Jeanne's Comix | Tag | bad mother

Walking in a Circle

I like a lot of things about Mona’s house! Notably I like that her tomatoes are doing better than mine are, at present.

The book Mona is reading is AT LADY MOLLY’S, the fourth book in Anthony Powell’s Dance to the Music of Time series. So far it’s probably the best of the series, if only because it’s More About Widmerpool than the others. Basically this series is like Proust except (1) funnier, (2) featuring occult topics, and (3) containing a far greater percentage of rank coincidences. I like ridiculously sustained writing/narrative projects A LOT, so if you like these as well (plus you have an affection for early twentieth-century British society and some level of tolerance for long passages about how the “character of women can never truly be known to men,” which are annoying but which aren’t the WHOLE point, at least), give it a shot!

New comix Tuesday, I think.

If You Enjoy People

Mona and Cathy are out on the town!

It looks like I’m gonna be reading in NYC in June with one of my favorite writers and people! Details to come once they’re more final. Putative title of the event: DOUBLE FIST

New comic Thursday! This one featuring Inez, and a magic garden!

A Killer Whale, a Tiger Shark (2 of 2)

This was written a while ago, and continues yesterday’s strip. They’re like super jerks to Inez, always

New comic Tuesday! Probably featuring Cathy! Everyone loves Cathy!

A Killer Whale, a Tiger Shark (1 of 2)

The first in a two-part series involving SONGCRAFT. The next part will be tomorrow! TUNE IN

In a special BONUS FEATURE, I also did a comic about the characters from the Dungeons and Dragons game friends and I have been involved in for like half a year now! It’s here on my Tumblr, and also here, in miniature:

In YET ANOTHER SPECIAL BONUS FEATURE, I also have this awesome Bad Mother fan art that Kathleen Jacques of Band Vs. Band did for me for my birthday (which was, uh, a while ago) that I don’t think I’ve yet posted here! It features Mona, Betty, and Inez enjoying WHOLESOME PURSUITS:

You should be reading Band vs. Band, guys! Something really cool happened!

All right, SEE YOU TOMORROW

Sonic Experimentations

I drew this strip back in January and have hung onto it because I don’t like it that much. Valuable elements: we learn the name of the coffee shop Mona and Cathy work at; we get evidence that Sometimes Groups Play There; we get evidence that Cathy likes this guy’s weird electronic music. We see that there is a staircase in Starkfutur Coffee. (Rory has an art gallery upstairs that maybe we’ll see at one point.) There’s this whole world this is some kind of keystone to.

Inspiration: K. Carter of Derangement of the Senses, though I don’t think he’d like name a band BRAUTIGAN’S GRAVITAS and also his music is good and stuff

There are more new strips slowly being completed. I’m feeling kinda cut off from comics as a general thing lately, which has led to a lot more work on my next novel, which nobody’s gonna be able to read for a long time. Can anyone recommend Good Story Comics? I dig this comic Rain kinda, but it’s not in and of itself moving me to work on this particular story more than other stories: I’m doing a bunch of scripts and pencils but it doesn’t seem like something I’m building so much as something I’m like passing time with, which is the wrong feeling. I’ll get past it

Bless this Mess

Let Your Indulgence Set Me Free

Comics are power fantasies! Everyone sez so

I don’t have a ton of news! There was a neat Boat Girl update the other day, for those who missed it. I don’t even know who reads this these days.

WORLD TOUR SCHEDULE upcoming:

New Orleans: later today until Sunday
New York: early June
WHO KNOWS WHAT, AFTERWARD

New comics coming sometime soon! There are a bunch in a half state of completion. This one was like completely done tonight, though, in an eerily short space of time. I wish Cathy had her own fun strip full of mean-spirited trans adventures sometimes

SEE YOU ALL SOON.

A-1 Helldragons

OH GOSH THAT WAS SO LONG SINCE THE LAST COMIC. I’m sorry! I don’t know what it is about January! It’s something about my birthday and New Year’s and ugggh. Please enjoy this!

ALSO PLEASE ENJOY THIS AS MUCH AS I: my comix pal Kathleen Jacques (of BAND VS BAND) drew excellent Bad Mother fan art for my birthday! Please enjoy her rendering of this charming, chilling scene from the horrifying everyday occult life of the Spector household. THANK YOU SO MUCH KATHLEEN. (I feel like I also owe her for use of the term “helldragons,” but can’t confirm this? At least in spirit, this is clearly a KJ term)

You Will Work for Rory Forever

Uh, let’s PRETEND this comic was posted on February 2. Mona’s official birthday is February 2, just like mine. I had this drawn well in advance of February 2, finished most of it, and then fell off the face of the earth. (I finished some other comics related stuff in the meantime, which I’ll post soon.)

There is more Bad Mother stuff in the works — I am not in a comics mood lately. I’m not sure why at all. But I will be again. This is inevitable, and there are a bunch of half done comix to prove it. aghgg

I guess my book is a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award! Here’s a review of it they did.

The Cat’s Secret Helper

Yet another exciting review of my novel has come in, everybody! This one is from Neon Magazine and it ends like this:

If you think that the protagonist’s involvement with a cult is an odd direction for the story to take, then you’re right. But this novel is built on odd directions, strangeness, darkness, sudden violence and the wildness of youth. The presentation of the book is similarly intriguing, with punkish, hand-drawn illustrations fronting each of the long sections, and an intermission in the middle. It’s the kind of thing, you get the sense, that Julie herself would have liked.

This is eerily gratifying, to have someone believe that one of my characters would like the story I wrote about her. I hope this is generally true! I feel that somehow even the Man Who Hates Fun would like the story I’ve written about him, just because like showing him in the worst possible light is somehow doing good service to Reason Itself. (I am actually working on the MWHF conclusion, but REALLY SLOWLY. Some pages are drawn and they are pretty good, I think, but I don’t want to promise stuff until I have a pretty solid idea of when.)

ALSO: a new issue of Rocksalt Magazine has come among us! This one has probably my favorite Rocksalt cover yet, by Anton Solomonik of ANIMAL CITY.

Regarding this strip: I don’t know if I’ve ever drawn the Spector family cat–or rather, I have, but I don’t think I’ve put the strip featuring this cat up yet? But it’s pretty transparently my cat, who is legitimately maybe some kind of Evil.

Like seriously THIS JOKE MAKES SENSE RIGHT

New strip Tuesday! It features more Second Life wackiness! Um, don’t read it at work probably!

Apology Cards

We are starting the YEAR OF THE SNAKE on a CLASSY NOTE, one that also features a pretty accurate drawing of my cat’s soul

It’s now been a year and a third since I moved back to Austin, TX. Thinking today about doing the first draft stuff of Bad Mother while I was getting ready to leave NYC, putting all my stuff in boxes. At the Cafe Orwell in Bushwick I think three subway stops from my own (I don’t think in terms of how many subway stops away things are anymore!) doing early drawings of Mona and Betty, trying to determine if “Mona Spector” was actually a ridiculously self-indulgent private joke name or if that was okay, not ordering sandwiches I couldn’t afford. Talking to girl in front of the cafe about the idea for the strip and asking if she thought the title was stupid; said she hoped to hear about it later; it took until May of 2012 until I felt “back on my feet” enough to actually start putting these weird little strips I was doing online. It’s weird to think how much time I’ve spent thinking about this strip relative to the actual amount of work showing, which I can’t help but think of as KIND OF NOT ENOUGH.

So here is hoping for a better 2013 in terms of work. Here is hoping that the detailed plans I have for this strip and these characters come to some kind of useful fruition! Here is hoping that the art gets better, that I figure out how to fit more Real Life Material into three or so panels, that it all just generally works kind of better and makes it more plain that I’m not like “slumming it” with this project, a fear that we will all have until we die, I think. Here is to LESS SLUMMING IT IN 2013! Here is to REALIZED DREAMS

And here is to everyone in NYC, where I really, really wish I could be tonight. MAY LOVE SUSTAIN YOU IN THE COMING YEAR, FRIENDS IN NYC AND EVERYWHERE.