Dear blog-readers, Thank you for all the amazing comments. My apologies for not getting around to responding, but I’ve been focused on the new book. As even my best friends know, I’m lousy with correspondence, but maybe at some point I’ll get a handle on that aspect of blog-managing. Today, I leave for a cousin’s wedding in Ohio for four days, so I wanted to leave you with something — a handful of photos from that high school era, approximately 1993 in rural Wisconsin.

From left to right, top to bottom: My brother and I traversing the highway near our home. The view from the backyard skate-ramp (which I chose to omit from the book). (Note: yoda shirt.) My bro, our neighbor Shawn (aforementioned paper-provider), and me with cow-themed fashion. The sign for my hometown: population 1,200 at the time. An angst-ridden portrait (taken at church).

In response to one of the most frequently asked of questions, here’s my list of “art tools”. My apologies to those
bored with shop-talk… I pencil with any ol’ HB pencil — these “Berol Turquoise” will do. Erasing courtesy of
“Staedtler Mars Plastic”. The text lettering in the balloons is casually dashed off with a .05 or .08 MICRON felt-tip.
For inking, I dunk a watercolor brush in a well of India ink - the old fashioned way. SPEEDBALL “Super Black” makes
me happy with its soulful darkness. CHUNKY RICE and BLANKETS were inked up with these cheap Winsor Newton
Cotman III number twos — a synthetic/sable blend. With my new book, Farel Dalrymple turned me on to this
upgrade brush — the Raphael series 8404 size number four. It’s quadruple the price, but it’s debatable if my line
has improved at all. While on the go, the Pentel “pocket-brush” is certainly handy. Another frequently asked question;
“How do you get that dry-brush effect?” Answer: Vellum finish bristol paper. Its toothiness combined with an abused brush
caked up with gunky ink.

The dimensions of my pages has fluctuated plenty. The live art area of CHUNKY RICE is 10.5″x14″ reduced for print a whoppin’ 48%. That’s admittedly too much shrinkage. While all the details are sharpened in the reduction, some of the integrity of the original is lost. The Pantheon edition of the book is smaller than the Top Shelf one, but the details are sharper, because I finally scanned the pages at 1200dpi from the original art. The older edition was simply 600dpi scans from Kinko’s photocopies! BLANKETS is drawn far smaller and reduced less — 7″x11.25″ / 70%. HABIBI is in-between; 8.75″x12.5% reduced 63%. (Sorry, this isn’t metric!)

One last goody. On this page of BLANKETS, you can see a paste-up correction. Just a slice
of typing paper glued atop the bristol.

When I was approximately eight years old, I drew these panoramic winterscapes
on the backsides of computer spreadsheets (from my friend Shawn’s dad) stapled together.

I’m posting them here because of their snow-infused childhood connection to BLANKETS. Other themes include snowmobiles, superheroes, and the below image which I fear depicts some sort of molestation — not sure if the obese man or the child in his lap is the perpetrator (reflecting my childhood confusion), but fortunately a flying spandex-clad hero has intervened before the pants came off.

Hectic week is distracting me from updating. But here’s a little sumtin’…

A glimpse of my thumbnail process. I draw the entire book in this loose ballpoint pen format and edit, before ever starting the final pages. BLANKETS was thumbnailed for a year. The first page of final art was drawn August 24th, 2000.

These thumbnails were sketched out on February 19th, 2000. They’re finalized counterparts were inked on May 25th, 2002.

On the back of my final pages, I keep a brief journal –

This one mentions the bill-paying work I was about to throw myself into — two covers of NICKELODEON and a ten page comic for Dark Horse. For the record, I didn’t ink the next page of BLANKETS until June 18th, 2002, nearly a month later.

As for HABIBI, I spent late 2004 until late 2006 editing and rewriting the ballpoint pen version.

In high school, I had a falling out with comics — trying to replace my nerdy junior high obsessions of comicbooks ands rpgs and star wars with skateboarding and girls and Christianity. At age 16, I met Kurt Halsey at art camp - the snarkiest skater of the bunch - and he made comics cool for me again. Upon graduating, Kurt and I collaborated on my first official mini-comic - TWO-WAY COMIC MACHINE - it was one of those flippy dealies, half his work / half mine. He drew my cover, I drew his. I worked at the local newspaper as a low-level ad stylist and used the small “brochure” press to print it. We couldn’t sell the things at the time … I remember driving through the streets of Milwaukee, tossing handfuls out the window — proselytizing or littering depending how you look at it. Excerpted here is the story of Lionel Piglet.
1 2 3

4 5 6

The photo on the left is the oldest I could find — 1997 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin — the two of us looking respectively baggy-trousered and limp-wristed. Somewhere off Humboldt Street. At the time, I worked as a laser light show animator at Discovery World children’s museum. The second photo is just short of ten years later — the small gang that gathered to celebrate my 31st birthday — Vinh, myself, Kurt, Taizo from the nearby okonomiyaki place, and Alena displaying the amazing memoir “A Weasel in my Meatsafe”.

Continual thanks to everyone responding to this blog. My apologies for being lazy with anything correspondence or ‘puter related. Soon I’ll try answering some of your questions… In the meantime, the blog seems like a decent forum for being transparent with the process of comics-making. I still feel secretive with HABIBI, but we’ve three other books to show-n-tell with — Here’s some doodlings from my notebook/sketchbook when I began writing BLANKETS. Kenneth Koch, Marcel Proust, Gnostic Gospels, Ballpoint Pen, 1999!

I started surfing because of depression. My Wisconsin painter buddy Dan Attoe claimed rock-climbing salvaged him from a dark mental space — learning something new combined with physical activity. I was already having surf-themed dreams, so on my thirtieth birthday, I treated myself to a board, and braved the frigid waters of the northern Pacific with Justin from Menomena.

The shot on the right is at Indian Beach, OR — terrible surf conditions that day, but a picturesque cove shared by inquisitive seals and, yes, the GOONIES rocks in the background.

…to keep breaking your heart until it opens.

Here’s a couple of his ditties “illuminated” with ballpoint pen in my sketchbook.

Aaron Renier is one of my bestest of buddies. He’s a Wisconsin homeboy raised on brautwurst and fried cheese curds just like me. (Now he eats tofurkey brautwurst). He’s also one talented, brushtastic cartoonist with a great book — Spiralbound. The French edition was released this January on Delcourt’s Shampooing imprint (rodeoed by the brilliant Lewis Trondheim); and Aaron and I flew to Angoulême (Europe’s premier comics festival) to celebrate. I documented some of it in my sketchbook, but then Aaron and my trip drifted separate directions and the diary sort of disintegrated. Oh well, here’s a glimpse of it anyway.

And just for proof, here’s a photo of Aaron’s ’stache when we first hopped a train from Paris in our grubby jetlagged splendour. The second photo is in Paris along with Alban Rautenstrauch and Alex Holden. The third photo is me getting horrifically ill at Charles Berberian’s place. Charles is one of the most charming human beings in the comics industry and a true inspiration, but I defiled his bathroom in a number of ways with my food poisoning. I couldn’t eat for four days, lost ten pounds, missed my plane back to the states, and was diagnosed upon returning as host to three varieties of parasites! Merci to Myléne for looking after me.

Also, just so Aaron isn’t embarrassed by this advertisement of his ol’ soup-strainer, here’s me rockin’ four of my own.

PS - please, excuse the obsessive “links”.