Lately I’ve been watching my mega-pal Kevin finishing up what will surely prove to be the sickest comics anthology of 2011. I mentioned it once before, and seeing more work coming in for it, I’m increasingly giddy for its springtime release. Its called Visions of the Aporkalypse, and it features plenty of Swineclopses like that guy up there. Kevin’s been dropping previews on his blog, including two pages from mine own entry. I’m so excited!

Here’s some more piggies. Pot bellies have the most personality and babirusas are even grosser than warthogs (sometimes those upper tusks grow into their heads!!). That’s what I learned.

Yes, it’s another Buchwald sketch. I did it a while ago, and I’m still pining to get going on a Big Buchwald Project that’s looking farther and farther off. This drawing also demonstrates some loose, free, quickness that I seem to have lost for now. Yeah, I know that back leg is a little weird, but I still prefer it to what I’ve been up to lately.

I just keep thinking how much I wanna simplify things when I get to that Next Big Project. Time to Speed Things Up and Get Things Done. None of us is making a career out of comics, so why kill ourselves over it? Oy. I should stop now. Jeeeeeeee-zooey, we haven’t had one o’ these posts in a while, have we??

What’s that I hear? Do you think Mr. McFeely is here with today’s speedy delivery?? Oh boy, neighbors, I hope it’s a video about how they make something we all love! What’ll it be today? Crayons? Maybe rocket ships??

“Aheheh, sorry neighbor, but today I just brought some slides.”

Oh, that’s alright. I’m sure they’ll be very interesting.

“Well, uh Fred, not too interesting. You see, I couldn’t get into a factory this week, and all I got was a tour of one corner of the Telegraph Studio at the Center for Cartoon Studies.”

Telegraph! Cartoons! That does sound interesting!

“You see, Fred, this is Pat Barrett’s corner of the Telegraph Studio. You can see from his wall that things are heating up on Petrified Girlfriend chapter 3: Invasive Species!”

I don’t know what that means, but allllrighty! And what’s that, that daisy chain there?

“Each of the second-year students at the Center for Cartoon Studies (or CCS) has a space at the Telegraph. It’s in the former cafeteria of the town’s original phone company building. Well, one of the students, Josh Kramer, instigated that paper chain. Now it’s making its way through the studio with a lot of help from Beth Hetland.”

OK. I’m sure this is about to get very interesting.

“Here we can see a closer look at some of the pages on Mr. Barrett’s wall. Peaking up at the top-left of his drafting table is a floor plan he made for the imaginary apartment where much of his comic book adventure story takes place. He says it’s really made drawing scenes a whole lot simpler. When he needs to fill in a background, he just looks at the map. Then he’ll draw the furniture as its positioned in his diagram.”

I’m sorry, I fell asleep.

“Oh, that’s OK, Fred. Just one more slide to go.”

That’s fine. Take your time, Mr. McFeely.

“This is a table shared by Mr. Barrett and his dear pal Ben Horak. They lived together last year, and this photo that Mr. Barrett marked up certainly demonstrates who was the Felix and who the Oscar in their relationship! Did you notice that Lego race car sort of pushing into Ben’s half of the desk? And there’s the sex change gun from the hit comic anthology Nymphonomena!”

Gosh, that really is special. Well, thank you, Mr. McFeely, I’m sure we’ll be seeing you again soon.

“Speedy Delivery!”

Bye, neighbor!

Poor Wilma Whistlepig sees Satan lurking around every corner. Who can blame her for hiding out a little longer? Good thing it’s still hot fun in the summer sun down on the farm.

Groundhog Day is one of my favorite holidays, by the way. For one thing, there’s no history of war, or genocide, or human sacrifice involved. There’s just plain old Pagan longing for spring to hurry up and come. It’s also great because nothing really happens, but everybody still talks about it. Sure, you probably forget it’s even coming, but on the second day of February, everybody’s gotta know what Punxsutawney Phil and Staten Island Chuck had to say about their shadows.

And, could the wilds of North America provide us with a more perfectly comedic rodent to act the part of wintry barometer? The way they scurry across the ground, their little fat bodies looking like fuzzy waves cresting and falling, just can’t be beat. And then, once they get to chucking wood, forget about it!

Here’s a throwback: Anyone remember I am the Last VCR?

Folks, we’re all just livin and lovin, lovin and learnin the best we can. Do you know that I walked around in negative-18 degree weather the other day? When I walked into a shadow, ice started to form around my eyes. This was a new one for me. A step beyond the frozen snot in the nostrils. When I got back into the sun, I melted and all this water was dripping off my eyelashes as if I’d been crying.

You guys, I know. It’s been a while. And I was really starting to feel like I was being withholding, but then I noticed a slew of blogs that started out something like, “Oh, I know I’m always apologizing for not posting anything in a while, but anyway, sorry for not posting anything in the while! But, you know. Holidays!” So you won’t hear it here. That’s my sterling guarantee.

Above are some trees and a monster’s bird head that I doodled at an exhibit of Dürer prints at the Clark. It happened a long time ago. Okay, so I might have some blogger’s guilt about not posting these more in-the-moment. You imaginary internet people and your insistence on timeliness! As I was saying, Andy Warner, Kate LaRocca,* Jon Fine and I took a day trip down to Williamstown, Massachusetts back in, I don’t know, November. We saw this lovely, lively show of the Northern Renaissance master’s woodblocks, and a few etchings. We also drove through some spectacular New England scenery, with billowing clouds and shafts of light dappling the hillsides. Yeah, that’s right. I said it. Landscapes!!

I’ve got another page from our drawing adventure that I might or might not post. It also occurred to me that this might qualify as a Drawing Adventure.

*Does anybody have some up to date internet location for her? I’m only finding broken links. <3

It’s “the holidays,” and it’s been lovely, but I wouldn’t want the internet to think I’d forgotten it. So here I am, with another short-term memory-drawing of the north country. It was funny passing by the same spot the next day and realizing how different the construction of the bridge is, and how there are bigger, uglier buildings just past it. But, isn’t that the great part about memory? The relevant parts stick out. I’m really enjoying doing these landscapes in this way. I think it has a lot to do with cartooning, and with only including the pertinent details. If I ever teach a class, I’ll probably make my students do some memory sketching. First I’ll show them Laura Park, who does a lot of it.

In other news, my whirlwind tour of the New York metro-area is drawing to a close, and it makes me sad. Caitlin and I extended our Christmas stay in Connecticut, due to that big snowstorm the entire Eastern Seaboard is talking about. One of my oldest and dearest friends was staying there, with my parents, and blended right in, an extra sibling, just like he used to when we were kids. That was lovely.

The other day a bunch of us took the commuter rail down to Grand Central. It was the day after the storm, and the train was packed. My dad had to go to his bank, my sister to the French Consulate, my Chad (that’s the friend I mentioned) to Brooklyn, along with a friend of his who joined us on the train. Caitlin and I took the subway over to Penn Station, and never emerged to the light of Manhattan. We just got straight onto a New Jersey Transit double decker train and took it to her grandmother’s, where we’ve been the last two days. Upon arriving in New York, neither Caitlin or I felt the Country Mouse sensation that I’ve had when emerging from a day’s travel on Amtrak directly from Vermont. There was none of that “gorsh, there sure are a lotta pretty people…an’ boy do they move fast!” kinda thing. I don’t know if it was the buffer of some days spent in the suburbs, or the familiarity of the commuter line, or what, but it just felt comfortable and right.

I’m looking forward to our approaching weekend stint in Brooklyn. I miss the old borough, and haven’t been back since August. I’m worried that I might never live there again. I can’t stop thinking about what I’ll do, and where I’ll be, after graduating (unless I fail) from CCS this coming May. I know I’ll stick around in Vermont for a while, but I don’t know for how long, or how I’ll be paying my loans. Ah, the future! There’s nothing like the New Year to make you obsess over your plans, is there? Welp, that’s my life. Sorry to get all reflective on yas.

The other day I saw this happening. I felt really sad, like this was some sort of a betrayal. Each detail that hadn’t been removed, like the mailbox on the wall and the little flag on the porch column, and the kid’s room wallpaper I spotted through the window, felt like a cruel reminder that somebody lived here. That people have been living here for probably more than a hundred years. A hundred years! And then the steam shovel, it’s business end like a mammalian face, mouth agape and just sorta knocking things around, then pulling, then smashing through. When I finally stopped staring, and walked by, I started to choke and cough on air-born house dust.

I dunno. Maybe this was just the outpouring of disappointment after I went to pick up some covers at the printer’s. They’d been printed horribly wrong. All 300 of them. I was really excited to see them and to make some more Oaky Lindy 3s and get them out to the public. Ah, well. It’ll just hafta wait ’til January.

it gets a lot bigger || that is, if you click it

Poll time, blogheads! Would anybody be interested? in purchasing or gifting these two posters? They’d be digital inkjet prints on nice, archival, 11″×17″ cream colored paper. Probably with short descriptive text (hand lettered) in the black corners. Signed and numbered. The whole deal. For $8 for one or $12 for both (the second at half-off). Let me know, by comment or by email, and I’ll make em available on the shop or by direct order. If you’re not sure how you feel about my work, maybe you can allow some other people to tell you it’s not too bad, for some punk kid.

Now that you’ve slogged through my hucksterism (second week in a row), how about some good news of family, friends, and fun? I’m getting pumped to roam around all three of the NYC tristates! First at my family’s in Connecticut, see Better-Half Caitlin’s family in Jersey, then pal around with my dear ol’ college chums in Brooklyn.

And how better to kick off this whirlwind tour of the New York metropolitan area? A Wu-Tang concert in Burlington! It’s gonna be full of bros, but all the founding members but ODB and the RZA are gonna be there! (Although, the Razor dropped out only about a week ago, and after I bought a ticket. Supposedly he’s filming something in China. Whatever. Maybe they’ll each drop out, one by one. Still ready to love it.)

My buddies Dan, Todd and I have started a new web comic called Farmy Acres. It’s set on a farm in Kansas, 1962. Each of us draws a strip about one area of the farm. Our characters can move around from place to place, but we’re stuck drawing the same location, which means story lines will wander from cartoonist to cartoonist. A new strip will be posted every Monday and Wednesday at farmyacres.wordpress.com.