The new page is posted at Modern Tales.

Looking at it on my laptop screen, the colors appear lighter and the darks washed out. Damn LCDs.

Also, I finally posted something new at 4 Panels. Thanks to In Contempt, there has been more traffic there lately, so I felt obligated to put up something. Which makes it sound worse than it is. In fact, I like it a lot. The drawing is silly and the sentiment reflects my feelings about "Puff the Magic Dragon" - a critical issue of our times, natch.

Heads up, I am preparing for the Stumptown Comicsfest in a few weeks. I'll be sharing a table with Chris Baldwin, he of Little Dee and Bruno fame (plus much more). And I will also moderate a panel, "Comics in Libraries" in which I will pepper Sara Ryan and Dawn Rutherford with questions about the history of librarian attitudes toward comics, how they have changed, and how all that is relevant to cartoonists and comics writers. They are both librarians and youth advocates, Sara is a comics writer and Dawn is an advocate of comics in libraries, compiling YALSA's 2007 Great Graphic Novels for Teens list (among many other activities.)

Stumptown needs volunteers. If you're local and interested in volunteering, please visit the Volunteers Page, or email barry -at- stumptowncomics.com.

Posted.

If all goes well tonight, Owen will stay sleeping in his bed for the first time since last November. G'night.

Page 11 is now complete.

The latest installment of "Grounded" is inked and scanned, but needs to be colorized by the Photoshopbot. I'll post it tomorrow.

This weekend we went to the coast with my mom. The kids jazzed on the Oregon Aquarium in Newport with its sharks, jellies and sea lions performing dog tricks for fish. There was a lot of driving, driving, driving. My back is still healing, aching, creaking. Owen was in his element.

Another installment squeezes slowly out of my creative orifice.

Which doesn't do justice to the amount of work - and love and sweat and care and blood sacrifices of abducted alien babies - that I put into this thing.

Yet truly I am dawg tarred. One kid grounded this weekend, the other full on three years old, muthafukka, and much hauling boxes up and down the stairs as we convert the old mother-in-law into a creative studio and the old creative studio into a place to dump crap.

And then we went to the new Ikea. On a Sunday afternoon. Were we high? As expected, total mob scene, but (the bourgeois excuse ensuing) we really needed this thing and that thing and this cheap crap over here.

So, right. Brain shot. Gotta go to bed.

Still trying to think of a new name for this thing. Not for the pig. The pig stays the same. But his world, man - his world! It is nameless, formless, a nebulous void! Spare the pig this ontological crisis and grant him the boon of a place name.

Right. Bed. G'night.

This week's installment of "Grounded" appears on time. On the day the good cartoonist hath intended. Yea, verily.

My goal for the next few weeks is to get pages done way ahead of their deadlines; should interruptions or distractions arise, they won't interfere with punctual posting.

Besides which, my internal calendar insists that Sheldon is a good year and a half off schedule. There's some catching up to do. Lazy pig.

Not that I hold myself to high standards as a continual source of anxiety and guilt or anything. Nooooo.

There is a new installment of Sheldon appearing at Modern Tales right now. I just put it up. Go look at it. It is my first post-grad school Sheldon update. Perhaps this will mean frequent, on-time updates. Like, OMG!

As some of you already know, Chris Baldwin's Little Dee has joined the Modern Tales famdamily. Go give his nipple a squeeze.

Sheldon gets in deep trouble. Note Sheldon's facial expressions. Jenn saw them and laughed, "He looks just like Katie." Sans snout, of course.

I thought I would post this on Thursday, but I have been working extra hours with the web developer while submitting job applications and catching up on reading for school.

Not that the reading is a chore. Just finished Fallen Angels by Walter Dean Myers, a book about a young man from Harlem serving in Vietnam that serves as an excellent introduction to the war (and resonates now all too much); and started Make Lemonade by Virginia Euwer Wolff, which I am already starting to like.

Best news of the day: my daughter Katie's team won their invitational. Katie played well in the catcher position, got to base twice and home once. Girl has a helluvan arm. The aim, well, not so much. But we're working on that. When it's not raining.

New Sheldon page is now UP - in color!

And what a great soundtrack to coloring it, too.

On time. In color. Go see it.

When I colorize the previous pages (already in the works) and post them, I will let y'all know.

Now bed.