This is a commission and it’s hand lettered so I guess I should put it here. There is some controversy at a local school district and those TPUSA d-bags will be there to scream about how their religion requires them to hurt marginalized people, so of course the Coyote, who is also a one of those radical priests who think Jesus wanted people to feed the hungry and welcome the immigrant and support the marginalized will be there too, wearing his collar and carrying this sign.
Threw this one together in record time. Last night I thought I would get up early and go in and do this work and finish early and leave. But then I thought, “Hey, it’s August 1. I should look at the calendar to see what I’ve got going on this month.” And I realized I had a doctor’s appointment in the morning. And then I didn’t get to sleep until almost dawn and had to get up and run to this appointment and then have breakfast afterward, around the time most people are finishing lunch.
Blah blah blah, didn’t get in until 2:30, the air conditioning still isn’t fixed so it was 90° in there, and it was “Meet the Teacher” day so it was a total madhouse with hundreds of people wandering around.
Still managed to knock this out in under 4 hours. It’s not fancy but it does the job.
I knew last night I was going full rainbow on this one. I showed the background to the librarian before I did the letters and she loved it and I said, “I’m being very subversive” and then her daughter said, “You made a Pride flag,” and then I said, “Shh, we can’t say that,” and she said, “Why not?” and I said, “Because some people are humorless.”
“Humorless” in this case is a euphemism for “bigoted asshats.”
Anyway, the office manager loved it and it really makes huge impact on the space. And also, little queer kids will know.
If you can believe it, school starts Monday.
I can’t quite believe it but I decided to act like I did and get the breezeway ready. Originally I intended to come back today (Thursday) but then in Monday I decided I didn’t want to be rushed, and good thing, too. Because it turned out that not only would I be decorating all 3 bulletin boards in the breezeway again, they also wanted me to do the one by the principal’s office.
I didn’t have any huge inspiration but I decided I wanted to make a hibiscus and then it just made sense to go along with that theme. Which is hilarious because the breezeway is, of course, in the Sonoran Desert. But it’s frankly as humid as a tropical rain forest this week. So that’s cool.
I could have made MORE FLOWERS or made the flowers fancier or added smaller leaves or other design elements, but I had to go feed the Bear’s cat and then I had to give Miss Kitty a yoga lesson and ALSO I still have a whole day of work on that fourth board tomorrow. A dragon’s gotta pace dragonself.
The lettering is based on the De Latto font. The leaves are monsteras.
If you are among the chosen few who read my unpublished novel The Girl Who Followed Her Own Counsel you might see some parallels between this story and one of the Little Red Riding Hood variants in that novel. The point is: either you grow up or you die. There’s no option where you stay a kid forever no matter what your family does to keep you there. If you keep living, you’re always going to become an adult, and, sad as it is, your grandparents are always going to decline as you rise.
I had what one might call a prolonged childhood, by choice, in which I was able to keep a youthful outlook on everything until I was about 35. Adulthood never really suited me, though, and I’m happy to move on to my crone phase. I’m happy to be a witch. I was never cut out to be a grown up.
Perhaps not coincidentally, my grandmother lived to 96 and only passed away about a year ago, when I was 49. Now I’m grandmother-aged myself. You can’t stop the progression of time. You can’t stop your children from growing up.
The Spirit of the Waters is probably my favorite thing I drew for this comic, which is why she’s going to be a full color feature of the Table of Contents and probably, at some point in the future after this comic is put to bed and after my literary journal release party and hopefully after getting out of jury duty, I hope to make it a sticker. There’s a few images in this comic that would make good stickers.
I’m not confident about a lot but I am confident that this is the best drawing of a knight in shining armor doing battle with an octopus that you are going to see today. I worked really hard on it.
This is the story that’s probably going to do the least for a reader who hasn’t actually read the book, and required the most careful note taking on my part, so I could really get a sense of each of the six “knights” and what they specifically had to be sorry about.
Also, tiny mermaid boobs, tee hee. Always gotta have at least one naked body part in each of these comic books to ensure that I can’t show them to my elementary students.
If there’s one thing literature teaches us about lindworms, it’s that you shouldn’t just yeet them in to a confined body of water and not expect them to turn up again in 15 or 20 years bit enough to eat a man.
Of all the amusing little details I managed to get right in this comic, this page probably contains 2 of my favorites. On the first pass, I drew the ghost in a classical ghost shroud style, which looked…really dumb. Making him a glowing, translucent guy worked out much more elegantly.
But probably my favorite image in this entire comic book is the top one, of the devil being so incredibly offended and the guy with his hobo outfit and “hey, what did I do?” expression. But devil practically clutching his pearls like, “Dude? Your own stepdaughter? Really? No. Gross,” will be cracking me up for the rest of my life.
Spent a very long time drawing that dragon’s scales. The Fox assured me they are perfect but they don’t look perfect to me but anyway they are done and that’s pretty close to perfect from where I sit.
That small king is a real creep so I drew him creeping.
Women, don’t betray your own principles for some guy.
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