During these weeks I weighed the choice to buy a very unique set of shoes, read on below for the full scoop. I’ve also included my training schedule for the next month and a half.

More comics to come next week!

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What I’m coming to understand is the physical activity of running has hidden benefits and revelations. Being the journal comic prone cartoonist I am, I think keeping a cartoon runner’s journal would be an interesting thing for me to do and for you to read. While I don’t plan on doing them on post-it notes and poor-quality iPhone pics every week, I will try to keep it loose yet legible.

I know of one other comic in the world where a running journal has been employed: the masterful “Haunted”! If anyone else has suggestions of running comics I could read and…uh…”draw” inspiration from I’d love to hear about ‘em!

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See? Funny as shit. Completely takes the piss out of the Bat. I’d give this guy a hearty kick in the jewels if he came up to me all “I’m batman” in his throat cancer voice, wanting to start something.

See that? Now her crazy-ass eyes completely distracts from her massive anti-feminist boobies. Power-Girl problem solved!

Oh wait…this one doesn’t work so well…hang on…

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There you go. Takes a little suspension of disbelief — but would you care what this guy has to say about you as you rob a bank? All those quips at your expense are merely an attempt to preserve his own, non-existant dignity. Stupid Spidey.

DONE!

Jason

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This is part of my thesis package. Cartooning school is awesome. Share/Bookmark

A soon-to-be college graduate scours the streets of Austin, Texas, looking for a deal. A deal on shoes. The recent trend of kitten-heeled or wedge shoes made it possible for the said graduate (me) to drink a bit and still dance the fuck outta the night. These shoes fit the bill-too uncomfortable to wear for a full day but fantastic enough for the poorly-lit dance  floor. They cost me four whole dollars, that is two dollars a foot! How could something so complicated be worth so little and what could that mean for our society? Did the person who created these shoes get more for them, beautiful wonders that they are? I can only hope so.

Time in Austin was key in development but one thing I hadn’t truly learned during my university experience was to create. At a liberal arts college with a ginormous fine arts program I learned so much about process, history and analysis of art. My eyes keener, hands sharper and brains addled after four years, I still knew nothing about creating or what that meant in daily life. My goal was to consume and be consumed. So my work suffered; pithy lines on insincere parchment. 

Four years later, I know the value of a day and hours, even minutes key in its foundation. Maybe the concentration of this new town I live in, White River Junction, breeds a creative fervor in its inhabitants. Without the call of a mall or movie theater in walking distance, we often resort to making our own fun (as the saying goes). All I know is my friends and loved ones are all driven to do more, be more than a paycheck or a smear on the wall after the rolled up paper of life smacks them. That need to consume is still beaten into our skulls by advertisements and even psychologists. Buying a new outfit can temporarily provide the body with endorphins and simulate happiness!

To hell with that I say. Create something instead. Take clothes you already have and staple ‘em, stitch ‘em together, bleach ‘em, color ‘em, anything! Mod something you sorta like and make it yours forever. Tired of the restaurants? Find a recipe on the internet or better yet, a friend and make it! We forget how much joy there is in using our own hands unless it is exchanging money for something tagged or eating off of dishes that are not our own.You need not spend an exorbitant amount on shoes or food or even make your own yet consider your daily choices and live fully. Go from ‘had’ an interesting life to ‘having’ one now because you only get worn out on that dance floor so many times before you’re pitched.

-JenShare/Bookmark

Six LIES About Porcupines That Are Not True.

1. In turn of the century Canada, sheep were in fact quite rare. Thusly, condoms had to be made from the skins of the Porcupine. Of course, this led to a stiff decline in the birthrate, with some historians going so far as to say the porcu-phylactic caused the downfall of the Third Great Canadian Empire.
2. Never introduce a Porcupine to your lover. Porcupines live to sew dissension among otherwise happy couples. They are watching you through your windows. They know you don’t do enough dishes.
3. Porcupine is Sumerian for “Nettle Pig”.
4. An age old war has been raging for eons between the Porcupines and the Sea Urchins. Both claim the title of “Nature’s Pokiest Animal.” Thankfully, skirmishes are rare…except on the coasts.
5. Porcupines are filled with a grape-like drink rather than blood. Go ahead, lick one. They taste amazing.
6. If a porcupine mistakenly made love to a pineapple, the offspring would be the size of a bus, just like a liger. Strangely enough, it would have a silky coat like a mink that shampoos with Pantene. Poky is a double-recessive gene. Sort of like how two wrongs make a right.

1 FACT About Porcupines ( I Think…My Memory Is Hazy. )

1. My step dad totally shot a porcupine, like, twenty times with a pellet gun this one time. I think it got into our car engine when we were camping. Either it lived, or died a horrible death. I can’t really remember which.

(All of this is crap. I just had to draw a lot of Porcupines for a job, and decided to recycle some art. Then I drew something new.)

(Oh well.)

Later,

JasonShare/Bookmark

I’m sitting in the kitechenette of our African themed hotelroom tapping this post out on my iPhone and have four blisters and a light sunburn.

I had written a long thoughtful blog about nostalgia and Disney and creativity but my posting from an iPhone made me lose it all…for the love of blog.

Here’s a visual summary about my thoughts on theme parks and love for Jim Henson:

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Thanks to everyone who stopped at our table this weekend! It was so good to see you, shake your hand and give you a button or a comic! If you are in the mood for some fun posts, read some past ones. This little one is a little on the heavy side.

Over the weekend I had an injection of comics culture. It had been over half a year since my last comics and indie art convention, APE, and so much has happened to me since then that I felt a little off balance. When I went to APE I had one freelance job for sure and two maybes that quickly became yeses. I had been doing HCE for only a few months and hadn’t yet gotten into the flow of characters or lines my pocket brush could make on paper. Now I have a full time job making comics and illustrations for a company an hour from my apartment and I barely have the energy to make my own deadlines with HCE and Rarebits.

To put it another way: I felt like a loser.

Ok, I feel like a loser a lot of the time without much cause, but hear me out. The passion and joy in the eyes of all cartoonists I met and hung out with over the weekend in New York spoke of a hunger they had to see their work on screen or on paper. They lived for their expression. Comics were life, love and limb for them. Even those who had to suffer the so-called “asteroid field” of freebie tables were there for the love of comics. It reminded me of something TMNT creator, Peter Laird said to my CCS class in 2007, “If you don’t absolutely love comics and what you are doing, you won’t make it.”

I couldn’t be prouder seeing my fellow Rarebits cartoonists share their work with old and new fans. My joy on Sunday night when I read that Billy the Dunce was on the shortlist for best comics of the con was only matched and exceeded by Jen Vaughn and Kyleen Flynn. Their drive and love of comics and comics culture was evident all weekend, it was an inspiration to me.

I’ve toyed with the idea of stepping away from publishing comics on and off again every month or so. I ask myself if I love what I am doing. A conversation I had this weekend was about that very thing: if your heart isn’t in it, then it will show and not be worth it for reader or cartoonist. I am NOT at the time stepping away from comics, but it seems like I’ve been stuck in the undertow of life and can’t get back on my drawing board.

Next year, for MoCCA I hope to have something worthwhile to show. Something I’ve poured more into than the few reserve drops of creativity that constitute the majority of what I did in HCE volume 1.

And for all of you out there making comics or art, I will say this: NEVER stop doing what you love, even when it sucks. You will regret it more if you walk away. I’ve done it once, I won’t do it again (more on that some other time).

BTW: The new MGMT album is so good, NOTHING like the last one. If you are a fan of music, pick it up. Mind blowing. Truly.Share/Bookmark

Along with a many other Center for Cartoon associates, (including Alec Longstreth, Nomi Kane, and Joe Lambert) Billy the Dunce got picked as one of the best comics at MoCCA for 2010 by the New York Daily News!

So there you go.

Now that that’s out of the way – rest assured there will be something new and sort of funny going up later tonight. About Porcupines.

Later,

JasonShare/Bookmark

Table G3 along the back wall with all the Center for Cartoon Studies students. Come by to say hi and get some Rare Bits buttons! Jason has beautiful prints for sale and Billy the Dunce comics! Sam has Here Comes Everyone comics, These Things Happen 2-4 minicomics, and a new anthology called Tag Team! Jen has Menstruation Station: Menarche Aboard, Don’t Hate Menstruate minis and Mermaid Hostel comics! So much good stuff here!Share/Bookmark