On the one hand, it's not exactly the contest I've been promising yet (urgh..sorry).  On the upside, it is a pumpkin carving contest!  
If you're looking for something fun to do this Halloween season that doesn't involve ritual bloodletting, this might be the thing for you.  We promise better prizes than most ancient, bloodthirsty deities, anyway.  
My publisher, 4DE, is hosting this one and, of course, the theme is 4DE's various comic titles.
Contest rules are here.




TinyHeroes, has just been released in the App Store, for those who enjoy iPhone games...and murdering googly-eyed do-gooders.   Here's its direct iTunes link.

It might be Tiny, but it was a herculean effort for the development team, spanning many months, and we're proud to finally have it out there.  Candy, Satyr, Marie and I are among the art monkeys working on this one.



Um, penultimately, I want to thank all of you who voted or left feedback on the t-shirt poll.  I'm sorry I didn't get  a chance to respond to many comments, but I assure you I read them all (so did Eric from 4DE) and took your thoughts into consideration.  We should have some t-shirts available soon.



Right about this time every year, when the corn is finally tall enough to hide in, when canned pumpkin pie goo goes on sale at the grocery store, and when the evenings start growing just a few degrees cooler, I'm struck with the need to be horrified.  Yes.  I need horror movies.  I need them right now.
The trouble is I'm running short on new material again.  Classics never lose their lustre, but one can only watch them so many times before they lose their effect (save that one inexplicable shot in The Shining in which Barf from Spaceballs appears to be having some sort of tête-à-crotch moment with a man in a tux. That has never lost its WHAT?).  Slasher films are, with few exceptions, filed under 'Unintentional Comedy' and not 'Horror' as far as I'm concerned, and, by and large, American remakes of Asian horror films are horrifying in all the wrong ways.  

So where's all the good stuff??  Any recommendations?

Hey guys.  A few people have asked lately about what became of that art contest.  It wasn’t a tease.  It is going to happen. I did say it would take place this summer, though, and since that turned out to be an unequivocal lie, I figured I owed at bit of explanation.

Somewhere in-between comic conventions, a push to get a game ready for release at my day job, a particularly awful cancer my cat endured and then succumbed to, the ongoing saga of the neighbor’s cat needing rescuing from the neighbors (details below), a trite and tiresome bout with Stereotypical Moody Artist Syndrome that sometimes leaves me far less functional than I would like to be, and the recent passing of my grandfather – a short, feisty, French troublemaker and dear, generous man I will never stop missing – I lost a lot of the time and a lot of the volition needed to iron out contest details.  
I feel lately I’ve dropped the ball on Lackadaisy in a lot of ways, actually, and I’m full of a very achy regret about that.

With all due sheepishness, I’m sorry.  The next journal entry I make will contain the guidelines and other details, and the contest will run for no less than three months so as to make up for the lost summer and to allow those of you wishing to participate as much time as possible to prepare and submit artwork.
Thank you to those of you who’ve shown interest and haven’t given up on me yet.


Augh.  There’s been a lot of cat drama lately.  In some karmic sense, I must’ve brought this on myself.  

Not long ago, my neighbor’s cat, Luca, came stumbling into my yard with a dislocated jaw, maxillary and zygomatic fractures, shattered teeth, ulcerated eye – in short, he looked like he’d been punched in the face with a car.  The raging infection around his mouth, eye and sinuses (complete with a side order of maggots) meant whatever trauma befell him must have happened days prior.  I guess the neighbors didn’t see fit to do anything about it.  This marks the second time I’ve had to rush him to the vet on an emergency basis due to their total lack of give-a-damn, actually.

I thought for sure I’d have to have him humanely euthanized, and for a while I was exceedingly frustrated and baffled by the whole situation - why do people adopt pets and then promptly set about neglecting them utterly?  How can anyone be so void of regard?  It seems downright pathological from where I’m standing.  They took the time to hang a collar and nametag on him, but their concern for him doesn’t seem to extend to providing him shelter in inclement weather, feeding him, or giving him the most basic medical care (easily prevented flea anemia was one of the things I had to have him treated for in the past).  I was infuriated and upset that I now had to incur the responsibility and heartache of putting an end to him...     

…but countless vet visits, two surgeries, a barrage of fierce antibiotics and a truckload of pain meds later, the old adage holds true – cats have nine lives or so.  Luca must have had some still in reserve.  I’ve since cat-napped him and sequestered him in my house so that I can give him his daily regimen of meds, and though he’s drooling like a St. Bernard, down to one eye and sporting a crooked nose, he’s been steadily improving.  I can’t help but marvel at his resilience when even the vets were taken aback by his condition at first.  It’s looking hopeful that he’ll make a full recovery save for the donning of a veteran boxer’s countenance.

Watching him progress from a disoriented, staggering sack of infection to a rumbling purr-baby sprawled across the couch like he owns the place has been an uplifting and inspiring little end note to an otherwise terrible summer.  It was expensive, it was stressful, but he’s so worth it.  I wish everyone recognized that about the animals they keep.

Maybe I’ll post some photos of him here later once he’s looking a bit more presentable.

Do any of you guys have rescued animal stories to share?

Thanks everyone who noted their interest in the proposed contest.  Based on the response, the publisher and I decided we're definitely going to move ahead with this and hold the contest over the summer months.
I'll post all the details about subject matter, submission policy, judging criteria, prizes, start and end dates here soon.


Lackadaisy is in Diamond's April issue of the PREVIEWS catalog (page 288 I think), which definitely calls for a moonshine toast.  It took about a year's worth of tenacity and finagling from the publisher to work this out.  It was all the more rewarding to see that Volume 1 received a staff pick too.

What this means is that, if you're not keen on ordering the book in the online store, you can now order the book through major bookstore chains like Borders and Barnes and Nobles, or through almost any North American comic shop.  In fact, if you happen to feel like doing so, or even just nudging your favorite retailer to stock it, it'd be much appreciated.

In order to keep Lackadaisy-type stuff appearing in future catalogs, it has to make a decent showing.  Otherwise it'll get kicked to the curb and I'll have to resort to living in the woods in a shelter constructed of twigs, spit and unsold copies of the book where, without broadband internet access,  I will lose my marbles and attempt to adapt Thoreau's Walden into a screenplay with Michael Bay in mind as director-producer.*

*may not actually occur





My publisher and I have been discussing the possibility of releasing a Lackadaisy art book for 2011 to either coincide with or precede Volume 2 of the comic.  I would love to be able to include 3 to 5 pieces of guest artwork in the book.  Since I can’t figure a way to design a Ponzi scheme around this premise, the next best thing, it seems, will be to wrangle some art by way of art contest.  

Winning pieces of art would be featured in the book, of course, and prizes would likely include a copy of the art book itself, a copy of Lackadaisy Volume 1 containing a custom drawing from me, various other Lackadaisy baubles courtesy of my publisher, and something like a Wacom Intuos4 tablet for first prize.

Before I go ahead and start seriously planning for such a thing, though, I figured it’d be pragmatic to ask – would anyone be interested in participating?


There now exists a Lackadaisy Group, with thanks to for making it so.
As it has gradually been populated with related art, I’ve realized there’s a lot of it ‘round these parts I wasn’t previously aware of.  I’m pretty overwhelmed by it actually, and I say so with gratitude.  I’m only sorry I haven’t yet commented on so many of these pieces.  I owe a lot of artists and writers my thanks and compliments.

If you’d like to see the group gallery, join the group, or submit some art, you can find it here:



Wondercon  - San Francisco, April 2-4th, 4th Dimension Entertainment booth

Natsucon – St. Louis, July 16-18th, Special-ish Guest and vendor

Comic-Con - San Diego, July 22nd – 25th, 4th Dimension Entertainment booth

Well, the  little convention tour is over for this year.  Shows have been invariably stressful and exhausting, but always rewarding.  For the latter, I owe many, many thanks to those who stopped by the booth for a book, a sketch, or a hello.

Still, while it has all been quite the adventure, my productivity has really suffered, and the resulting frustration, disappointment and self-reproach has a way of culminating into a very disagreeable bundle of creative angst – the sort that tends to seat itself in the chest with the implacable cold weight of a canon ball.  Just as I was looking forward to alleviating that uncomfortable sensation by turning some undistracted attention back to comic production, something else came along that rather thoroughly sapped all the wind out of my sails – Rocky died.

He was creeping up on nineteen years and "he lived a good long time" seems to have been adopted by the family as the official tagline.  Even if that genre of self-comforting platitude is true, the subtext is generally that they've stuck around long enough to decimate you upon their departure the way any family member would…and for a long time after, leave you primed for outbursts of blubbering over every accidental glimpse of a photo, lump of shed fur on the carpet, or feather-toy couched in the corner and emanating pathos the likes of Tiny Tim's abandoned crutch.

So, I apologize for the inactivity here.  My inclination toward publicly demonstrating my bad taste in humor and drawing criminally stupid pictures in sequence went on hiatus.  
As it happens, reams of sentimental drivel come more naturally at times like these.  I'm sure some of you can relate.  For others, I imagine it comes across as a little pathological...so I beg pardon for these following reams of sentimental drivel.



Early on we had outfitted Rocky with collar bells, ensuring I would ever after associate their sound with him.  Initially, this was a well-meaning attempt to warn cute backyard wildlife of the oncoming likelihood of dismemberment.  In practice, however, the bells failed to create any real handicap for his sport, and ultimately only provided the ironically cheerful, tinkling death knell for many a hapless rabbit and field mouse.
It was slaughter in the warmer months.  Tributes to the gods for the bountifulness of the season's suburban mammalia came  in the form of blood offerings tastefully arranged on our doorstep – disembodied heads and hearts and sundry mystery organs garnished with sinew and little rivulets of blood.  One had to watch where one stepped in barefoot summers as the stoop was something of a miniature ode to an Aztec temple pyramid.
But he was forgiven all this.  It may have had something to do with the charming alacrity inherent in a pair of half-crossed blue eyes, or the way his over-sized canines poked through the corners of that universal feline smile for an effect more comical than vampiric.  In spite of the mangled quarry, he seemed to exist in dopey ignorance of his predator's conformation.



Among people, he was less predator than adept lap cat - he never scratched, never bit, and sometimes drooled on you a little.  That's was an understandable side effect of becoming voluntarily invertebrate, though.  It made him a capital foot warmer.   And, if he wasn't busy achieving maximum sprawl, or outdoors shamelessly soliciting the attention of some unknown passerby (he wasn't above encouraging even the most perfect stranger to drape him around their shoulders like a mink), he was probably indoors catching and fetching crinkled paper for ovations.  He had a performer's streak, and a flair for melodrama besides.
In fact, the thespian emerged at the end of the love affair (or the arrangement allotting for regular cuddling and grooming) between him and Tonya, the mercurial white cat.  She inexplicably withdrew her affections years ago - some say she lost her mind like Ophelia, others attest she had just always been a spaz - but he never relented trying to sidle up next to her as before. Following each of her temperamental rebuffs, he'd pace about the dark basement like a theatrical ghost, moaning and howling pitifully, jingle bells substituting for the traditional chains.
He was more geared toward comedy, though.  Some of his routines involved breaking and entering into the neighbors' house for surprise visits I'm sure they never truly appreciated, dragging a bag of hotdog buns home which he had ostensibly pilfered from some other neighbor's picnic, or peeling a half-frozen crow carcass twice his size off the ground and trotting it about with ghoulish glee.  In keeping with the theatrical and his uncanny talent for self-injury, there were, of course, many engagements with the Elizabethan collar too.



My deepest attachment came, I think, in the midst of those most awkward years of early adolescence.  Trudging out on cold, queasy mornings to be picked up by the humiliation-chariot and taken to the ruthless hellscape of teenage realpolitik (uh, school, that is), he'd follow me to the bus stop – trailing behind in cool emulation of man's-best-friend clichés and carrying on in squawking conversation while I flailed my arms in attempts to shoo him back home.  At those moments he was about the only thing on the planet that could make me crack a smile.  Moreover, he gave me a place for my mind to wander away to during the interminable school days, something that manifested as cartoonized pictures of him to drawn throughout my class notes.  He'd made himself the bright spot in my little lonely-kid's world.  

Now, it's all too easy to dwell on the absence of those shameless performances, his one-sided conversations, his games of fetch and - on evenings marked by inordinate worry because he had failed to return home before dark – that  reassuring jingle-bell prelude to his presence breaking through the steady chur of the crickets.
I do still have many pictures left to draw, though; a happy residue from years when I could take all of those other things for granted.  All told, there isn't much more one could ask for from a cat.
(…aside from those little forget-me-not piles of gore they like to leave on the doorstep.)

Anyway, I'm not used to being quite so emotional, but now that I've cried all over my sandwich, it's probably time to stop rambling and move along to other things.



I'm working on a long-overdue revamp of the character bio page on the Lackadaisy web site.  A lot of art is involved and I expect it to take a little while longer, but I've posted a small preview for the time being.  Just click the thumbnail.



I've also just opened a Twitter account here, my justification being that I'll use it to announce  large and small site updates as they come, since they tend to be hopelessly erratic.  Outside of that context, I'm not sure how much I'll use it yet, but as a few people poked me and suggested it, I'm willing to give it a try.



Lackadaisy Volume 1 Books are available for order here  And as a special courtesy, they're even in English this time.

...though perhaps wearing clothes would be more conventional.  (Yeah...I know you see what I did there.  Rest assured, I'm sufficiently ashamed of myself.)
Anyway, I'm just throwing it out there for anyone who might like to stop by that I'll be at San Diego Comic-Con July 23nd to the 26th at the 4th Dimension Entertainment booth in the small press secion.  Books, posters, pins and a limited number of sketches will be available.

Sculptor Damon Bard will be gracing the booth with his presence as well.  There are just too many good things to say about his work, so rather than leave a heap of verbiage and glee here in praise, I'll just suggest that seeing it is very worthwhile.

Later this summer, I'm also planning to be at Wizard World Chicago, once again affixed to the 4th Dimension booth and most probably wearing clothes.  



Lackadaisy Volume 1 Books are available for order here  And as a special courtesy, they're even in English this time.  

Club-shaped pins are new on the menu too, in case you're ever in the neighborhood and care to slip into a certain St. Louis speakeasy to enjoy some of Captain Kehoe's fabulous Mississippi embalming fluid hooch.
They're approximately the exact size of the image shown here:

You heard me.   I said approximately exactly.



Lately, I've amassed a small collection of notes and emails requesting advice or "tips" about how to be an artist, how to be a professional artist, or about arting in general.  I apologize for not responding to all of these messages.  I really don't know how, to be perfectly frank.  Answering more specific questions is much easier.  When it comes to the broader scope, not only do I feel  unqualified to offer counsel, but vague questions yield vague answers, and those scarcely seem useful.   Anything I try to write in response reads like pablum fit for haiku.

bleed on blank canvas
fever dreams, shabby wages
an artist is you

Sensing that I'm being unintentionally rude by dodging the questions, though, I've scrounged around the general-knowledge center of my brain for something worthwhile to say.  So, here are a few scraps for the Gallery of Oblique Advice for Artists:

• Do art.  Do it all the time.  If you need someone to tell you that - if you're not already spending almost every free waking hour drawing, painting, 3D modeling, or whatever your vice - you probably ought not consider it as a future career.

• Develop a raging inferiority complex.  It'll keep you working hard, because you'll never fall victim to believing you're good enough.

• Accept honest feedback.  Actively seek it out, in fact.  If you're switching on the 'discourage criticism' option on your deviations and you wish to be something more than a hobbyist, you're doing it wrong.

• Learn to accept said feedback with some measure of grace.  That's often difficult, I know, but as a professional, few people will empathize with how personally you take your art.  You will be very exposed to criticism, and it will not behoove you to react like a hypersensitive ninny.  

• Learn the fundamentals - light and shadow, color theory, composition, construction method drawing, figure drawing, perspective drawing -  either in school or of your own accord.  It'll apply to just about anything you do with art.  Even if you're a Dadaist, you have to learn it so that you can properly ridicule it.

• Don't attend a technical school to learn art.  That sounds like a no-brainer, but these types of schools are plastering ads all over television, professing to make students ready for game industry positions.  Lies!

• Try not to apply for a job with a portfolio full of nothing but fan art, for chrissake.

• Don't forget to work on your artist image.  You could always start by wearing vintage clothing and drinking absinthe made by obscure independent brewers.  And remember, "I'm an artist" is a legitimate response to all sorts of questions about your inappropriate social behavior and terrible fashion sense.

• Quest for a deeper meaning to imbue in your art.  Take up your artists' tools; embark on your spiritual journey of self-discovery; try not to get shivved by a hobo on the way.

  

Well, there you have it, artlings.  Now, before you know it, you'll be rolling in filthy lucre!*   
(* Lucre not actually available.  But feel free to have a roll in the filth anyway, since you're an artist and you can get away with that sort of behavior.  Just as long as you enjoy yourself.)



Referenced some css code from 's lovely layouts in trying to piece this new journal look together, and so credit is due.