Another backdated strip (from the lofty vantage point of September 4, 2013.) This one starts a MINI-STORYLINE OH WOW.
I want to make a ridiculous cast page to contain info like this, but the kids are ADAM and LUCAS RICKETS. Their mother is DAPHNE RICKETS. I don’t remember what their father’s name is; he will make an appearance SHORTLY.
This one was drawn a while ago but I was nervous about running it for various reasons. This is silly, though.
Obviously Cathy is being an awful creep here. But she is being a creep in a way I identify with, and maybe you will too? Like it is sad, living in the South, to not really be in an environment where there are a lot of trans people around, so it’s like when someone shows up who seems to maybe be a trans lady, it’s like whoaaa what if that lady and I were to be FRIENDS and talk about things we have in common, such as oppression! Yet it’s this awful catch-22, because it is really not proper to speculate about whether someone is or isn’t trans. It’s not like a Golden Rule thing because I personally don’t mind people doing this to me, esp. if it’s another trans person (and generally not that much if it’s not another trans person as long as they follow the basic rule of “never ask ever.”) There should be an Emily Post book maybe
The joke is also more about how Cathy is being an awful jerkface to Mona. I am just so paranoid about ever writing about My People ever for some reason, and thus have to include fun little essays like this one
such fun!
Oh no Mona doesn’t like video games! She’s clearly a jerk!
Not much to say; still in NYC; this post was made by an automatic schedule script from a full week IN THE PAST. If anything neat has happened since then, LET’S ALL FIND OUT ABOUT IT ON THIS COMING TUESDAY TOGETHER!
I’m in New York right now, June 4, hanging out with cool people at The Dalloway maybe! Or maybe it is Wednesday, June 5, and I’m at the excellent DOUBLE FIST reading with Chavisa Woods! Depending on the day, you ought to come to one or the other of these events! (Also, my book, The Dream of Doctor Bantam, either won or didn’t win a Lambda Literary Award for Debut Fiction last night.)
New comic June 6 (Thursday)!
Oh no, a mystery, you guys
Bootlegger turns: I learned about these from a fun editing client! Basically you apply some kind of horrifying engine brake that cuts all forward motion instantly, allowing you to turn via horrible inertia without really losing any momentum. It is the kind of thing everyone should probably learn to do, though I will not actually attempt this.
So there will be comics Tuesday and Thursday next week! They are done, even! They’ll update automatically while I am away from my desk in NYC for the Lambda Literary Awards and various events! It is the magic of computing! Please enjoy!
BUT THE PRAYER WAS SWALLOWED BY THE DARKNESS
So Rocksalt Magazine’s person-who-understands-marketing-because-I-don’t MATT HIRST interviewed me for the STAPLE! blog! I talk a lot about Bad Mother, my previous comix stuff, and despair:
The best thing I think I’ve done with Bad Mother are the strips with Mona driving Betty to the gas station at night or Mona slumped on the kitchen floor, one hand on the handle of a pot, talking to the cat about how she feels incapable sometimes of being a decent parent/human being. It works because it uses the same graphic vocabulary of the strips where like Mona’s being a jerk to her girlfriend or Betty’s saying something cute about dinosaurs: this safe family comic world is also the world where there’s real despair breaking through. This is a theme that I want to work with a lot more as the strip going forward, which I’m sure fellow despair fans will appreciate.
I hope today’s strip MEETS EXPECTATIONS in this regard! (None of my plants are dead, incidentally) (yet) (except the one that died of “old age” basically)
Hey, this weekend I am doing a reading at Bookwoman in Austin! You ought to attend!
New comix Tuesday, as per usual. (Because I’m going to NYC on tour, expect some delays in strips going up first week in June, though I’ve got enough of a mostly-finished backlog at this point that hopefully we’ll be fine. I WILL ADVISE.)
WHO HERE AGREES WITH INEZ. I kinda don’t, except about the magic urn thing
Also, clarification: Mona’s not like referring to a “trigger warning” or anything; she’s referencing Roy Rogers’s horse. I don’t know why this is a reference that occurs to her (or by extension, to me, since I’m like the same age.) I could guess that Mona was the kind of kid who would get like really really obsessed with a single piece of archaic culture and be really demonstrative about it. Like frex she’d probably go around the house singing this song:
Probably she sang this for COUNTLESS HOURS, like literally chasing her parents from one end of the house to the next, belting out this song neither she nor they would have any direct reason to care about! Forever! She still sings it today!
That’s it — see you all Tuesday
(This comic based on personal experience)
So I guess I’ve been doing this comic for a year now! I’m glad it’s still going, even if it’s going a lot more slowly than I figured it would. There are like just shy of sixty strips, I think, which is not a fantastic amount in a year since it’s like three panels per strip usually. But this is fine (uh, for me, anyway.) Things grow at the rate they grow.
Vision statement: I did a comix panel with Griffin Mauser, Ghastly Gilbert Smith, and the friendly musical folks of Urban Specific this weekend, and the question of what all of us even liked about comics came up (i.e. influences etc.) This comic comes out of me really, really loving newspaper comics, like to horrible distraction, like checking out every comics anthology or collection from the 741.5 section of the library over and over forever, and wanting to intentionally set out to write one that’s supposed to be a long, evolving story told through a lot of short newspapery installments, taking this weird format that’s a result of a bunch of accidents of commerce and publishing/distribution technology, and trying to do something neat with it that would be hard to actually publish in any mainstream newspaper consistently. I think the fact that this is supposed to end up being a long story isn’t yet apparent, and will be soon, but I want it to be at least sort of good as a regular daily-style strip, and I guess I hope people like what I’m doing! BECAUSE I’M GOING TO KEEP DOING IT
Thanks everyone who’s been reading! I wish I could make a green-iced anniversary cake that everyone could eat, but the internet does not yet have this technology. HERE’S THIS INSTEAD
<3, new comix Thursday
I like the switch between panel 1 and 2 in this one and I like the little drawings. One of them says THE GHOST THAT KILLS.
So I have two news items! One is a New York City event on June 5 at Bluestockings Bookstore with the excellent Chavisa Woods, author of The Albino Album! It is all part of a FANTASTICAL TOUR this summer that will take me from Austin to New York! And back again! And that’s all! But this event is going to be really, really good, and everyone within a two state/province radius should hell of come out to see us read!
The other is that ROCKSALT ISSUE 8 is now upon us! Fantastical work from a variety of artists both old and new! You are commanded to read it, and please take note of the various SPECIAL OFFERS available to the savvy consumer within.
A new strip will appear on MONDAY. Yes, MONDAY
Who is this new mysterious kid? When am I going to like make a cast page to detail facts about my six or so characters?
Hey so check this out! My pal Bill Cheng is FAMOUS NOW, and appears in this interview on NPR’s All Things Considered talking about the Delta Blues and his new book, Southern Cross the Dog, which is AVAILABLE EVEN NOW YES NOW from all stores everywhere! I’m extra excited about this book because while I was writing my book, The Dream of Doctor Bantam, we were both reading our work to our group of pals in a cafe every two weeks, so it’s like this book is some kind of GHOST TWIN to mine book, sharing amniotic fluids and stuff! You ought to read this book. It features a really scary sequence in a swamp, various awesome characters, authentic hoodoo magics, and all kinds of good writing. GO READ THIS BOOK NOW.
In other MY FRIENDS ARE GREAT DEPARTMENT NEWS: Miracle Jones was just exhaustively interviewed by The Rumpus! One of my fave quotes in an interview full of fave quotes:
I think the future of publishing is a mere change in metaphor from books as “commodity” to books as “location.” Having “electronic rights” will not mean being able to put out a single, boring text file for “download.” Electronic rights will mean property rights: you will host the one copy of the text that everyone visits and with which everyone interacts. Pirating books will become as silly as pirating houses or food. That’s why celebrity chefs are being pushed so hard as the new “rock stars”: elaborately-prepared meals are the very last art that can’t be copied.
Please widely share this interview! Use like Twitter and Tumblr and stuff! The world’s gotta know!
I guess there will be a new strip Thursday? Maybe we will learn more about this kid and his deal then.