Soon as we get the poor broke artist dude a new computer. We’re working on it. Until then – peace!

I could claim that the pie chart was all done just for laughs, which of course some of it was, but when I look at it I get just a little depressed by its accuracy. There is considerable crossover between the Drunk/High portion of the chart and some of the other portions, so the whole thing isn’t too scientific. I’m not completely sure if that robot wishes for my death or if he’d view it more as a mecry killing.

OK, here it is, thanks to no less than four different computers. Really. I don’t know why God doesn’t want me posting these comix (OK, maybe I kinda do) but it seems like all the technology of the world has, of late, been conspiring to keep it so that I’m not able to simply use WordPress. But I’ll prevail. And if you see God, at a supermarket or bathhouse or wherever, do me a favor and be like, “What the fuck, God?” because it’s getting tiresome. Or, you could just buy me a computer. Any of you, really. I don’t have much shame. If you’re reading the comix, you’ll know that already.

Anyway, as anybody who talks to me about comics for more than a few minutes will tell you, one of my big influences would be Bill Watterson, and one of my favorite memories of those collections of Calvin and Hobbes I had when I was little is reading the holiday strips that he did. The Christmas strips I’ve done have very consciously been my own, vaguely pathetic, stabs at doing something similar to the warm, beautiful style that his Christmas strips had. So, technology aside, it’s seemed important to me that as long as I’m doing a strip like this, in this sort of format, that I manage to get holiday strips up, if nothing else. I’m not sure if Watterson would appreciate the sentiment, and I don’t really remember many instances of Hobbes taking sly stabs at Calvin for having too much anonymous anal sex. I’m not sure what exactly Susie Derkins was into, but either way I think it’s apparent that my strip isn’t exactly like Calvin and Hobbes in a lot of ways, but I sort of hope that Watterson wouldn’t be too offended by me saying that he’s an inspiration, despite the differences.

Oh, and as far as the computer thing goes, I’m going to upload more strips right now to take advantage of my temporary access to 21st century technology, so check back Monday and afterward for what will, hopefully, be continual updates. For a while at least. Peace.

I thought it would be fun to update the Thanksgiving strip that I did a couple of years ago to reflect where my life and where these comics are now. I deliberately didn’t look at the original strip until I finished my new one, and then I went back and found it:

That sparked some mixed emotions in me. It felt good to see that I’ve come a pretty long way in the past few years, and it also felt kind of embarrassed to think that there were actually people reading that hideous stuff I was doing back then. I guess the best case scenario is that when I look at my current stuff in a few more years, it looks as old to me as this older Thanksgiving strip does now. I kind of feel like if I continue at my present rate of progress, in about 100 years I might be good. For now, though, it doesn’t seem like my current strips are too embarrassingly awful, so I guess that’s something.

If this hasn’t got you in the holiday spirit, allow me to recommend that you find and watch the video for Bob Dylan’s Must Be Santa as soon as you possibly can. I was gonna post it here, but it has embedding disabled. It’s well worth the few seconds it’ll take you to find it, though, and it pretty much made me feel like my life was complete.

OK, well, computer delays aside, I’ve actually started on a little backlog of material during the time in which I haven’t been posting, so we’re planning to be back to the original Monday/Wednesday/Friday plan after this post for the forseeable future.

I think the second comic strip I posted when I started with these was a Halloween one, so I felt like I should make sure I did one this year. Hopefully I’ll be back to regular posting soon here. Stick with it.

The image up there is the comic I drew while at Brian Andersen’s table at APE. I guess it was my table, too, since it had my comics on it, but he paid for the table and paid to print most of those comics, so there you have it. Check out his comics at sosuperduper.com , by the way.

That’s me at the table, drawing a little bit and looking pretty fucking adorable. The show seemed slow overall, but I had a really good time and met a lot of other artists, found some really awesome comics, and so that’s the most important part. The Sina I mention in the comic would be Sina Grace, whose comic Books With Pictures I purchased most of a while back and who is, indeed, adorable. He was sitting at the table next to me along with Justin Hall, who, if you don’t know him, has some really amazing comics out there that you should track down, and was in the first America’s Best Comics anthology, among a lot of other things.

Like I said up there, I found a lot of comics that were pretty great, and I’d like to give a quick mention to a few, maybe more in the next couple of days as I work my way through the stack of stuff I got.

That’s a page from a comic by Melaina, whose comics can be found and purchased at http://blog.melainacomics.com/ , and who is awesome. I was lucky enough to have her come read at one of the Papercuts shows I worked on with Dylan Coyle, and everybody should buy some of her comics. Go, now.

Next I wanted to mention Matt Runkle, whose hilarious comics can be found at http://www.matt-runkle.com/ .

I was also lucky enough to have Matt come to one of the Papercuts shows, and he’s great.

And lastly, for now, but certainly not least, I’m gonna mention Rene Capone, renecapone.com .

I would venture to say that the comic of his that I read is easily the best comic you’ll find this year about unicorns and abused children who cope by running away from home and wearing, on their heads, the corpses of small animals that they’ve killed. And it’s a competitive field.

So Rick is still without a computer, the kiss of death for any webcomic, like running out of paper for print. Not a whole hell of a lot to do until the problem is fixed. So this is Dave Baxter, webmaster extraordinaire filling in for a quick hark! We are alive! ALIVE, I tell you!

Rick’s still doodling up a storm, so expect MASSIVE art output in the near future. For now, I’m going to not even ask permission and just post this sketch Rick did for me, based on a project we’re sloooooowly collaborating on. If we can forge ahead with it this’ll be Rick’s first and maybe last super-hero series. It’ll rock, trust me. You don’t know me, but trust me.

He draws great women, doesn’t he? –Dave B.