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.