Tiny Life is a radical departure from conventional comics.  There are no super-heroes, there is no manga.  There are no post-apocalyptic vampire-cyborgs who terrorize the zombie populace while simultaneously falling in love with the one shy yet very attractive girl who’s just coming into her own.  It is the completely original story of Jed, a stick-figure in a world of flesh, who must eventually learn – like we all do – the truth about himself, about relationships, about God, and about reality.  Tiny Life is about the world behind things.

In this novel, Jed is banished from his foster family for his bizarre actions and searches out an old friend and a new place to live.  Unfortunately, in order to find this friend, Jed must journey to the most miserable place he’s ever known: his childhood home.  Eccentric characters – including an all-but-invisible old man, a former nun who had an extraordinary relationship with his late father, and an oddly morose narrator – line the way. Ultimately, his search leads him to learn divine truths about both his father and his own unusual existence.

Ch. 6, Pg. 3 Inks

I gotta get a better camera.  This thing is WAY too grainy.

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Dental Lobby

Bottled water was a topic of conversation the other day with my co-workers.  Many of them were talking about the lack of recycling incentive, which is a problem (I get ten cents back when I bring back a soda bottle, yet I get nothing for water).  Many of them were talking about the purity of the product (it’s a fairly recent story that Pepsi admitted to just filling up Aquafina with any ole water they could find), which is a problem.  Many were also talking about how popular bottled water has gotten despite having some of the cleanest public water in the world (at least before the Bush Administration), which is a problem.

But the first thing I thought of was “recommended daily allowance” vs. “manufacturer’s recommendation.”

For those of you who don’t particularly care what you eat, “recommended daily allowance” basically means someone somewhere convinced some government official that you should ingest a certain amount of their product daily; for those of you who don’t fix things very often, “manufacturer’s recommendation” basically means that the manufacturer tells you when they think you should replace their parts.  In the second scenario, the party telling you what to do has a clear, vested interest – and since lobbyists have taken over our government, it’s also clear that the party in the first scenario that the party telling you what to do has a vested interest.   So I usually go a by a rule of 2’s.

If the manufacturer says I should change the filter every season, I do it every other season: if they say I should feed my dog two cans a day, I feed him one.  This generally serves me pretty well.  I got my oil changed every 6,000 miles (you’re supposed to do it every 3,000) until I hit 100,000 miles; now I do it every 3,000 (you’re supposed to do it every 1,500).  You’re supposed to eat nine servings of vegetables a day, I eat 4-5 (I don’t think I can eat nine servings of anything in one day; that’s a lot of food).

I noticed, though, that the dental lobby isn’t like that at all.  They’re very straightforward: “brush for two minutes twice a day to avoid tooth problems.” You would think I would either brush for one minute once a day or for four minutes four times a day (depending on your perspective), but this “twofertwo” thing is dead-on.

Does this look like a fun job?

And when you go to the dentist – if this were a typical American institution – they’d say, “Oh, you’re doing a fine job of brushing.  13 cavities per visit are normal at your age.”  But they don’t.  They yell at you every time for not flossing enough.

I could never understand why people get into dentistry; having your hands in peoples’ mouths all day isn’t a career choice I had considered.  But now I know; it’s the only honest profession.

That and “best comic of all time comic book maker.”

Ch. 6. Page 2 Inks

Looks like I won’t be able to use the camera again.  The Wife says I break it too easily.

So get used to grainy pictures of my inks until I can figure another way around it.

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The Correct Lie

It seems that the more we “advance,” the more we have to bend our morals in order for the right thing to occur.

For instance, have you ever simply said to a phone solicitor, “I have no interest in what you’re selling; even if you gave it to me for free, I would not take it”?  They won’t shut up.  So you either have to be rude, “I don’t want it.  Stop calling me,” or you have to make up some elaborate story that you’ve decided to go Amish and the phone is the last thing to be taken away, other wise you “totally would’ve bought one.  Godspeed Goody Karen from Culligan Water Softeners.”  Just telling them “no, thank you” is the right thing to do, but the system has found a way around that, so we must lie to circumvent their circumvention.

This is my driveway during a "Jones Barn-Raisin Hell-Raisin Kegger"

Another good example: my mom pays WAY too much for her health insurance since my dad died.  However, the County offers free regular insurance (no catastrophic, only regular check-ups and small surgeries like hernias) for those who can’t afford their own.  She can afford some insurance, just nothing that would amount to much of anything.  So instead she’s dropped Blue Cross, picked up some low-cost catastrophic, and lied to the County about not be able to afford anything.  Paying an affordable amount for insurance is the right thing to do, but the system has found a way around that, so we must lie to circumvent their circumvention.

I did this all by myself. Ok, my father-in-law did it. But I held the flashlight.

The latest example: my shower.  I installed a shower several weeks ago, but the pressure was bad and I couldn’t get it quite hot enough (“anti-scald technology” Finally, science has saved us from that life-changing decision, “Do I burn myself with unnecessarily hot water or lift my arms all the way up to my waist just to turn a knob?”), so I tore the wall off again to take a look.  The damn thing sprung a leak.

So I turned the water off, tore the fixture out, went back to the hardware store and explained the situation.  I had the receipt, but not the box; therefore, they said, I would have to contact the manufacturer so that I could get replacement parts.

Now, the right thing to do would be for them to simply replace my part, send the broken part to the manufacturer, and everyone would be happy: I get my part, the store gets a returning customer, and the manufacturer gets some data on quality control.  But they’ve found a way around that.  So I lied to circumvent their circumvention.

I walked into the store, bought the same product, traded my broken part for the correct part, changed my shirt, and brought it back in the new box saying it was defective.  It was the same cashier (pardon me, “customer service representative”), I had the same problem, but because it falls under the very complicated “I got box, I bring back” store policy, I was able to do what was right all along.

Ch. 6, Pg. 15 Pencils

This first panel has to change.  It looks like he’s going blind.

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Dead Authors

"Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Eoin Colfer" makes about as much sense as "James Joyce's Finnegan's Wake by Dr. Suess"

I was in Target the other day (yes, on purpose.  Here’s a little tip for you guys who’ve been dating the same girl for a while: take her wherever she wants to go for a date – movies, dinner, shopping, whatever – and then say, “We should stop by Target for a minute.”  It’d be like her saying, “We should swing by Auto Zone on the way home”; suddenly she thinks you’re “coming around;” suddenly she thinks she’s “fixed” you) and I saw a new Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe Douglas Adams is dead.  For a while now.  And he hated writing, so I doubt they found this hidden in a drawer somewhere (as so many publishers claim).

Seriously, who cares if the actual VC Andrews writes another novel, as long as those kids keep getting shoved into that attic.

Now some of this “posthumously published” stuff I understand.  If you have a pen-name and then you get published under your real name, you kill off your pen-name and publish crap you wouldn’t put your real name on as a posthumously published pen-name book.  Or maybe if the original writer of a book series wasn’t all that original (and the fans aren’t all that intuitive or interested in the prose itself), then it wouldn’t be hard to find another unoriginal author to take that author’s place.  However…

When you have an author with such original prose – as is Douglas Adams – and you have a book that is 100% original and widely celebrated – as is Hitchhiker’s Guide – then I think it’s a slap in the face to fans.  A bigger slap in the face is that the new author is an author of children’s books.

No one aspires to be a children’s author.  You fall into that line of work, generally because you can’t hack it being an adult author.

Why do I bring this up?

The men in my family don’t generally live very long.  I would hate to see Tiny Life get published all the way through book 9 – where Jed really finds out what the whole mess has been about (why he’s a stick figure, why the color, why the situation with his dad, how all the characters fit into his life, etc.) – and then have some children’s author, let’s say Paolini, volunteer with, “Oh yeah.  I read it.  Big fan. I can finish it, that is, if his widow decides that she would like $100,000 for doing no work.  I know exactly where he was going.”

No you don’t.  No one does.  That’s the point of making it a point to be original.  No one knows where this is going to end up.

You like how I slyly compared myself to Douglas Adams?

Chapter 6, Page 1 Inks

I noticed Colacitti didn’t do that huge first chapter panel on this page.  I might have to fix that up later using Photoshop.

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New Wallpaper Available!

I’ll have some more wallpaper when the color guy gets done with the color pages.

These are also available on the downloads page.

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Ch. 6, Pg. 14 Pencils

I love the backgrounds here.

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Feel Good Drag

There’s a social upheaval happening in this country.  My friend calls it “The Pucification of America.”  Basically, we’re raising a generation of wusses.

I know that every generation says that they were much tougher than the next one.  I’m sure someone said, “In my day, we didn’t have no ‘lectricity.  You pussies and yer indoor plumbin…!”  But this generation is a bit different.  See, they’re wussiness is infecting the rest of us.  Lemme ‘splain:

When I was in elementary school, my mom thought I spent too much time alone playing with my toys and drawing ridiculous stick figure comics.  So she put me on a little league team.  We were awesome and we won the league.  “How,” you might ask?  By keeping score.

The average score of a little league game

Today’s little league teams don’t do that.  Today’s little league teams are all about teamwork and feeling good about oneself.  And when you lose, you feel bad.  So no one keeps score.  So the kids play and have a good time and everyone is happy and everyone goes out for pizza and ice cream and no one cries about anything.  Which is great until one of these kids grows up and has to deal with a loss (personally, I think that’s why the suicide rate is so much higher with the current generation; when the feel bad they genuinely have no idea what to do with those feelings) – a loss like losing a cell phone, or a loved one, or a job.

Sometimes I would say I have to go to the bathroom, and then I would just sit on the toilet to pass the time.

Today in America, you can’t really get fired for being incompetent.  People will talk to you about your job performance, but they won’t really come out and say what needs to be said.  Something I heard practically everyday while working at Burger King was, “Get your shit together or leave.”  You don’t hear that anymore.  Anywhere.  People talk around the point without actually getting to it.  For instance, if I was a teenager today working at BK, I’d probably hear something like this:

“Hey Nick.  How are you?  Have a seat buddy.  I noticed you’ve been eating some of the chicken fingers while on the clock.  Now you know this is our most expensive item.  Have you been getting enough to eat at home?  I just feel like if you can’t get enough food at home, that maybe you should subscribe to our ‘half-off’ meal program here.  It’s really pretty nice; I utilize it all the time.  I remember one time, when I was about your age, I was having a pretty tough time at home too.  But my family at Burger King saved me, which is why I’ve been so loyal for the past 20 years.  I think you’ll see if you simply use the programs that are available to you, you won’t have to sneak so much food behind the scenes, which is really what we’re about here…”

Not once would I be told not to sneak food; not once would I be told to “quit dinkin around” and “get back to work” before I get “shitcanned.”  Instead, the boss would tell me how they feel, would ask me how I feel, and then we would agree to feel generally bad about the situation.  However, I would never be led to feel bad about myself or my behavior, just the situation.

Like I said, people talk around the point without actually getting to it.  And as you can tell from Tiny Life, I can talk for years around a subject without actually getting to the point.

I only say this because I was “yelled at” the other day.  Well, the modern equivalent of getting yelled at: the product of my behavior was discussed until the point came where we both generally felt approximately the same thing about said product.

To tell you the truth, I felt pretty good about myself.