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?

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!)

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.

Well, I guess I slipped. If you’re wondering what I’ve been up to, it’s basically been this:

Yes, that’s right, it’s spring break time at the Center for Cartoon Studies! I’m waystid! Not too long ago, I wrote about my boy Steve Ditko and his Objectivist obsession, Mr. A. I’m afraid it’s a little, uh…verbose, but if you like Steve D, you might like it.

What else, what else? Gabby returned to the green mountains on my feast day, and wrote all about it, and it was too much fun. We all miss him very much in Vermont, especially Yours-Truly, as a quick troll through his comments will attest. Speaking of missing people, this delightful episode was immediately followed by my own return to the swamps of Connecticut. My co-writer-for-life, Caitlin, met me at my parents’ house, and we had delicious food and cookies and beers, and it was lovely. We rubbed elbows with my dear old friends Danielle and Chad, and spent most of the weekend just sitting on the porch. Danielle and her family were mourning her grandfather, Dick Shand, and we all went to his simple, sweet funeral, surrounded by his family and friends, in a church that must have been plucked from Western Ireland and plopped down in the Hudson Valley. I think maybe the whole town of Pearl River was transplanted from those emerald shores. And now I’m in good ol’ Brooklyn where spring showers are sprinkling the forsythia–forsooth! More friends and beers and fun times and celebrations of the return of Persephone from the Underworld are sure to follow.

Aaaaaanyhow, if this post hasn’t been vernal enough for you yet, what if we were to celebrate the return of sports I care about with this helmet decal I drew for my baby brother Jack, and for the Wooster Generals varsity LAX club.

Oh golly, I guess I forgot I had a blog. I’m in Charlotte now, at Cait’s parents’ house, and I’m watching Star Wars on TV (“Only a master of evil, Darth”). We’ve got Legos and preg-os, so basically, things couldn’t be better. Since last I wrote, we’ve had a kegger at my “frat house,” a lovely night out at Union Hall in Brooklyn, and I made a header for Joe Kopta’s blog.

Guess what else I forgot. I used to post doodles! Here’s a page from back in September.

So I actually spent time on this one, and it made me fall behind on my other work and I only slept for two hours last night, and I blame all my Pratty fart school friends for making me feel bad about my shitty drawings. Now I understand the appeal of bigheads, by the by.

That’s right, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, today you get two Dear Diaries for the price of one! First, you’ll find out what happens when a household’s estrogen levels become dangerously low (this one is especially rough, but I ain’t apologizin – you’ll just have to figure out where those speech bubbles point for yourselves, goddamnit). Second, you’ll get a cartoonist addressing his audience directly in every panel.

Last week I saw Zombieland. I didn’t really like it much. Plus, as you’ll see below, I was pretty distracted. There are movies I want to see! Like A Serious Man, and now there’s Where the Wild Things Are tomorrow! But I go out pretty much whenever something’s happening on Thursdays. It’s about hangin’ with friends.

Annnnnd, while we’re all here together, here are the actual, live, on-the-spot drawings of and on Mt. Ascutney.

The next one you can enlarge if you’d like.

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.)