Hey Dani!

The Internet is a wonderful thing. I'm drawing a scene of a man in Manchester, UK, waking up to BBC Radio One. And it suddenly struck me that folks in Manchester will actually read this comic. There's a close up of the clock, so I'll need to show the right frequency tuned in. No problem. It's between 97 and 99 FM across the UK. I could be more precise, but the BBC website that gives you the exact frequency doesn't work. Good thing I'm not drawing a digital tuner.

And to keep the good Dani happy, here's some recent work that I've done that I can actually show!


There's some more work on the Fables story and a DVD insert illustration that I can't show yet.

The Villainous Conspiracy

This is just a little something Lowell Francis sent to me and Art to amuse us. Enjoy!:

Being the transcript of the most recent meeting of the Villainous Cabal who controls everything.

VANDAL SAVAGE

"Good morning Gentlemen and welcome to the quarterly meeting of the Villainous Conspiracy. I hope you've reviewed the minutes of the previous meeting. Unless there are an objections, I'd like to move to approve those minutes."

RĀ’S AL GHŪL

"I'd like to correct the record. Following our discussion of the destruction of Black Adam's forces, I did not say 'bwa-hahahahahahha…', I would like to amend that to strike that or to simply show that it was a slight laugh.

GRODD

I recall that you were standing on the table when you did that.

RĀ’S AL GHŪL

I don't remember it that way.

THE BRAIN

Been in the Lazarus Pit lately? I would accept fiendish cackle.

[Votes on amendment, so passes].

VANDAL SAVAGE

I'd like to move to the first order of business, an inventory of superhumans available.

ECLIPSO

Thank you Mr. Chairman, as of the last census, we currently have 35 metahumans under my control. Thirteen among our inner circle, ten hidden from the world, six under strong control in our Justice League, two in the Justice League but simply co-opted, and three in the Scranton branch office.

DR. SIVANA

Only three?

ECLIPSO

Yes. Red Tornado was blown up when we sent evil Detective Chimp against him.

T.O. MORROW

HE WAS A PROTOTYPE! STOP LOOKING AT ME.

VANDAL SAVAGE

Moving on, we need to assess the capabilities of this quarter's created beings to see if they fall under the minion or super category. As you know we have one slot available for metahumans following Red Tornado's, er, death. Based on our last meeting, that will be filled by Chemo.

GRODD

Is that the giant chemical factory thing? How are we dealing with the PR on that?

T.O. MORROW

We could say he cures cancer.

DR. PSYCHO

I move that Morrow doesn't get to speak again.

VANDAL SAVAGE

As I was saying, we have no slots for new super-beings. Any labeled as such at this meeting will have to be suspended or destroyed. First, we have Naga's new Lizard-Human super soldier hybrids.

LORD NAGA

(sssss) They've actually quite weak… (ssss)

FELIX FAUST

But they spit venom? And have the strength of five ordinary men…and scale armor…and lightning reflexes.

LORD NAGA

(sssss) They get sluggish unless I keep them under heat lamps…. (ssss)

GRODD

Motion to register Lord Naga's new snake-soldiers as minions.

(Approved)

VANDAL SAVAGE

Next, we have T.O. Morrow's new robot soldiers…

DR. PSYCHO

Minions.

T.O. MORROW

Wait…they're very, very powerful….

GRODD

Minions.

(Approved)

VANDAL SAVAGE

Finally we has Prof. Ivo's new creation, Amazo.

PROFESSOR IVO

It really doesn't do much. More of a toy.

DR. SIVANA

What does it do…?

PROFESSOR IVO

(unintelligible muttering)

RHAS A GHUL

Could you repeat that?

PROFESSOR IVO

It copies the powers of any and all superbeings.

THE BRAIN

Ivo, you really are an idiot.

PROFESSOR IVO

At least I don't create gorilla love slaves. No offense, Grodd.

THE BRAIN

Leave Monsiuer Mallah out of this.

RHAS A GHUL

Motion to destroy.

(approved).

VANDAL SAVAGE

I believe that's all the business this week, be sure to try the macaroons I baked on the way out.

How little Choice is ideal?

I like to distinguish between the wacky conservatism we see on talking head shows and the conservatives I know personally. I don't know any conservatives who have taken Ann Coulter's advice and tried to kill me with a baseball bat for being a Democrat. My pals in the GOP didn't hunt down Muslims over 9/11, or take Jerry Falwell seriously and blame me because I'm a Feminist. I know a lot of people who listen to them and might claim they agree with them. But it's obviously taken tongue-in-cheek because right wing death squads are pretty rare in the US of A.

This is heartening to me. As delusional and belligerent conservative pundits and politicians keep trying to go further and further, the great middle ground of American citizens can be stirred to rein them in. And that middle ground includes most conservatives. It might not happen as quickly as I'd like, but it does happen.

An unusually big dope slap is being handed to the politcal class of South Dakota. This is no hotbed of lefty politics: Bush won 60% of the votes there in 2004. Feeling the wind on their back, the legislature there passed a law this year banning all abortions except to save the life of the mother.

There are no exceptions for rape or incest. There aren't even exceptions for serious health damage short of death. If this law is enforced, you can't get an abortion to stop a molar pregnancy, in which the fetus is too deformed to ever become viable. You'll have to continue until labor. The South Dakota law is based on the moral theory that taking the Pill is murder because it prevents one cell zygotes from implanting in the uterus. The law is outrageous so it will get challenged in court. They hope to take this to the Supreme Court and overturn Roe v. Wade.

But the politicians were surprised when a challenge came from another source: the people of South Dakota. A grass roots movement rose up to overturn South Dakota's law with a referendum. 16,728 signatures are needed to get on the November ballot. An all volunteer force of 1,200 citizens gathered 37,846. Even abortion opponents are signing the petition:

Even in the most conservative corners of this conservative state, both Republicans and Democrats -- including some voters who say they oppose abortion -- are eagerly signing the petition. In two weeks, volunteers have collected a third of the signatures they need to get a November referendum on the ban.

Some voters dismiss the abortion-rights activists as out of touch with South Dakotan values. "People here have a sense of morals and ethics," said Darcy Patterson, 40. "I don't want to change the law."

But many others say their legislators went too far when they voted last month to prohibit all abortions, even in cases of rape or incest, unless the woman's life is at stake.

Spotting three teenagers with clipboards as he walked up to the Sturgis post office, Jack Hoel, 74, broke into a grin.

"I can't wait to sign," he said. "I was going to go out looking for this petition."

Hoel said he is a staunch Republican in a county that twice backed President Bush with nearly 75 percent of the vote. "You have to be, in South Dakota, or you get extradited," he joked.

But Hoel disliked the thought of politicians interfering in a family's most intimate decisions. "It's too personal to be legislated," he said.

I don't know South Dakota. But it's become pretty obvious that the people aren't as crazy as their elected leaders. Get out the vote, South Dakota, and remember to vote for sanity.

They're in Chicagoland too!

Just a note for my South Bend friends. There are Barnaby's here too.

For those not in the know, the Barnaby's in South Bend is where you go for thin crust pizza in a traditional English Elizabethan style. Even as a kid that confused me. But it's really good pizza! Not quite the artisanal quality of a NYC coal oven pizza, but crispy on bottom and gooey greasy toppings galore.

There used to be one near my Mom's house in Chicago, but it's been turned into a synagogue. A very odd looking Tudor public house synagogue.

This one (still nondenominational) is in Niles, IL. Lisa and I took my bruddah Donn there yesterday.

Welfare States

(Thanks to The Decembrist).

In the US the term "welfare state" is an insult. It's usually used to refer to the Federal system of social benefits like Social Security or Food Stamps. But let's look at another type of welfare state: Idaho.

From The Guardian:

The governor of Idaho, an affable rancher named Jim Risch, stretched back in his chair and outlined his alternative history of the last few years in America. "Hurricane Katrina - they heaped that on George Bush!" said Mr Risch, in his shirt-sleeves in the blasting dry heat of an afternoon in Boise, the state capital.

"Here in Idaho, we couldn't understand how people could sit around on the kerbs waiting for the federal government to come and do something. We had a dam break in 1976, but we didn't whine about it. We got out our backhoes and we rebuilt the roads and replanted the fields and got on with our lives. That's the culture here. Not waiting for the federal government to bring you drinking water. In Idaho there would have been entrepreneurs selling the drinking water."

Wow. Let's check the figures on you independent minded Idahoans... for every $1.00 you send the Federal government you get $1.28 back. In my state of Illinois for every $1.00 we send we get $0.73 back. Sounds like you folks need to pay back a pretty huge loan before you start blowing smoke up your own backsides.

So how did they do when they got flooded in 1976? What's an entrepreneurial 'culture' look like? Let's look at the official Department of the Interior history:

Failure of Teton Dam left Reclamation with a situation never encountered in the agency's history. Legal experts concluded the Federal government was not legally liable for damages caused by the dam's failure [my emphasis]. The Ford Administration took a different stand. The President decided the government had a moral responsibility to pay restitution to the flood victims. Within a week after the disaster, President Ford requested a $200 million appropriation for initial payments for damages, without assigning responsibility for Teton Dam's failure...

Reclamation set up claims offices in Rexburg, Idaho Falls, and Blackfoot. Disaster victims filed over 4,800 claims by January 4, 1977, totalling $194 million. The Federal government paid 3,813 of those claims, $93.5 million, by that date. Originally scheduled to end in July 1978, the Claims Program continued into the 1980s.

Still sucking that teat into the 1980's, huh? Kinda sounds like Idaho started up their backhoes after getting some sizable checks from Washington.

Idaho. King of potatoes and Queen of welfare. I'd like that $194 million back now.

p.s. Note to my pals in Minnesota and Indiana. MN gets back $0.69 per dollar and IN gets back $0.97. You deserve some money back from the potato heads too.

I started drawing comics professionally in 1992. After a few stories for a publisher who only sometimes paid me and soon collapsed I drewI remember my last conversation with the attorney financing the failed company, who obviously fancied himself Michigan's Tom Cruise. He was dressed in a pink polo and wayfarers in his law office. I stood demanding my money while he screamed at me "Do you know who I am!?! Do you know who I am!?" And I thought to myself, honestly, not many people do or would care to. And to this day I don't understand why he thought impressing me with his wealth and power would have made me NOT expect to get paid.

But I stayed in the game and eventually got my first gig, Green Lantern #36 for DC. I've been working pretty steadily ever since.

1992. So I've been around for a while. Fourteen years. So it came as a big shock today when the DC production manager wrote me a curt email complaining about the images I'd sent him. I'd made a mistake while converting it to Bitmap and it came out looking like a cheap dot matrix print:

Ouch. Before I'd realized my mistake I first reacted with indignation. I don't make mistakes like that! Then I checked it out and knew he was right. It's amazing how painful and offputting things like this can be after all these years. After I fixed the mistake I had to stop and be a bitter little troglodyte in a dark room.

One hopes to get better and better as the years go by. But occasionally we end up making very basic mistakes. What made me stop moping is remembering the scared young artist I was fourteen years ago who kept trying nonetheless, and all the artists today in the same situation. I just couldn't stand being that pathetic.

But really, I couldn't draw for a while. It's funny how there's still a moody teenager inside my middle aged body.

Delayed...

I made a mistake logging into Blogger and posted to the wrong blog page. I wrote this post earlier this week, but it's only showing up now. Donn steered me in the right direction, all seems good again. Here's the late post:

Hey all,

I say with great relief that Vertigo doesn't give a damn if I blab that I'm doing a project for them. In fact, they seem to think of it as free publicity. Odd, that.

I'm doing a three page section of Issue 52 of Bill Willingham's Fables. I have a 'hit list' of writers I want to work with, and Bill was second on the list right after Alan Moore. So you can't imagine how delighted I am. Embarassing jumping up and down giggling and screaming lock me up in Belleview delighted. On another project the covers to all four Authority issues I'm drawing are done, and Art Lyon is doing his finest work ever coloring them. Go to his site and ask him to post some of the colored pages.