I feel like there’s a belief that an artistic person does better if they have a less artistic person as a partner. (Unless you’re an Oscar-winning actress, but that’s a whole other bucket of poop.) The symbiotic relationship usually works out to artist and support, where the support can be a nice person who likes to make dinner, a schlep as a comics sherpa, or be a quiet editor. This other person may be incredibly skilled too, but they’re comfortable to let their more prolific mate get the attention.

With that in mind, it’s always interesting to encounter a couple where both have awesome things going on. I’m thinking about this right now because I bumped into Kelly Froh last night at a ZAPP benefit. I was sadly not talkative, as I was beat as a clean rug, but I did at least have the energy to hold my heavy head up while watching her and her husband, Max Clotfelter, present and read a series of intertwining comics about their teenage years. (Verdict: awkward, funny.)

I got to table next to them at Olympia, and we’ve crossed paths a bit before then. I traded some comics with Kelly and I’m just now digging into them. I take a while to read things; this is actually exceptionally speedy to me. Immediately to the left of where I’m currently sitting is a grocery bag full of comics that date to APE from last fall. Bad habit.

ANYWAY. Look what was in my pile! Just look!

This is quite possibly the best way I’ve ever seen two people deal with an ongoing discussion/debate. It’s about how Max and Kelly have been debating a dog. They present their own thoughts on it and then go on to give you all these hilariously weird drawings of wiener dogs, complete with possible names. “Breanne, why do you not give us an example of these?” Because I don’t want to take away even a tiny bit of the fun of seeing it for your damn self, that’s why.

Corgis are my wiener dog. Also short-legged, also tenacious in the face of getting the short end of the breeding stick. My long-term goal is to be like the queen and just have a flock of them galloping around my ankles. I believe I shall say that the next time the deathly words “five-year plan” are uttered in my presence.

So yeah, talented couples. The fun thing is that I haven’t read a lot by either of them just yet, so I have more delightful things waiting for me.

Final Furlough inking is done. A version of lettering is done – hand-written, straight on the drawn pages. It remains to see how I like it (and how my Legibility Panel feels about it). I completed a bullshit strip* to make the story an even 24 pages. Three printing quotes requested, and now I’m on page six of scanning so that I can go in, tidy everything up, lay that shit out, and send it to the printing shop of my dreams.

And so much is left to be done! For instance:

• The cover: penciling, inking, painting.
• Try to finish this cat zine of mine so I can have it at the convention
• See if I have a good night to devote to doing the drunk zine
• Decide what on earth I want my booth to look like
• See about getting paintings printed

And so on. I could make this list 40 items long, if I felt so inclined, but these are the things I’m actually thinking about. There’s also a larger item, entitled “Do not make yourself insane,” which includes things like exercise, reading, and not shorting myself of sleep. However, I know me, and adding such an item would only make me unhappy that I managed to do no such thing.

I’m at a good place; T-minus 13 days, and the bulk of everything is done. It’s just hard to see that right here, and it will be until I’m sitting happily in my living room atop boxes of printed books.

I didn’t help myself tonight; I spent a weird amount of time (like an hour!) reading old Questionable Content strips. I’ve gotten a vague impression, from the small amount of webcomics-related criticism/bitchery I read, that it’s kind of popular or trendy to slag QC, but I really like it.

I like that if you read the whole of the archives, which I did in three nights when I first found it, you get a very specific picture of one person’s artistic education. I like the banter and the swearing and that the characters are just far enough away from regular life to be fun to watch, but not so far that you’re drawn out of the story. I like that it’s about half a universe away from ours, so you can get some really wonderfully strange “And now for something completely different” moments now and then. It’s also nice to read a graphic story about (mostly) regular people doing regular things. As those are the kinds of comic stories I tend to write, it’s reassuring to see that kind of story being told and to see that it’s not made boring by its generally domestic setting. I even enjoy its glacial pace. I think there’s an honesty to it about the pace of graphic storytelling.

*I got this term from Dan Clowes, who used it in a derogatory way about the stories in Twentieth-Century Eightball. However, I usually use it in a complimentary way. The stories in that book are my favorites of his, and I like pretty much all of his work anyway.

A comic I like: My Cardboard Life by Philippa Rice.

I’ve read this one for quite some time, but this particular strip sums up so much of what makes me cackle. I love the media she uses – characters can be bobby pins or Band-Aids or foil or other bits of cut-out paper and fabric scraps, often as unexpected as they are appropriate. At first glance, this makes the strip seem deceptively folksy and cute. Then, suddenly: voodoo head-shaped pancakes, and fork-inflicted wounds! Or any other number of sly jokes tinged heavily with cruelty and cleverness. Think about it: the second most twisted line in this strip is “Now eat your own face, Colin!” That’s some potent shit.

I’m a long-form person; panel-panel-punchline is not the form for me. Consequently, when someone does it so very well, in such a deceptively casual way, they get my instant admiration. My Cardboard Life gets it consistently and always in a new and surprising way.