereafter. The female waits until her eggs hatch and then she achieves senescence and dies.

Octopuses seem pretty smart. Maybe they have the right idea.

Dreams of Sushi

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It’s just a matter of motivation. It’s hard to made decisions on an empty stomach.

A fish dinner is a fish dinner, but if you start messing around with wishes, you might end up with nothing, which is less than a fish dinner. When I was a little kid I made wishes all the time: on the evening star, on dandelions, on birthday candles. Not on coins thrown in fountains, though. My mother did not condone the throwing of currency into pools, or anywhere else. But I noticed a trend, which is that my wishes pretty much never came true. I’ve had the same wish for decades and even with concerted effort, I can’t make it come true. Maybe in another 20 years I’ll make some progress.

Although I feel like I failed to complete any of the things I set out to accomplish today, I did draw a comic. And I guess I did some other, possibly meaningful things that were not on my list.

If I had wishes, I probably wouldn’t use them on personal things that I really want. In the long run, I think we’d all be better off wishing for peace, for people to be less greedy and more empathetic, for equality and liberty and justice and safety.

Charming

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It’s a family name. 

Please understand that this comic in no way reflects my relationship. The Man would never a) keep a pair of socks with holes in them, b) wear tighty whities/a tank top, or c) own a La-Z-Boy. He would also not miss his mouth if I made him nachos. He is too fond of nachos to treat them with such disrespect. Also, I don’t think I could get him to wear a crown no matter how many beers I got him. Well, maybe, but it would have to be a lot of beers. Anyway, he never claimed to be a prince.

I should have given the prince a 5 o’clock shadow. You get the picture.

Today I applied for a job, one that pays money. Got a callback right away because–yo! I gots mad writing skillz. At least where those skillz pertain to the writing of cover letters. Also, I have 20 years of experience. But I still have to take a test. Between that and making a new bulletin board for the elementary kiddies (the old one blew away and the librarian replaced it with a sign that read “This sign is out of order. Please do not read this sign.Oh, no, now you’ve done it. You should stop reading this! Why are you still reading this broken sign? Now you must go back to the top and start over”) and trying to finish 2 books and write articles about them, and of course, draw a comic and maybe work on a novel, Dragon will be a busy Dragon tomorrow.

Now Dragon is a migraine-y Dragon. No more screens.

Washing Machines

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But tell me again about how all kids have equal opportunity to achieve the American dream.

American public schools are structural inequality in motion. Rich kids go to well-funded institutions, and they attend prepared to learn. Many poor children don’t have that option. Here’s the source: One Answer to School Attendance: Washing Machines. We live in a world where little kids miss out on whatever advantages might be available to them because they’re afraid other kids will make fun of their clothes. And some people are OK with this. The solution is so simple, but society doesn’t consider clean clothes the right of poor children, apparently.

But some people do care.

Anyway, I felt like that story needed a little boost.

Dragon Comics 150

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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.

Morning in America, 2017 (part 2)

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According to my interpretation of the data, the impact of house fires is both small as well as beneficial. For example, we could be roasting marshmallows over there right now.

To get the wording of this comic just right, I Googled “climate change deniers” and found the wiki, which is chock full of mind-bogglingly specious reasoning and really has to be read to be believed. What is clear is that, for some years now, certain factions have achieved leverage in their fight against reality by accusing their opponents of doing the things they themselves are doing. For example: stating that the 97% of scientists who have studied the phenomenon are lying for their own personal profit (clearly bunkum: anyone who knows a decent sample size of scientists knows that scientists very rarely profit off of anything) when in reality, the people behind climate change denial (ahem…the fossil fuel industry) personally profit from squashing good science.

When I was a little girl, in the early ’80s, I remember reading about anthropocentric climate change for the first time. “Hmm,” thought little Dragon, “this looks like something that requires more data.” By the ’90s, data trends indicated, to me, a reasonably skeptical person, that there was something going on with greenhouse gases and the environment. By the ’00s, there existed enough information that no rational human being could dismiss the danger. But, instead of shrugging and turning away from a small percentage of irrational ostriches behaving in a dangerously self-centered, ignorant, and short-sighted fashion, we gave them a seat at table and an equal voice in a discussion that had been settled to the satisfaction of everyone who bothered applying rationality and logic to the question years earlier.

Guess what? Just because they let you talk on TV does not mean your argument possesses validity.

Admittedly, there’s a little Fox Mulder to me. I want to believe. I’d love to believe that there are aliens, fairies, and beautiful golden carp that grant wishes to those who pull them from the water but spare their lives. It would be wonderful to live in that world. I’d love to believe that, in the next 20 years, we won’t see the continued melting of the ice caps, the continued rising of the ocean, the continued trend in extreme weather, or the continued dying off of countless species (including large numbers of our own species dead as a result of climate based disaster).

I want to believe that so bad. But there’s. No. Evidence.

The house is on fire. Whether or not you believe fire exists, whether or not you believe the fire was started by bad wiring or an anomalous lightning strike or spontaneous combustion, whether or not you think there’s any point to fighting the fire, the fire will still burn.

This comic should probably link to my other comic about climate change denial and my other comic that uses a house on fire as a metaphor for people being married to their irrational beliefs.

Morning in America, 2017 (part 1, maybe)

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Also, music offends me. You’ll have to replace it with the sound of a two-stroke engine.

I’m worried about public education in Arizona. I mean, it’s worrisome all over America, but I live in Arizona, which typically ranks about 49th out of 50 in educational funding. It just doesn’t seem to be a priority for a lot of the population, which includes many aging retirees who just don’t care about other people’s children. But public school funding is important, if only so you don’t end up in a state full of ignorance. You wouldn’t believe how important education is to an outcome of competent adults.

There are 2 schools of thought concerning the nature of education. For me, education is a process of teaching people how to think, so that can adapt to new conditions and make intelligent choices as situations arise. For some people, education is about teaching people what to think, so they parrot your opinions and don’t believe in the validity of any others. Facts are facts, and if your facts cannot stand up to independent analytic scrutiny, your facts are actually opinions, and if your opinions are so frail they fall apart upon examination, why would you expend so much effort to protect them?

That’s what education is for, to keep humanity moving forward, to improve our odds as a species to achieve the best possible outcome. To prevent us from making the same mistake over and over.