Sequential art runs in the family

Tuesday was my birthday and Carey unveiled her boffo socko gift to me: a 4-panel comic of her creation, done in mixed media. As everybody who's anybody knows, 4-panel gift comics are my specialty, so to receive one like this is... well, instead of gushing I'll just let it speak for itself.

Thanks, Care. I like it an awful lot.

Good news, bad news

I'll start with the good news:

Completely unexpected, but Nat Gertler (gentle genius and founder of 24 Hour Comics Day) has finally worked through the submission pile of 24 Hour Comics and looks as if my story, Cubicles, has made the cut for this year's anthology.

Press release details here.

Surprising, really, as this is a much slimmer edition than previous years, including only 10 stories, versus the boffo-socko-mega-tomes of days past. The hope is that a less expensive book will sell better (and, seriously, $11.99 retail for a 256 pg. comics anthology is a friggin' ridiculously good deal).

Published in March, so be sure to get a copy. I've picked up all the anthologies thusfar and they're always a fascinating read: sometimes entertaining, sometimes loopy, sometimes touching, sometimes goof-ball. But always interesting, considering they were done in a day.

If you're the type of person that goes to comic shops, ask them to pre-order you one. It's called 24 Hour Comics Day Highlights 2006.

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And the bad news:

Unfortunately, work-wise, this season has been absolutely unrelenting and my energy has been extremely low, particularly when it comes to working on side-projects. There simply hasn't been time.

Wish I were kidding, but I'm afraid the Bears will be taking this Christmas off with the original animated Christmas cards.

I know and I'm sorry. I love making them, so no one's more disappointed than me. The sad fact is it usually takes up the majority of my free moments in December to produce them, though, so I rely on a slow month to get them done. The only way I could do it would be to turn down paying work and that's just not an option for me this time. I've already been told by several folks that they're anxious to see what we come up with this time and I wish I could have done it (this year was going to be an idea of Carey's and it would have been hilarious. Maybe next year).

For the bored and nostalgic, though, here are links to the cards of previous years. Relive the magic all over again:

2003	2004	2005

My comics are hyper-sigils too

First, here, at long last, is my spankin' new, all-deluxe, Collector's Edition DVD version of Cubicles, my 2006 24 Hour Comic. Click it or stick it, chumps:



You may have already read the wretched thing (and if you haven't, get ta steppin'), but the sweet feature I'm proudest of on this dee-luxe go-round is the video journal. Much like last year, I recorded a little diary entry at the completion of each page, but this year I've stepped it up to video, rather than audio only. Now you get to watch me waste away as well as listen. Fun for you and the kids!

Also, there's a wee bit of Jer-in-action video magic buried in the subsequent pages of the 24 Hour Experience link, courtesy of Joe and Rebecca Taylor. Give it a click or two.

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Not sure if you managed to watch the Grant video I posted a few weeks back, but, if you have, you probably thought a little about magic. And spells. And sigils.

Grant swears up and down that his comic (the still-sublime-after-all-these-years Invisibles) acted as a sort of sigil, or even "hyper-sigil", casting a spell over his own life and world. The events he wrote about literally magicked themselves into reality and he began to experience duplicate scenarios as the characters he'd written, particularly the ones he identified with the most.

Maybe bullshit, probably bullshit, but you can't help but wonder.

And the past few days, I've been disturbed by the fact that I keep running into the same friggin' person over and over again, a person with a seemingly liquid identity, just like Charley experienced in Cubicles.

She's a short, middle-aged latina woman with sharp, distinct features and she was the cashier that helped me yesterday at Office Depot. 10 minutes later, she was the cashier that helped me at Target. And today, she stood in front of me in line at the bank, wearing her work uniform: Subway.

If it's not the same woman, they're triplets. This is no joke.

Or. And hang with me. My comic made this happen.

Go ahead. Laugh. I'm a lunatic and a narcissist.

Comics as magic objects, as spell-casting iconography. Tt!

And then I remembered Calvin Carson and the Ghost of John Lennon.

Backstory:

I can't remember a time when I didn't regularly draw little comics for myself, for my own amusement. In high school, I created a character (an anthropomorphized lion) in the hopes that he might become our school's mascot. I drew a few pages of comics about him, had some t-shirts printed, called him "Calvin" and that was that. Nobody remembers but me.

When I was 17, I made a new incarnation of Calvin: now he was a skinny white kid with blondish hair, a high school student. He dressed like me and acted like me and was only a little bit better looking than me. I began a comic about Calvin Carson's Adventures in the Pod Dimension, or something like that. Poorly-conceived sci-fi. Again, yawn.

College: I wrote him into a play for our theater group, Remnant, and even played the part of Calvin when we toured our show. Calvin as a post-college, failed artist (my worst fears realized).

Later, I wrote my first screenplay. The main character? Take a guess.

I was Calvin. I fixated on this character and identified with him. I wanted to will him into existence.

And in 1995, I met Carey Moyer.

I really wanted to ask her out, but I was not a ladies' man and I just didn't have the stones. Friends gave me encouragement, but I was jelly. Frustrated, I drew a comic starring, surprise, Calvin.

I called it Calvin Carson and the Ghost of John Lennon.

The plot, in a nutshell: Calvin obsesses over Christine, his object of desire. After failed attempts to ask her to the Homecoming dance, he goes home, draws a circle on the ground, lights candles and begins to chant a magic incantation made up of John Lennon lyrics. A ghostly Lennon appears, assists Calvin, and the three bop off to the dance.

That's where the comic stops, 8.5 pages in. I never did finish it.

But the day I worked up the nerve to finally ask out Carey, I concentrated on that comic. I studied it. I dressed in my Calvin clothes, trudged over to her dorm, and did it.

That was 11 years and two wedding rings ago.

So here's where the story gets embarrassing, because I don't know what to think. But I have to ask and, while I'm asking, I might as well punctuate my embarrassment by publishing it on the internet:

What if Calvin Carson was my sigil?

Am I casting spells without knowing it? Does it work that way? Can it?

Am I losing my mind?

Lunatic and narcissist. Let's go with that.

Obnoxious Boners!

Back in September, I teased that I'd been keeping a blog all through my self-imposed cyber-exile, I just wasn't telling anyone about it. Look, no one hates secret blogs more than me because, seriously, what's the point of a blog if you're not going to tell anyone about it?

But here, now, I'm ready to reveal: since early June, I've been drawing one-page comics and giving them away to important people in my life. My usual mode of operation is to think of someone who inspires me, pull something strange or unique that I know or like about them from my subconscious, and manufacture a short, comic moment.

Sounds much heavier than it really is, but I began posting them as a secret blog (and it's a pretty lousy secret. A number of folks have already stumbled across it. Wah). I made a deal with myself, though: I wouldn't tell the world if I'd done less than 50.

Don't ask, I don't know.

Anyhow, enough wind-up, here it is: ObnoxiousBoners.com



They're short and they're by me. I don't know, whatever. Either way, you'll have to let me know what you think.

(Also, don't feel slighted if you haven't received one. There's an excellent chance that, if you're reading these words, I have one planned for you, I just haven't gotten to it yet. Inspiration, she's fickle, and there's really no rhyme or reason to the order I've chosen to do them so far).

Another 24 hours later...

It's over.

I took the challenge once again and, I'm happy to announce, I once again completed 24 pages in 24 hours. This one was even hairier than last year and the wee hours were even more panicked... but it's done. 24 Hour Comic Day 2006: mission accomplished.

I'll eventually do a deluxe presentation of my experience in the vein of what I did last year... but, in the meantime, I wanted to get my pages out there for anyone who's interested. So...

Click here to read this year's 24 Hour Comic.

(Note: while last year's comic was sweet and adventurish, this one's a tad more grown-up and raw, particularly in the language department. Work-safe, but maybe not kid-friendly. There, you've been warned.)

Okay, I'm completely beat. Hope you enjoy it.