More thanks to all of you for the comments and support. I’ve done a poor job of responding to any questions, so here’s to catching up on some of them this sweltering Friday the 13th evening in Portland.

Kesher asked about a Spanish Chunky Rice. Tanwer and Salakov are right. Chunky should be available in Spanish from Astiberri any day.

Ngam, Flescetto, Smoky Man, and Liz asked about potential signings in Paris, Italy, and Chicago. I’ve nothing scheduled for the rest of the year, making myself sparce on the promotion circuit. For a while, I was spending all my time signing books rather than starting on a new one, so I’m trying to stabilize at home. My drawing hand needed the rest, too, but I sincerely miss interactions with you loyal readers. That’s one reason I’m grateful for this blog. When HABIBI is finished, I’ll likely tour for a year.

Here’s a slice from a signing tour in Germany when my editor/publicist Sebastian purchased David Hasselhoff’s GREATEST HITS as our Autobahn soundtrack Frankfurt to Berlin.

Ben Bishop asked about Nickelodeon magazine. Best for new cartoonists to simply submit directly. I lucked out. While working as a graphic designer at Dark Horse comics, I snuck some of my own illustrations into ads and indicia pages. It was against company policy, but the editors of the SCATTERBRAIN humor series encouraged it. After seeing these said illos, Chris Duffy at Nickelodeon contacted me about submitting to the Nick COMIC BOOK. At first, I focused on one panel gags and later graduated to full-page comics.
Editors Chris Duffy and Dave Roman are glowing heavensent angels of the comics industry. They are almost solely responsible for economically fueling me through the production of Blankets via monthly comics and illustration gigs. Here’s a peek at a new millennium cover for them and the preliminary ballpoint pen roughs.

Ngam ~ My birthday is actually September 21, 1975 as seen on the CARNET passport.

Emily asked if I still believe in God and Jesus, but I think I’ll defer that question for this forum. Jesse Cohn pondered self-nurturance versus self-denial in Rumi’s poetry, which is a juicy and exciting topic, but too much for tonight’s typing. Open discussion for both!

Sorry for the late response to Maria asking about the Cure and Tom Waits references in BLANKETS chapter titles. Yup, you got them right.

Jaybird asked about my HABIBI working day.
The entire book was storyboarded in thumbnail form. The first draft was completed in summer 2005, but then I tinkered with it and got lost an insecure creative block until a late 2006 revision. Except for much of Carnet, I definitely pencil before I ink. It’s a great stage for working out compositions, but it often hurts the integrity and fluidity of the final line. In the future, I hope to draw a book with ink straight to paper like many of the inspiring European cartoonists, but for now, I’m not “masterful” enough to get away with that on HABIBI. Of the six hundred pages, I feel fairly good about the first two hundred, the second third will require some editing, and the last part of the book will likely be tossed out and rewritten. I haven’t yet “solved” the story for the main characters, because I haven’t sorted out the same issues in my own life. Here’s a picture of me living inside a tree.

Just home from Kentucky (not Ohio, after all) and grateful to bike around peaceful Portland again.
While in Kentuck’, my bro and I made sure to sample local culture, including the Creation Museum – a gigantic museum which presents Biblical theory as factual science. It’s like a Right-wing Christian Jurassic Park with animatronic dinosaurs frollicking alongside Adam and Eve.

Above: A collaborative sketch by my brother and me, humans and dinosaurs coexisting, Noah’s flood separates the continents,
and real-life kids voyeuristically study Adam and Eve’s intimate bath.

Below: Here’s a glimpse of Eden from the pages of HABIBI. Not an especially interesting page, but I happened to scan the in-progress pencils.

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.

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”.

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.