Oh glory, has it been more than two weeks since I broke my tooth? I’m almost used to it, although I think I’m a bit shyer with strangers. In the meantime, I’ve been to my ancestral home, where my parents are grieving their approaching empty nest life when my baby brother, Jack, goes to college today. What was meant to be a long-weekend visit turned into an extended stay when my significant other’s new-old car got itself stuck at the mechanic with problem appearing after problem. We got back Wednesday night and I’ve been trying to squeeze a week’s worth of work (both paying and personal) into these last couple of days. Waaaah wah wah. Anyhow, I’m back, and tomorrow is my sister’s birthday, and a week from today I’ll go back to school.

Another lapse! Excuse me while I flagellate myself. August has kicked off with a bang, in both my professional and  my social non-virtual lives. And it seems like things are just gonna keep heating up through September!

First in both importance and chronology, my better and hotter half has rejoined me. And she brought along our fat little cat of a buddy. What I’m saying is my eternal girlfriend, Caitlin, and our cat, Sheba, have moved to Vermont so that we can once more form like a Voltron of Love and conquer a whole Universe of Haytahz!

Then my TA work at the CCS Summer Workshops started at the exact same time that we began unpacking in our new apartment. The days and the nights have been full. I’m behind on freelance work, on comics, on replying to emails, on the blog, on everything. But! If Doc Brown pulled up in a DeLorean and gave me a chance to take back my decision to help out, I would stand proudly, pointing to my left, and tell him, “Go back! Back to from whence you came!” Working with the students who came for this program, and with the faculty I’ve come to adore over the past year, has been a dream. I can’t believe how many truly talented and enthusiastic people showed up, and how much quality comics work has been produced in just one week. Today marked the end of our Extended Studio option, and ended with a bittersweet tube ride down the White River.*

I also gotta give a shoutout to a couple of my besties that crawled their ways back to the Junction last weekend, by red eye planes and all day trains, Ben and Kevin. The party’s back! And speaking of BFFs, one of my oldest and dearest is going to be visiting starting this Friday. In the meantime I’m trying to get my house in order and catch up on (at least) my actual paying work. And the following weekend I’ll be going to Maine with my fambly. So what I’m saying is, there might be another lull. I’m sorry. So it goes. But don’t feel bad, Internet, I still LYLAS.

*A tube ride that I actually wasn’t on. This is what happens when you try to write about the future as if it’s the past. I had some spare time this morning and was trying to crank out a post, so’s my imaginary horde of fans could stop complaining in my head that I hadn’t posted for a while. And I thought that that tube ride would be a great, happy/sad way to end this session for the summer, which I’m sure it was. But, alas and alack, before I could go on said ride, I broke my front tooth. Combined with my red beard of summer laziness, I am the spitting image of a pirate. Not unlike this LEGO self-portrait. Needless to say, I wound up at a dentist and wondering how I’ll pay for a root canal and a crown. And thinking that Yoda would be very disappointed in me.

Things are happening! If you follow my Twittles diligently enough, you may already know that last week I was going through a bit of despair. I didn’t think I’d ever work on this comic, or maybe any comic ever again. I was lonely and bored and only wanted to drink gin and play video games. I think this was mostly because nothing could live up to the spectacular weekend before it.

There was delicious barbecue with grilled potato salad and grilled tomatillo salsa. There was jumping in the river and taking in the view down the Connecticut River Valley. There was a three-hour walk to the town’s outer limits. There was Rock Band the game and going to Indian food. It was all great. And it was all part of my stalwarts, my rocks, Caitlin and Todd, coming up to visit.

At any rate, now I’m coping. Partially by talking to myself. Today I cheered Lee Marvin when he ended a Western with a really cutting line to a robber baron. Yesterday I got tough with my pens, and with a guy on the radio who wanted to extend the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy.

But, the more crucial part of my recent spat of not hating myself is as I mentioned first; things are happening! Yesterday I finished revising the second chapter of Petrified Girlfriend, “The Forest Primeval.” If you’ll recall, I was working day and night on this back around April. I let it stew and fester a couple months before coming at it with the clinical gaze of an editor, and now that awful deed is done. But, before I can flip you all a third issue of Oak & Linden, (featuring, of course, this very same chapter), I’ll be adding some gray tones to the piece and also making some little shorts. What would Oak & Linden be without shorts?? Anyhow, it should drop in September.

And speaking of Todd, and talking about collaborating with him and Dan, and Colin, did you notice Wilma Whistlepig putting on some weight up there? How do you like this, with the drawing at the top, where you want it? Where you can skip the blab blab blab?

Lately I keep finding myself in conversations about fashion’s tendency toward revivalism and pastiche. It seems especially commonplace in the last decade, but it ain’t a new phenomenon. Before the ’00s riffed on the ’80s, the ’80s was really into the ’50s. It took us the last twenty years to try to forget that bellbottoms made a comeback in the ’90s, but it was the Roaring Twenties that sported ‘em first. So, granted, these things are cyclical. But! Here’s a little nugget of late-night wisdom for you: they’re also political.

Okay, okay, maybe I’m not blowing your mind here. Yes, you may have already noticed that women wore gigantic, man-shaping shoulder pads both times they found themselves trying to muscle into the office, in the ’40s and the ’80s. But check this out, I think you can predict what era will be in vogue for a comeback by who is in the White House. Eisenhower and Reagan both hated Commies and glorified the notion of a clean, orderly suburbia with plenty of time-saving gizmos and great new stuff to acquire. Change the Commies to Evildoers and it’s easy to understand how the ’80s were so huge in the ’00s. The Obamas/Kennedys-era fixation with long, sharp silhouettes and solid colors has already been discussed enough.

How about, let’s try for a bit of a stretch. Teddy Roosevelt and LBJ both replaced assassinated presidents. They also both used their executive might to take on too-big corporate interests. What was all the rage with hippies? Cowboy stuff! Fringe, leather, big facial hair. It was positively turn of the century!

Well, aren’t you glad we got through that? Are you just here to look at the pictures anyway? Alright, then. This I drew on the Greyhound some time. It’s Don Rosa (as best I could remember) at a barbecue in Charlotte, thinking about Scrooge McDuck (who looks something like that?) who’s thinking about money. Well anyhow, the point is they have similar hair and glasses and mouths. Gahd, cut to the picture already!!

What an incredible summer day in the country yesterday was, my brothers and sisters of the ether! It started with jumping off tall rocks in into these really deep pools along a really small river in the woods. Invigorating! That was followed up by a rousing game of ultra high-humidity soccer which led right into a brotherly dip in the big river.

And then! I came home, and there was an order for some comics from stores in the United Freaking Kingdom!! It’s my first order over seas and I’m pumped! (And don’t forget the shop.)

The night ended with drawing and drinking with friends, and martinis in honor of Alec’s Pop. It was a bittersweet note to go out on, but how better to end a glorious day than by toasting the life of a guy who sounded like both a lot of fun and a profound influence on a great cartoonist. And I’ve got things to share, like a new song. I did the Big-Bopper-on-the-phone segments of Chantilly Lace for my pal Dan “Friend Savage” McCool.

And speaking of projects with Dan, here’s a glimpse of what I’m working on. This will either hit the internets in August or never at all.

She’s a groundhog, and she’s Catholic. That’s all I’m saying. (So click it; yuh’ll big it!)

I’ve got some doodles from the last semester up at the CCS Visiting Faculty blog! Also representing are my buddies Melissa Mendes and David Yoder. What a semester jam-packed with Livin Legendz!! Here’s a lidl preview–some drawings of Kim Deitch that I didn’t submit to the blog. Instead I horded them to share with you, my Dear Sweet Pals.

And his hands. He has the longest, cartooniest, expressive-est figners I’ve ever seen. Special bonus: they’re actually square at the end! Like a Kirby hand!!

To see my crowning Deitchievement, check out that Visiting Faculty, aight? And by the way, I keep forgetting to mention that Oak & Linden issue # 2 is now available at the shoppe. Keep your inner consciousness alert for #3, dropping in the fall.

Hi friends. This past weekend I flew down to Charlotte with my buddy Joe to attend the Heroes Con (he beat me to the blog punch). My lovey dovey Caitlin’s parents live in Charlotte, and this was a great excuse for us to visit them. They were welcoming and giving as always, and I feel ridiculously lucky to have them as “in-laws.” They gave me a bed and rides to and fro (including today at four in the morning) and a bag lunch for every day of the convention.

I was representing CCS along with my classmates and pals Ben, Paul, Lena, Monty and Jesse. Although there were a few kerfluffles with the existence of our name badges or our table on day one of the three-day comicsplosion, the event was still fun and productive. Heroes is a big convention, and tilts toward mainstream superhero fare. It’s really refreshing for one of those events in that it’s not at all about pushing whatever new commodity the big conglomerates are hoping nerds will get feverish over, or that the entertainment news will scoop. It’s about comic books and the people who make comic books, and it’s for the people who read comic books. There are no Star Trek actors signing autographs and no big promotional launches of video games (with one exception).

And, thanks to the force of will that is Dustin Harbin, it also includes an Indie Island overflowing with the type of literary/comedic comics that I read and make. It was great to see graphic novelly indie snobs and rippling pectoral devotee fanboys join in the middle of this convention hall-sized venn diagram. Plus I got to meet some great artists, talk to some enthusiastic comics readers, scour through longboxes for forgotten, musty comics nobody cares about, and goof around with not only my tablemates, but also Joe, Gabby and Alec, all of whom I love very dearly. No homo.

This being a mainstream convention, there was a lot of drawing famous characters going around. I couldn’t resist. It’s Goofy acting like the Tex Avery Wolf.

It’s been a bittersweet couple of weeks. The CCS class of 2010 has graduated and are trickling off to the rest of their lives. In one day, both buddy/”Big Banana” Ben, and good ol’ Gabby (who was up for the weekend) left my house. I’ll move out in August and things will be different. But! On the sweet side, I’ll be living with Caitlin and our cat, Sheba, again. Other bright spots have been walks in the woods, jumps in the rivers, and nights on the porches. One such night unleashed Kaboobs, a bunch of dirty drawings from some of the contributors to Caboose, including yours truly. José put them up on a Blogger site, but he’s using it more like a Geocities site than a blog, so don’t look for updates. Still, do look for boobs.

Continuing the theme from my last post, here’s another cartoon I drew in transit. This was drawn on the train up from New York…some time. I don’t remember when. It’s about a cartoonist’s worst nightmare.

I’m trying to get back into regular routines–like blogging, exercising, brushing my teeth–since my last big comics project ended. This is some pretty Sisyphean shit ’cause right now it’s party time in White River Junction. School’s out forever, the weather is glorious, the trees still have that special springtime yellowy shimmer and pop. We’ve been grilling like crazy, and I’ve been cooking again (after a month of instant noodles) and catching up on grownup paperwork stuff that I’d ignored while I was in the drawing frenzy.

At any rate, here’s one of those sketchbook pages I promised last week. It was drawn in the car on the way down to MoCCA Fest, after a particularly paranoid walk through the White River Stinkeye.

Well, don’t say I didn’t warn you. Yes, maybe you’re right, even I didn’t think it would be three weeks before we spoke again. Finals season has come and gone, and I’ve got 23 great minis from my classmates to show for it. I’m still collecting myself after a wild month. But, I can at least tell you that the Upper Valley is bursting with lilacs right now and its downright glorious. Lots more sketchbook pages and some processy-behind-the-scenes stuff to come. I promise.