To Obscenity And Beyond

This comic reminds me of the time Josh IRL showed up to my wife’s college graduation party wearing a Penny Arcade “Jesus is F’ing Metal” shirt. This particular party featured all of her aunts, uncles, grandmas, grandpas and great grandpeople. I met him at the door and sent him to his car to turn it inside out. I felt like an assistant principle. Josh is a prime example of unabashedly being yourself to the fullest extent all the time, and I love him for that.

Wifetron and I took DaughterUnit to see The Toy Story 3D double feature last weekend. She’s only 2 (the daughter, not the wife) and has never been to the theater before, but she was surprisingly captivated and entertained throughout most of the first movie. By the intermission she was dancing in the isles and ready to go home. Note to the movie theater industry: if you only have 1 size of 3D glasses that have to fit my giant head and her tiny head, one of us is going to be disappointed. I ended up having to build a contraption out of a head band and rubber bands to hold the glasses on her head but it was worth it. She had a blast.

BOOK UPDATE!!!

They’re HERE (HERE, HERE, and HERE)!
ORDER YOURS NOW AND IT WILL SHIP VERY SOON!
They will start shipping (beginning with the Ultimate Fancy Editions) when I get back from…

BALTIMORE COMIC-CON!!!

…Is where I will be this weekend. Read more about it, and my other upcoming appearances in Austin HERE. I will have books, buttons, T-shirts and sketches. Come say hi or I will feel sad forever.

Prepping for this Con (my first real con appearance) has kicked my ass this week (hence the super late comic). I still hope to have three new comics this week, but I still have to get a 6ft X3ft banner printed and a build a stand for it. Monday after the Con there will probably be some sort of sketchbook comic. I’m considering changing the update schedule from “Mon-Wed-Fri” to “3 Times a Week.” Then maybe your expectations will be properly set for my inevitable tardiness.

HEALTH UPDATE!!!

Am I sick? Dying? Dead? If you haven’t been following my recent health tragedies you can catch up HERE, HERE, HERE and HERE. I am pleased to say that my normal back pain (due to a bulging disk) is all but gone. My spinal headaches caused by the spinal tap are cleared up and only an occasional dull headache on the left side of my head persists. My back still hurts from them actually sticking needles in my spine 4 or 5 times, and I still generally feel like shit due to having spent the last 4 weeks on the couch, but some light exercise should clear that up.

Thanks to your generous DONATIONS, one of my medical bills is almost completely paid off. I have a bill for $1400 (CT scan and spinal tap) and another for $1700 (hospital stay and blood patch) and so far, the Fancy Bastards have donated over $1200. I am constantly amazed by what a selfless and supportive group of people you all are. In addition to donations I have received dozens of emails and twitter replies encouraging me to get better. Believe me when I say that those go a long way toward aiding my recovery.

LAST THING!!!

I did an interview with my friend Corn Mo for Digital City. His band, 357 Lover, is releasing a new album called “Diorama of The Golden Lion” and it rocks intensely hard.

Malpractice Makes Perfect

Panel one is the actual exchange I had with the ER doc that did my spinal tap just after the needle went “pop.” If you have never experienced what it is to have a device manipulating around in your spinal column, let me just say that I A) DO NOT RECOMMEND IT and B) can’t stress enough how wrong it feels.

HEALTH UPDATE: I feel worse today than I did yesterday. This does not bode well for my trip to Baltimore in roughly a week. If I don’t feel better by Sunday I’m going to have to go back to the hospital.

BOOK UPDATE: The books officially exist and are shipping from the frozen wilderness of Canada today. The bad news is the print run went over by 100 books which cost me another $600 (this is apparently something that happens when you print books). So ORDER THOSE BOOKS!!! Order 100 of them!

Special thanks to you Fancy Bastards that have donated towards my medical bills. You’ve covered over $500 in the last week. I appreciate your generosity more than I know how to express.

If An F-Bomb Drops In The Woods

…and no one is still watching SNL, does anyone give a crap?

After my spinal tap on Thursday, I am on day 4 of “24 hour migraine explosion time.” Looks like I won’t be able to get a blood patch to potentially cure the “spinal headaches,” so I am banking on bed rest, fluids and complaining (the healing triad).

If you are keeping track at home, I spent the first few weeks of September on the couch with horrible back pain due to a bulging disk. Now I get to spend the rest of if on the same couch with nausea, light sensitivity and the feeling that my brain is swelling to the size of… larger than it should be. It’s hard to think of funny analogies when your brain hurts. I’m sharing all this not to garner your pity, but to help you realize under what strain and difficulty this comic was produced. If it isn’t funny or up to snuff, cut me some slack and hope for LOLier pastures later in the week. I’m not even sure what characters I drew. I made this comic while squinting through the visual cacophony of blinding white hate-flashes you people call “light.” It burns us. Burns our eyes and our minds.

With this comic completed I will begin to seal myself up into a darkened cocoon fashioned from mud, twigs and my own secretions. I will either emerge a beautiful healed butterfly, or dead. OK, maybe I am fishing for some pity. It’s been a shitty month.

Apples And Roddenberries

Hey, look! Here’s a comic about buying a computer that used to belong to the guy that created Star Trek. I’m too tired to make funny words to go with it, but it will probably be a two-parter so check back Friday for the conclusion [unless I decide to do something else].

Gene Roddenberry’s Mac to be auctioned

I know the comics schedule has been crazy unpredictable lately, and for that I’m sorry. Believe me that I am the person MOST frustrated by the situation. Finishing the book and getting ready for my first real con has taken up nearly every ounce of my focus for the last month. Today was my wife’s birthday and I spent the whole day making a comic. The comic was late so that makes me a crappy husband AND a crappy cartoonist.

Speaking of cons, please check out my post about my upcoming appearances in Baltimore, MD and Austin, TX. I am getting super excited (read: extraordinarily worried) about graduating from “faceless internet person of slight interest” to a “hey look there’s an internet person sitting behind that table let’s go poke him” person. I’ve been frantically practicing drawing on REAL paper (something I haven’t done regularly in almost a decade) in anticipation of doing con sketches. Follow me on Twitter to see the sketches I’ve been doing lately.

I hope to be doing a handful of cons next year. These first few outings are really just practice. For instance, I dropped a cashwad on shirts for Baltimore not knowing if it’s even the sort of con where people buy shirts. Expect a fire sale after the con if they sell poorly at the show. I’ll also be debuting a 4 pack of HE buttons and, of course, the book.

BOOK NOTE FOR MARYLAND PEOPLES: If you ordered the book already, or if you order it between now and Oct. 1st and you are going to be at Baltimore Comic-Con AND you want to pick up your book there please email store (At) hijinksensue(dot)com.

SPECIAL THANKS: to the server samurai at Infinistorm for the ridiculously smooth transition to my new souped up server. I have never worked with more accessible, reliable and honest server geeks. They specialize in custom app development, web design and VPS hosting. If you live in Indianapolis they will meet with you and buy you a puppy.

Habeas Jennifer’s Corpus

Every night Josh cooks 6 pounds of bacon and reads aloud from the NecroOmNomNomicon.

If you get the reference in this comic it must be because you (like me) have seen the trailers for Jennifer’s Body, because apparently no one saw the actual movie. Megan Fox is an attractive young lady, but other than that she’s shit-cocking insane. She’s been dating Brian Austin Green from Terminator: 90210 The High School Years and told Rolling Stone that the reason she will never buy a gun is that she’d definitely shoot him with it. I wonder if he started wearing full Kevlar body armor after that article came out. She also uses gypsy magic to keep airplanes from falling out of the sky. So what I’m saying is that she’s s winner. Not a “thankless, unfriendly bitch” as former coworlkers have said. No sir. She’s a winner through and trough.

On a “things I can actually recommend you checking out” note, two of my webcomicing friends Bill Barnes (of Unshelved) and Paul Southworth (of Ugly Hill and You Are Dead) have activated their webcomic wonder twin powers and created a new comic call Not Invented Here. Programmers and coders should be instantly familiar with the title and thus most of the subject matter. That’s not to say non-programmers won’t get the jokes (but you won’t). Bill is the king of niche webcomics that only make sense to 1 out of every 150,000 people. And Paul is the king of drawing 150,000 times better than Bill. Together they can’t be stopped.

That’s enough good will. Here’s an ad for my book. Looks like it will be shipping when I return from Baltimore Comic-Con.