Hobo Blues

Between September and December it seems to me only a five minute jumble. I'm still out here, right there, over yonder, as Sexton Ming once said, still kicking.

In the newly refashioned Comics Journal as an online animal, indomitable author Bob Levin grapples with my In Tongues Illustrated book and interrogates yours unruly.

At the end of September, I returned to SPX, this time with partner in slime Brian Manley (aka Brine Manley) and made fast buddies with the classiest of cartooning dames (and the best tablemates one could hope for in a convention type setting) Sally Bloodblath & Erin Colby Griffin. Tom Neely stumbled across me, and we discovered that great minds think alike (both Neely, along with Manley and myself, are interested in producing soundtracks for our comics projects), which resulted in his preaching the gospel via the microphone of Sparkplug Comics. Then, more recently, Mr. Neely did me the honor of including my book in his "top 5" list for the year over at The Daily Cross Hatch.

The aforementioned Griffin greased the wheels with Benn Ray (or at least she pointed out my book to him) from Atomic Books of Baltimore, and that led to my book being in the store and available online from them. A fact I'm quite proud of, thanks to Miss Erin.

Oh, and I ain't been idle, party people. I've been building lots of contraptions that have become something else. Brine Manley and I took with us to SPX an old fashioned photocopied mini-comic version of the first chapter of a novel in progress, Creekwater. One thing leads to another, and now that book is being serialized in the Lexington, KY rag, North of Center. The last three images from my sketchbook above were preparatory numbers for my non-collaborative work in progress, The Organ-Grinder.

Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I'm scattered. Not always in the same place and time as my scanner, but my ink and pens and brushes and bristol and Moleskine sketchbooks remain, like a gunslinger's six-shooter, at my side.