Guest Strip

The jolly lads over at Let's Be Friends Again let me play in their sandbox. Click on over!

As an aside, I did, like, 12 drawings of Wellington to get his likeness down, and yet he barely appears in the strip. And he's drawn so small that he doesn't really look like much of anybody. But wasting major effort for minor effects is the hallmark of a true artiste. Right? Isn't it? Please?

Nobody Expects...

The Spanish Mech-Armada!

My Trendy Contemporary Luster

This is dangerously close to counting as another life goal achieved: The New York Times ran a brief, positive mention of The Gift of the Magi, today.

Lately though, genteel poverty and bank runs aren’t so quaintly distant. Joel Priddy’s eye-catching adaptation of O. Henry’s classic Christmas tale, “The Gift of the Magi” (about a cash-strapped young husband and wife who sacrifice to buy each other decent gifts), feels positively up-to-the-minute. And that’s not only because it is a trendy graphic novelization, but also because its drawings evoke the contemporary luster of two-stops-past-Bedford hipster paupers.

It doesn't quite count for life-goal-purposes because it's not in The Book Review. I used to spend a lot of time illustrating other people's reviews there, so it features specifically in my authorial ambitions. But still, pretty danged happy-making. Thanks to Corey at Burke's Books for bringing this to my attention!

Gift of the Magi updates

Beeswax foreign correspondent Curt Franklin supplied this snapshot of Gift of the Magi in Parisian comics shop.

Last night's signing at Burke's Bookstore was great: lots of people lined up the whole time, most with stacks of three or four books to give as presents. Assuming that's the scene in every bookstore in America for every night until Christmas, I'll soon be retiring to pursue that life of debauchery I've heard so much about.

And then, this morning, I actually made it onto the local morning TV show, and that seems to have gone well enough. From my side of the camera, at least. For all I know, I had a toddler-sized handprint in blueberry jam on my forehead the whole time. No one mentioning it, because I'm an artist and they thought it was my thing.