Watching human vocal cords come online, as exemplified by my young daughter, is delightful. The aspirant sounds seem to come first, the hhhhhhhhhhs and the uhhhhhs. Interesting that the word “aspirant” has both meanings like this — she’s a fairly aspirational little girl. She has things she wants to do, places she wants to go. She wants to know what’s in that cabinet. She wants to know what happens when you bang the car keys into the wall over and over again.
Archive for ‘comics’
I’m in favor of socialized food.
I get food stamps. I didn’t used to, but now I have a kid, so now I do. I think they’re awesome. I think everybody should get food stamps. I don’t see any reason why anybody should even have to waste a single moment wondering where to get healthy, nutritious food.
In fact, it fucking pisses me off that that is not obvious to everybody. Everybody who is not a farmer is equally a parasite, so I wish everybody would learn to share.
And if my house gets burgled by somebody who needs cash because they had to spend all their crack money on food, it’s not going to make me feel any better that I’m one of the Good Poor People and I’m Not Like Them.
If I learned nothing else from 9/11, it’s that poor people can do a shit ton of damage, and it’s cheaper to solve their problems than ignore them.
I don’t fucking care if somebody wants to take stupid drugs that fuck them up. I still don’t want them to starve, because starving people do desperate shit, and I don’t want to have to kill a burglar at my house. I know it’s legal, I just don’t want to.
The thing is that the Internet did not actually change the way we do business.
It just distracted us long enough to forget everything we ever knew. It took very little time.
All the old ways of business are still out there, exactly where they were. A little confused now that nobody is paying attention to them.
Cloudhopper #223 (and by the way I renumbered a bit, so you didn’t miss one)
by Geoff on November 29, 2013 at 1106Hey what do you know, I finished a page of Cloudhopper!
See, here’s what happened. Three or four people came up at Wizard World and expressed a wide range of disappointment that it had been two years and Book Three was not done. So I got to feelin’ guilty.
After getting back into Cloudhopper a bit, I’ve found it’s become somewhat easier. My photoshop method was unnecessarily precious and overly complex (nothing compared to how bizarre my method for Feef was, but I digress). My insistence on putting everything in its own layers was leading to overall disunity of form and storytelling (a fault that may be on display in this page, because I don’t know how obvious it is that this page takes place over time as Dan wanders awkwardly through the crowd).
Anyway, new page! Tell me what ya think.
It’s time to finish Cloudhopper. I started it with the Obama presidency and I’d really like it to be done before he is. It’s taken me five years to produce half of a 400 page graphic novel. That’s…not that great. Plus, if I was done with it, I could work on other things. A story about cavemen I wrote is calling my name, and War on Christmas (Gewel’s and my project) keeps calling my name.
Right now my major projects are finishing Cloudhopper 3 and the Twin Peaks comic, hopefully both by Staple. It would be awesome to have two projects for Staple. It’s not completely impossible, because the event is three months away and I have 48 pages to finish of Cloudhopper. So if I do one every other day I’ll get done in time. Twin Peaks 2014, on the other hand, has 20 pages to draw. So if I….get that done too…at the same time…while raising a child and working….and keep up with Feef and SWE…
I WILL BE AWESOME!
You watch! I just might do it.
This Thanksgiving I would be honestly thankful if I just got to stay home with my family and not go anywhere or do anything.
Thanksgiving isn’t the worst holiday. It’s not as bad as Columbus Day. I like to have an excuse to watch my yearly football game. But this year, even though we’re not leaving Austin, it’s still complicated. Gotta drive an ailing friend to Sealy and come back again, then make appearances at two different parties.
Man, I complain a lot.
A website is like a business card. You don’t actually need it and it doesn’t really do you any good, but if you don’t have it people think you’re weird. None of the people reading this are going to send me any money, though I bet some of you buy some of my stuff in stores and at conventions. But if I met you at a convention and said that I don’t have a website, you would react with horror. You would be aghast. You would think that I was some sort of anti-future terrorist.
Yet my yearly sales from my website are two or three powers of ten smaller than the other outlets.
I cannot explain my recent fascination with the Legion of Super Heroes except to tell you that it is real. I truly love the Legion comics from the 80s in a way I cannot explain. They are children’s literature, written for me when I was a child, and something about them still evokes wonder. I think it’s the future that it portrays that attracts me. They propose a 30th century that’s more like the early 20th century than the 21st, but the open and friendly and amazingly detailed world that they depict has my heart.
When I read them I imagine a young artist spending days at a drafting table, trying desperately to imagine the future. I respect his quest, and appreciate it. To a certain degree, what he was talking about has come to pass.
It was worth all his trouble, is what I am saying.
I’ve been getting used to driving a car again. After years on a bicycle parenting has lazy me and motorbound.
Cars make you impatient, bicycles make you patient. Bicycles introduce you to the world around you. Cars get you where you’re going and fast. You always have what you need in your car, bicycling usually means forgetting something at home. You show up better smelling but less healthy when you are in a car.
You are more morally justified in your American life the more you eschew motor transport. But you try taking your wife and child grocery shopping on a bicycle.
Parenting is resource intensive. I see that now.
If you want a child to learn to walk, take them to a swimming pool a lot. I heard this legend that kids in fishing villages and other primitive settlements near the ocean or the water can learn to walk at one month old. I halfway believe it.
Kids are born wanting to be fish. The same reflex that stops us from breathing in when our faces are covered with liquids is completely present in everyone even before birth. That’s what stops us from drowning in the womb. So from the second they pop out kids know not to breath in underwater.
But I was too chicken to let my daughter go underwater until she was six months old. However, for a long time before that I was taking her to the wading pool, and that made a world of difference. Just having that little bit of support — and it is just a little bit, because babies are very dense at the beginning and will sink like a stone — makes an enormous difference to their developing muscles and sense of balance. It’s amazing how little things help.
Racism: at what point, exactly, was it healed? When exactly did they surmise it went away? At what point was the injury undone?
If you’re reading this, odds are pretty good that you know that is a rhetorical question with the answer of “never.” But I’m having an argument with this dumb tea bagger on the internet, so that’s what I want to ask them.
But they couldn’t hear me. Confirmation bias is a hell of a thing.