Nevertheless, I’m glad Sarah is finally standing up and asserting herself a little – she’s been too passive for too long, and this is the first chance she has to really get involved.  Well, of course, in the revised first chapter, she does blow away that PA trooper.  And she does have a pretty groovy fistfight with Sgt. Vissarionov.  So, okay, I take it back.  Still, she looks pretty good on this page, if I do say so myself.

At any rate, this week I’m starting an extended summer schedule so I have to get to work early tomorrow.  So I’ll sign off without any more snarky or self-deprecating remarks.  Until next week, be well, everyone!

Oh, except for this: to everyone out there, Happy Father’s Day!  My own dad died about a decade ago, and I miss him terribly.  But he had a huge impact on me, and what I do, and how I live my life, for which I am eternally grateful.  He was a truly great man. So to all you fathers out there – be good to your kids.  You’re key to building a worthwhile future for the world.

And NOW it’s time to go.  All the best, everyone!

As for me, I have nothing BUT patience.  But nothing really new to report this week, except that I’m just kind of maintaining my position here.  I hope you are, too.  We’re coming up on the closing part of this chapter, now – events are accelerating.

That, and my cat has apparently learned how to open doors.  I find this really unnerving, and it’s allowed her to get the drop on me at some rather inopportune moments, particularly while I’m trying to finish pages in this comic.  Oy vey.

Anyway, it’s back to the ol’ grind for me.  I’ll see you next week!

Oh, and by the way, the last two-page spread is still over on topwebcomics.com, and your votes are, as always, deeply appreciated!  Anything to get this baby rolling in a larger audience.

So I don’t have a huge amount to say about anything other than once again, it’s Memorial Day in the U.S. (forgive me if this is an international holiday and I’m leaving everyone else out – I don’t think it is, though), and so we’re all thinking about the citizens of our country who’ve died in the cause of the Revolution.  I live in faith that one day we’ll find a way to make war less necessary; the events of this week, in the United Kingdom, haven’t left me too terribly hopeful that that day is coming any time soon.  But a conversion of conscience like this takes thousands of years; the best we can do is try to move things forward a little bit in our generation.

So anyhow, enough of my rambling.  Until next time, folks, be well.

I like this scene a lot.  Actually, it’s going to look a lot better as a spread when the other page is finished, so I’ll stick the whole thing somewhere for you to see it next Monday.  But I like that it accentuates Mike’s bigness.  He’s not a small machine.  And there’s good reason everyone is afraid he’s going off the rails – he could really ruin everyone’s day if he decided he wanted to.

As for me, well, I’m turning in.  It’s going to be another big one this week, but I’m up for it.  And now that we’re “over the hump” with this chapter and events are starting to accelerate, the prospect of getting to draw the rest of the chapter is really exciting.  And this one is building up to my second-favorite scene in the entire story, which I’ve been dying, just DYING to draw for three years now.  So I’m really starting to have fun with this.

Anyway, until next week, folks, be well!

So, yeah, I’m getting a little burnt out, I’ll admit.  I’m still plugging away at the comic, though, and I’m glad to say that, unlike the first three chapters, Chapter 4, which is now about 2/3 complete (I think), is one I would feel confident sending to print right off the website. Well, fine, the next to last panel needs a tweak. It looked better in the inks. But still, no major “this whole page needs to be redrawn” situations.

God.  Print.  Now there’s something I haven’t thought about for a while.  Maybe I’d better not go there at this time of night.  Suffice it to say, another week’s gone by, and another page is drawn.  So, I call that a net gain.

Have a good one folks.  See you next week!

Pulled this one out of the fire, somehow.  It was an extremely busy work week for me.  A lot of traveling, into the bargain.  But here we are. I also just realized I never put up the back of the T-90 spec card for you.  I’ll have to do something about that.

As to the rest of it, well… not much to say about this week. Just a lot of hard work and some longer than usual hours in the Studio.  I still have to get these exams ironed out, too – work has been so time-consuming – there’s just so much to do with earning a living – that I haven’t had any time to plan in my licensing examinations yet.  I really have to start carving out time to do that. But I work twelve hours just about every day… I don’t know how this is going to work.  But, well, as they say, “By the grace of God and this casino…”

Anyhow, I’ll just leave it at that.  Work work work work work work work…

Be well, folks.  See you next week.

Here in New England, it’s been a wild and hairy week, with a bizarre action movie-style finish.  I live quite close to Boston, and so it was with some uneasiness that I watched the entire criminal situation up there play out.  I have to admit that it feels, recently, as though people in the Northeastern U.S.A. are starting to go radically off the rails in a very unfunny way, and the answer people seem to have to it is more repression, more laws, more violence.  I don’t get it.  I don’t understand how “not killing people” became such a difficult thing to do.  I don’t understand how “passing the toughest laws in the country” became a thing to be proud of.  I don’t understand how declaring that you aren’t giving a criminal suspect the benefit of his constitutional rights became something meritorious, or at the very least, acceptable.  I don’t understand any of it.  The conversion of conscience our world desperately needs is just not happening, and it doesn’t seem to be getting much closer.

Before he died, my dad told me, I think prophetically, that God was going to send my country a great test, and that we may not be up to the task it sets before us.  I sometimes wonder whether this is it, or if there’s something even worse yet to come.  All I can say is that so far, we haven’t been up to the task, and we all need to start shaping up, and stop killing each other.  This is just crazy.

Anyhow, I’m off to another week in paradise.  Next weekend, I’m going to be occupied at the wedding, actually that of my oldest friend; we’ve known each other for over twenty-five years.  In the midst of the chaos and violence of this week, it will be a welcome relief, and a hopeful moment amidst so much bizarre and pointless tragedy.  I’ll see about getting a page done for next time, but if I don’t you’ll know where I am.  Until next week, then… well, just be safe, be happy and be kind to each other.  God bless.

Anyway, this was another “how the hell did I get this done” kind of page.  Oddly enough, I owe it all to taking a nap this afternoon.  Only about half an hour – but I was totally back on top of the task afterwards.  Who knew?  Strange things, these weird sleep habits I have.  In any case, I haven’t really anything substantive to add this week other than to say that I’m still truckin’, here.  Have a good one, everybody!

So, anyhow, yes!  Here we are.  With the tension breaking in both of the parallel scenes.  You can probably see now why I have been intercutting the two – astute observers will notice that this page and the last one make up a single spread, so the big “moment” is happening at the same time.  Well, anyway, I thought it was clever. But what the hell do I know?

It’s a bit odd to be writing a comic about nuclear war when we seem to be on the verge of one right now, if the media/propaganda machines worldwide are to be believed.  The North Koreans are currently threatening to use the Bomb against us Americans, though Christ alone knows what we did to them THIS time, aside from asking them not to do that.  And, yes, the sanctions thing, but I mean, come on.  The North Koreans have been imposing sanctions on their own people for sixty years, now, so I mean, what the hell?  My rational side tells me that this is all just the outward signs of a bizarre internal political dance that always happens in totalitarian dictatorships when there’s a change in power, but good God, guys, can you solve your problems without threatening us with the Bomb?  Seriously.

It only really came to my mind because I happen also this week to have watched a documentary (while I was working, actually – a rare multitasking moment) on the disaster at Chernobyl in 1986, which is basically as close as we’ve come to knowing what the aftermath of a widespread modern nuclear war would be like: a total ecological and human catastrophe. Which is, of course, to say nothing of the disastrous way that World War II was brought to an end in Japan.  So to think that threatening that kind of destruction is such an offhanded thing, as some kind of internal political ploy, really makes me sick at heart.

But anyway, enough rambling.  War or no war, life goes on, and I have a job to get to in the morning.  See you next week, folks!