4 May 2005

Volume Two

One month later, I've finally gotten around to setting up "volume two" of the "God's ex-Boyfriend" site. From now on, all new entries in this category will go there.

In the Realms of the Unreal

my rating:

I pity Henry Darger.

I can identify with him a bit as well.

And I even envy him.

Henry Darger is the subject of In the Realms of the Unreal, a documentary whose name is taken from The Story of the Vivian Girls, in What is known as the Realms of the Unreal, of the Glandeco-Angelinnian War Storm, Caused by the Child Slave Rebellion, Darger's magnum opus. It's a 15,000-page story with countless painted illustrations about an imaginary war revolving around seven pre-adolescent blonde princesses. No one knew it existed until just before Darger, a reclusive janitor, died.

The film was made by Jessica Yu, who manages to make do with rather limited material. For one thing, there are only three (black and white) photographs of Darger in existence, one of which barely shows his face and another of which is probably 50 years old. Not a lot of footage to get out of that. The novel is a rambling, incoherent story that apparently doesn't make for very good reading aloud. And still illustrations don't work well in a movie. Her main tool for getting around this is to animate the drawings, which she manages to do without losing their character and turning it into a Disney film. She also interviews the few people who sort of new Darger: his landlords, neighbors, the former altar boy at his parish, etc.

How little-known the man was is emphasized early in the movie by the fact that his closest acquaintances can't even agree on how to pronounce his last name, or where he "always" sat in his multiple-times-per-day attendance at Catholic mass: in the front, the back, or the middle.

But you can learn a lot about him from the work he left behind. He had an obvious fascination with pre-adolescent girls. He collected photographs and illustrations of them, which he used for teaching himself to draw. His art was never very sophisticated, and depended heavily on copying and tracing from photos and other illustrations, then painting with watercolor.

On one hand, the girl heroes of his story were naively innocent, resembling standard cutie-pie figures of the early 20th century. On the other hand, these girls were the leaders of a bloody rebellion of Christian slave children against a ruthless, godless enemy power. And on the third hand, they were frequently drawn nude. And usually with penises.

It's unclear what exactly the penises were about. One theory is that Darger - having grown up in an all-male environment, and probably a virgin - didn't really understand male/female anatomy. But he didn't always give the girls dicks, so he may have understood that not every child was equipped like he had been. Another theory is that he saw them as innocent saviors of a sort, so he drew them like baby Jesus was usually painted: with a little sac and dingus.

There's a definite religious theme to it, which is at times typically naive stuff about the virtuous Christians vs. the evil and enslaving godless foreigners. Darger was a compulsive mass-attender. But there's an undercurrent that seems to challenge God, with Darger producing this horribly violent disaster in his fantasy world, as if to demand that God do something about it. The ending of his epic is conflicted, with two versions: one in which the slave child rebellion succeeds with the defeat of the evil general (named after a bully from Darger's youth), and another in which the Vivian girls lose.

Yu provides a fair amount of biographical information about Darger, which is where most of my pity for him comes. He lost a sister and his mother during childbirth, and his father not long after. He grew up institutionalised as "feeble-minded", which certainly didn't help him become a well-adjusted member of society.

My empathy with him comes from the fact that I'm a less-extreme version of him. He spent all of his spare time alone in his apartment; I get out a bit more than that - such as going to see art films like this (by myself) - but there are times I'd be just as happy to stay in. And obviously no one has every really understood his psychology, which I'm sure is true of me as well.

As for my envy.... how could I not envy him? He produced what has to be the longest novel in history, and unquestionably the longest illustrated novel (which is what I consider "my medium"). His apartment was filled with painting after painting, some of them huge. I have a hard time getting anything onto paper. He had levels of discipline that I can only dream of. Granted, it came out of an obessive/compulsive neurological disorder (an after-the fact diagnosis of Asperger's Syndrome has been tossed around the art world since his work was discovered), but he definitely produced more in his lifetime than I ever will.

There's also the issue of fame. I like to think it doesn't matter to me... but it does. I'd really like my work to be seen by more than dozens of people. And the fact that his paintings are now - after his death and discovery of course - selling for tens of thousands of dollars makes me a little jealous. Even when I'm dead, I can't see anything I've created commanding... well, any money. I guess I'm just not freakish enough.

The thing is, I think I am. I've got ideas for stories that - in my own mind, at least - would blow the roof off. God knows I'm iconoclastic enough that my views are often so far "outside the box" as to question whether or not there's even a box anywhere around to put them in.

But unlike Henry Darger, I don't spend my every waking hour putting my thoughts onto paper (or any other medium). I dabble. When I'm in the mood I might put several hours into something, but I often waste a lot of time doing other things. Like this blog. Or watching TV. Or drinking and not getting much of anything done.

The Spirit of Will Eisner

Will Eisner died yesterday. If you're a serious fan of the medium of comics, you know who he was. He was the Grand Master of Sequential Art.

He's famous for a bunch of things, not the least of which is having the foremost awards of the comics medium named after him. While he was still very much alive, no less. Heck, he hadn't even retired yet. (In fact, he never did. His next book comes out later this year.) The thing is, it was only slightly awkward when Eisner himself won an "Eisner".

In 1940 he created the landmark Sunday newspaper insert "The Spirit", which (to please his editor) had the trappings of a "masked adventurer" (like those trendy new "super heroes"), but was so much more than that. The character, the setting, and the strip itself had depth. And the art... the sequential storytelling... was groundbreaking, doing previously-unseen things with the page as a structure for conveying the narrative. It was Eisner who transformed the comic strip (panel, panel, panel...) into the comic book (page, page, page...).

As if that weren't enough, in the 1970s and 1980s he pushed to gain new respectability for the medium as more than just a vehicle for pictures of men in spandex hitting each other. And more importantly, he showed the way... first with A Contract With God a "graphic novel" which demonstrated the subtlety and seriousness and length that comics could aspire to, and later with Comics & Sequential Art and Graphic Storytelling & Visual Narratives, how-to books that explained so much about the craft and vocabulary of the medium.

And as if that weren't enough, he never stopped, even in his late 80's. He averaged a graphic novel per year. His output after "retirement age" was greater than many cartoonists accomplish in their whole lives. And the number of comics conventions, seminars, classes, etc. he participated in was amazing.

And he did it all with such warmth and class. He treated everyone with respect, and received it in return. In the comics industry, where feuds and rivalries abound, I have never heard a single person say anything negative about him. Even artists who couldn't be coerced into agreeing with each other about anything ("The sky is blue!" "No, it's cyan!") will agree about what a great artist and what a great person Will Eisner was. You could fill a book with all the fond memories, the inspiring anecdotes, the encouraging bits of advice that followed in Eisner's wake.

I'm saddened to say that I don't have an "Eisner story" to share. I never met him. Which means I also never got any direct encouragement from him regarding my own work (as oh so many others did). But he left behind a great body of work, including some excellent teaching tools.

As a writer and an artist, I'll never be anywhere close to Eisner. But considering how much he did, even when much older than I am... that helps motivate me to keep working on it. And considering that even Eisner's work has now come to an end... that helps motivate me not to put it off.

The Write Time

In The Sandman, a comicbook series written by Neil Gaiman, there is a character named Lucien who tends a supernatural library filled with books that are dreamt of, but never written. Next month the library is going to get raided.

November is National Novel Writing Month... NaNoWriMo, for short. It's an event in which the participants will each devote their free time for one month to the task of writing a complete 50,000-word novel. It doesn't have to be the Great American Novel. It doesn't even have to be good. It just has to be 50,000 words, and it has to be started and finished in November.

I think it's a brilliant idea. There are so many people who keep telling themselves that "someday" they're going to write a book, but never actually sit down and start it. And there are those who've started, but have been dragging the process along for so bloody long that they'll probably never finish. NaNoWriMo offers a gentle kick in the head for either kind of person.

There are some who scoff and sneer at this challenge, complaining that it encourages mediocrity. But you know, it's easier to fix a poorly written first draft of a novel than it is to fix a blank ream of paper or an empty diskette. And even if the product of a month's writing ends up sitting untouched and unread from December onward, it's still a worthwhile exercise. The way to get good at writing is to write, and participating in NaNoWriMo would force you to do just that.

I do have to admit that I won't be participating myself. For one thing, my free time for the next month or several is pretty much spoken for... and since some of those commitments may put much-needed money in my (creditors') pockets, they have to take priority. And to be honest, I don't think I have any novels in me. I'm more inclined toward graphic novels (long-form comics), which are in many ways a very different medium. I want to tell stories with pictures, and a simple translation of 50,000 words to 50 pictures doesn't work.

Instead, I'll be participating in a similar challenge next April: 24 Hour Comics Day. It doesn't last as long as NaNoWriMo, but it's more intense, requiring the cartoonist to produce a complete 24-page story - plot, script, finished art, word balloons, captions - in 24 hours. To put that into perspective, a busy comics writer generally produces maybe four such scripts in a month. A typical comics penciler does one page a day... and that's not even counting the time somebody else then spends inking it, lettering it, and so on. Do the math and you'll see that it's insane to think that one person working alone could produce a professional-quality 24-page comic in 24 hours.

But that's not the point. The point, again, is to get the juices flowing, to get something out of your head and onto paper. For pros like the ones described above, it means throwing their usual self-critical analysis out the window and just creating. For amateurs like me it's mostly about the same old issues of getting started on something, and getting it finished. I'm a pathological procrastinator and perfectionist, so I need that. Badly.

In the meantime, I'm giving myself a little challenge of sorts to get my pencil moving a bit more. This whole blog thingy is here to get me writing more (opinion, not fiction), and it's working nicely, thanks. But I'm still not drawing like I need to be. So, instead of (or perhaps in addition to) the photo/graphic images I've been decorating my weblog entries with, I'm going to be illustrating them. Some of these illos might possibly be works of expressive genius and exquisite craft, some will definitely be hasty scribbles. But what matters is that I'm doing them. And with each one I do, that's one more piece rescued from the "Art" section of Lucien's library.

Christopher Reeve, Superman

It's a rude awakening when the wake-up timer on your clock radio turns it on just in time for the announcer to tell you that one of your heroes has died. Christopher Reeve died yesterday, of heart failure.

I wrote an entry about Reeve last year, which expresses much of what I thought of the man and why. What it boils down to is the fact that, despite spending the last decade of his life as the physical antithesis of Superman, he even moreso typified the character of Superman: good-natured, courageous, altruistic, and unwilling to accept defeat. He continued to pursue his Lois Lane (directing and acting) and he never gave up the fight against his Lex Luthor (paralysis... not just his own, but that of any spinal cord injury sufferer).

I wrote earlier: In the first movie, Jor-El (played by Brando) said to his son, "They can be a great people, Kal-El; they wish to be. They only lack the light to show the way. For this reason, above all, their capacity for good, I have sent them you, my only son." Who knew that he was really talking about Christopher Reeve?

Kate Worley, Mistress of Kitty Porn

Over the weekend, a great American passed away, one who raised the spirits of so many, a great communicator with a daring message of hopefulness for us all. I'm speaking not of Ronald Reagan, but of Kate Worley.

Worley was half of the creative team behind Omaha the Cat Dancer, probably the most notorious comicbook series of the 1980's and early 1990's. It was about an exotic dancer named Omaha and her circle of friends (and not-so-friends). Worley wrote the stories, which were illustrated by her then-husband Reed Waller. The stories were frequently sexually explicit, and unapologetically erotic, but they were more than just porn. Thanks to Worley, they were actual stories, about characters that - despite having the heads, fur, and tails of cats, dogs, and assorted other animals - were more human than Bruce Wayne, Jean Grey, Archie Andrews, or most of the other characters that we think of when someone mentions "comics". They were not only "adult", they were adult.

There's actually a whole subgenre of funny-animal-porn comics, but Worley and Waller were the lions of it. By their example, they raised the bar not only for the quality of comics writing, but for the freedom of expression of the medium, and by extension our sexual freedom in society at large. Worley and Waller both came out as bisexual in the late 1980's, making them among the first publically openly queer creators in comics. (Other gay-identified creators before them had usually used pen-names.) Although both creators seem to be closer to the low end of hte Kinsey scale, Omaha included characters of assorted orientations, and the couple proudly contributed a 5-page story and the cover for the "funny animals" issue of Gay Comics. And above all, they celebrated sex as the potentially joyful, perfectly natural, part of everyday life it is.

Omaha came to a rather abrupt end when Worley and Waller broke up, an acrimonious split that seemed completely irreconcilable. She later remarried, to cartoonist Jim Vance (best known for the excellent graphic novel Kings In Disguise) and had two children. Part of the sad irony of Worley's death at this particular time is the fact that the wounds between her and Waller had finally healed enough that they had recently begun work on new Omaha material, to finish a planned reprint of the series. Unfortunately, her cancer returned at the same time, and she only got a little bit written before she was overtaken by it. Waller has said that he and Vance intend to finish the project in her memory, based on her notes and what they both know of her plans for the story.

I hope they do, and that they can bring some closure to the story of Omaha and her friends. It would also be a fine example of how mature adults can cope with the obviously awkward relationship between these two survivors. But even if the cruel hand of Fate intervenes again, or if Vance and Waller just can't make it work, I'm grateful for what Kate Worley accomplished before the break-up. Not just the 24 issues of comics, but for what it did for the industry and society. That mind- and door-opening work will always remain unfinished, but in such matters the beginning is so much more important than the finishing.

Cerebus: The End

I didn't get to the comics shop on New Comics Day this past week, so I was a few days late in picking up the 300th - and final - issue of Cerebus. But heck, Dave was late sometimes, so I don't feel too bad about that.

Cerebus is - or was, I should say - an epic story about the life of an aardvark. It began in 1977 as a Conan parody, written, illustrated, and published by a guy named Dave Sim. It rather quickly grew into something with more depth and breadth than that, and Sim declared fairly early on his intention to continue producing the series for 300 issues, culminating with the protagonist's death, "unloved, unmourned, and alone". The final issue would come out in March of 2004, he projected. And here it is.

I haven't been buying Cerebus all along. As a matter of fact, I haven't read very much of it... yet. I've never been a big fan of buying serialised stories of the sort that most modern comics have become, requiring you to either wait a month (sometimes more) between chapters, or collect a bunch of little booklets before you can start reading them. So I decided some years ago that, for limited series I knew would later be reprinted in collected editions, I'd wait and buy them that way. Cerebus already had a backlist of several collections on the shelves, but I didn't want to have to sit and wait between those. So I decided that I'd wait until the last one was out before I'd start reading. I special-ordered #300 more for the sake of participating in a much-awaited event: the March 2004 release.

Sim has been variously described as a genius and a lunatic. He's probably both. The sheer hubris of setting out to write and illustrate a 6000-page graphic novel, and the obsessive tenacity to actually do it are evidence of both. By all accounts, reading the book provides even more... with probably more of the genius showing in the earlier half and more of the lunatic in the latter half. He's developed a fairly wacked-out and misogynist cosmology over the years (most evident in the essays and commentary pages at the back of the monthlies) and I'm curious to see how it shows through in the story.

Regardless of what I think of his philosophy, I have a great deal of admiration for Sim. Not just for the 300 issues, but how he did it. He refused to sell the series to a publisher (there was at least one serious offer from a major player). He maintained his independence, allowing him to call all the shots with his creation. If he wanted to include the Marx Brothers, Oscar Wilde, F.Scott Fitzgerald, and himself as characters, there was no one to tell him not to. He could do dopey superhero parodies at his discretion. Popular characters could be killed and stay dead. If he wanted to let prose and essays squeeze out the sequential-art storytelling for a time, he could. When his anti-feminist and anti-homosexualist ranting caused many readers to drop the series and sales figures frankly sucked, no one could cancel it on him. The only noteworthy concession he made to this do-it-yourself/own-it-yourself ethic was to partner with Gerhard, his background artist for all but the early issues. And true to Sim's creator-ownership manifesto, he made his collaborator a co-owner.

In some ways, I look to Sim as a role model. He certainly served as an example to many other writer/artists who've followed in his footsteps by publishing their own work (DC, Marvel, and their ilk be damned). But don't expect me to announce any grand quarter-century objectives like his.

Going to a doctor and getting the news that I have a "health risk factor" (however mild) on my charts has got me thinking a little about my mortality. The old "what if I only had ___ to live?" question has hung about me, and I was torn between two conflicting ideals: make a mark, or live it up. I came down on the side of the latter.

When I was younger I was definitely more in the "make a mark" camp. I wanted to change the world, to make a difference. I'd still like that, but if I only had a year or several left, it wouldn't be my highest priority any more. In some ways, I've already done that. I was publically involved in les/bi/gay/trans rights issues back when even mere visibility was a major problem. I volunteered helping gay youth, some of whom have specifically told me that I'd made a difference in their lives. This doesn't necessarily let me off the hook for doing anything more, but at least it gives me some comfort in terms of my mortality.

Ultimately it comes down to my own view of the universe (which diverges widely from Sim's, obviously). Spending my final years establishing my importance to the fate of the world might make me happier in the afterlife... but I don't believe in an afterlife. So instead it'd make more sense to focus on making myself happier in this life. Rather than worrying about some checklist of things to do before I die, I'd be happier just making sure that I'm doing something I enjoy... even if doesn't have any lasting consequences. So no "run for president" or "climb Mt. Everest" or "publish a 6000-page story"... unless I'd really be happy while doing that. And I don't think I necessarily would.

I am planning on doing something (superficially) similar to Sim's project. And I do very much want to finish it. But the bottom line for me is going to be having fun with it. If that leads to it getting published and read by tens of thousands and discussed by millions and changing the world... great. But the main point of it is to enjoy the ride, and the destination is wherever it gets me.

Michigan Web Comics

I did something a bit different from my usual Saturday routine today: I drove to the other side of the state and hung out at a Panera Bread franchise. I didn't go all that way for the cuisine (there's at least a couple Panera's here in town), but because I was invited by one of the founders of the new Michigan Web Comics group to come talk about their web-hosting needs.

It was an interesting bunch of people, and despite my chronic discomfort in unfamiliar social situations (heck, I'd never even been to a Panera before), I had a swell time.

The most golly-gee-whiz aspect of it was that I found myself sitting across the table from Matt Feazell. He's something of a fixture of the mini-comics scene, in which he's been active for over 20 years. His stick-figure cartoons featuring the Amazing Cynicalman and a host of other characters are legendary. He's also been published by "real" publishers, such as pieces in Disney Adventures. And here we sat, smiling at each other.

Matt's the kind of artist who (apparently) never stops drawing. He'd brought along a sketchbook and was filling little boxes with images as we all talked. As the people present were going around the table introducing ourselves, I was shocked to see that he was doodling a cartoon of me (with my name next to it), in his hyper-simplified style.

He wasn't the only one drawing. There were some "jam" pieces making their way around, including one single page illustration and an add-another-panel "story" that bounced in one direction after another. I nearly choked when I was handed a half-filled page of doodling (including some of Feazell's work) and was invited to add to it. I scratched my head a bit and finally came up with something.

I'm really not a very creative person. I have creative tendencies, and I bring some creativity to the things I do that other people might not, but I'm not the kind of person who can easily just produce something on the spot out of thin air. I'm better at it than I used to be, and I suppose if I did more of it I'd be even better. I'm just too easily distracted by all the other things around me.

Anyway, it was a fun time, and worth the nearly-four-hour round trip. I walked away with a fistful of minicomics (for web cartoonists, they sure do put a lot of stuff onto little folded pieces of paper). I'm going to try to stay involved in this, to see what kind of creative stimulus and motivation I can get out of it, and of course whatever (beyond plain geek services) I can contribute.

Super Irony

I just watched a recording of Christopher Reeve's appearance on 20/20 the other night, as interviewed by Barbara Walters. I don't usually bother with those kinds of programs, but there are a handful of "celebrities" that I've programmed my TiVo to watch for, and Reeve is one of them.

The first reason is that I'm a fan. I consider him the definitive on-screen Superman, the definitive superhero. In my assessment, Superman: The Movie remains the best translation of a superhero and his story to the silver screen, and Reeve was a big part of what made it work. Sure, the franchise lost a full "star" in rating with each successive installment, but that first one was magic. Of course it probably helped that I was 13 when it came out, was subconsciously smitten by Reeve's charming smile, and saw it from the awe-inspiring front row of the packed theater, but even though the effects now seem rather dated, it still holds up as a great movie.

The other reason I watch for Christopher Reeve is my fascination with - and inspiration by - his life following his spinal cord injury. I've questioned whether his determination to walk again is realistic, but the quest itself is quite simply admirable. While it's conceivable that he's just putting a brave and hopeful face on the situation... OK, let's be frank: he was good, but he wasn't that good an actor. And by putting that handsome, famous face on the nebulous class of "people with disabilities", he's helping to focus attention, effort, and funds on research that will eventually help countless people. He didn't just play a hero in the movies; he is one.

The irony of an actor who played the most powerful being on the planet now being unable to move his own body is fairly obvious, and certainly tragic. But I got a good laugh when I realised another, fairly recent, irony. One of the mild flaws in Reeve's Superman movies was Lex Luthor. Gene Hackman's portrayal of him was an entertaining interpretation of the character, but rather than shave his head to play the bald villain, Hackman pretended that Luthor wore a wig. Well, Reeve just appeared on 20/20 completely bald. It was, he explained with good humor, one of those quirky side effects of his injury, which led to his body just not regulating itself properly any more. His hair fell out. So Superman, not Luthor, now sports the chrome dome.

The point of his interview with Walters wasn't to show off his unintentional foray into cutting-edge fashion. He was there to show off his latest accomplishment: thanks to the implantation of a device which artificially stimulates his diaphragm muscle (much like a pacemaker does with the heart muscle), he's now able to breathe without a respirator. It's not a true recovery, in the sense of being able to breathe naturally, because he still depends on the device to tell his diaphragm to flex and relax. But it will enable him to keep his lungs in shape for the day he dreams of (when he'll be able to use his body again), and it means he's no longer fully dependent on a machine to put air in his lungs every several seconds. In effect, he's turned his own diaphragm into a backup respirator, a biological one.

He's one of the first few people to have this procedure performed, which raises the obvious question of special treatment for a celebrity. But it also indicates that he's willing to serve as a guinea pig for experimental treatments. The fact that he went to Europe to undergo this procedure might cause people to criticise him for going places for treatment that they couldn't even afford to visit as tourists. But Reeve brings up the issue himself, criticising the American medical research system as too timid. Frankly, he'd be a damn fool not to take advantage of his fame to get whatever help he can. But at the same time he's using his fame to advocate for better treatments for others as well.

In the first movie, Jor-El (played by Brando) said to his son, "They can be a great people, Kal-El; they wish to be. They only lack the light to show the way. For this reason, above all, their capacity for good, I have sent them you, my only son." Who knew that he was really talking about Christopher Reeve?

You Can't Judge A Cover By Its Book

The most frightening laws are the ones that nobody opposes.

Case in point: a recent law passed unanimously by both parties in both houses of the Michigan legislature, then signed by the governor. It's the sort of thing that sounds so squeaky clean and wholesome that any moderate-to-conservative legislator would get behind it, and no liberal would dare to stand up and oppose it. It requires that dirty magazines not be displayed so that kids can see them in the convenience store or gas station. Sounds like common sense. Unfortunately, the law itself sounds like the legislators have their heads up their asses.

See Briefs on the Outside for an explanation of the law and what's so damn backwards about its logic. If legislation were homework assignments, and a professer were to grade this one, it'd get a "D-"... for completely screwing up the logic, but not failing completely because it managed to spell everything right.

Almost Semi-Famous

OK, this is just weird. I live in Grand Rapids, Michigan, which is by no means any kind of hotbed of comics-creating activity. Heck, the art school here just offered its first college-credit "sequential art" class last year. But today I've encountered two interviews with people from GR who are now doing professional comics work.

The first is an interview with three people who recently had internships with comics publishers, in J. Torres' Open Your Mouth column on ComicBookResources.com. One of them is Matt Dryer, who studied Illustration at Kendall College of Art & Design, and since graduating is now an assistant editor at Dark Horse Comics, one of the better "major" publishers out there. The thing is, I've been a part-time student at Kendall for the past 6+ years, and I'm nominally an Illustration major. It's not that big a school, either. So it's almost inevitable that I had a class with this guy at some point. But I'm lousy at picking up people's names, especially when they're just people in my classes, so I'm not sure. I'd probably recognise him if I saw him, and maybe vice versa. As if that mattered. So here's a really great networking opportunity that slipped away, just out of my grasp.

The second instance is an interview with Jeffrey Brown, creator of the graphic novels Clumsy and Unlikely, interviewed by Daniel Robert Epstein for Newsarama.com. He talks a little bit about how he used to live in Grand Rapids, and describes it pretty accurately. His religious background and development sounds a lot like my own as well. But I never met him, and now he lives in Chicago or something. I actually did get a little "advantage" out of his connection to GR, however: my local comics shop stocked his book, even before it got picked up by Top Shelf Comix (a truly cool small-to-medium publisher) and got national distribution. So I got to read it before most people did. Other than that, he's just another modestly successful cartoonist I might have known... but didn't.

They say that "networking" is the key to getting good jobs.... the old "who you know" factor outweighing "what you know". As brilliant as I am about networking technology, I suck at the inter-personal kind. So I guess these two examples help explain why I'm still unemployed. {shrug}