Troop 142 got a nice shout-out on an NPR Best of 2011 blog yesterday, which did actually translate into some book sales, I believe. I don’t know what amazon sales rankings really mean, but I know that I jumped into the top 100 for Graphic Novels for the first time ever. Again, I don’t know what these numbers really mean, but it was all very exciting nonetheless.

(I actually suspect a lot of sales came from friends who’d forgotten that I’d recently published a book until I posted about the NPR list on Facebook. A couple folks responded that “ah, yes, they really oughta finally buy that thing off of amazon…”)

In other news, I’m not sure that I’m going to be posting anything new on this blog for the remainder of 2011, as there’ll be no The Ink Panthers Show! episode next week, and then before you know it, it’ll be 2012 already.

Also, I am not sure yet when I’m going to resume posting actual comics up on this blog again. I have to admit, keeping the work offline for the past couple months has probably been creatively beneficial. I’m happy to report that I’m knee-deep in a new story and I’m feeling generally very positive about it. A couple days “staycation” this past week, where I just holed myself away and just drew and drew, really did wonders for my feelings of momentum and progress. I’m excited about the work, and am thinking maybe I’ll have something I feel good about showing sometime soon.

Here’s a video of me lettering a word-balloon, to tide everyone over.

Next year, I don’t have a ton planned. I’m going to be attending the big Angouleme Festival in France at the end of January, and will be doing some signings in Paris following that. My wife will come join me out there after all the comics business is done, and we’ll have a little mini-vacation to celebrate ten-years of being together.

In terms of other conventions, I am not sure what I’m attending or not. I imagine I’ll still make it down to SPX in the Fall, and am hoping that TCAF in Toronto is a possibility.

Nothing is changing with The Ink Panthers Show! I think this past year was really great for the show. We had some wonderful guests, and I think really had some strong episodes with just The Panthers (Tony “The Desert Panther” Consiglio is included in that. We should change his name to The Honorary Panther). TIPS is continually a work-in-progress, and Alex and I are always trying to figure out what is the best balance of solo-Panthers shows vs. Special Guest episodes. I think it’s probably best we keep aiming for that pleasant mix of both.

TCJ Talkies will return in January. It’s probable that those are going to be coming out at a slightly slower pace. The biweekly schedule really began to catch up to me at the end of this year, and listeners may have noticed a bit of a slowdown. My plan is to roll them out at a more relaxed rate, but we’ll see. I’ve found that I feel worn out before I record an episode, but once it’s done I get all excited and motivated again. I think I just really like talking about comics!

Happy New Year everyone!!

And, I’m back. Had a really, really nice week away at the shore up in Cape Cod. Things were more fun for the baby this year, as she’s more mobile and can run and play and go in the water by herself, etc. Last year was more challenging, because most trips to the beach were spent trying to stop her from eating the sand. We rode our bikes, ate way too much fried seafood, and all had naps in the afternoon.

I accomplished pretty-much nothing the whole week in terms of comics. I didn’t even bother going through the motions of packing a sketchbook, because I know from past experience that nothing gets drawn in them while I’m away (the same thing goes for my jogging shoes – why even bother bringing them? They aren’t getting run in). I’d like it if I could sketch, but for some reason I can’t, so better to accept my shortcomings.

I think maybe it’s for the best actually. During the rest of the year I basically think about comics around the clock. It’s nice to just take a week away from it, and not feel like I should be getting a panel inked while the baby sleeps in the afternoon. Much nicer to watch some of the World Cup, read a book, talk with some friends, and fall asleep on the couch.

I did give the first four issues of my Troop 142 minicomics a bit of a re-read, and had a few thoughts about revisions/additions/changes, so that was a little something at least.

For Good Friday, here’s a recent video of Orli. This is actually my favorite video of her ever. She starts off crying because we won’t let her have the iPhone to play with. Then she is talked into reading her book. I just love how she brightens up, going from crying sad baby to happy smiling one.

This is what I’d look like if I was a Jedi, who went to some formal gathering, where all the Jedis had to wear suits.

When I was in college, working towards getting a BFA, I did a whole series of paintings like this, where I took panels from Marvel and DC comic books, and cropped them so that the characters heads and stuff were cut-off. It was supposed to be a statement about objectifying male characters in comics, and also supposed to be kind of funny.

Anyway, I just always liked how this one came out, and it’s been hanging up in my various apartments for years, though usually in a bedroom, or last apartment-go-round in my office.

Where we live now, this is currently up in the dining room. We had Hanukkah dinner at our place yesterday, and while we were eating, one of my wife’s relatives looked up and noted that this was basically a painting of Thor’s crotch. I had to admit, that yes, it was. I’d kind of forgotten that it’s kind of an odd picture to have up.

Not that Alex and I have really talked about our comics work all that much on the ‘cast. We’ve mostly avoided it, except for a few instances. I’m still not sure where to fall down on this issue, because I like talking comics, but am very much aware of the fact that the show’s weekly, so if we spent every episode talking process, that would get old pretty quickly.

We do want to have more guests on though, and have started putting out some feelers to some potential New Panthers. I really like mixing things up, having some episodes where it’s just me and Alex rambling on (see episode 16 for what I think was one of our best chats), and then some where we’re joined by someone else from the comics/podcasting community.

In not-related-to-any-of-this news, I just finished reading a book called The Death of Conservatism, by Sam Tannenhaus. Normally I am bad at finishing non-fiction books, but this one was only 140 pages long, which is exactly the amount of pages I can normally read of a book before it gets put down and forgotten about forever (looking at you The Omnivore’s Dilemma). So that worked out well. Also, though, it was a really fascinating account of the history of Movement Conservatism full of a lot of information I didn’t know, and providing some great historical context for the past eight years of George W. Bush and everything that came along with that.

Anyway, that’s all for now. Alex is away in Mexico this week, so there’ll be no new podcast until next Tuesday or Wednesday I imagine.

Super Heros, a comics shop in Paris, made this ex-libris bookplate to insert into French copies of Freddie & Me. They sent me a box of them. They’re really nice.

This is a picture I took at TCAF of my table. I never got around to posting any of my TCAF pics, but most of them weren’t very good anyway. I might need a better camera, or maybe I just need to read the manual to find out how to take less blurry photos.

Look how cute Orli is!! She drinks out of a straw!

A not very high-resolution image of the cover of the Spanish version of Freddie & Me, which I believe will be out in a few weeks from Ediciones La Cúpula. When I get a less grainy version of the image I will probably replace this one.

Me and Orli in the swimming pool. She was a little freaked out when she first went in, but pretty soon she really loved being in the water. I am not sure when it’s OK to let them put their heads under, though. Do they learn pretty quickly to not breathe the water in, or do you need to wait until they’re old enough to understand you when you tell them to hold their breath?

According to the storyteller, he was doing very well striking up a conversation with the girl, talking about her book, which he had also read, until, he claims, he showed her Freddie & Me. Apparently, she saw he was reading a comic-book, and became repulsed and he ended up striking out. He frantically attempts to salvage the conversation, but the damage is done, and she gets off at the next stop.

Normally I would have a problem with this, because seriously, is this 1988, or 1995, or even 2004 or something, and comics still aren’t considered cool/acceptable by the mainstream? Didn’t she get the update? Hasn’t she ever heard of MAUS or PERSEPOLIS or even the Dark Knight or Iron Man movies? Does she think only creepy man-children are going to see these things still? Shouldn’t reading a “graphic novel” make you seem more interesting/sophisticated/with it/etc? Come on now.

But, I am OK with this, because whether or not she was wrong to dismiss the guy because he was reading a comic, according to the story he was very attracted to her, so it’s all fair-enough. I just feel bad that F&M was such a lousy wingman for the fella. Maybe if he was reading John Grisham’s The Firm or something, things might have gone his way.

It’s Friday, here’s a picture of my girls. If you look closely you can see The Baby has a fine stream of drool hanging from her mouth. She’s so cute!