The Folly of Beanie Boylan, page one

After months of shooting my mouth off about it, I decided to start drawing the next issue of my book. This is the first page of the sci-fi epic I mentioned a few months ago when I posted those drawings of robots. The cars were inspired by those from beloved Super Nintendo racing game F-Zero, the building was inspired by some photographs of factories from the 40's and 50's I discovered while tooling around online, and the story was inspired by my cheerful disdain for humanity. I'm moving at a pretty steady clip, so I'll be able to post a few pages every week. That's right, I'm going to post the whole goddamn thing on my blog as I draw it. Hopefully, by the time I'm done someone in a position to offer me a lucrative publishing contract will have seen it and I can start making some money off this horseshit medium.

More Stuff About Ostriches

Here are the other two pages of the story Justin and I did for Always Comix. I've been working on them for six or seven hours a day all week. It feels great to be spending so much time on comics after so many weeks of drawing for an hour or two a day, if at all. I'm really excited to get started drawing the next Trackrabbit. Hopefully, I'll have the first few pages up sometime in the next week. In the meantime, here's more nonsense about huge birds.

How They Met, page one

This is the first page of a three page comic Justin DeCarlo and I are working on for the anthology Always Comics. It's a somewhat fictionalized account of our friendship. I know there are some glaring mistakes, and the title lettering is noticeably absent, but I was anxious to get it up here, since I haven't updated this blog in over a month. I promise weekly updates from now on, with the last two pages of this story following shortly. Enjoy.

Mastodudes

Anyone who's hung out with me in the last few weeks is totally sick of hearing me talk about the new Mastodon record, and how excited I was to see them at the Great American Music Hall. The show was last night and, as predicted, it was one of the defining experiences of my adult life. I woke up this morning fully intending to continue thumbnailing the next Trackrabbit, but found myself incapable of thinking un-Mastodonly thoughts. The solution: listen to 'Crack the Skye' and draw the dudes themselves. All wardrobe choices and outrageous facial hair were recreated from memory, so purists will forgive if they're not 100% accurate.

Neocurtilla hexadactyla

I've been hard at work on preparatory material for the new Trackrabbit. Buoyed by the achievement of usurping the last available table from an aging yuppy couple, I finished writing the plot yesterday in a cafe in Hayes Valley. Then I went home, drew some bugs and got drunk. I'll start posting finished pages next week. Until then, make friends with these guys.

Character Designs for Trackrabbit #4

Here are some character designs for the next issue of Trackrabbit. The story centers around a scientist named Beanie Boylan who quits his job as a robotics engineer to move to a farm and lead a pastoral life with his new bride, Deborah. The shackles of robot-ology do not prove so easily cast off, however, as Beanie builds a new robot out of old boiler parts to help him around the homestead. The robot, Ponchito, seems sweet enough at first, but he doesn't like having to compete with Beanie's wife for attention, or deal with the sneering derision of their neo-hillbilly neighbor Brian. Also, the farm is infested with mysterious alien insects. Hilarity and chemical warfare ensue.

Visually, Beanie (center) is sort of a cuddly version of Steve Albini; Deborah is sort of an amalgam of Beverly D'Angelo and Goldie Hawn; Brian is based on my ex-girlfriend's dad, a rugged, out-doorsey type who once bought me a head-lamp for Christmas. The Robots Poncho (right) and Ponchito are based on a cylinder and a sphere, respectively.

A Knight in Shining Denim

Many claim that I come off as a cad in my work, and their criticisms are not unfounded. There are, however, moments like this, when I can be the very picture of chivalry.