Tauhid Bondia

20th TIME'S THE CHARM

I once set a firework off in my bedroom. It was a small one. One of those little jobs that shoots a stream of sparks out of three places on its sides so it spins furiously. I still don't know what I was thinking. It left a huge, smelly, patch of charred carpet in the middle of my bedroom. When my mom saw it she didn't even say anything. She just looked tired. I think about that a lot. 

Crabgrass Process Video

This one is a sneak peak at a comic from the far flung future (December of this year)

DOES WHATEVER A HUMAN CAN

My driveway has an overhang that spiders love to start their webs in. They never get to finish them because they constantly get Godzilla'd by people coming in and out of the house. In fact I have special technique that I use in the hot months when coming home or leaving. I throw my hands in front my body in a wide karate chop, like an insane person, just to knock down any webs before they can touch my face. 

THE GREENS ARE GREENER

I didn't have my first garden tomato until I was full grown. In fact just about everything I ate as a kid came out of a box or a can. It's obvious now that processed food is terrible but who can afford to eat natural? Not cartoonists. 

BRIGHT LIGHTS, BIG CITY

I wanted Miles' previous city life to pal a bigger role in his character development initially. I thought I'd draw on my experience staying summers with my NY cousins to write about it. But the boys had different ideas. Something about them is just so acutely focused on right now that it never felt in-character to have them talking much about the past. 

A MAN OF MANY SKILLS

I did okay in school as kid. I wasn't exactly an over achiever. In fact my entire motivation for getting good grades was fear of getting in trouble if I didn't. 

THE BOY IN A WELL

I feel like there was always a spot were )legend has it) a kid died in some horrible way. I've often wondered about the origins of these stories. did big kids are them up to scare little ones? did adults make them up to keep kids out of dangerous areas? Or did a kid actually die there? 

...

Did you hear that!? You did? My apologies. I had Taco Bell for lunch. 

KEVIN ASKING THE REAL QUESTIONS

Growing up as a black kid in a predominantly white town, race was mostly only discussed as a curiosity. As kids we didn't understand racism or race relations much. It didn't make any sense to us back then. We simply didn't see why it was so important to some folks. But just about any person of color will tell you there was a moment when they realized they were "different" and that things were never the same after that. One of my favorite things about this comic is revisiting the years before ...

I STILL KINDA WISH I WAS A DOG

It's true.

UNBREAKABLE CYPHER

Writing in code was always fun as a kid. The problem was never having a secret worth encrypting. In fact I don't think I ever deciphered a coded message that was worth the effort. 

TEEN YEARS 45

More Teen Years inbound!

IT'S THE PRINCIPLE OF THE THING

As you can probably guess I got blamed for things I didn't do a lot as a kid. In retrospect it probably evened out with the things I did and didn't get caught for.

AND HE WAS, INDEED, FINE

I've always found the relationship between kids and their stuffed animals in comics a little overly whimsical. I never wanted Kevin or Miles to spend much time leaning on the "power of imaginations." If only because it didn't play an especially big part in my life as a kid. Never had an imaginary friend or anything like that... 

...

Wouldn't it be weird if Crabgrass ended with one of the boys being imaginary...? I mean, it WON'T but wouldn't that be weird?

YOU GOT KEVIN'D

It's important to always obey the letter of the law. 

CAR!!

This is the first Sunday strip I ever drew for Crabgrass and it remains one of the more artistically ambitious to date. If I never draw another stadium full of people it'll be too soon. Seriously, how did anyone draw anything before google images? 

You may be wondering if we actually played football in the middle of the streets when I was young. The answer is also-freaking-lutely. Could we have played in a backyard or an open field? Sure. But dodging traffic added an element of dan...

PICTURE DAY!

Miles is just trying to share his drip, Kev. It's all love! 

Did anyone else hate picture day? I don't know how but it managed to sneak up on me every single year for twelve years of school. Back in the day you had to order copies in a  package of varying sizes the day of. Wallet sized photos were like GOLD to our parents. They'd give them to friends and relatives like trading cards. Time were weird. 

SEDUCED BY POWER!

Do kids still play with the water hose? Or the sprinkler? I can't even think of the last time I saw a sprinkler on a lawn. I can clearly remember having to dodge the arc of water from sprinklers every other yard as a kid. I guess that was kind of wasteful now that I think about it . 

Anyway, I don't know how Kevin thought this was going to go. 

NOT THE TOOLS!

When I first came up with Gene I wanted him to be handy with tools. Mostly because my dad wasn't particularly handy and neither am I. But every now and then I'll change an outlet cover or fix a wobbly table leg and my wife (who I have witness elbow deep in a car engine) has to endure my chest puffing for at least a week. 

THE WHOLE POINT OF SUMMER!

As a kid there was nothing that could make me drop everything like hearing the ice cream truck coming. I could literally be in the middle of already eating an ice cream cone and I'd toss it to chase that truck. I can't think of an adult equivalent to Ice Cream Truck Urgency short of getting the call that your wife is giving birth. 

BEST FORT EVER!

I had high hopes for this strip. It was supposed to establish the boys hideout in the woods. I planned for it to be a never quite finished collection of crates and plywood where they frequently read comics and made plans to finish construction. But just like the hideout the follow-up strips never really materialized. I supposed it's at least historically accurate as I also spent an afternoon with my childhood friend "building" a fort and then promptly never visited it again. I haven't given u...

CRABGRASS SOFT LAUNCH!!

As promised, I will begin posting new(ish) strips today, exclusively on Patreon. The "ish" here refers to the fact that the first batch of strips will be from the newspaper sales kit. A sales kit is just a collection of strips that any papers new papers run before printing more current strips. They've basically been selected to best give new readers an idea of the world of Crabgrass. So if you've been reading Crabgrass from the beginning you'll recognize these strips, HOWEVER, most of them ha...

Some... news

So there's been update on the Crabgrass newspaper launch, folks. Long story short: It's been pushed back to June 27. Long story long: This comes after a lots of debate and considerable effort on behalf of Andrews McMeel to prevent it from happening. But, it turns out trying to launch a comic is newspapers during a pandemic (and the potential start of World War III) is more difficult than anyone anticipated! The world is different than it was just a few years ago and an already shrinking newsp...

Timelapse For a Future Sunday strip

Don't forget! Crabgrass returns soon!

More Redone Strips

Here’s one that I really like the original.  The art is just too far behind the curve to print as is. 

Here’s another early strip redone

Here’s another early strip reworked. This time around I decided to I didn’t like the idea of Kevin dragging and bossing Miles around so much. Miles used to be much more of a follower but I think he keeps pace with Kevin more readily these days. 

Sales Kit Strips

So when you get syndicated there’s a thing called a sales kit that you have to put together. It’s basically six weeks of strips that every paper runs when they pick up your comic. When you pick these comics it’s a good idea do redo any that come from early in the run so the art matches with the current style. It’s also a chance to punch up the writing a little bit. Above is the very first Crabgrass strip redone for syndication. You can see the difference in art style here more than an...

What does this mean to you?

Well, I'll tell you. First of all, yes, it does mean no new strips for a bit. Leading up to Crabgrass appearing in newspapers I've been hard at work preparing for a daily update schedule. However doing so, along with putting together a sales kits for the strip, and working on the first Crabgrass book has burned through a considerable chunk of my established buffer. And so in order to rebuild that buffer (and also to give myself a much needed break) I'll be taking the next couple of months off...

1/9/22

1/8/22

1/7/22