bad mother

2013-09-10-bm

You Can’t Keep A Good Dog Down

2013-09-10-bm

I am getting the hang of this having more than one color thing very, very slowly. A secret is that it makes no visual sense!

So uh I don’t know if anyone uses Tapastic (besides DYLAN), but I started running old Bad Mother comics there? Supposedly it is better for viewing on your phone so that you can read in the car and get into TERRIBLE TROUBLE THAT WAY. I guess it is also better at handling those web technologies like cross-browser optimization and subscriptions and magic and stuff that I with my terrible 2001-era web skills am not able to do. So if you like those things, I guess FEEL FREE TO SUBSCRIBE THERE.

There should be a new comic up Thursday, and I’m still adding secret backdated strips so as not to violate the central TIME RULES of the comic. A fun little ongoing storyline starts here if you have not seen it!

2013-09-05-bm

Reading Time is No Good

2013-09-05-bm

The big question people may have re: this one is how Betty knows about Jonestown. My idea is that Mona like one day, when she was five, sat her down and gave her a really sanitized version of the skinny on various cults, basically to warn her about those who would seek to do her harm via MIND CONTROL. It’s the kind of lesson that I guess she thought was important to administer before starting public education lol

So ROCKSALT MAGAZINE was reviewed in the Austin Chronicle! Here is what was said:

Single strips, full-pagers, even a few static poster-pages, are contained within the newsprint volume. (Note: Cover by Gil Smith. Note: Centerspread by Gewel Kafka.) Here are people with something to say. Here are works by ragers-against-the-machine, historically fluent philosophes, arch observers of humanity, and silly-ass cartoonists. . . . [we] highly recommend grabbing an issue in your favorite java joint and locking yourself to some easy chair with caffeine handcuffs … and using the paper hacksaw of Rocksalt #9 to cut (if only for a few golden minutes) your cortex free from the constraints of immediate reality.

Wow cool you should CHECK IT OUT!

I am trying to get used to the balance with the new color. Like I mistrust a lot of my basic Color Ideas, so I hope this is agreeable enough for y’all.

New BACKDATED STRIPS to come, of course! See ya later

 

2013-09-03-bm

Advertisements for Myself

2013-09-03-bm

WELCOME TO BAD MOTHER YEAR TWO. It is now after Labor Day! Betty, six, is now in school (and slightly redesigned because I was drawing her way too tall, oh no.) Let us follow her progress!

Complicated note: because I am advancing the strip in real time (and collecting it year by year as it’s done), the fact that I was traveling all summer really messed with my plans a lot, but I don’t want to violate the roughly real-time progression and delay Betty’s entry into school another year. So hopefully just this once I’m going to slowly backfill the archives, FALSIFYING DATES WITH IMPUNITY, in order to get to a few things that need to be done for Year One. (It’s nothing that’s like a PLOT SPOILER for year two or anything; just stuff that needs to happen now before Betty’s in school for the sake of the Whole Thing when it’s done.) So please take a look back in the archives to see if any new cool things have been added SINCE LAST YOU VISITED.

How do the kids even read webcomics these days? Like do you use computers or like phones or like just psychic interfacing with machines directly? I do not know any of these things. I still think the fact that this site is run on a WordPress install as being somehow really “cutting edge.” gughghh

What has happened since June! Not that much? I didn’t win a Lambda award. I was in New Orleans for most of August. A new issue of Rocksalt Magazine that I’m super happy with came out. I got a new secret freelance assignment that is really impressive but that I can’t tell anyone about for a few more days, I guess.

(Oh also: my other comic, The Man Who Hates Fun, actually updated in honor of its NINE YEAR ANNIVERSARY. ughghh again. It’s not going to update again for a while, until I’ve got a big chunk of pages ready, but I think the new page is a more fun front page placeholder than the big TO BE CONTINUED page that’s been there.)

New comics, as ever, when they come. Thank you all for being patient with these like ENDLESS VICISSITUDES

 

2013-08-04-bm

Triple Graveyard

2013-08-04-bm

I don’t even know if “triple graveyard” makes sense as a description of what she is doing (basically just an awful 72-hour shift, I think), but it’s how I’ve thought of this story (which is one of the first planned for the comic since back in 2012, whoa), so it stands. (Uploading this April 19, 2014, for archival reference, i.e. me in the future obsessing over when I uploaded something)

I feel like I thought this was funny during the weird deathmarch to try to have all the “year one” scripts drawn and finished before STAPLE! Independent Media Expo in 2014, and now I don’t know how funny I find it, but IT’S YOURS everyone! One day there will be funny comics again for you, the people

2013-08-03-bm

Win-Win Situation

2013-08-03-bm

I feel like Rory isn’t even the kind of person who cares that much about the work they do; he’s more the kind of guy who has an abstract problem with feeling as if people are “taking advantage of him.” I like the fun way he runs also!

I don’t have too much to say about this since it’s one of those “set up the plot” strips. It’s notable maybe that this is the 100th strip, according to my internal records? But it’s not technically the 100th strip on the site (I have no idea how many there are, maybe like 96 or something), nor is it the 100th I’ve drawn (there are four or five “large-size” comics that don’t come in for the standard numbering system for whatever arcane reason). And like–the strip on the front page of the site right now is #91 according to my internal numbering system (because I start a lot of strips long before actually finishing them), so it’s in no way meaningful for this to be “the 100th strip,” but I mean base ten isn’t inherently meaningful either, so you take your kicks where you can find them is all I am saying

2013-08-02-bm

Me and Hank Rearden

2013-08-02-bm

The painting behind Rory in panel 2 was supposed to be a Jackson Pollock but I ran out of time to do a goofy fake one

This is the managerial office of the coffee shop, which is up that staircase that is sometimes in the background! There is an art gallery up there which Rory runs as his primary business. He likes modern art and Atlas Shrugged, a mysterious combo!

This (posted on April 7 2014) is yet another in the series of strips collected in the book; the book is still here in PDF or REAL COPY format if ya want to know the ending of the story early, see?

2013-08-01-bm

This Fleeting Clean Feeling

2013-08-01-bm

Aw geez :(

So some of you have read this, from the last part of the YEAR ONE storyline! I’m finally getting around to putting these up online now that the website is at least *working* again rather than a comparatively attractive HTML corpse. I’ll put one up every couple of days until we’ve run through them all, and again everything is going in “present time” (by which I mean, uh, me posting comics intended to run around October-November 2013, according to my master-plans.) OR if you JUST CAN’T WAIT TO SEE THE EXCITING CONCLUSION / wish to throw some material support in my direction, all these are in the Bad Mother book which I’m selling on my Gumroad store as either a PDF or a PHYSICAL BOOK WOW.

I don’t have too much to say about this one, except I think Cathy’s outfit is neat, though it’s not really distinct from what she always wears or anything