I don't think I ever drew a finished version of this. Too bad.

Packing for my big move at the end of the month, I found myself browsing through nine years' worth of the spiral-bound Walgreens notebooks in which I do all my sketching. I've got dozens of these, and around two in the morning it seemed like a good idea to scan the most entertaining pages.

Here, for example, is some G.I. Joe art. The line starts here, IDW!



And here's my favorite covert superteam:



Holy crap I gave Michael a jheri curl.

More to follow...

I recently drew a pin-up for the first volume of Shaenon Garrity's excellent webcomic Skin Horse. This tale of crossdressing government agents, zombies, transgenic intelligent animals and all other kinds of strange and wondrous creatures features Shaenon's best artwork ever. Plus, it's full of references to two of my favorite things: 1970s science fiction and children's books. The first volume is now available for preorder here -- please check it out!

Do I need to create a 'mammoths in unusual places' tag?



(see here)

I may occasionally make noises about photography or art or whatnot, but the real reason I carry a camera everywhere is so I can share things like this with you.

( the MAN GROOMER )

The preorder period for Skin Horse Volume 1 is going great. Thanks very much to everyone who's placed orders so far. As a special bonus, I will sign and sketch a character in every copy preordered by July 31. That's right: all preorders get signatures and sketches!

Preorders can be placed here:

http://www.skin-horse.com/store.html

Also, it has come to my attention that some people are unaware that the entire run of Narbonic is available in print. Because it is! And if you order all six volumes together, I'll sign and sketch in each volume. You can order Narbonic books here:

http://www.narbonic.com/swag.html

And yes, I agree it's inconvenient having separate stores for Narbonic and Skin Horse. This will be remedied soon, but we're not ready to make the big announcement just yet. Keep watching the skies.

The vines didn't die all the back yet, but I was hungry for some potatoe salad, so it was time to pick some potatoes. I grew these Yukon Gold potatoes in a thick mulch of half compost and half wood chips. I dug up 6 plants and almost filled this 13 quart strainer.
( a little more havest )

I re-staked the tomato plants yet again today; they all LIED about being compact plants that don't require support. Meanwhile, the yellow pear is intent on taking over the universe, but I'm letting it fend for itself; at least those tomatoes are lightweight. It's well outgrown the cage and I don't have anything bigger. It's growing up the side of the house now. I was planning on sticking some of it into the trellis there, actually. But we're going to have to pull the trellis away from the wall when they repaint the house in a couple of weeks, so I don't want it to get too comfortable.

I finally gave up on my hanging tomato plant as well. I don't know what went wrong. The remaining tomatoes all ripened at their current (tiny) size rather than maturing to regular cherry tomato size, and all the foliage is dead. Final tally: 28 good tomatoes, 75 dubious ones (if the tiny tomatoes are very ripe, some of them taste okay, but they're not that great since they're mostly skin). There were probably 75 more where that came from, but I only took the ones that looked like they might be worth eating. If the plant had thrived, it would have been awesome. I have no idea what variety it was, or why it died when all my other tomatoes are green and healthy. Fertilizer may have been an issue, but by the time I did anything it was surely too late.

I've had nine tomatoes off the yellow pear (decent but a little bland), six excellent ones off Patio (I think? it might be Better Bush) and two off Better Bush (except it might be Patio). The outermost layer of skin on the latter was... persistent... in a way that I remember Patio being from a few years ago. I wish I were sure which was which. Sadly, the one with the better tomatoes has been a bitch to stake. It's got one skinny stem and is determined to commit suicide.

The only plant I haven't had anything off yet is Bush Goliath, and true to its name it has some nearly full-sized tomatoes ripening. I'm looking forward to that.

Something's been chewing on one of the plants, but I can't find any caterpillars. They're hard to spot, though. They haven't gotten any of the tomatoes yet, at least. I also chucked away about six snails while I was puttering around. One was the size of my pinky fingernail. They look so innocent when they're young.

I also trimmed spent blooms off the kangaroo paw (they're terribly messy if you let them fall off) and pulled out some alyssum that was never going to take root. The garden's looking a little crappy these days, but I don't seem to have a lot of energy for anything but the tomatoes, and with the water restrictions I don't really want to try to establish more flowers anyway.

Hi all,

I've discovered a house centipede living in my bathroom. Everything I've read about them is basically summed up by "they're manky looking but they eat everything you don't want in your house!"

I know there are at least a few silverfish here (probably more than I realize, but until they eat through my clothes and books, whatever). And I've seen spiders around. It's the spiders that eek me out, I'm horribly arachnophobic and really would prefer to NOT share my living space with them.

So. House centipedes? Is there any reason to get rid of this guy?

(And if this is too off topic, I'll gladly remove. I figure you folks seem to have it down pat as far as beneficial insects, so you'd be good to ask. And before it goes there, I know spiders are also beneficial. But the whole thing with a phobia is it's beyond explanation and reason, I'm just terrified of them.)

The New York Times had an article last month, that I missed until now, about the Alta Rock deep geothermal project up in the area of The Geysers, a current geothermal field. They discuss the numerous small quakes that are already created by the expansion and contraction of rock in the area as water is injected (causing cooling and contraction of the rocks, opening fissures), as steam is created (creating pressure that further expands the fissures and creates new cracks), and as the steam is extracted (relieving pressure).

They also have a story about a similar deep well in the vicinity of Basel, Switzerland, that seems to have caused some significant shaking. The article feels to me a bit overwrought in its descriptions of the problems in Basel. They play up how terrifying the quake was, and barely mention the fact that nobody got hurt. Not even people standing directly over the borehole. This sounds to me like an argument for building your geothermal projects out in a rural area, rather than right by a major city. Alta Rock's project is, in fact, far from any major city, suburb, or exurb.

A lot of people seem to be scared that the Alta Rock project might set off a truly major quake. Color me skeptical. Major quakes happen when pressure builds up along a fault line for a very long time, and then the energy is all released at once. Having numerous small quakes sounds, to me, like a good thing. If it really turns out that we can induce quakes, it might actually be a good idea to start doing so at significant stress points along the major fault lines, on an ongoing basis. The fact that this happens to be a method for producing extremely high-temperature / high-pressure steam, which can generate a lot of energy, is an added bonus.

Geothermal is, IMHO, one of the more promising sources of base load energy generation; if we have to provide some relocation funding, or funding for people to build houses that can withstand small quakes on a regular basis, fine. But I don't think we ought to have the "paper of record" suggesting that it's going to cause a huge quake that will knock down San Francisco when it seems equally-or-more likely that it will actually help relieve pressure through small quakes, reducing the chance of a "Big One".

Shaenon is self-publishing the first volume of Skin Horse, and she's getting a submission packet together for Diamond Comics Distributors. This is a line from their submission guidelines:


"If you publish comics, Diamond generally receives a discount in the range of 60-70% off the US retail (cover) price."

If we offer a 70% discount, I'm sure that Diamond is more likely to consider listing Skin Horse in their catalog, but we'll only get $4.20 per copy sold (minus whatever shipping costs we incur getting the books to Diamond). If we offer a 60% discount, we'll make $5.60 per copy sold--still not great, since we're self-publishing this, but I always prefer making more money instead of less money when possible.

So, the question is: Is offering a 70% discount going to greatly improve our chances of getting listed in Diamond's catalog? Is only offering a 50% discount a guarantee that they won't even look at the book and will automatically reject it? Given Diamond's new standards, what can we do to improve our chances apart from putting Wolverine or Barack Obama on the cover? Are any self-publishers getting picked up by Diamond at all right now? Are there any other alternatives to Diamond if we want to get into comic shops (apart from the traditional method of hauling books from store-to-store and trying to convince the owners to carry it)?

Thanks for any advice.

Hello:) I am a novice gardener trying my hand at veggies. My carrots failed abysmally, but otherwise things seem to be coming along. I am worried about the watermelon plant... I wonder how to make it happy?

Anyway my husband says that since I seem to love mucking around with growing things we should compost. So, now I have a bin.

Any advice to help sort through greens and browns and advice on what to add and not to add and things to help it get going good?

Right now, I've been adding all peelings and such. I know I am supposed to turn it, what does that really mean? Right now I've just been flopping around all of my fruit and vegable waste with a shovel....

What do I do during the winter?

You guys seem to really know what your doing, and if I am going to do this, I might as well do it right:) So any advice is welcome!!!

I have a specific patch of peas that my deer apparently find irresistible. I put bird netting over them and the deer avoided my garden for weeks. They didn't nibble on my daughter's peas, on my beans, on my lettuce, or anything else in my garden. And my peas were getting increasingly tangled in the bird netting. Finally, I figured it was worth a shot and removed the netting last night. By morning, half my peas had been nibbled.

The bird netting is obviously not working, but just as obviously, I need some sort of barrier. Floating row covers would probably work, but I haven't been able to find them at any of the local garden stores. Is there a good online site that would have them?

Just for the record, I am not interested in any other method of deterrent. I won't spray anything on my peas and anything else will get in my way more than the deer's.

Page 3 of The Strange High House in the Mist is up! Now to obsessively fiddle around with text placement issues. The next page will go up on July 10.

I think I just bought a house.

Last night, I dreamed that nonelvis had created a community solely for the posting of bacon-related recipes. The first one was bacon chocolate cake. This was somehow in coordination with a couch-to-5k community, because there was a movement suggesting bacon was a health food.

For the record, I was this close to putting Polk's head on a pike, but Andrew convinced me that the fun ends when small children get beheaded.

http://www.girlamatic.com/comics/mell.php

Meanwhile, in The Chronicles of William Bazillion, is that ever really a "plus side"?

Man, what a week. Work's running me ragged, Shaenon and I are thinking about making the most major purchase of our entire lives, and I got mugged yesterday, so I'm pretty much made of 100% stress right now.

I wasn't going to mention the mugging to anyone, but I'm stressed out, and I figure this will get it out of my system. Short version is that I had to go back to work last night to fax some paperwork for the aforementioned major purchase, so I took the BART downtown around 8pm. A couple of guys came up to me and asked if I had any drugs on me, then walked away when I ignored them, and I got off at my stop and walked to work. I punched in the security code at my office building, and just after I stepped inside, the two guys from the BART train followed me into the building, cornered me, ransacked my backpack, grabbed my iPod out of my pocket, then ran off. I just now realized that they also grabbed my digital camera, which was still loaded up with all sorts of pictures that I'd never gotten around to downloading.

On the plus side, they didn't beat me up, and they didn't take my wallet. On the downside, I'm full of stress, anger, insecurity, and I'm out $400 worth of electronics that I'd rather be spending money to replace--I'd just bought the camera a couple of months ago, and the iPod was a birthday present from Shaenon that probably had another three years in it before reaching total obsolescence.

The injustice of the whole thing is what I just can't cope with on a fundamental level. The idea that any two guys--or any one big guy, really--can just violate your world like that... It's a schoolyard level of unfairness. Why did they do that? Because they could. What are the chances they'll find these guys? Probably next to none.

The thoughts that this is putting in my head are really bothering me, too. I'm mad at myself for not fighting these guys, but realistically, I know that two against one, especially since they might have been armed, wouldn't have been in my favor in an empty building. But it still bothers me that I didn't do anything beyond trying to hang onto the stuff they were taking from me. I'm mad at the government and the economy and George Bush and Arnold Schwarzenegger and everyone who made the bad decisions that screwed up our economy to the point that I don't feel I can walk the street safely alone at 8pm. I'm troubled that at least on some level, I want these guys dead. I'm sure that I'd be perfectly happy just getting my stuff back and having the peace of mind that would come with having these guys locked up, but the reality is that a couple of creeps are out there sleeping soundly and enjoying my stuff while I'm looking forward to another week or two of restlessness and paranoia.

Oh, yeah, and there's a new installment of my comic up, which you can see here. I think those guys stole some drawing pens out of my bag, too, come to think of it. The hits just keep on coming.

I wrote a blog post on samurai manga for the Asian Art Museum here in San Francisco. I was a little surprised that more great samurai manga haven't been translated into English. Actually, Ooku doesn't have all that much samurai action, but I included it anyway because it's so boss.