What I Did This Week

Well, there you have it. A la I Have No Superfluous Leisure (except it actually does map my superfluous leisure).

I've never mapped out my time like this. It's kind of depressing. Leaving aside any complaint about spending almost half my life at work (almost everyone feels that way, I'm sure) I'm sort of disappointed at how I spend my free time. I didn't think I watched that much TV.

I should do this more often. It's very revealing.

See? Cats are good for something.

Cranky New Year...

To be perfectly honest I don't remember if all of those "ball" drops were in the CNN report. I remember the chip and the drag queen (Anderson Cooper made a big deal about that one) and Times square of course. The rest I picked up off of Google (but they may well have been mentioned, too.). Thought I'd just mention that. You know, full disclosure.

If I haven't already told you, Happy New Year.

it's all happening too quickly...

It's Like Show and Tell!

In the New Christmas Tradition...

Place your bets. I'll let you know next year.

Another True Story

What I like about this one is the way it plays with the structure of the gag-strip format. The first panel takes the part of the punchline here, followed by the setup. Once you reach the end you have to double back (mentally) for completion of the central theme (why is the dog acting this way?). If you remove the first panel the rest makes no sense.

And it's true... Tico does hate the snow.

It all goes with life's yin and yang, I guess...

If it's gotta be a joke, at least make it a bad one...

Apparently it's hard for me to make comics in the three or four panel format without trying to tell a joke. That's not what I want to do with these - tell jokes, I mean. If I can't lick the inclination I may have to abandon the format for these sketch-comic thingies.
This one sure feels like a joke, even though it doesn't make a whole lot of sense as one. I was going for the depiction of the sudden realization that the entire world may not be familiar with some things you may take for granted (or something like that). Yeah, I know... real profound (har har). Not sure if it all comes across but the whole thing is depicted pretty much as it happened.
A small victory.

Babies, Babies, Everywhere!!

So, in honor of Cat Garza's new baby girl I thought I'd put up some new pictures of my own little bundle of joy. You know, kind of give Cat an idea of what he has to look forward to.

(Okay, okay... So I'm just proud of my lttle girl and I want to show her off. Is that so wrong?)



Thank you Walmart Picture Studio.



She'll have none of that spoonfed-by-mommy-and-daddy nonsense. Such an independant minded child.


Note also the fancy new photo in the "profile" of the blog. Not my best posing (perhaps if i had known of the photo op in advance) but one of my favorite pictures nonetheless.

Go on. Ask me how I liked the movie...

I'm not what you'd call a big fan of Gus Van Sant. Not that I have anything against his films, it's just that I haven't seen that many of them. Like the rest of middle-America, I watched Good Will Hunting (and it's "sequel", Finding Forrester). And also like the rest of middle-America, I tried to ignore all the hubbub over his shot-for-shot remake of Psycho. I've still never seen that film (the Van Sant version) nor have I ever seen My Own Private Idaho. So you see I'm no expert on his work.

What I do know is Nirvana and the circumstances surrounding the death of Kurt Cobain. In high school I was pretty obsessed. I devoured anything Cobain related in the media. I remember pouring over Tom Grant's early internet posts on his investigation into Cobain's death (Grant was a private investigator that Courtney Love hired to find Cobain when he "escaped" from rehab). It's kind of sickening to think back on it, all that wasted time. But anyway, yeah, I'm pretty familiar with all of that.

The film seems pretty accurate in that regard. Of course there's a disclaimer in the credits (this film, while inspired by the death of Curt Cobain, is a work of fiction...) but all the elements I'm aware of are accounted for and events seem to match up with what is known about Cobain's suicide. From rock-star ennui and the pressures of fame to details of chronology (Tom Grant completely missed finding Kurt in his search of the Cobain household. He later turned up dead in the one room Grant didn't search.) Despite the name changes, all of the details are in the movie. I don't know where they shot it but the greenhouse (or gardening shed) where Blake (the Cobain character) finds his end is almost too eerily (visually) similar to the shed where the real Kurt Cobain spent his last night. The final scene, the discovery of the body, is staged so remarkably well it matches up almost exactly with the well-known photos of the scene of Curt's death.

Michael Pitt, who plays Blake(/Cobain) does a fairly convincing caricature. The mannerisms are pretty good and the Cobain slouch is in effect. With his dirty hair all in his face he could almost pass as Cobain. Pitt also provides a passable possible embryonic Nirvana song in his A Long Hard Journey From Death to Birth. and there's a dischordant, Sonic Youth-y (Thurston Moore serves as "musical consultant") tape-loop collage experiment in the middle of the film (which ended up scaring Sophie, poor baby).

The cinematography and the editing are the real stars of the film, though. The photography has a rough-edged kind of beauty to it (not eye-pleasing but somehow right). Much of the focus is on the setting. Lots of wide-angled distance shots and stationary trailing shots following the action (20 seconds on only the bushes). The scenery is anything but pastoral ("I don't get it," remarked Rachelle, "It's not even pretty"). But it fits the decidedly unsentimental portrayal of events.

A lot of reviews called the pacing "meditative" ("boring." says Rachelle). It's a long, slow slide to the ending. It's not really the kind of movie you follow along but you have to let it wash over you. Comparisons have been made to the other recent minimalist works of Van Sant, such as Elephant (which I also have not seen).

Even from a only a layman's perspective, I can appreciate the understated filmmaking. What struck me is the fine use of the combination of elements unique to the film medium. Visuals were important, and of course sound. While specific verbalization (the realm of prose) is obviously and adamantly unimportant. Most of the dialogue is mumbled or obscured (except a nice little allegory the P.I. tells regarding a vaudeville stage magician and the details of his mysterious death - you can hear that one all right). The dialogue is unimportant. It's the sound of it that's key. Only in film does this work. The forced ugliness of both visual and audio in concert tell the story much more effectively (and viscerally) than description or verbosity ever could.

So did I like the movie? I don't know. I guess i did as much as a movie like this can be "liked."

But, like the man said... like the man said...

Mind in the (Infinite) Gutter

Phil Sandifier entered the Webcomics Examiner fold in this latest issue with a take on James Kochalka's popular American Elf series called American Elf and The Infinite Gutter. I'm pretty new to American Elf (I just started reading it when it came up in discussion for the Artistic History of Webcomics also in this issue of the Examiner) but Phil seems to confirm my initial impression of the feel of the strip, and he explains it in a clever way to boot with his description of the infinite gutter effect.

I like the idea of the infinite gutter, especially as pertains to webcomics . Let me clumsily summarize: Form and display (design) of a given comic strip affect the reading experience in many ways. When a webcomic displays each installment on it's own page (rather than in the Manley-backed stacking method) then a temporal gulf is created between each strip. The space between one day's installment and the next, Sandifier argues, is effectively infinite. This infinite gulf can act just as a gutter does between panels. What Scott McCloud calls closure (remind me to share my thoughts on "closure" sometime) occurs here. This is the infinite gutter.

Now, McClouds idea of closure rests on the use of juxtaposition. If two successive moments are placed next to one another spatially then they are comics. Closure is your mind filling in the blanks between the two panels. So if it ain't juxtaposed it ain't comics, right? Well, I'm not so sure. This dependance on spatial relationship has not been sitting well with me lately.

Take the example of Ethan Persoff's The Recovery of Charlie Pickle. Like much of Persoff's work,Charlie pickle is presented on a page-by-page basis. Each page of Charlieis a single panel. Unlike American Elf there is no spatial juxtaposition on any given page. The images are clearly in a deliberate sequence and closure does occur, albeit between pages instead of in the gutters - the infinite gutter. The temporal gulf is smaller than in Elf, where the gap bridges an entire day instead of mere moments, but the principal is the same.

Charlie Pickle is precisely the kind of example Scott McCloud argues against in Reinventing Comics. Remove the aspect of juxtaposition, McCloud argues, and then it's not comics. But I think this clearly is not the case in Charlie Pickle and other one-panel-at-a-time webcomics.

I love panel-to-panel interplay. I love design and the effects design can have on multiple panel layouts. But I think dependance on spatial relationships between panels does not necessarily make or break "comics." Mr. Sandifier's idea of the infinite gutter only adds fire to this belief.

Ladies and Gentlemen... are you ready for some DISCERNING CRITICISM?!?

A new issue of The Webcomics Examiner is up.
I get a kick out of every new issue (although I don't know if it's that much of a kick).

My own participation in this issue consists of a small part in the round table and throwing in my two cents behind the scenes of the "best of 2005" list. I also wrote a review for this issue but Joe decided to hold it back for the big format change.

Anyway, the press release:

ecember 05, 2005-- The Best Webcomics of 2005 are
featured in the special end-of-year issue of The
Webcomics Examiner. The editorial advisory board
surveyed the field and debated to come up with a list
of the most noteworthy series and completed works.
Says editor Joe Zabel, "Everyone has their own opinion
about which comics are best; but we hope our listing
efforts will stimulate discussion and attract new
readers to a very fine group of cartoonists."

The Webcomics Examiner is a monthly forum of reviews,
interviews, and critical articles evaluating
webcomics as a fine art. The free-access website is at
http://webcomicsreview.com.

This issue also features Part 2 of an editorial
roundtable on The Artistic History of Webcomics, with
T Campbell, Shaenon Garrity, William G., Phil Kahn,
Bob Stevenson, Eric Burns, Wednesday White, A. G.
Hopkins, Rob Balder, Tim Godek, Zabel, Alexander and
Brandy Danner. Chronicling the webcomics medium's
creative evolution, the discussion includes profiles
of Cat Garza, Tristan Farnon, Demian5, Patrick Farley,
Broken Saints, Justine Shaw, James Kochalka, Roger
Langridge, Jim Zubkavich and many more.

Also this issue:

--Webcomics pioneer Tracy White discusses her
innovative approach to webcomics in an interview
conducted by Zabel.

--Philip Sandifer probes the secret life of James
Kochalka's legendary autobiographical comic American
Elf.

--Tristan Farnon's Leisure Town is analyzed by Zabel.

The cover artist this issue is David Hellman, of A
Lesson Is Learned But The Damage Is Irreversible fame.

So go. Read. Learn. Enjoy.

Self Portrait No.1

I've been flipping through the archives at Angel Interceptor again. I was gonna do Inteceptor as my first Examiner review but just as I was preparing to write it, Ira Marks up and stopped posting comics there. It's too bad. He's got a nice style. Kinda long, spindly appendages. Cartoony but with a little bit of creepy, spidery twist to it. His ink work was good but I especially liked when he switched to just pencils like in The Coward From Where. Very much a "hand written" style. Immediate and personal like Jefreyf Brown and Anders Nilson meet, I don't know, Edward Gorey or something. The story where I fell in love with his pencils is, alas, no longer available online. It was a kind of human-raised-by-animals fairy tale with a "futility of social justice" motif. Incredible page design where all the smudges and scratches seemed to make sense. He even had lines of dialogue crossed out and re-written right there on the "finished" page. It was so fuckin' cute.

I Thought I Had Lost My Cat Today

We couldn't find Rufus this morning.

I was feeding Sophie her morning bottle and Rachelle had gone downstairs to feed all the animals. We feed our cats twice a day. They know the schedule and when they're fed, they all come running. When Rachelle had filled their bowls she noticed that one was left standing without a cat anywhere near. Sophie had just about finished her drink when Rachelle burst back in with a panicked rush in her voice.

"I can't find Rufus!" she said.


You may remember Rufus from my timeline comic My Life With Pets. He's the big orange cat about halfway down on the far left, just above our dog Chi Chi.


Rufus was one of our Humane Society rescues. When we first brought him home we already had four cats. Normally, a new animal brought into such a situation would range on the caution scale from a little nervous to quick! finds me some place to hide. As soon as we opened the carrier Rufus hopped out, took one quick tour of the house and plopped down on the couch, just as calm as could be. It was just as like he'd always belonged here. I don't know what it is about Humane Society cats, maybe they're just grateful to get a home, but they always seem to make the best natured pets.

But this morning he'd disappeared.

All of our cats are indoor-only pets, but the dogs go outside to do their business. Some of the cats, being curious by nature, try to escape through the open door when we let the dogs out. Usually we see them get out and usually they don't get far (although, trying to chase down a black cat in the dead of night isn't always a whole lot of fun). A search of the whole house did not reveal our missing cat this morning. This time we must not have seen Rufus go.

Rachelle did a quick walk around the house, calling his name (later she said she kind of felt like an asshole, walking around the yard in her bathrobe yelling "Rufus... Rufus..."). I put Sophie down and pulled on my shoes and coat to go canvas the neighborhood. The last time I had let the dogs out was the previous night. Rufus must have gotten out then. He had been out all night. He could be anywhere. I took a step out the door, expecting at least a long search. Honestly, though, I really feared what what I would find laying in the ditch alongside our road.

Now you might say, "Tim. You've got (let see... onetwothhreefour) eight other cats. Really is one less gonna make a difference?" But you have to understand something. Of course we are what you might call "animal lovers." You kind of have to be to pile up that many pets. But more than that, I think it's pretty safe to say that Rufus is our favorite pet of them all (they're not like kids, you can pick a favorite). Ever since that first day we brought him home he has been nothing but love and warmth and acceptance. Not just to us, but to all the other animals and people we have welcomed into our home. When we fostered the three kittens (Libby, Stripey, and Miko), Rufus was the one who really adopted them and raised them like his own kin. He comes up to see everyone, and I mean everyone who comes over. But, unlike Macio, he's not overly friendly and knows not to push his welcome. He's a big, warm, friendly teddy bear of a cat and quite possibly the best cat ever. So I was afraid and saddened at the thought of never seeing him again as I left the house this morning.

I took one step out the door. I heard a meow.

Rufus was right outside our front door the whole time. Cowering between our steps and the remains of a rose bush, scared out of his wits. I only spoke his name once and he popped up the steps, through the door, and back inside our safe warm home.

We were lucky he had the sense not to wander far and we were lucky that last night didn't get as freezing cold as it has been getting lately. But we were all glad to have him back safe, it seemed Rufus included.

In celebration of Rufus' return (and because I haven't released a comic in so long) I give to you a sneak peek at the Welton Colbert epic I have now returned to preparing. So for Ryan Estrada on his birthday, and for you (for making it all the way through this post), I present part one (the prologue) of The Welton Colbert Show.

Tree City officially down the drain and Colbert wins... This Time

More spinning my wheels as the unfinished comics keep piling up.

I'm shelving Tree City. Part Three is all drawn up. I'm not completely happy with the way it turned out (which is about par for the course with most of my comics) but that's not why I'm putting it away.

Tree City, as I've envisioned it, is a very drawn out and involved story, and it really doesn't make much sense except as a whole (or serialized into the six chapters). I'm averaging about six to eight months per installment (each chapter is eight to ten parts) and it's just not a story that can adapt to that kind of schedule. I certainly wouldn't want to read it like that. It might all be well and good (though not ideal) if I had the time to focus exclusively on it and dribble it out piece by piece, but there are too many other avenues I want to explore right now. Tree City wad kind of an accident. I never intended to serialize it on the web. I was just using it to play around with the infinite Canvas program. I'm pretty sure it's a good story, though, and I may return to it if I ever have the freedom to devote to it the time it deserves.


The comic I've been spending most of my time lately on was to be for Ryan Estrada's Welton Colbert Guest week. You may remember Colbert turning his withering gaze in my direction in the pages of Comixpedia. His strip was basically an "attack" on infinite canvas so of course my response turned into a massive nine-part Infinite Canvas epic (okay, "epic" might be stretching it.But it is nine parts.) Alas, I bit off more than I could chew once again as it now appears there is no way I'll be able to finish it by anywhere close to the deadline. Which is too bad. I think what I have finished is some of the best cartooning I've ever done and the script would have been very compelling (in my opinion). I thought about sending him just the first part (of the nine) 'cause it's done and it could conceivably stand alone. But it really makes a better comic when grouped with the rest, so I've decided it's all or nothing there, too.




So where does that leave me?
Well, I've got a ton of short standalones piled up and I've started work on a story called "I Lost My Voice"





And I've got something else up my sleeve that, if I can work it out, means you'll be seeing a lot more comics from me on the internet next year.

I will make comics again, someday...

Well it's fixed now

Stupid Blogger. I'm thinking of switching services anyway. Big plans. We'll see...

Anyway... Sophie's very first Halloween.


Thassa big pumpkin.



It's cute, but it's not, like, Ann Geddys Cute. (I hope)



Like I said, thassa big pumpkin.



And the two loveliest ladies in my life.

screw this shit

the content of my posts keeps getting deleted

Having Problems