Hey! No BOTU today, but here’s a comic I did for the school paper. You may have seen it on my Tumblr before, but I figured I should give it a spot on this site at some point. It also helps that I have nothing else to post today.

I suppose I’ll take this opportunity to tell you guys what’s going on, since I usually very quickly post comics before school. I’m wide awake at midnight this time! This won’t make much sense in an archival context, but we’re figuring stuff out behind the scenes, I think. Johnny Panic (Floatillion) and Colin (Fight Club) are a lot more heavily involved in that kind of stuff than I am. Ask them! Whatever!

BOTU has been off to kind of a rough start, both writing and art-wise. I try not to count my eggs before they hatch, but self-reflection is necessary to a point. BOTU is what I hope to be a year-long project, a way to sort of track my evolution as an artist and tie me down to a consistent, yet flexible premise every week. It’s a challenge to myself to commit to a project and hopefully make something unexpectedly beautiful. SBboard, in essence, is all about self-reflection and growth and progression. We just have kind of a confusing layout.

Hornets, on the other hand, started as an off-hand joke, and blossomed into an experiment in writing. With the new fifteen-panel format (the first twenty-something were merely compilations of three-panel gag strips) I can explore more substantial plots, or well, as substantial as a comic about cussing bugs can get. And weirdly, Hornets has shaped my writing style in a major way. I see the blindly aggressive demeanor creeping into how I write for certain characters in other projects, I see the naive irony hardening as the backbone for most narratives I write, whether it be a class assignment or a hypothetical sitcom pilot for Nickelodeon. Hornets has had a major impact on me as a writer, and while, superficially, it’s just some really mad bugs saying bad words to each other, it’s a beautiful and important part of my life. I hope to continue doing Hornets for as long as it is fun and exciting to me.

What else? The new Adventure Time episode, I Remember You, totally killed it. Go watch that.

Some recent music I’ve been pouring down my ears would have to be the Ultraista debut album and Godspeed You! Black Emperor’s reunion album (after a whole decade! wow!).

Some web comics I’ve been reading include Ant Comic, and um. WOW that’s it. I need to read more comics. I draw too much inspiration from masturbatory, self-congratulatory sitcoms.