Complying with her charade

This is the comic summarization of the short story by Shirley Jackson called "Like Mother Used to Make." I try to put it in eight boxes. It was hard and fun. There are some failures, such as the plot is not conveyed effectively. The plot is that a very tidy man invites a bag lady that lives in his building over for dinner. Her house is a shithole and she acts she was raised in a barn when she comes over. She gradually starts acting like she made dinner and it's her house over the course of the evening and eventually she thanks him for coming over and sends him away. Seemingly she does that to maintain an illusion she created so the landlord who stopped by won't think she's a scumbag because she lives in a shithole and doesn't make dinner. He goes across the hall in confusion to her house and acts like he lives there. There's a little bit more to it than that. It's a genuinely creepy and disturbing tale. It's on the internets here.

HELOISE HINT: If it's hard to see fine details and text, right click on image and save so that you can view the large size file more largely in your computer's image viewer and magnifier.

I just wanna make fun of this for a minute

That's not how you make a swastika, stupid. Or any of those other things. Webster and 19th in Oakland. Can you imagine who this person is or what they must be thinking? What's the message here? It's just all over the place. SLAP.

Investigative journalism

I walked by a TV last week that was playing an ad for a news program that was coming up and they were doing one of those "TOAST THE SECRET KILLER!!1!" type of stories. This time is was women's public bathrooms under the microscope. They noticed a terrifying trend and did the right thing by bringing it to the public's attention with some ominous music playing over it. But even though it seems like awful hyperbole, I know that we are truly in danger. Evil creatures lurk behind every stall. Probably not a sick pervert stalker, but more likely a beholder or maybe a displacer beast or maybe a terrible githyanki. I'm afraid the scan is of poor quality, because it was captured on a grainy security camera. If you are sensitive to powerful horrifying beasts, you shouldn't be looking at this.

Tinny projectile death

After drawing a lot of folding chairs hurtling through the air in different configurations, I think this is the drawing that will become the flier for the Stress Ape/Strip Mall Seizures/Sister Fucker show in April. Before I added the color the chairs definitely looked more like walkers. Matt said that was scary and cool too, but I'm still going for folding chairs, cuz this concept is commemorating an unforgettable night where one person was throwing folding chairs at the wall at 21 Grand and didn't understand why they were reprimanded for doing so. It was awesome. It might happen again. I recommend going to this show. Details and a finished flier to come.

Comic summary of "The Intoxicated"

I present a comic summary of "The Intoxicated" by Shirley Jackson. The whole damn book is online here at goog books. I think this story is about how kids say the damnedest things and the dooshy drunk older guy isn't smart enough to challenge the teenager about her world view. I don't know. I'm gonna search Shirley Jackson's blog and see if she says anything about it there. I didn't think it was very creepy at all. But my hands are so clammy today. Maybe I'm creeped out and I don't even realize it.

They're just like us

Going through old pictures looking for the perfect face that says I'm a winner for my business card and I see this one from Brock's tour in Europe in 2008 and it tells me that we're all the same everywhere in the world. Even in such a sophisticated metropolis as Rotterdam, the basics remain the same. Hamburger, hamburger, cola, rectangle.

Monster Manual fan remix 2010 Volume Two

I'm not a design person. I wish I was. I appreciate the visual eye that some people seem to have for layouts and that sort of thing. I'm not a fashion designer. I'm not a beautification expert. When it comes to the digitalization of foldy book, sometimes I'm at a loss. If I'm out of it enough, I completely forget how to do even the peasant technique that I developed myself. I wish I could do the thing where you hit the button to turn the page like in goog books. I bet I could look it up or something... but it may be throwing poop at pearls. Anyways, here I have experimented with a pretentious new layout for foldy book. It's pretentious because it looks like the Swedish flag. At least it may be cute for this particular book. Symmetry is the siren enemy that brings me down every time.

HARD TO READ TEXT

Front page: "The most ancient Black Puddings are vast pools of inky death"

Next page: "Cockatrice -- Steals copper from under your house and turns your ass back to the stoneage. Just trying to get paid. Nothing personal. Alignment -- Always Neutral. +$12 for copper +$3.65 for (bottles and) cans"

Next page: "Intellect Devourer -- Has been recognized for building roadblocks between communities and encouraging race riots and social strife. Alignment -- Always Chaotic Evil."

Next page: "Blink Dogs -- Prolific indie sweetheart band. Sounds like Joy Division on downers and uses the blink spell to travel between material and ethereal plane. Alignment -- Usually Lawful Good."

Next page: "Well, what a wild bunch! I get all excited and weak in the knees just thinking about facing them. The adrenaline makes my handwriting terrible. I'm sorry. More to come."

Monster Manual fan remix 2010 Volume One

I just got hired by Wizards of the Coast to update the D&D Monster Manual (tee-emm baby) to keep it from getting stale. Just kidding, I'm just trying to work my way down the geek hierarchy by doing a fan job on it. Lord knows I'll never actually pull that off until I actually start playing D&D. On second thought, I think people that play D&D might think I'm a worse geek than them for only being interested in the monsters or for being a D&D poser and that's what the geek hierarchy is really about -- being perceived as a worse geek by those less geekier than yourself. Hmm... Smoke that, nerds.

Lets make sure we all retire together on a compound in Guadalajara or Eugene or whatever someday and just make sauerkraut and soak our dentures and prepare all week long for super serious competitive geriatric weekend D&D tournaments. That is my dream. Along with surfing on a giant pizza.

HARD TO READ TEXT IN FIRST PANEL: "In memory of Matt Monster who hath been slain in battle by wicked dwarves and ocelots / It did 80 points of fire damage on him. It was sad but cool"

ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF ERROR: I wrote "go to" twice in the SPECTRE panel. I ain't rescanning though. That's your funeral.

Coal powered ipod?

Matt, why doesn't it look like an orc? I don't understand. Next time I'll try harder.

Las Vegas was like this

This is what happened to all the meathead people at the animatronic fountain at Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas every hour. They were punished for their insolence. And as for that last bit... I really actually think I heard that on NPR today. Seriously for reals.

Behold -- duh finished product

I begifted these upon Helen of Doy for her birthday. It took 100,000,000 years but I did it. Amen.

update on the homo floresiensis (hobbitses)

"In this photo taken Sept. 15, 2009, 80-year-old and 4-feet-tall Victor Jehabut, second from left, who is often claimed by tour guides as a descendant of Homo floresiensis, dwarf cave-dwellers that roamed Flores island 160,000 years ago, walks in his village in Rampasasa, Indonesia. An international team is trying to shed light on a fossilized 18,000-year-old skeleton of a dwarf cavewoman whose discovery on the remote Indonesian island of Flores in 2003 was an international sensation. Jehabut said the rumors of him being related to the hobbits are not true, and that childhood hardship had stunted his growth."

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jEgedVKrVUAaxRiWb3jwEA4jYBQwD9E9J6280

So basically, all we had to do is get to Indonesia and pay $55 or a negotiated fee to see a real living hobbit.

Of course this is a follow up to previous coverage of this topic: http://crudelydrawnpen15.blogspot.com/2010/01/i-heard-about-this-true-fact-on-radio.html

It's my birthday. I do what I want.

Somewhere there is a witch

Isn't that how the old saying goes? I can't find it anywhere on the internets. Can you find the witch? Those two in the lower left corner are sneaky crawling Japanese park voyeurism perverts searching for their target.

Sketchy Olympics

This is a representation of the setting of my terrifying nightmare last night. I think it was inspired by the abandoned building next to the Steve List warehouse where our show was the other day. Why should there be any place so scary. No reason. It's just waiting for insanity inducing battles between ghouls and drugged crazed evildoers that don't believe in anything. Can't get a decent night sleep for the love of god. Only horror.