I remember hearing once that most indy comics never reach issue ten.  I've always wanted to break that particular bell curve.
 
I just moved into my new place.  I'm now looking out over Toronto from a top floor studio apartment.  I'm sharing the place with T.S. Jenkins and Hairy.  Way cool digs, two minutes away from everything.  It's really astonishing how many distractions there are in the heart of downtown Toronto.  --You've got everything from the seedy to the sublime, and all of it in quantity.  I really love cities.  I just got back from the Saint Lawrence market: one of those big food markets where you can buy direct-from-the-farmer produce, and things like fresh fish with the heads still attached.  I've always wanted to live near one of those places.

--I got some Canadian smoked salmon jerky, and Yow!  That's good stuff!  Like high protein junk food.  There's a guy selling it for two bucks a handful.  I love this place.
 
The cover of this issue was the very first piece of artwork I did in the new studio.  I had to do it twice in order to get it right, and in doing so l accidentally discovered the basic principal behind animation-style backgrounds as produced with gouache paint.  --Not that I'm striving for a Saturday morning animation look, but it's still nice to have figured out gouache paint.  My next challenge, whenever I feel up to it, will be to paint something in oils.  I consider oil paint the renaissance equivalent of air brush work.  Or, today's computer stuff, I guess.
 
Hmm.  About computer graphics. . .  I think I've figured out why I feel kind of blah about even the most spectacular computer images I see.
 
Until computer graphics of today's quality came along, it never really occurred to me just how little the visual effect itself had to do with my reaction as a viewer.  Computer graphics are too easy.  With the right computer system, you can produce images which were once only possible at the hands of dedicated pros.  But now, with powerful graphics systems becoming more and more affordable to the general public, it seems that dazzling images will become common place.  As a result, those images will cease to dazzle. 

Perhaps it's different for me, since I've always been involved with painting and drawing, but the reason I'm amazed with most of the amazing images I've seen lies in knowing just how difficult such work can be.  I'll say things like, "Wow! Somebody did that?"  --Sort of like figure skating: what would be the point of watching if it were easy?  It's the same difference as between a photograph and an airbrush painting. 

But there is a good point; photographs can still amaze you.  --Not for their chemical ability to render perfect color images.  Nobody cares about that.  What a photograph can do is fill your head with amazing ideas.  With photographs, the ideas it can portray are the important thing.  And the same will soon apply broadly to computer creations.  It's the idea that counts, not the image.  And that's a good thing. 

Still, don't try to stop me from drawing free hand.  Don't sell me any snappy new art software which will allow me to 'point and click' Rubels into panels, (thus allowing me more time to spend on writing the all important 'ideas').  It is not that simple.  I like figure skating.  There is a great power in having to struggle for an image.  Years of practice teach temperance and responsibility, and that's where powerful artwork comes from.  --Artwork of any kind.
 
Somebody said this to me about why western values are sweeping the globe:
 
In China, you have to spend twenty years learning the mental and physical control required to stuff your fist into a wall.  In America, you just go out and buy a gun.  It's instant.  It's easy.  It gives power to those who have not earned it.  It gives power to the immature and the irresponsible.
 
Don't get me wrong.  I like technology.  But I also like temperance: mental and physical self control.  And I think that anybody who does is going to be miles ahead of the pack, regardless of how big and expensive his or her computer system happens to be.
 
Hmm.  Seems there was something on my mind.  I was wondering what I was going to say this issue.  Pass the jerky.