Beanie's Folly, page 8

I've had some trouble drawing since I've been back in San Francisco. I've only had one day off since I've been home, and I managed to fritter it away reading old comics and watching old SImpsons episodes. I've had some inspiring experiences since I've been back, including a flattering e-mail from a guy who is just about as "famous" as an indie cartoonist gets these days. I've also been enthusiastically re-devouring a lot of the comics I rescued from my childhood collection just before it was sold. I just finished Peter Milligan's 'Egypt.' Despite some lacking art by Glyn Dillon (I thought he was so good when I was in high school) and Phil Gascoine (I'd never heard of him before, and I've not seen the name since), it was pretty good. It's got a great, weird plot about time travel and re-incarnation. The ending doesn't quite pull everything together, but after seven issues, I was so endeared to the main character, a free-wheeling jerk aptly named Vincent Me, that I didn't mind filling in some substantial gaps in plausibility myself. Re-reading Milligan's stuff has really reminded me where my narrative voice comes from. I've been reading stories about glib sociopaths since I was fourteen. Everyone in my books just talks like the lizard from 'The Enigma.' Anyway, here's page eight.

Memories for sale

As I type this, I am sitting in my childhood bedroom in Fair Lawn, NJ. My mother is coughing violently in the next room as a Jamiacan woman with a barely decipherable accent tends to her many ever-changing needs. I'll be inking pages and getting drunk in the backyard all week, but not before the two most important parts of my pilgrimage to the Mother-land. Pilgrimage the first: to my father's grave; pilgrimage the second: to my favorite Jewish deli. I'll post the fully inked pages upon my return to the sunshine state. In the meantime, I thought everyone out there in blogland (both of you) might enjoy reading the text of the craigslist ad I posted to sell my childhood comic book collection. Enjoy, and pass it on to anyone who might be interested.

Beanie's Folly, pages 5, 6 and 7

The Folly of Beanie Boylan, pages 3 & 4 (pencils)

These pages were drawn in my room late at night while listening to the third Blue Oyster Cult album, which is great. Page 3 was partially inked in Portland while listening to the fifth They Might Be Giants album, which holds up really well. As I type this I'm back in my room, listening to the second Wolf Parade album, which is boring me to tears.

The Folly of Beanie Boylan, page 2 (pencils)

I'll be traveling quite a bit this month, so my plan is to pencil a bunch of pages at my base of operations here in San Francisco, then ink them while stylishly jet-setting from one hip local to another. This means the bulk of the book will be inked at a Denny's in rural Illinois. I'll post the pencils as I finish them. I'm sure you'll find the insight into my creative process utterly fascinating.

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.