Got a haircut today in order to try to fight back the oppressive heat. While I feel a lot better, I think the barber took a little too much off the sides and perhaps, through no fault of his own, underestimated the fact that my hair shrugs off gravity until it reaches some planck length which tips it into behaving like normal people hair. Either way, I can't shake the feeling that I now look like Walter Sobchak.

On the bright side, it has a week to grow out before I will ever be photographed again (Wedding! Argh!) So I can always hope that a little time will even things out. Besides, it's not like anybody can ever call you a "Fat John Goodman" !

Ha ha! Ha ha ha ha! HA HA HA HA HA!

….God Dammit. He really slimmed down.

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This weekend was the Big Apple Comic Con here in NYC and earlier today Nadir and I, along with friends and family, went to take in the sights and buy lots of comics. I’ll have a more in depth report soon as I sort through the photos and read all the comics I bought. Until then, here’s a comic that was much funnier on the train when I thought of it Clicking the above image will take you to it in all its non-sequitur glory.

Note: Shatner was indeed there, though the image of him shrewdly poking his head out from behind a curtain I was standing next to will now always be how I remember him. Enjoy!

New webcomic today, featuring myself this week. Any New Yorker can tell you about the intricacies of the subway system and its riders.  You see some messed up stuff sometimes. This story did happen and I do truly hate people who talk out loud to themselves. Stop it. We’re not interested.

The first image is a pinup for Dusk creator/writer David Doub in anticipation of the second trade paperback of the series!

 Seems to be an issue with NextGen Gallery (my spiffy image plugin) and the new version of WordPress so image uploads may be on hold as I really don’t like making thumbnails myself after years of NExtGen spoilage! Cheerio!

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During the recent election, Jailbreak Toys ramps up and makes a slew of Obama and McCain toys. When McCain lost, they began selling off the McCain variants en masse.  So how did I end up with a garbage bag full of them? Well, a friend of a friend had a hookup at the Conan O’Brien show and got me a backstage pass wherein O’Brien himself confided that he had aquired all these McCain toys in an ill planned business venture. Now all I had to do was score 30 grand in 4 hours in order to save Conan and get all those McCain dolls.

No not really. She and my roommate did go to the show and were picked out of the audience to hand out these McCain dolls en masse. 

I see all these toys and think ‘We gotta have a paint-a-mccain party where everybody repaints them’ a la the dunny. This grand idea became ‘Maki camps out in his dark room and customizes one’. I figured I’d send Nadir one as well, almost certain that he’d make a John McClane for obvious hilarity’s sake. Instead I stole what could have possibly been his thunder and made it myself and gave it to him as a gift! Below is the result along with the original. Classic. I even crudely painted the letters to say ‘McClane’ and pasted printouts of Bruce Willis’ face over McCain’s on the packaging.

As you can see, I had to beef up his wiry form a bit.

Fast forward to the Philadelphia Comic Con last week, where Jailbreak had a booth set up and was selling their new line along with these McCain dolls for $1 each. There were some Obama mods on the table so we brought up my McClane and I e-mailed the photo to them. Good Story. I’m going to bed. Yes, at 5. Here’s some doodles for ya.

I have to thank Nadir for taking us to the Con, his brother Yener for the camera, and Scott for being an awesome cameraman. Nighto!

That’s right, after years of pining and worrying about the learning curve, I finally got myself an Intuos4 graphic tablet by Wacom. All I have to say is, damn this thing is sweet.  It is taking some time to get used to, as parodied above, but not so long that the joke got old before I could properly flesh it out (well, maybe a little bit old). The hardest part has been getting the brushes in photoshop and illustrator to behave like my paint brushes do.  I have to thank a lot of online tutorials for helping me here.

Some things I envision for the future:

Faster comics– Even a comic of this simplicity took twice as long and never scanned in right when I was doing it old school. Faster also means I can flesh out ideas while they’re fresh and pump out hilarity like an incontinent newborn.  You’ll definitely see more once I become comfortable enough with the tablet to properly express myself.

More art– More large, lushly colored, print-ready art— No more do I have to slave over a painting only to have my scanner make it green. Also, I can work without the limitations of paper size.

More lunch money– while these things aren’t cheap, I won’t have to buy art supplies for a long time.

I know I had a whole list of these I rattled off to my girlfriend while trying to weigh the pros and cons of buying one of these mama-jammas, but those are the big reasons I think. Stay tuned.

In other news, my little octopi sculptures have been selling like hot cakes at Destination NY, a small gallery/boutique here in NYC.