Work on HABIBI is progressing, but recent pages feel like spoilers, so it seemed like a nice time to reflect on my first book
~ GOOD-BYE, CHUNKY RICE. Below is a page I drew a decade ago — on December 9th, 1998 to be exact.

(The page preceding it was drawn November 20th, but I liked this one more. To account for the three weeks between pages,
I’d been working on graphic design work for Top Shelf, a collaborative pitch with Phil Amara, gag cartoons and a monthly comic strip
proposal for NICKELODEON magazine.) Anyways, here’s the ballpoint pen thumbnails for pages 104 and 86.

And here’s a photo of me taken approximately the same time — my first trip to the Oregon coast. Look, I was just a boy (23 years old)!
with a bad haircut! Sandwiched between covers of the first printing and current printing of CHUNKY - now available from Pantheon Books.

Often I worry I draw too small and confined. Compare these recent panels with a brush, my hand, an autumn leaf.

It was a really pretty day in Portland the day Barack Obama came to town, and thanks to my pals the Decemberists
I got to watch from the best seats in the house - the stage alongside his podium.