Just before moving away to Comicsland, I had to finish up Guns, Germs, and Steel to give it back to Todd after borrowing it for something like nine months. The whole argument of this book is that the course of human history is basically an accident of geography. Essentially, Jared Diamond fills thousands of pages making a very thorough argument that the only reason Europeans got to kick everybody else’s ass is that crops, livestock and ideas can diffuse really easily throughout the gigantic landmass of Eurasia. He say the grasses that grow naturally in the Middle East (like wheat and barley) helped with a food production head start there, too. Also, the big docile animals in Eurasia didn’t die out as soon as people showed up (as they did in Australia and the Americas), partially because they got a chance to evolve with us as we were just becoming homo sapiens. Seemingly the African animals were on to us from the beginning, and have never trusted our species.

Diamond mentions in the last chapter that had African knights been able to domesticate rhinos and hippos, they would have mowed down sissy European horses and stomped all over the Mediterranean and who knows where else. That def put an image in my head. This was a bottom-up drawing, and the rhino wound up pretty tiny compared to its knight, but I still think it’s cool enough to show youse. As soon as I stopped drawing it, I also thought about how awesome these two would look in full armor, but that’s another story. Rhinoceroses already look like they’re wearing armor anyhow. Maybe Todd will draw them in proportion and with lots of metal plates and leather and muscles and stuff. You hear me Todd? That’s a mission!

The one nice thing about moving away is that suddenly all of my friends want to see me all of the time (and if they don’t, obviously they’re not my friends). I’ve been inebriated at some point of almost every day for the last two weeks.

Before our tearful goodbyes, Dan McCool and I had two days of serious brotimes. On Monday we got stoned, we walked all over the Village, we were this close to getting matching T-shirts at Uniqlo, but there was nothing good in Dan’s size, although we did get cool sunglasses on the street and we also looked at this sweet mural at Houston and the Bowery. As we were chomping down on some falafel, I got called to duty making corrections on not one, but two, illustration jobs. This was a big disappointment because it cut our broday short. We were hoping to have an afternoon Drawing Adventure, but had to go home instead. We made up for it by jammin’ on some comics, one of which is below, the other of which is on Dan’s blog. If you can’t tell (again, that probably makes you not my friend), I kicked this one off, Dan continued it, and backsy-forthsy all the way. We did the two simultaneously so we could both be drawing at once. (If you click it, you’ll enlarge it.)

Well friends, it’s countdown to Escape from New York. I’m really sad to go. I love this place, and I love all my pals that live here. But I’m leaving this Saturday.

I’ve been meaning to show the page below for a long time. It’s from a few months back when I was fleshing out chapter one of Petrified Girlfriend (only available in the impossible-to-read-titled Oak & Linden – I’ll make an Etsy page or something when I move to Vermont if you’re interested in a copy, Blogiverse). You may recall that Caitlin and I stomped around the Museum of Natural History taking reference pictures for it. Well, a pivotal moment occurs in the Hall of Ocean Life, which has had a wonderful lighting effect ever since it was remodeled sometime this decade. The hall’s skylights, which were painted over in the let’s-paint-over-everything 1960s, are illuminated with the blue, shifting ripples that you see on the sand under the ocean water. It’s gorgeous. And it took me a while to figure out just how to depict it, as you can see. This objet d’art features some coffee stains by me and also one of my collaborator Caitlin Martin’s inimitable lists.