I drew this in homage to Lawrence Lee Dirk III’s Grim Bard. Last year at the CCS Telegraph Studio, he would warm up for drawing his comics by making self portraits in the adopted styles of his classmates, or eventually drawing the Bard inhabiting his piers’ comics. Then, I think he got back to doodling super heroes like a good member of the Merry Marvel Marching Society. I gave the image above to Law after he had whipped up this little number:

As a longtime superhero reader, Lawrence is a teasing student of showmanship and merchandising. He loves making peripheral products, like posters and plush dolls, archly posing himself as a snake oil salesman pushing his goods on unsuspecting kids.

I think some of his mocking commercialism rubbed off on my Baby Pat material, which has better allowed me to have my own way with autobiography, and I’d say the babies have been better for it. Memoir is a form I don’t take naturally to. It can feel desperate or needy to me for middle class white kids to slavishly record and draw their own unremarkable existence…but maybe I’d better back off that rant for now. Anyhow, our’s is a time of Self as Product.

So anyway, Lawrence countered with Wilma Whistlepig (of much Farmy Acres fame). And get this, he even cut out little stand legs for her so she could admonish me from next to my drawing table. I couldn’t best it. I haven’t. And then at the end of the year, he gave each of his classmates a mini of his complete, funny, Golden Book-sized The Grim Bard and the Immortal King’s Crescendo. So now I double owe him! I’ve also been having lots of fun following Law’s blog, even though I’ve seen everything he’s posted, just because he’s a delightful writer.

Well, after all this, my boyfriend Ben got a bit jealous and made a mashup with three of his own characters impersonating three of mine–one of whom has not yet even made her debut to the world outside White River Junction. (So look out, cause Anita’s cooommmmmin!!*)

I love Ben and I love his Grump Toast comics. From bottom-left that’s Unfortunate Face as Izzy, Asphalt Monroe as Anita and Pinky Palms as Steve. Ben actually drew this when I was pretty deep down in the dumps, feeling both stretched thin and disappointed in myself.

In particular, I felt like I’d stopped seeing any progress on Petrified Girlfriend. I’m in the middle, which people always say is the hardest part. I’m ready to persevere, now, and this week’s New Yorker profile on Pixar writer-director (/new-delver-into-live-action-adventure) Andrew Stanton was inspiring to me. The article [pay link, sorry], by Tad Friend, compares the Pixar production method with the old Studio System. I love sentimental Old Hollywood stuff, and I love most of Pixar’s movies. I want to keep sight of their spirit of upholding a duty to entertain, and to always edit, revise, and improve.

*To the tune of “Rosalita,” not “Santa Claus.” [BACK]

Here’s one I’ve been sitting on for a while. For, like a year. This was when my ex-roommate, my ex-ex!-EX!-rooommate Todd was updating a blog every once in a while. Which was before Dan McCool and I (he hatching ideas from his six heads like Scylla, and I sucking wayfaring cartoonists into a depthless cavity of deadlines and despair as Charybdis) pulled him into the spiraling vortex of Farmy Acres. Now Todd McArthur’s after-work creative time is mine! ALL MINE!*

As I was saying, Todd drew that on the subway in his Moleskine. I said I’d love to see it in color, he said, “So why don’tcha color it?? Neener-nyaaa-nya!!” So I did. I limited myself to the colors (if not the style) of classic comics. This is something I keep doing to myself.

The image is apropos, readers, it’s apropos. And yes, I’ve been looking for an excuse to write “apropos.” Isn’t it so weird that it ends with an “s”? It’s apropos because this is the summer of collaboration. Right now I’m in the process of assisting the acclaimed Joe Lambert as a colorist on an up-coming book. I’m also on a top secret mission with the Nymphonomena crew, as well as some…other stuff…which we’ll get to. Because, I’m trying to get my blog posts back down to a reasonable length. I figure they will as I get back into the habit of writing em.

Speaking of which, the Party Time I alluded to when last we spoke, well, it ended pretty quick. I’ve been running back and forth between Vermont and New York, working long days, fretting, taking meetings, all of it. Real life started again. Just like that! Again I’m starting to see what things I can live without. I want to simplify. I wanna get rid of some stuff. I’m having my lump looked at before I turn 26 and rejoin the legions of uninsured Americans.

Look forward to more regular updates this summer, precious reader. There is much to talk about, and I’ve scanned a buncha sketchbook pages, too.

*As it was once before, in a dream…
–Punctilious Pat

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?

Dearest friends and esteemedest colleagues, I forgot to post this back on All Hallows’ Evening and I’m sorry. (By the by, Halloween also marked the second anniversary of this blog.) Enough of this nonsense; I give you the latest in a long line of drawing portraits of BFFEA, Zombie Todd!

Too much? Can’t stand to look at that accursed misery any more? Here’s nice Todd

Todd’s a celebrity. He must be cause he has a blogspot domain with his name on it. And he draws superheroes! So I’m posting this as a Celebrity Saturday. See if I care what you think.

My blog sucks. I know it. For the infrequency of the posts, you’d think there would be awesomer content. And now my other, more favorite blog is taking forever to update (because certain collaborators got a job, not to point any fingers at Todd, who sucks even worse than I do).

Well, this time I thought I’d toss up the fruits of this week’s labor. A pencil test! It still needs a couple frames at the beginning and end to make it a rad animation, but it’s a start. Plus, who doesn’t love eternally looping animated GIFs!!!??!

I saw Once and No Country for Old Men this weekend. They’ve both stuck in my head big time. One for it’s penetrating music, the other for it’s lack of music. They’re really good movies and they deserved the hype they got. Is it nerdy to get into a singer-songwriter because of a movie? Is it nerdy to be into a singer-songwriter? Is it lame that I took this long to see a Coen Bros. movie that got all the Oscars?

Once makes me want McNamara, McArthur & McCool to actually happen, and for actual conviction in songs to actually happen too. So far, though, the only song we have is “A Major,” cause we realized my ukulele book spells out chord families really nicely, and the A family is awesome for a good times rock song. But, I’m only really leaching from Dan and Todd, cause they can actually play instruments. Is playing with music just a distraction from making actual headway in the worlds of comics and illustration? Is it just hanging out with friends? I don’t know, but collaboration is so awesome.

Well, I’ve been doodling in my sketchbook again. Here’s what’s come of it. This one is so epic, it needed a crop for maximum page design effect!

Basically, as always, I have Blog Guilt. My man Dan is actually pulling through (well, he has for 2 whole days) on posting a song and a drawing every day, or some bullshit. So, in honor of him, and so as to not go 2 full weeks without posting, I present a high point in music and in animation:

I’m resisting the idea of posting illustrations on here, cause that’s what a website’s for, right? But, I’m not exactly updating that very fervently… I just don’t know. My roommate thinks I should toss up storyboard work on here, cause it’s work I won’t put on the portfolio, but it’s drawings I’m working on that are filling up my day. I just don’t know how to feel about that.

Now I have another blog to not update frequently enough. It’s a shared one. With my roommate, Todd. Not too different from this one, in that it’s silly drawings done with red, green, blue, and black ink. It’s the dry erase board from our hallway! It will feature a new dry erase drawing every week.

Here’s an older one. October?

I just had, I think, the nicest moment I’ve ever had with a stranger. I was staring out the window, head on the glass, gazing down at the 20-something Halloween party people, and thinking about the stages of costume. About how kids dress up and get candy, fifteen-year-olds wear their regular clothes – maybe a mask on the top of their heads – and expect candy, and young real people dress up really lavishly and get wasted. I saw what looked like a Slutty Eskimo, and I was thinking of a stand-up bit, about costume stages, about how long can this slut stuff go on.

And then I was thinking about how I keep thinking in stand-up lately. (White people need instructions, that’s how to make a hit song. Instructions for a dance. The Electric Slide, The Hustle, The Macarena, The Soulja Boy. We’re not like black people. Black people are real. That’s why they all dress the same and walk the same and say the same things and even stand the same. [big laugh] I’m sorry, I don’t really feel this way … and I know I better not talk this way! [bigger laugh!] No no, seriously though, I don’t think that political correctness is a bad thing. I think it really has helped black people, and women, you know, approach something like equality. But it really must have been nice when they would cook you dinner and clean up the house for you … Black people, I mean [kills!].)

Then I thought about how I was pretty sure I’ve heard the Slutty Eskimo bit before. Turns out it’s a real costume, not just a joke. Then a woman on the sidewalk looked up and our eyes met. A little older than me, normal clothes. I smiled my instinctual, eye-contact-with-a-stranger half smile. I was at work. At work, you smile at every person you see, and that’s how they know you work there.

I don’t know if it was the skeleton shirt I had on, or the way I must have looked like a kid in detention watching the other kids at recess, but she smiled back. And I smiled big. And she smiled big too. And then I got embarrassed and looked at a manhole, but I was still smiling.

This is the pumpkin my roommates and I made.

Me, Megan

Megan, Todd