The Summer Is Now

Or, I should say, the summer starts Saturday, when I graduate from the Center for Cartoon Studies! “Good times.” Here are two things you should know now:

Between this blog and The Cartoon Picayune blog, I’m all blogged-out. In two days, I will be “entering the world” and for the first time in many years, not returning to an academic institution in the fall. Because of this “turning point,” I’m putting this blog on hiatus for summer, and replacing it with a weekly email list that you can sign up for here.

I think it’ll be a little more informal, and I hope it’ll allow me to honestly address the changes in my life as they come in a more ephemeral format. And yes, there will pictures. I’m just gonna give it a try this summer, and we’ll see what’s what come fall.

Also, I’m very excited excited to share the Thesis Senior Showcase blog, which will feature the art of the Class of 2011 and hopefully make us more visible. There’s gonna be a lot of excellent work posted on here daily, so I hope you’ll check back often throughout the summer. We’ll already getting some love and I think it’s going to be really good.

So thanks, and have a good summer! If you wanna hear from me, these three options are pretty good, but this blog will be quiet.

Sign up for the email list.

A Tour of My CCS Thesis

Here they are! I created 8 packages for the thesis committee, my advisor, the library, etc. But what’s inside? So you turn one over and take out the flap…

…and what do you see as you open the flaps?

Aha! And what books are these, secured inside?

Well, that on the left, of course, is The Cartoon Picayune #1, available for $3 on cartoonpicayune.com. That’s the bulkiest, weighing in at 40 pages. The blue guy is Part two of my ski story, Fly By Night. None of that is on the internet to read, yet. The cheese story with the die-cut is the newly repackaged One Place, One Cheese. Finally, there’s an appendix on how I’ve done my reporting. I’m very pleased with how everything came out, and I think the red, blue, yellow thing came off better than I could have hoped. My year may be nearly done, but there are exciting things to come, sooner than later.

Next Up…Thesis!

Back to business next week with a photographic tour of my Senior Thesis for the Center for Cartoon Studies. !  Next week will be reserved for participating in the critique of the Freshmen mini-thesis projects (my last duty as Teaching Assistant to Mr. Jason Lutes), an end of the year comics reading party, and a wrap-up with Mentor/Advisor/guru Josh Neufeld. The week after that: thesis review committee session and graduation!  General revelry will commence. (And hopefully, more bloggin’.)

New CCS Links: The Class of 2011

Scroll down and look to the right and you’ll see the newer and more complete links section. There used to be another section labeled “blogroll” that was just stuff I liked or friends with blogs, but I’m tired of deleting inactive links. So for a while at least, the only links will be to the pages of my classmates. The class below us is quite a fine group as well, but we’re going to be graduating soon and we need to maintain our pack mentality. If you’re curious what kinds of comics come out of this tiny town, these links are a good start.

Scorched Earth

Finally! This project took about one month to research and report (March) and another to work out and draw (April). I’m proud to present Scorched Earth, a 24-page black and white journalistic comic by yours-truly. This is the lengthiest attempt I’ve made at journalism in comics, and I’m really happy with how it turned out! It’s a non-fiction story about a particular plot of land in my town, White River Junction, VT. It starts slow, but as the title suggests, there is some action involved. I’ll be shipping these puppies for $3 or selling them in person for the unbelievably reasonable price of $2. [Edit from the future: no longer available. Visit for my site for current work.] I’m gonna try something new here and just give a three page preview. You can decide if reading the rest is worth the price of a peppermint whoop-de-do.

A Comics Project Announcement!

And that’s the announcement! Also, my essay on Jeff Smith’s RASL is now posted on the school’s library blog. I had a lot of fun with it and even my proof readers seemed to enjoy it. If you’re coming here from that, welcome! Take a look around. Next week I’ll be in the Twin Cities and then DC, so maybe I’ll see you.