H’lo folks. Sorry I’ve been such a bad blogger. Here’s some cartoons with which I’ve been learning how to use a dip pen, and especially the mythical G nib. Forged by samurai metallurgists obsessed with manga, the G nib is the only pen designed specifically with cartooning in mind. I’m not sure that it can lure me away from my Rapidographs, though.

First, a one-panel gag. I made two others, but one is pretty dumb and the other has been deemed by some to be too much for the internet to handle.

Next, a dear diary dream comic. (Trying to work looser, more cartoony, faster, but not exactly getting great results yet.)

And finally some autobio-ish strips in the style of EC Segar (you can click em to see em).

I’ve got more stuff to show you, and I promise to throughout the week.

OK! I’m crazy for The Wire! That’s Avon Barksdale (Wood Harris) and Stringer Bell (Idris Elba), the drug lords. I just finished season three on DVD, and the Avon-Stringer thing was soooo Shakespearian! Intrigue! Double dealing! Family and blood brothers and war and power! Whoah.

I don’t know if you noticed, but I’m trying a fake silkscreen thing. Do you like it? Is it too subtle? I’ve often said that I think this kind of stuff is disingenuous, or just a trick, but seeing is believing, you know? I think it kinda works. I don’t know. Most of my jobs are tiny and printed on newsprint, so I don’t think they need any extra muddying. But maybe the times I get internet jobs, jobs on actual good paper and/or in actual sizes bigger than two inches, they could use a little futzing… In other words, this may well appear again some other time.

Yes, it’s true. Every single illustrator/cartoonist/comic book artist/graphic novelist/blogger in New York draws people on the subway. I even hear they do it in Chicago, too.

These guys here are both Mets fans, so I guess we’re all kindred spirits. The one playing something on his PDA was on the 7 out to Shea Stadium, and the guy in the hat was on his way home from work ’round about midnight, just like me. How about that?