Lost two more days, but this time it wasn’t some ethereal slippage of time as has been the case as of late. No, I was lucky enough to acquire what was either an intestinal bug or food poisoning (leaning towards the former) and spent the better part of the weekend up against the porcelain god. Had my first coffee in three days this morning and was able to eat half an egg.

I don’t have time for this, but I guess it is what it is. When you can’t do anything for more than ten minutes without getting exhausted, then there’s not much choice in the matter. What I DID manage to do was get four boxes of comics opened up and checked in that I got in the mail Saturday and they just sat unopened for two days. You know I’m in piss-poor shape if I can’t dig into a box of four color treasures. This batch included a bunch of Kindt and Lemire stuff, mostly variant covers that I didn’t already have.

That’s it for now kids. Be kind to someone today.

I checked my 401K today for some random reason and it’s actually looking pretty decent, considering the state of the economy and the world. I then checked my already graded and large stack of yet to be graded comics that I purchased mostly from 2010-2018 and the percentage increase in the value of my comic books over the last ten years surpasses that of the 401K by a significant margin.

Of course this is always subject to change…the stock market could crash or the collectible comic market could evaporate at any moment, but I’ve been watching the comic market for nearly 40 years and I don’t believe it’s going anywhere (I can’t say the same for the stock market). In fact, with all of the uncertainty in 2020 during the pandemic and millions of unemployment claims, the value of the comics that I’ve checked so far have actually increased as much as 50% in the last six months alone (I use GPA, a website that tracks graded comics values for my numbers).

I can’t be sure, but I think what is happening is that while some collectors need to sell their books for much needed cash, many collectors are still working and snapping up books left and right. I know of more than several people that spent their entire stimulus checks on comics. Unfortunately I needed that money to live on and didn’t buy any comics for nearly four months. Thankfully this was during the period that the industry was basically shut down, so I didn’t miss much.

So the bottom line is: I love comics and that’s why I buy them. That I’ve been collecting for forty years and have an eye for what will increase in value over time just happens to coincide with the fact that I happen to have good taste, so all of the money I’ve spent will not have gone to waste. I’ve got around 10k of them and can tell you where I bought nearly every single one of them, whether it be at a local IGA in Lincoln, MT (Wolvie 1, Thor 337) or in an eBay auction back in 2007 (a big Sub Mariner run I got for insanely cheap). I can chronicle my entire life beginning at around age ten with the various comics I’ve acquired over the years.

One random example is on Christmas Day in 1977 I vividly remember reading Defenders 54 (along with a big stack of other Defenders issues) and listening to my new KISS Alive II LP on my new (and very cheap, I might add) record player. I was in 9 year old heaven. Another random example is riding my cousin’s bike to the local 7-11 in Tucson to buy the very first issue of Marvel’s Contest of Champions (their first ever ‘limited series’ which was a novel idea that took off in the years to come). This was in 1982, so I can tell you exactly where I was at…just as I can similarly tell you that using any comic that I own. One day I’d like to write an autobiography in comics. That might be fun to an audience of me, but that’s who I write for so…

I often wonder what animals think when we humans do various things. For example, I recently acquired a utility cart for my studio with a flat top that I can use as a sort of mobile workstation. It’s pretty heavy duty and has wheels which is super handy. I use it every day, but the first time the cat walked into the room and saw me pushing the cart, the look on his face was similar to what you might see on mine if I saw a positive political ad.

Anyway, I haven’t written much here lately but have been busy. About half of the art supplies that I need for various projects are here and the rest to arrive in the next couple of days. Went into Prescott today and took some reference photos of various buildings to use as practice in perspective and watercolor studies and bought the biggest bag of comics in I don’t know how long. Lots of good stuff, including my favorite new series Skull Digger and Skeleton Boy.

So upcoming projects include two watercolor paintings I’ve been wanting to get to forever, the comic page, a zine for Peregrine Comics, a new comic universe of my own creation, and probably most importantly: finishing up the Mycelium Network. November is just around the corner and in the past that has been by far my most productive month of the year and I don’t see why this year should be any different.

Pictured are the new paints from Daniel Smith, hand poured in Oregon. Can’t wait to use them!

I’ve long thought about trying a comic page but my art skills aren’t really there (at all) and writing comics is quite different than writing books or short stories. but what the hell, I’ll try it. I might incorporate this into a Japanese art course I’m taking, the mood is perfect for the story (the method is Sumi-e, sort of a watercolor but only using grays, blacks, and whites). I did the rough thumbs in March, and will attempt some finished pencils and maybe inks here before transferring it to watercolor paper for the actual finished inks. Here are the smaller thumbs and first two full size panels in progress. I will be redoing panel one to make the figure smaller. Panel two is completely different from my original idea, but I wanted to try different perspectives.

So the event depicted in the picture here is happening two blocks from my house. Couple hundred people gathering in the park on a nice sunny day. If anyone is short on COVID-19 give me a holler and I’ll run get you some. Looking forward to the local notice in a couple weeks about another outbreak.

Calm down, Beavis, I’m talking about the series by Matt Kindt and Tyler Jenkins chronicling the members of a secluded, off the grid group of folks known as the Grass Kingdom that find themselves embroiled in a murder mystery of the serial killer sort.

This is a different type of story for Kindt than Mind MGMT or Black Badge, but his quirky influence is undeniably there even though the art is in capable hands with Jenkin’s art instead of Kindt doing it himself. I wasn’t sure I was going to like this at first but became a huge fan and am now on the hunt for some of the variant covers I missed back in the day.

Messing about with different pencils while working on the Inktober project. I really prefer wood pencils (particularly Staedtler 5H) but the constant sharpening is a real pain. For this project, since I’m going to be doing a ton of sketching, I’m switching to a Pentel mechanical with hard lead. It will take some getting used to.

Scratch that. Instead I found my drafting pencil that I have drawing leads for. I still have to sharpen that, but the tips last longer between sharpening than wood pencils.

Finished prepping the Sketchbook that will hold my preliminary rough thumbnail sketches prior to setting the final image down in the project notebook. I move slow but that’s nothing new.

More lost time….where did the past few days go? Anyway, I’ve been collecting comics for around forty years now…and when that happens, your views of what is considered a ‘modern’ comic certainly changes over time. For me, the original moderns were 40 cents, in 2020 they are around $4-$5 depending on what you’re getting. In the time I’ve been collecting there have been a lot of ups and downs in the industry that I am not going to cover because that would take an entire book, but I have brought you all here to say this: today’s modern comics (especially the stellar independent publishers) are at a zenith. Great stories left and right from some of the most talented creators to grace the medium in decades with actual readable stories…smart stories that challenge you and make you think. Which brings me to Matt Kindt and Jeff Lemire, my two favorite modern creators that blow me away with everything they do. Mind Mgmt (Kindt) and the Black Hammer universe (Lemire) are some of my favorite series ever. On my shelf, Mind Mgmt takes it’s rightful place with Watchmen, Ronin, and V for Vendetta for Kindt’s creative innovative (not to mention immersive) storytelling.

Apologies to my future self for missing a few days. I meant to post a serious missive about changelings, cuckoos, and how humans display different sides of themselves to every single person that they come across, but the idea came during a burst of thoughts when I was out walking today and by the time I got back (three miles later) I was too tired and eventually the thought sort of faded away. I do believe I might talk about that in the future, however.

Inktober is moving slowly, but believe it or not, I am working on it. I’m certain not to finish this month, but let’s see what happens. I’ll post any updates on the Inktober page as they arise. It took me way too long to figure out to approach the project and unfortunately the paints I’ll need for coloring the pieces will not arrive for a couple more weeks, so this shall certainly stretch into November and NaNoWriMo, but I don’t see any interference problems.

Finally, circling back to comics, once in a while all of the stars align and you get your two favorite creators paired up in one title as in this case when Kindt dips his toes into Lemire’s Black Hammer Universe (attached picture).

Maybe the smartest thing I’ve done this year is choose the right color of hiking/running shoe for Arizona. Including a chocolate brown base, the shoe is highlighted with two different shades of dirt, helpful in masking most signs of accumulation to the naked eye. The shoes are of the wide based variety to go with my abnormal feet.

The bluejays have gotten demanding. Have I written of those crazy bastards yet? My sponge is full and I have trouble remembering what I had for breakfast lately let alone what I have actually posted and what I have merely thought about posting. Most of my conversations are of the imaginary sort as of late and I have trouble distinguishing things that I have actually done and things I only thought about in a laconic way.

Now that the fog is lifting (assuming that’s what this is about), I’m hoping to embrace the weirdness that continues to infest 2020 because if it’s not painfully obvious to anyone by now, this shit is just going to keep on going so you might as well strap in with me and ride it out.