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. 8, Pg. 9-10 Pencils

That’s one scary lookin dude at the end of page 9 .

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Lost 6 Reaction

Read the reviews of the past five seasons of Lost:

• Season 1
• Season 2
• Season 3
• Season 4
• Season 5

I stayed up late to watch the Season 6 premier of Lost.  Like with all the other season premiers, it was a bit of a disappointment.  This time, however, it’s not because the current episode doesn’t mesh with past episodes, it’s because I can tell what’s coming.

If you don’t know, the Survivors ended up in 1977 with a hydrogen bomb.  They decided to blow up The Hatch before it ever got built so that they wouldn’t crash and therefore the entire series would’ve never happened.  The white flash of the bomb is how last season ended.  This season begins with everyone back on the original plane in 2004; no one knew anyone else and everyone seemed to be slightly happier; the plan lands at LAX as planned.  There is no crash.  Then we see that the island is sunk in 2004 and the Survivors have been transported back to it in 2007.

This tells me that the 2004 flashbacks can be one of three things.  Two of them piss me off beyond measure:

1. The bomb somehow changed the past so that everyone has a slightly different life.  This pisses me off because the reason the show is good is because the writers seamlessly intertwine what happened to what is happening.  By changing the past, they change the motivations for all the characters all the time.
2. This is an alternate reality.  This pisses me off because all alternate realities are stupid.  As a writer, what it says is that you can’t figure out how to get out of the situation you’ve written yourself into, so you make up an alternate reality to fix the situation.
3. The slightly happier 2004 is the aftermath of whatever is about to happen.  This doesn’t piss me off too bad.  Basically, it’s a flashforward of a flashback where we see that somehow every one of the Survivors has learned their lesson, and they are now better people (it’s always been my contention that once a Survivor gets past whatever made them “lost” in their life, they got off the island – either died or got rescued).

I’m hoping it’s none of the above.  Lost is the only show where I couldn’t predict what would happen next; I’m hoping they keep that record intact.

Ch. 7, Pg. 8 Inks

I replaced a couple of panels here.  I’m sure you’re able to tell right now, but you won’t be able to tell in the book.

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Baby, Why So Sad?

These ladies are attempting to invert their nethers and become men.

For years I’ve been joking with The Wife about having a boy; or, I guess more to the point, I’ve joked with her about not having a girl. Everything from, “Just stick it back in ‘til it’s done,” and “We’ll make her blow until a penis pops out” to “We’ll just give it to your sister,” and “I’ll leave and take the dog with me”.

But I never was serious about it. None of those things really crossed my mind. It was just something (borderline) funny to say once in a while. As a matter of fact, we didn’t even discuss girls’ names because I always had a smart-ass comment like, “Why waste our time with naming something that will never exist? It‘d be like naming New Coke.”

And then we found out that The Baby is actually The Daughter. I gotta say, I was pretty disappointed.

And I don’t know why. It’s not like I’ve longed to have a little boy in my life. It’s not like all my friends have little boys and I thought it’d be cool to drink beer during playdates. But the news really got to me.

The more I thought about it, the less disappointed I was – we’ll have more chances and for the first few years, boys and girls are pretty much the same anyway – no; it was something different. Something that didn’t have to do with the gender of my offspring, but something that had to do with How I See Kids.

And then, as I was running away in a panic, thinking, “How the hell am I going to do this? I don’t know anything about little girls,” it hit me. I didn’t want a boy because I know how boys function, I wanted a boy because I wanted to relive my youth.

This is the real reason I wanted a boy. I wanted to do kick-ass stuff with his toys.

I wanted to play with Legos again. I wanted to play with GI Joes and eat fudgesicles and throw things as hard as I can. I wanted to let him think he was getting away with something when he borrows the car, I wanted to give him advice when a girl stomps all over his heart, and I wanted to play bad-ass when he gets out of line. Basically, I wanted a redo. Maybe I wanted a chance to be a better bigger brother than I actually was. I wanted a boy because I wanted my younger days back. But wanting to relive my earlier days is not why I want kids.

I want kids because life is repetitive and boring. I want kids because I have everything figured out in my life right now, and when that happens, Life has a way of showing you something new.

Like how to raise a girl.

Without treating her like a boy.

Without giving her daddy issues.

So that she can become a healthy woman.

See, a father can screw up a son pretty badly and the son won’t have any life-altering negative attitudes; that is, if my dad was too harsh or not harsh enough, the worst thing that could happen is that I will always look for a father-figure wherever I go. If The Wife’s dad was too harsh or not harsh enough, she’ll always harbor some sort of resentment toward men; she’ll either love them WAY too much or WAY too little. It can screw up her whole life.

To me, that means that I have to be a better father to Daughter than I could have been to a son. And that’s MUCH more exciting than getting to play with Nerf guns again.

Ch. 7, Pg. 7 Inks

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Ch. 8, Pg. 6-7 Pencils

I asked Colacitti if he could finish the last few pages in time for me to ink them and get the whole book to SPACE.  When that happens, sometimes you lose a little something in the rush.

I think I might be content if I just get 8 chapters done by April.

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Ch. 7, Pg. 6 Inks

The middle panel looks like Janitor from Scrubs.

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It’s a Girl! Now What?

We found out that The Wife is having a girl in June.

This is supposed to show us that it's a she. I say the jury is still out.

That nose looks like my brother's. I wonder what The Wife did while I was at SPACE?

 I’ll talk about it more once I process it.

Ch. 7 Page 5 Inks

The picture is grainy, but the drawing kicks ass.

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Lost Season 5

This article is the third is a series reviewing the television show Lost.

• Read the first review here.
• Read the second review here.
• Read the third review here.
• Read the fourth review here.

Lost Season 5 is the first real science fiction season. Up until this point, the show had flirted with the idea of science fiction – a button the stops the world from ending, a monster made of smoke, a magical leader who’s been on the island since the beginning of time – but those elements are all mystery-based. That is; what does the button do, what is the smoke monster really, what are this magical leader’s intentions? Now, with time travel, we have full-on sci-fi.And, in a nutshell, that is why viewers left. “Sci-fi is for nerds, Lost is now a sci-fi show; therefore, if I watch Lost, I am a nerd.” That and time-travel is hard for baby-boomers to understand.

Who IS this guy?

The finale, titled “The Incident,” is the other truly interesting episode of Season 5. We see Jacob, some sort of ancient nemesis, how Jacob touched everyone’s life, and we finally see how Hurley got back. We also see – and I think this is the most important plot-based aspect, but it’s just speculation – that on Lost, you really can’t change the past; whatever happened, happened. We see The Incident that has been mentioned a dozen times in the series (again, we didn’t really need to see it) but we see that the Oceanic Six are responsible for it.

I think the finale brings the mystery back; I think it uses the sci-fi springboard to get back to Lost’s roots. Why does Jacob want these people on The Island? What is he trying to prove? Why were the Oceanic Six transported to 1977? Why did Sun go with them? Who is this bad guy? Why does he want to kill Jacob? Is Locke really dead? What happened to the rest of the survivors?

And, as with any mystery of this caliber, the answers, I’m sure, won’t be half as satisfying as the questions.

The final season of Lost premiers Feb. 2.

I don’t think the writers anticipated that; I think they thought it‘d be fun and interesting. I think the writers wanted to show some of the history of the island without having characters just sitting around talking about the history of the island. Frankly, I think this was a mistake.

I’m all about showing things rather than telling things (if I were into simply relaying information, Tiny Life would be about 50 pages. “Jed’s dad was a bad dad. But not really bad. Now Jed feels sad about his bad dad. But not really bad”), but in a show that is about mystery, there are certain things we don’t need to see.

We don’t need to see how Rousseau’s party was killed. We don’t need to know that The Island has been invaded many times, we don’t need to see how old Widmore is when he first arrives on the island. We don’t need to know how Alex got with The Others and we don’t need to know how the Orchid was built or how hostile the Hostiles are. It’s about character. This show started with 14 main characters with nothing to do but interact with each other. What we need to know is how everyone got back to the island and how Jacob fits into all this.

Take out the last four songs, and you have the best second-for-second album of all time.

And that’s why the two most interesting episodes are “The Life and Death of Jeremy Bentham” and the finale. Just about everything else in the season – in my opinion – is interesting, but filler. It’s kind of like the last few songs on The Wall: you know they’re there for a reason and the songs are interesting enough, but you’ll only listen because the rest of the album was so good.

In “The Life and Death of Jeremy Bentham”, we see how The Oceanic Six get back to The Island. We see Locke struggling to fulfill his destiny and we see everyone struggling against theirs. We also get another glimpse into just how evil Ben can be. These are all character-based storylines.