And by the way belated gratitudes/platitudes to folks at Locust Moon for a kickin' revival of the Philly Alt Comic Con on December 16.

  Just a little note to say I had an awesome time  catchin up with new and old friends at SPX two weekends ago! Thanks everyone for a brilliant showing of ambitious work, for gratifying trades, thanks to the 4 of you who bought my book and to mom and dad who let some of us eat their cookies and crash at their house! Big ups.  

Dust off your old 3D glasses or raid a disappointing, overpriced movie near you for a new pair to witness the plaintive scenarios I place before you. Also double click on the image itself for a bigger, more immersive view or printout. Enjoy!  

   

     

  Hopin to make an actual game board with requisite stickers to sell at SPX this year!        

So: I have done the long thing and received my master's degree in landscape architecture. Wish me luck with the landscape. Among other things, I now anticipate a renaissance in my comics world. The 6 page group that follows is from a wonderful sequential art class I took with illustrator Jeremy Holmes this semester. Jeremy's class brought me new media (crayons) and characters (namely lady bigfoot, and I think I'm getting attached... how do you feel about a new character duo named lady bigfoot and bedbug imposing on this blog? doesn't it seem like the couples' therapy possibilities could be quite productive?) One final word before I let you take a bath with lady bigfoot: the characters in this scene are 1) lady bigfoot, 2) the Loch Ness monster, or Nessie for short, 3) Paul Bunyan and 4) Babe the blue ox. The general idea is that these b-list mythological figures can take anticlimactic baths just like the rest of us. I hope to find myself in similarly hopeless scenarios this summer, but rest assured: all characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real personmonsters, living or dead, is purely coincidental. Enjoy!  

Hi all! Sorry for the pause I've got caught in as I finish this great, long thing called my master's in landscape architecture. I just had my first last class ever today and am looking forward to a comics renaissance in the coming months. Today I also went to the release party for Philos Adelphos Irrealis, a very cool inventive art book put together and printed with a charming plum color at the Kelly Writer's House.  Take a gander at my submission and its printed condition below:    

Dear friends, This comic is a companion piece to the mini-poster from way back in July marking Zodiac's birthday. This artifact, in contrast, is dedicated to no particular occasion. Or on second thought,  perhaps... : Spring is upon us? Our friends in Zodiacland are still alive? And presumably so are we since we are reading this? The weather is messed up but still sometimes magical and pretty? We are connected (purply,) whether we like it or not? Pendulous shreds for celebration... but extant, yes? So go ahead, click on the image or this very sentence to download the high-rez, print friendly pdf. It should come out best on 8.5x11, and I personally request that you color in the umbrella. I heard somewhere it takes a village, which we could totally make if we get enough technicolor umbrellas.  

Hey babies! So this post marks the first birfdae of www.zodiacandfriends.com! The short story about today's post is that I wanted to make a mashup of things I like to honor this landmark and then share the results with you in a form that you can print out all CMYK-style on 11x17 paper, crop and then use to territorialize your fridge, maybe with magnets. Party favors for everyone! But don't think this means we've arrived... maybe next year I'll aim for something scratch-and-sniff. Click on the image or this very sentence to download the high-rez, print friendly pdf! Wuv u & ttfn!

Ha. My housemate Arin just started a beautiful and helpful blog about popsicles that will bring only joy to the world and all its hot and tired little babies. This development has made possible a new thing called "meta blogging." Brace yourselves, then click on this. You'll see Zodiac figure heavily somewhere around "chai."

Hey check out the results of the Philly Comix Jam # 25 here! There's only a couple with frames that I drew which is weird because I felt like I was spewing them out like a factory. Maybe some pages weren't posted. But to elaborate, if I may, that fateful night initiated 24 hours of several varieties of spewing because I got food poisoning from a  open faced roast beef sandwich at Skinners. Someone somewhere had flooded it with a sultry/savory brown sauce that was quite compelling while it lasted. But yeah: Philly Comix Jam!

So with the click of the mouse at the end of this paragraph, I have officially posted one hundred Zodiac comics on the hundredth day of her "blog," the very unraveling phantasmagoria heaped before you. "But how is it done!!!" you quip with breathless enchantment? Well, my little pony, the answer is d: cheating. It is done with cheating. It is sad but true, what I concealed from you in the flourish of my hand these past months was merely a tissue of lies. FIRST: I quit my job in mid June, leaving me a good two months to move home with my parents to ask "Who am I? Where am I?" while trying to distract myself by drawing comics. I was well into this when the blog was born on July 30 with the help of technical midwife and wizard friend Matt Pinto at Social Ink. That adds up to about 20 comics straight out of the gate. THEN I began grad school, which slowed me down some but ever the eager procrastinator I managed to not do school work several times. And late last week, gaining on Zodiac and Friends' hundredth sun while staring down my dizzying absence of important accomplishments situation and impending shadow of Saturn Return, I decided to really really cheat and use 15 old favorites from when Zodiac was in college. AND FINALLY, because that maneuver didn't quite get me there, I'm counting the 6 portraits that accompany our friends' bios on the "how do you do?" page. And that, my favorite fillies, is how it is done. You're welcome to it as long as you don't tell anyone I told you. Or you could do it the honest way, see if I care. Just remember: in the game of halfhearted, velveteen self-flagellation second place is the first loser. That was your cue to pop the cork. Okay NOW with party o'clock out of the way I'ma get all kinds of Lion King on you. Your father and I have discussed the matter and we decided that as of TODAY, this bully pulpit will only display a rotating cycle of 100 comics at a time. So for each fresh-faced new arrival the oldest comic in the house turns into a pumpkin and retires back to my hard drive. It's called the "circle," not the "bottomless bacon basket" of life for some reason, right?

So in my enthusiasm for Halloween I exhumed some original Zodiac 'toons from 2003 and 2004. Don't ask me why her legs were so short then... I guess because she was younger? Anyway, enjoy.

Somewhere in the wilderness of my weekend I lost my Zodiac and Friends sketchbook. I'd even finished some new 'toons to share, just hadn't scanned them yet. A couple more places to look before I begin grieving. I'd be much obliged if you would be so kind as to send good thoughts!

So as to only annoy those of you who want to be annoyed, Zodiac and Friends have joined Twitter! Follow them into the cacophonous thicket at http://twitter.com/zodiacnfriends. Also in unrelated news, my May SpeakEasy DC storytelling performance was uploaded on to YouTube this week! It's a true story I prepared for the "Coming of Age" themed open mic, despite the fact that many of the specific details are lies. Watch me ramble inelegantly for 7 minutes straight over here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tm6wyXWk5PY. More comics soon, cross my heart.