News for 20081117

I apologize that this is currently (2:45 AM) not fully inked. Remember that Hunt 102 pen that I was talking up the other day? The one that BROKE after I had spent the day doing pencils for a bunch of strips and was ready to spend the evening inking so I could do/read you know OTHER THINGS tomorrow/today on my day off?

Inked version of this should be up in the afternoon/early evening tomorrow, followed by an inked strip for Tuesday sometime later that night. If you're already seeing the inked version of this, congratulations, slacker!

Not much else to say about this one, except that this is a fairly faithful rendition of the front of my apartment building. My apartment is the one with the cat in front of it, and the trash cans and stuff. Don't tell the building inspector.

Also, you should read this if you like the Sixties at all, or even if you have opinions about the Sixties in passing. I am not just recommending this book because I work for the publisher, although if you do buy the book then obviously that is good for me. I am recommending this book because it's a pretty fun account of life in a horrible street gang (the Motherfuckers--they can never be co-opted because their name is unprintable!) based out of the Lower East Side, told by a delightfully troubled man. I like the way he manages to communicate both his extreme ideological anger at the Vietnam War and corporate control over the American political system and his love of writing dirty poetry. It's also nice to see a day-in-day-out account of a street gang whose activities are almost entirely limited to: (1) stockpiling guns, (2) putting out cool flyers with pictures of giant flies on them, and (3) trying to take over buildings, ranging from the Fillmore East to Columbia University to Osha Neumann's girlfriend's apartment. There is a long epilogue sequence about the role (or non-role) of reason in ideological protest at the end of the twentieth century. It could probably have been cut by at least two-thirds, but it does feature a minotaur poem and finds the right balance between not approving of anything and tentatively approving of most things. Bottom line: it is a book about what happens when people who are better at writing and drawing than they are at planning try to form a street gang. It is recommended.

Inks later today; new strip tomorrow. Thanks!

Comments

Dewhurst on 2008-12-11:

ohmygod your drawing is getting amazing, how did I miss all these new strips?

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The Story So Far

Elvira Ellison is a young teacher working in New York City. Her old friend and one-time sexual partner, The Man Who Hates Fun, had been working as the janitor at her school, acting as a confidant to young student Milton Frogman. After the MWHF's apparent death due to hunger, Elvira Ellison was named the executor of his will. Upon looking through the MWHF's apartment, she was "zapped" by his manuscript, a book on modern Stoicism, which perfectly embodies his thoughts and ideas to the point that it is able to resurrect his soul from beyond the veil of death. The MWHF, now possessing Elvira's body in a way that is perhaps irreversible, is attempting to publish his haunted book.

Buy Books, Generate Support

Man Who Hates Fun
44p, 8.5 x 11
Contains strips 1-84, plus the eight-page "Winter" story and the Anais Nin story.
Four dollars, plus one dollar shipping
Witches Are Everywhere
28p, 7.5 x 10
Contains strips 93-169.
Four dollars, plus one dollar shipping

You can also get the books at Desert Island in Brooklyn, NY.


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