The Last Windbreaker

T did a really nice job with this. I’m not quite sure if this is what I intended in the script, but it’s quite nice.

I’m up in Kansas City today for the ABA Winter Institute.  I’ll be schmoozing with independent book store folks trying to get them excited about Odd Squad.  I’m pretty sure bribery is a bad idea, but maybe I can offer to decorate some kid’s rooms or family rooms or just paint the house.

Whatever it takes.

Whatever it takes.

The Winter of Their Discontent

It’s been a very mild winter in Central Texas.  I think we’ve gotten below freezing maybe once or twice. Some rain, but not enough.  Not sure I’ve ever reverted back to shorts and flip-flops quite this early.

This week’s Hedges are reruns. I had a hellish last couple of weeks nearly completing Odd Squad Book 2 and needed the some time away from Hedge.  We get two weeks off a year, but it’s never really a week off, just a week to catch up on some other project.

I’ll be polishing the final art on Book 2 over the next few weeks, then move to finish the live-action short, “New Soul,”  I directed back in Dec 2011, then finish prepping a secret holiday project to pitch to publishers, then on to Odd Squad Book 3.

I’m 53 and I’ve never been this busy in my entire career.

I don’t know what that means.

Alert: Comic Strip Characters Now Allowed To Have Digestive Systems.

When I started doing comics back in the Pleistocene era you couldn’t do a pee gag. Pee gags were verboten. Something about sensitive comic readers going into convulsions at the news that comic strip characters had working digestive systems.  But today all that has changed.  Cultural coarsening has finally arrived at the funny pages. Pee, poop, fart and even endless spleen jokes are now a-okay with reader’s everywhere.

No sex though.

There are already too many talking animal strips. We don’t need to reproduce any more.

Sweet Dreams Aren’t Made of This

I like this one. I got nothing to add.

So I won’t.

Fun With Cartoon Physics

They’re called laws of the universe. Not suggestions.

Except when hopeful, gullible turtles are involved.

Then all bets are off.

Spring Sprang Sprung

Warning:  Meandering Discourse Ahead

It’s been a very mild winter this year across most of the U.S. Here in Austin, I don’t think it got below 30 even once. We usually have a few nights in the teens each winter, but not this year. It did finally rain. Our pond is about 75% full after going completely dry last year. And since I can’t get anyone to fix my riding mower for another week, I’ve got a lawn of four feet high weeds. I mean wild flowers.

Actually, it doesn’t look too bad.  My closest neighbor is about a quarter mile away.  It’s not like a HAVE to mow it.

Hmm….

I’ll think about it after a few more pizza rolls.

 

Joey is the Cruelest Month

January is the liquid nitrogen of months.

February is the cruelest month.

March is the the darkest before the dawn month.

April is the nuttiest professor of months.

May is the Glee of months.

June is the triumph of hope over experience month.

July is the sparkly-est month.

August is the molten lead of months.

September is the month before October of months.

October is the gradual depletion of chlorophyll month.

November is the stuffiest month.

December is the guiltiest month.

 

 

The Wake Up Call of the Wild

I do not know why there are leaves on a dormant deciduous tree in the dead of winter. It is a mystery only my partner T Lewis can answer. Please write him and ask him.  Here is his email address:  tlewis@televar.com

Snow Larva

 

Be glad we spared you Verne’s snow angel pupae stage.

RJ Blindsides Verne With SCIENCE!

Today’s title is a shout out to Thomas Dolby’s 1982 hit, “She Blinded Me With Science.”

It’s poetry in motion
She turned her tender eyes to me
As deep as any ocean
As sweet as any harmony
Mmm – but she blinded me with science
“She blinded me with science!”
And failed me in biology

I was 22 years old in 1982. Just graduated from UT, bar tending in Houston and trying to get my cartooning career started. The only memory this song brings back to me are too many dreary nights in too many dreary night clubs (Confetti’s anyone?)  getting ignored by too many dreary (and apparently no where near drunk enough) women.

It was that post-graduate/pre-something period where you’re waiting for your life to start.  You’re standing in a DMV length line and you just have to wait your turn.   It’s a rite of passage for pretty much everybody.  And it really, really sucked.

But it gets better.

But then it gets worse.  Then it gets really, really bad.   But then it gets amazing.  And then it gets awsome!  But then it gets worse.  Then it gets down right desperate.  And then it gets better.  And then it gets amazing again.

And then it’s over.

Life happens.

Eventually.