It's awesome, but doesn't run often enough... or didn't. Recently, Brock Heasley brought on Spooky Doofus and Boxcar Astronaut artist Marc La Pierre to draw while Brock writes, so they could put out 3 strips a week (Monday, Wednesday, and Friday)! Marc's really shown himself to be an incredible comics artist and Brock's an amazing writer. The combo means more fun for all!

Here's a teaser poster for the new team-up...

And don't forget I've started a little webcomic of sorts. My wife and I are publishing the doodles we draw on our son's lunch bags at LunchaDoodle.

If you're not a fan of The Superfogeys, you should really check it out. It's the funniest comic strip about a superhero retirement home there is.

Click this banner to see my guest strip

If you want it as a .gif, just right click it and select "save image as". If you want to play with it in Inkscape or Adobe Illustrator, you can pick up a SVG format (vector) version of it at the Open Clip Art Library. I've dedicated it to the public domain, meaning anyone can use it in any project (personal or commercial), free of charge, and even redistribute it. You could even sell it, but you'd have competition since anyone else can give it away free like I'm doing. And I can give it away free because I drew it.

If you end up using it, please let me know, just so I can see. Thanks!

If you'd like to get it in SVG format (a vector format that works with Inkscape and Adobe Illustrator), you can get the file at the Open Clip Art Library. I've dedicated the drawing to the public domain and uploaded it there to join in their push to reach 10,000 pieces of free clipart in their catalog.

Volcano Smokey's Pizza Place by Greg Bulmash is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://www.brainhandles.com/contact-us.

At Volcano Smokey's pizza place
There was a din-o-saur meeting space
Where all the triceratops would go
To see the famous singing bronto
The T-rex would play the stand-up bass
While raptors on drums would rock the place
The dinosaurs danced with such grace
At Volcano Smokey's place

Pterodactyls flew through the dusky blue
Shining spotlights in the twilight
By the gingko roots they played silver flutes
On pizza they dined while the starlight did shine

The big sauropods stomped
Little fabrosauri romped
And the allosaurus chomped
On a big plate of pasta all covered in cheese

In moonlight, as the dino-band played, love entered the room
Indosaurus danced with Vulcanodon and swept away the gloom

They danced 'til night was done
And nobody had to run
All the dinos had some fun
At Volcano Smokey's great pizza place.

A few days back, more than one web-comic artist I follow linked to an interactive comic as an example of a cool use of technology to enhance cartooning. The problem for me was that it was in Flash and a little complicated. I wanted to build a tool that any cartoonist could use to create something like that.

So I came up with a utility I call ComicScript. I'm still just at the proof of concept stage, but basically when it's done, any comic artist who wants to build a grid of panels will just fill in a few details about his/her grid and get the JavaScript code and files needed to implement the grid on their site or blog.

Check out my test of an 8 x 2 (8 wide by 2 tall) grid comic (I would have posted it here, but I realized my proof of concept was too wide. Love to hear what you think.

I've been finding that if I'm willing to invest the time, I can do some halfway decent stuff with Inkscape. It's like Adobe Illustrator, only it's free. It doesn't have all of Illustrator's functions, but it has some Illustrator doesn't have. So I drew a cartoon zombie face which I've contributed to the Open Clip Art Library.

This means I, the author of the Cartoon Zombie Face, have placed it into the public domain. You can use it however you want, whenever you want, wherever you want. You do not need my permission and you don't even need to credit me (though credit and a link back here would be nice). And I guarantee it is public domain because I drew it and I'm putting it out there.

The image above links to a 997 x 1161 pixel .gif you can download. If you want a vector version (can be used in Illustrator or Inkscape to create extremely high-resolution versions) right click this link and "save link as" for the file in .SVG format.

Enjoy!

I had to create an ad for it.

Details and photos at the Daily Mail.

Hope you enjoyed it.

So, originally the plan had been to do 8 separate art pieces for my wife for our anniversary (which was today), then combine them all into one big piece and print and frame it for her. Eight is still the eventual goal, but the number I could get done by the anniversary was three, and I printed and framed two pieces separately instead of combining them all.

The first piece I printed was the "We Are Ladies" homage to "Little Britain". It turned out very nicely.

The second piece was a new one which combined six public domain images from NASA with one of our wedding photos (the wedding photo is not public domain).

One of the ways my wife impressed me on our first date was that she knew many of the various forms Zeus had taken to seduce mortal women in Greek mythology. Meeting a woman as beautiful and smart as her who also was into Greek mythology... be still my heart... No, really. I've been a mythology buff since I was 9.

But that just turned out to be a symptom of her deep-rooted sci-fi geekery. She and I watch "Doctor Who" and "Heroes" together (and "Eureka" and "The 4400" and "Torchwood"), plus we bring home sci-fi books and trade them. Part of our anniversary celebration the last two years (last year and this year) is to just go geek out at a book store.

So sometimes I call her "my sci-fi bride," and that was the theme I decided to use for the art piece.

The landscape at the bottom is a detail from a Mars Rover image from within Victoria crater, chopped off at the skyline. The background is a detail from a larger photo of a stellar spire in the Eagle Nebula. The planet in the upper left is Venus, radar imaged and color coded for elevation. The woman is, of course, my wife. And the space craft range from a space tug to a satellite to the ISS.

I framed it with a gold colored wood frame, with the gold really picking up colors from Venus nicely, and it's now hanging in our upstairs hallway. She liked it very much.

Her art project for me... The Luggage from Terry Pratchett's Discworld series. It was TOO cool.

READ ALL THE INSTALLMENTS: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 [here]

As the release of The Talented Mr. Ripley approached, I decided to read the original book first. Possibly a mistake as I tend to compare movies to the book and have strong negative feelings when they veer too far from the original. I understand that the movies often have to drop characters or subplots to fit the primary story into 2-3 hours of film, but when they make significant alterations to the plot or characters that seem to serve no purpose but to please the beancounters, marketing guys, or some particular quirk of the director's, it pisses me off.

Let me give you an example. In Stephen King's It!, the character of Richie did vocal impersonations (like Rich Little or Frank Caliendo). When it was made into a mini-series, they decided to cast Harry Anderson as Richie. Harry Anderson does not do voices. Richie's character was changed to accomodate the actor they cast, rather than them casting an actor who could play Richie. This pissed me off to no end.

So what did Anthony Minghella do that was so awful? He turned Ripley gay. There was an undercurrent of unspoken homoerotic tension in the book, to be sure. Perhaps if it had been written in 1998 instead of 1958, Ripley would have been overtly gay. But he wasn't, at least not in The Talented Mr. Ripley. Some of the more gay'ish bits in the movie could have been written off to different visions of the character. But Minghella ends the movie with a scene that's not in the book, with Ripley having an overtly homosexual relationship. It was as if he felt that question could not be left unanswered, and he chose the answer he liked.

I have no problems with characters being gay. I've watched and enjoyed films, both comedic and dramatic, where primary characters were gay and were not caricatures. But as a writer myself, I wondered if I had a character who could go either way, who some thought was gay, some thought was straight, and some merely enjoyed the fact that it was never stated which he really was, how would I feel if some gay man came along and made a big Hollywood picture with major stars and turned my character unmistakeably gay? I'd be upset.

See, besides the fact that Minghella apparently decided to remake Ripley in his own image to some extent, it pissed me off in another way. I liked the fact that it was left to bubble below the surface, that the reader was left to make up their own mind. That kind of subtlety, in my opinion, is a nod from the author to the reader that says "I think you're smart enough and grown up enough to mull this over and draw your own conclusions." I feel that when Minghella went and turned Ripley gay, he insulted the intelligence of the audience and showed a distrust for his viewers.

Since then, I haven't watched any of his other films, because I no longer trusted him. Furthermore, as a liberal, I'd felt like I could look down my nose at conservatives who would go on about the "gay agenda" in Hollywood and laugh at them. But after seeing Minghella do what he did to Ripley, I couldn't write them off as easily. He stole some of my liberalism and gave credence to some of the right's insanity, which may be the thing I dislike him for most.

So when he died and so many mourned his loss, I just couldn't. I'm not the fan everyone else seems to be and I felt like I needed to say why.

So I hooked up with one of my regular illustrators who does exclusive clip-art for Fun Draw and commissioned a drawing. It turned out great.

Buy This On A Shirt At Zazzle
I pity the fool who votes for Hillary.

What better mix is there than Obama, 80s retro, and kitsch? Lovin' it!

Presenting Scuzzo Kitty™

And...

This is fun!