Cartoonists With Attitude

I'll be signing tomorrow night at powell's. I'm having a total panic attack about what I should read.

I think I might read the squid and cat comic strip. I'll go through and take out all the words and photocopy the images onto transparencies for the overhead projector (no power point for me). I don't know though. I don't know if it's adult enough of a story... Damn but this is giving me anxiety...



total anxiety.

Got a new cartoon up...



These weekly strips are really stressing me out. Getting the timing right is hard. I'm hoping to get going on a new adventure strips sort of like that old Boy and Squid strip I did a while back.



I've started coloring some of the onion comics...

http://toonlet.com/creator/news




They've gone live with my toonlet pack. Check it out.


I like the idea of a woman talking about her husband as a bottle of wine that must be aged. The language is giving me problems since I don't know wine well enough to make the proper puns. Below is about as good as I've got. I'm not sure about the bouquet pun at the end. I like the idea but I think it makes it seem like the pun (and the flowers) is the point of the cartoon (rather than the idea that she's waiting for a jerk to become a nice guy). This gives me an excuse to peruse the wine at Whole Foods and crib from their descriptions.

“In a few years his contrary
nature will mellow and he’ll
mature into a rich, full-bodied
husband with nice bouquet.”

Tomorrow is Max's 1st Birthday. He's the baby I had with my lesbian friends. Time to buy a present. What's something meaningful for a 1-year-old?

Stupid website is still down. That means I can't post images unless I jump through the hoops of setting up flickr or facebook and linking - I'm not sure how to reference the image without linking to the site...

Anyway.

Another comic that made me laugh even though I wrote it is of two clouds talking. One cloud, which looks like a thought balloon, says to the other cloud, "I make babies by thinking."

In addition to inventing situations I'm using the NY'er's stock character/situations; two kids talking, people at a party talking, a boss, desert island, two clouds talking, man in a doctor's office, a couple ordering dinner...

my webstye, www.tmcm.com, is down. Very frustrating. That means there are no images to upload, link to, etc etc.

A coffee maker saying to a coffee cup; "I prefer the term 'barista'."

Cartoons are never as funny described.

my webstye, www.tmcm.com, is down. Very frustrating. That means there are no images to upload, link to, etc etc.

A coffee maker saying to a coffee cup; "I prefer the term 'barista'."

Cartoons are never as funny described.

I spent all day coloring some Onion comics for the Dark Horse Myspace site to help sell my book. I'm signing at Powell's in about a week. I don't think there's been any promotion... I hope I won't suck at Powell's, stuck on stage with no one there.


I sent more comics... He said he'd seen the grim reaper comic before and didn't think I'd quite nailed the dog gag yet. It's frustrating but I'm so damn happy to be in a correspondence. The stuff I'm doing for the Onion and the stuff I'm sending the NYer is starting to get diverge stylistically on it's own. Where was the Reaper comic before? I hope it's a coincidence and not subconscious plagiarism.

Here's my latest cartoon. I think it's funny... it's about being caught in a relationship. I'm not sure if anyone else will. I guess that's one of the benefits of not running in many papers - I can do what pleases me and not worry too much about it.


I'm corresponding with an editor at the New Yorker. He likes the comics Some were too corny he said. Some jokes he'd seen before and some needed to be pushed further (or is it farther?). He was apologetic about being so negative. I think it's great. It shows that he's not feeding me a line. He's actually reading my comics and taking the time to give me feedback. The dog cartoon above is one of the comics he feels needs more push. I'm going to resend it as this:


I'm going to try and pull together another 5 or 6 cartoons tonight for another package. Holy crap. I'm having a dialogue with a New Yorker editor.

This means that I'm going to keep doing gross cartoons for the Onion which makes me really happy.

Powell's (on Hawthorne) has me signing on the 26th.

This morning was the Portland Soap Box Derby. Half the city comes out to Mt. Tabor to watch goofballs race their hand-made contraptions down an extinct volcano.


Most everyone is drunk.


My stupid camera went blurry-broken again. I spent 10 minutes hitting the stupid thing 'till it worked again.


Most of the race cars put more emphasis on novelty than on speed. One of my favorites was the Transformer car. It stood vertical but would lay flat to race.


The homecoming queen car was pretty great too.


The whole thing was pretty great. I have a bunch more pictures up on my facefook.


My friends and I went from the Derby race to...


another friends Ping Pong party.

We ended up at a Barack Obama party where I fell asleep on the couch. Great day all the way around.

Gonna have a get-together tomorrow for a few people. Not much of a thing, just wine, ping-pong, ps2 karaoke, some Trader Joes frozen food, and the Forbidden Zone movie (I picked up a colorized version in San Diego and had it signed by Richard Elfman - I've been saving it).


I spent the day cleaning the house. Mostly clearing my cousin's stuff out of the garage to free the ping-pong table. Tomorrow I'll spend the day cleaning and doing errands. Parties are fun but way too much work.

Seems like when I get depressed my self-loathing spills over to a general loathing of everyone else too. This post-trip funk is fading - just slowly. A party will hopefully help.

Before going to San Diego I did some art for Toonlet. Check it out.


I sent more cartoons to the NYorker.... yikes.

Playing way too much Might of Many on Facebook. I sure miss Scrabulous.

I have a signing at Powell's coming up on the 26th...