Recreation of a Recreation of a Fun Strip (Or, Hooray For Art Theft)

The second piece I had to recreate for Zack Davvison after the original strip recreation (see below) was stolen. The Kitaro/M&C piece was posted a little while ago. I'm terrified something's going to happen to this package when I send it. I am not redrawing these a third time. I just can't.

I pretty much do all the Fun Strips as squares now, rather than four panels across as I always did. I find them easier to  work on and physically handle, and the format suits posting online better. They'll also be easier to ship when I start selling off the Fun Strip archive (which now consists almost entirely of individual strips that Sarah assembled into a "Fun Page". 

When I started making the Fun Pages I adhered to a standard of seven four-panel strips and a title header. Eventually (and not soon enough) I enlarged the panels to where I was only doing five strips a page with a header. So, that was 29 panels down to 21 per page. Which was still stupid, from a commercial/time viewpoint. I should have made joke books like Ivan Brunetti did, one comic gag strip per page, or some arrangement to spread the hundreds of strips and panels into something viable in book form rather than seven to a comic book page few people would see. Especially while the book market was starting to gear up in the aughts. Instead I made Dork #11, which was a lot of fun but a terrible decision. Always late to the new format, always stuck in the old ways. Not so much now, but now not doing so much. Oy!

At least this commission is done. Again. A few others will fall in the next week or so. I need to try to work faster and smarter (without losing quality). I'll get there. But right now I'm overloading these commissions with detail out of guilt for their being late, which makes them a bit more late, and then I feel i have to throw details into things that weren't paid to be very detailed.  An insidious loop! 

I may have inks on a WIP M&C commission posted here before I go to bed tonight this morning. Sadly, I have a funeral service to attend tomorrow. A horrible way to see old friends. The person who passed away befriended me in high school and introduced me to Dungeons & Dragons. Both were super important to me. We were never close, but Densel lent me some of his D&D supplements, back in the early 80's they were largely zine-like pamphlets. I was so engrossed in reading one of these that I walked into traffic at New Dork Lane and 10th Street and was almost run over by a turning car. Densel invited me to a couple of games, one at his family's apartment and one somewhere I can't remember, other than there were cobblestone roads outside the house and the older guys were smoking drugs. It was amazing. Densel left school the next year as he was older than me. Some years later as several Staten Island nerd circles converged it turned out some people I was socializing with more often were part of Densel's old D&D circles -- I might have played alongside some of them those two times. So, the nice thing, Densel would show up at some of the backyard July 4th get-togethers and whatever, sometimes with his wife. Densel was dealing with cancer for the past decade, and he passed away the other night. Like I said, we were never close, but he was someone I always looked up to (literally, as well, he was taller and bigger than me) and appreciated and it was always great when he came out to a party. He had a lot of heart and I'm sorry he's gone and that he had to go through all that. Things just seem to go from bad to worse lately with everyone I know. 

The mostly good news is I should have our car back Tuesday so I can finally prep a mail run with everything people bought in the past weeks, and the commissions that are done. Also some card drawings from IG, and if I can organize enough, I've finished a batch of Pirate Girl cards for customers. I've got about 40 orders or so and I've drawn about ten so far, I'm trying to get a few done a day when I can. 

Aaargh! Winky the Pirate is right beside the keyboard as I type, looking to walk across the keyboard and do something nefarious to the English language as well as my nerves. So I will sign off now to avoid a disaster. She did something the other day that shrunk my text on Google or something and it was a while before it got restored. Oh, that Winky!. 

See you soon.