henbanes cover ver.2

Drawn by eeTeeD, colored by me. Thanks for sharing, eeT!

dobbs' cover

Hey look! I actually finished something! I'll let you know when this book is actually printed and available so you can buy copies for all your friends and relatives and for your local library, our fighting men overseas, the homeless, and don't forget - nothing says "I love you" like a book of animation essays!

My coloring of The Henbanes is THIS CLOSE to being finished. As soon as I can grab a couple of hours I'll finish and post.

never mind

The gauntlet has been officially picked up, dusted off and placed back on the shelf. Ignore the color-off challenge, but I'll post my coloring job when it's finished.

Meanwhile here's another relic from Eric Talbot's file folders. Eric and I collaborated on this one. I penciled. Eric inked and toned. I think this was printed in some mini-comic about music, possibly an issue of Mary Fleener's Chicken Slacks.

on freelancing and stuff

Here's the thing about freelancing, if you have breadwinner anxiety issues like me and Jed. If you are TOTALLY freelancing, the way Jed is now, you can't relax and concentrate on ANYTHING ELSE because you constantly feel like you "should be" working, or looking for work. Because you SHOULD BE! Unless you are hugely successful and have a steady stream of reliable high-paying clients.

That's why Jed had to graciously bow out of the Henbanes Color-Off, and I have to graciously respect that. Good luck, Jed!

SO...

I took a screen shot of the little icon to prove that I am nearly finished with muy version of the Henbanes cover, and to open the challenge up to the first person who thinks he or she can whup me. First come first served.

CAVEAT: Of course this all hinges on eeTeeD's permission to send you hios copyrighted line art for you to color. eeTeeD, let us know what the rules are as far as that is concerned.

As long as I was screen-shooting, I also shot my whole little "to-do" list to share.

HENBANES: you just read about it.

ESCAPE: Dobbs' book cover, almost done! Hopefully finished in time for his birthday lunch at my house Sunday!

GAGSTA: next Nickelodeon Gag Station header, in progress.

ARTIE: icons/logo job for Benny. What up, Benny???

51BUZZARD: next EVERYTHING image

DAISY_005: My beautiful dog. I'm preparing the hi-res tiff for something special and secret

BLOG_TEMPLATE: Hey, guess what? Remember when I asked if anyone was crazy enough to archive the first 2 years of this blog? Colin is that crazy! So this is the template I set up for him. Tonight I'll see him at the Pioneer Valley Cartoonists Schmooze, and we'll swap notes, and he'll get his copy of The Henbanes! It's all just a big swirling ball of networking taffy!

TEENY08: In progress. Teeny Weeny in the Year 2525!

10: This is a page from "Easter Egg Fred" one of my children's books. I WAS working on it because it's my favorite, but I'm about to start working on "Toolbox Fred" because it is the easiest and fastest to finish, and I think will be the easiest to sell. This is jumping up to the TOP of the list very soon!

P2P: Re-design of panel-to-panel.net. More on that soon...

1: page one of an Illville comic I was working on for Runaway. I hate to abandon it... but, sigh, I must concentrate on children's books for now.

TAGDOG: It's gonna be that new Come Draw With Me activity I promised. I'll get to it...

There's more, but this is all I have on my desktop right now.

Who will accept the Color-Off Challenge??

unknown comic

A few weeks ago I bought a copy of EVERYDAY MUTTS at a Borders book store in Bedford Massachusetts.

Last week a co-worker gave me the DVD of Avatar Season 1 Disc 1. I had never seen Avatar and knew nothing about it. She thinks it's great and wants me to see it.

So I watched the first 10 minutes of edisode 1 last Thursday morning. Then I stopped and ate breakfast. Then I picked up my copy of EVERYDAY MUTTS (which I had still not read yet) and started thumbing through it.

And the above comic fell out of my copy of EVERYDAY MUTTS that I bought at a Borders book store in Bedford Massachusetts!

I swear this is all 100% true.

Clearly we are missing page 4, and God knows how many more pages! Unknown comic, how does it end???

sexy

We took the girls out for their Glamour Shots last week. Isn't she beautiful? She really is. Click to embiggen! Her teeth are orange because they are deformed and exposed to the air 24/7. You can't really tell it in this photo but a large portion of her left iris is blue, while the remainder of her eyes are brown. Her body is too long, like she has an extra vertebra or two. A veterinarian said her kneecaps are on backwards - I have no idea what that means, but she does have the most comfortable back legs I have ever felt while hugging a dog. Another vet said "Dogs don't get hemorrhoids, but by golly she has one!"

This is Daisy. The most beautiful girl in the world. Her sister Cocoa is also the most beautiful girl in the world (yes, there can be two!) but she had a panic attack at the photographers' and her pictures all look insane. You'll just have to take my word on that one.

Also, here are two panels from The Henbanes (see previous two posts).

comic book review

The Henbanes by TMD

There's a guy who posts here at jabberous as eeTeeD and daws comics under the pen name TMD. I know his real name, but I can't say it. I'm assuming that. I'm not sure, maybe I can. This is going to be a weird review because certain things will need explaining, and I don't know the answers, and I don't want to assume too much.

Very quickly, some background info (or lack of it) on TMD, because I think a lot of jabberous regulars are curious, and at least two of us want to party with that guy! I know a LITTLE BIT more about him than the rest of you, but very little. I know where he worked as a designer/artist as a small cog in a large machine, for example. I've even seen some of the work he did there, and it's pretty good.

Here's what we all know about eeTeeD. He is a very passionate opinionated guy. He is a comic book creator, but wants strict control over who sees his work, and under what conditions. He wants to use the same mop and bucket that Reed Crandall used when he is a poor old janitor in a pizza joint someday. He feels defeated and thinks very few people will enjoy his comics because people just don't get that kind of stuff any more.

Now he has self-published a comic book called The Henbanes and it is an interesting, well-done comic. Those of us who know eeTeeD may find it fascinating, not being able to seperate the comic from the creator, and reading all kinds of psychoanalysis between the lines. I could feel a struggle between intimacy and exposure duking it out behind the scenes in this comic. When I got it in the mail I had no idea what it was. It arrived in a plain manilla envelope with just a return address. I did not immediately recognize it as eeTeeD work, having seen very little of his comics. I scratched my head, put it down with the rest of the mail, and went and ate supper.

Later that night I picked up the odd comic and started flipping through it. It has no real cover, but a sort of hybrid between a cover and a page 1. Way down at the bottom in tiny type I learn it is the intellectual property of TMD! "HEY! Wow, this is eeTeeD's comic!" I exclaimed in my head.

I gotta be honest. I was kind of dreading having to read it. I mean, the guy is so WEIRD. I thought it was going to be "one of those" comics, and make about as much sense as the very few sketches he has revealed over the last year or so. But it is in fact a well-crafted well-written well-drawn comic. I enjoyed it. Parts of it seem a bit precious to me and I don't like "manga mouths", but overall I think it's better than a LOT of comics that are on the news stands.

I know eeTeeD is convinced that no one will publish it, and if they do, very few people will get it. And his reservations are valid. Fantagraphics no longer wants to publish Runaway Comic because very few people get it. eeTeeD and I both seem to have that curse - too mainstream for alternative, and too alternative for mainstream.

But you never know what the public will latch onto. The parts of The Henbanes that trip me up, the preciousness and the manga mouths, may be what thousands of teenage girls go nuts over. Throw in the occultism and you've got a whole 'nother demographic right there.

I'll try to post a couple of sample panels later. I forgot to bring the book to work today, and I don't have a scanner at home.

The Henbanes is a good read and won't make you wish you had that time back. It's refreshingly unstuffy.

NOTE: I had to drop the Runaway bomb in here because it's relevant to eeTeeD's anxiety about the comics biz. I don't want this post to be about me, but it's true - no more Runaway Comics. Let's talk about it later. This one's for eeTeeD.