After several years of looking at my first few attempts at getting a comics book out into the public and all the mistakes therein, I’m happy to announce that a new trade paperback available at Indyplanet.com collects Frater Mine issues #1 to #3 – “Family Reunion” – with a new introduction, and corrected text and images. FINALLY!! Now maybe the OCD-induced nightmares will stop.

The interior art is by Juan Romera (the faithful artist whose work just gets better and better) and Andres Barrientos (who was aboard only for issue #2). Re-lettering was done by Ed Brisson, who has been doing all the Frater Mine issues since #4. He’s an amazing talent, and right now is working on issue #8. I intend to keep him around for as long as possible. Cover art was done by my brother Scott with contributions from Austin photographer Dan Machold. This is a great team, and I’m thrilled to know and work with them.

Also, in about a week or so, a new webcomic – “Rise of the Pink Ninjas” – will be available for download. It’s drawn and colored by Benjamin Ruth (whom I’ve conscripted to help with “Unmouldered Vespula”, another new project) and lettered by Christopher Moshier. I’m not going to give everything away, but here’s a sample of page one:






The download will be free. I’ll make an announcement when it’s ready for your reading pleasure.

According to a CNN report today, people who have watched the movie Avatar are experiencing depression and suicidal thoughts.

On the fan forum site “Avatar Forums,” a topic thread entitled “Ways to cope with the depression of the dream of Pandora being intangible,” has received more than 1,000 posts from people experiencing depression and fans trying to help them cope. The topic became so popular last month that forum administrator Philippe Baghdassarian had to create a second thread so people could continue to post their confused feelings about the movie.

“I wasn’t depressed myself. In fact the movie made me happy ,” Baghdassarian said. “But I can understand why it made people depressed. The movie was so beautiful and it showed something we don’t have here on Earth. I think people saw we could be living in a completely different world and that caused them to be depressed.”

A post by a user called Elequin expresses an almost obsessive relationship with the film.

“That’s all I have been doing as of late, searching the Internet for more info about ‘Avatar.’ I guess that helps. It’s so hard I can’t force myself to think that it’s just a movie, and to get over it, that living like the Na’vi will never happen. I think I need a rebound movie,” Elequin posted.

A user named Mike wrote on the fan Web site “Naviblue” that he contemplated suicide after seeing the movie.

“Ever since I went to see ‘Avatar’ I have been depressed. Watching the wonderful world of Pandora and all the Na’vi made me want to be one of them. I can’t stop thinking about all the things that happened in the film and all of the tears and shivers I got from it,” Mike posted. “I even contemplate suicide thinking that if I do it I will be rebirthed in a world similar to Pandora and the everything is the same as in ‘Avatar.’ ”

Other fans have expressed feelings of disgust with the human race and disengagement with reality.

I’ve experienced this kind of depression before (though not with “Avatar”), most notably after seeing “Les Miserables” for the first time and wanting to run away with the touring company. Come to think of it, some women in grad school quit four weeks into their first semester to become “RENT” groupies after seeing the show for every performance of its DC run. I think that was actually my fault.

Call it what you will – Post-Holiday Letdown, The Back-to-Reality Blues, The After-Event Crash – but I’m going to call it Marauders’ Guilt. I’m also going to suggest that people stop worrying about what disgusting things movie people are doing to a fictional planet and wake up to how we’re destroying our own. That, if anything, was James Cameron’s message. Be angry (and active) here; not in make-believe.

Photo via LATimes

With .4 seconds left in 2008, The World Clock shows us the year in toto: what we’ve done, what we’ve lost, how we’ve grown (lord, how we’ve grown!), and how sick we’ve been.

HAPPY 2009, ALL!! (Make it a better one than 2008, or else!)

My pussydog Hogan is a sub looking for a masterful Alpha. Seriously. He was obviously part of a pack before I got him (I also suspect he was raised by Hispanic lesbian construction workers who drove a pickup), and being on is own now is not his idea of a good time. He will cry to get the attention of other dogs or cats or people or birds or whomever he feels is ignoring him. This horror is that because he’s a pit bull his aggressive friendliness is interpreted as aggression full stop. People cross the street to get away from him; cats scurry for cover (which makes him think they want to play and the chase is on!); and other dogs bark at him like bullies do to the socially awkward 4th grader on the playground.

Poor little guy.

Thus, I’ve decided to get Hogan a companion dog. However, because I also have cats, I’d like to get a dog that can be friends with the cats, too. Yeah, that’s asking a lot, but if the companion dog were a puppy, he could learn how to dominate Hogan (the 3 month old Chow mix next door has already figured out how to do that, so how hard can it be?) AND be dominated by the cats. That narrows the field of candidates considerably, I should say.

Going to Town Lake Animal Center is like getting a tetanus shot on Christmas Day. The staff there is wonderful, but looking at all the dogs and cats in their pens and knowing that some of them are not going to be alive at the end of the week makes me wonder how immured they are from their charges. If I worked there I’d certainly have more than one dog and three cats. That or I be an hysterical basketcase. Whichever. On my visit yesterday, I found two dogs that I completely fell in love with (if I were being totally honest I’d say I fell in love with several dogs, but only two matched my criteria). For your (and my) consideration:





Leo, Prisoner #A507794. I didn’t get to play with Leo because his pen was locked. Apparently, puppies need less contact with the outside world than grown-up dogs – something about catching diseases. I know he’ll get adopted right away because.. well, jeez, just look at him! Isn’t he just delicious??





Oliver, Prisoner #A506636. Oliver was brought in a few weeks ago with his sister, who was subsequently adopted. According to Sara, the adoptor screening lady (who was a doll), Oliver has been lost ever since. She told me that he “stops, drops and rolls” whenever there’s a loud noise or another dog barks at him. Literally, he gets into Chinese fire drill position and refuses to move until his episode is over. Before we spoke, I hadn’t even seen Oliver, but Sara convinced me to go visit him. Awwh! What a sweetie he was!! I took him to a private walking area, let him off the leash and hung out for about 20 minutes. We played fetch, and I gave him a few treats, but after a few minutes all he wanted to do was sit down and lean against me, which we did for a few minutes before leaving the pen.

Then some weirdness happened.

There was this guy taking his dog (a pit bull – which is not and indictment against pit bulls! Lord knows I love those little guys!) back to her cage at the same time I was taking Oliver back to his. We must have gotten too close or something, because the pit growled at Oliver, who then dropped to the ground and hid his face between my legs. The dude moved on, but even after a minute or so of waiting and with some treat-baiting, Oliver refused to get up and walk with me. I was content to wait, but I felt a bit foolish because I didn’t know what to do to make him move, if indeed there was anything to be done.

Then Mr. Pit Bull Walker came over and asked, “Why isn’t he moving?”

I replied, “I think he’s scared. He apparently does this a lot.”

So, the guy grabbed Oliver by the scruff of the neck and lifted him to his feet, saying, “He’s not scared. Look at his tail. he’s just being stubborn.”

I was a bit confused at this point because while I’ve moved my cats that way, I was uncertain if that was the right thing to do to a dog who obviously has a problem. But, is it better to let him have his episode or show him a bit of discipline? Without knowing the dog better, I wasn’t sure which was the right thing to do.

Right then, a woman from the office started walking towards us. I smiled and said, “I was told he might do this. What’s the best thing to do?” Whereupon she yelled, “STOP!” and I felt the leash tug on my wrist. I turned to look at Oliver and see this Dickwad pulling Oliver (unwillingly) across the lawn by the leash, with it more or less choking him. The woman was on us by now and I felt like this guy had ruined my chances to get this dog or any dog again, ever. She screamed politely at him, “That is not the way to handle a dog!” he tried to give her some lip about that’s what dogs’ mothers do, but she ignored him and picked up Oliver and took him to his cage.

The woman was very nice to me and said that Oliver had some walking-on-a-leash issues, and I explained that Sara had already told me that. Then all I felt was humiliated, like I had done something horrible by not knowing how to control the situation with Oliver. She was very reassuring and said that Sara doesn’t recommend animals to people unless she’s sure they’d be a match. Then all I felt was about an inch tall, like I’d failed a test, which it wasn’t and I know that intellectually.

Lord only knows what people with babies go through every day.

Anyway, that’s when I left the shelter. I have to get Zaph and Rose’s update vaccination papers, but after that I can adopt whomever.

Uh.. it seems like I’ve already made up my mind, doesn’t it?

And it’s about time I start using it, even if it’s terrible-looking. I can only improve, right? This past Friday at an adjunct faculty meeting, the speaker was droning on about 401(k)s or how I can retire in 30 easy years or whatnot, and I did what I always do in meeting to keep from falling asleep: I doodled. I came up with these characters:

whom I’m going to call Toxic Bitch and Alleged Rapist. No idea where those names came from. Now all I need is a premise to work them into a comic strip of some sort. Maybe a “Bonnie and Clyde” kind of thing or political commentary. Something dark.

I also did a sketch of Helena Bonham Carter and Johnny Depp in Sweeney Todd: the Demon Barber of Fleet Street, a movie better in reputation than execution.





I kinda like how they turned out, but having it on scratch paper isn’t the best way to start a portfolio. Maybe I’ll take a class this summer, assuming I’m not moving by the beginning of July.

On top of my comic book Frater Mine continuing to see the light of day, this has got to be one of the best things that’s happened to me.. well, this month. In a year of firsts and highs, a profile I wrote on Andy Bauer was published in Instinct Magazine this month!!

Thanks go out to Jonathan Riggs and Mike Woods of Instinct forgiving me a great assignment and the chance to work for them. You guys are AWESOME!