I don’t know if it’s this way for anyone else, but for me, buying and listening to music just isn’t the same as it used to be. It used to be more like a ritual, an immersive experience. Whether it was holing up in my bedroom (as pictured) with headphones and accompanying booklet or wearing out the tape in the cassette as I drove around, listening to both sides over and over for days or weeks, buying a new (whether actually new or just new to me) album of music was much more than just an acquisition of new media. These days, it goes pretty much as shown on the right. I still don’t think I’ve heard more than one song from P.O.S.’s latest album, We Don’t Even Live Here, despite buying it last fall. And I love P.O.S. But, for the most part, music serves merely as a backdrop for work or a run or in rare instances a commute (that’s what NPR is for, right?), whereas in younger years, it was more like the soundtrack, the score.

A lot of this has to do with the way we have changed all media from individual works to merely indistinctive “content.” We amass digital collections of stuff, with which there’s not that visceral reaction or interaction. This probably explains why I can point out iconic comic book, magazine or album covers from the 1970s, ’80s and even ’90s to an extent, but everything now just seems like a blur. Some of that is just age. Some is the reality of adult life. But the fact is, even in the early 2000s, when I was very much living an “adult” life (wife, job, 99 problems, etc.), I still interacted with music and other creative media in essentially the same way I did pre-internet. I was slow to adopt buying commercial music digitally (even though I was on the forefront of producing and selling it in the late 1990s); I didn’t even own a CD player not attached to a computer until 2001; I’ve never owned an iPod or dedicated digital music player save for the Shuffle I took from Sara a few years ago to use at the gym.

But I have become an iTunes music listener/buyer (though I prefer Amazon MP3 for a variety of reasons, price and portability among them) in the last decade, and the only way for me to listen to new music purchased digitally in, say, my car is to burn it to a CD (because, yes, I have an old-school car stereo with no USB ports or audio jacks – a step up from my previous car, which still had a TAPE DECK). And because I primarily only drive to commute, I mostly listen to NPR in the car, because that’s also the only time I have in my life to get caught up on news and world events. It’s why I rarely know what’s going on in the world of pop culture, my own city, or anything else not covered on Morning Edition or Here & Now.

However, I think I’ve digressed enough. Besides, I have work to do. It’s the only way I get to hear my music, don’t you know?

This is one of those instances where the concept for a comic seemed much funnier in my head than the final product.

HOWEVER, this was actually inspired by a real story I heard on, um, The Story, about a woman whose recently passed husband was driven to become a firefighter (and eventually fire chief) because his family’s home was destroyed by fire when he was a child. So, in my head, this guy was like Batman, only fighting fires, not criminals.

So, this one’s in memory of Freddy Gerik, and, by extension, the victims of the fertilizer plant explosion in West, Texas, where he lived.

So … I just got back from Emerald City Comicon. Well, OK, technically, I got back to Las Vegas on Sunday night, but I’m still playing catch-up from being up in Seattle all weekend. Every time I do a comic convention — which is usually at least four times a year — I go through the same cycle of emotional highs and lows. This comic oversimplifies it, because as much despair as I feel by the end of the show, I also feel incredibly inspired to do more cool stuff with comics.

It just so happened that at this weekend’s show, I was seated next to a quasi-popular mainstream comic artist, who had a short queue of people waiting all weekend for free sketches.* Some of them blocked half my table for hours at a time, leading me to definitely have a few “why am I even here?” moments. But outside of that, the show was a lot of fun (a little too much on Saturday night) and I got more of my dumb comics into the world. One of these days, maybe I’ll have enough of THESE dumb comics to actually put in a book. But at the rate I update this webcomic, that will probably take another five years.

However, while at my table in Artist Alley, I DID draw THIS comic, so there you go.

This scene pretty much plays out about five times a day. If only I could teach the cat to draw backgrounds or something, she’d be really helpful.

And it literally just happened again while typing the last sentence:

It’s telling that I drew the original sketch for this strip about two months ago, and did the pencil artwork about a month later, and then finally had time to ink and color it last week, only because I was sick and confined to my house for a few days.

So, yeah, when I first conceived of this, I was in the middle of deadline hell for several projects, but the truth of a freelance career is that if you want to keep working, this should always be the sight in your rear view. And those bastards ARE always closer than they appear.

Now, would you believe me if I told you there’ll be ANOTHER new strip next week?

I woke up this morning, bright (well, not so bright, the sun wasn’t up yet) and early at 5 a.m. as I usually do, ready to start a new day by making comics, jogging, and eating breakfast — three of my favorite things. Today was going to be extra cool, because me and my friend Jay were going to see The Dark Knight Rises in the early afternoon. Everything was looking pretty good, and then … news of this surfaced.

I was unable to shake this sucking feeling from the pit of my stomach, and I couldn’t focus on anything else. So I did the only thing I really know how to do to cope with feelings … I wrote this comic. You guys might think it’s cheesy, but I’m pretty much almost tearing up even as I write this, and my 14-year-old self’s reaction in the comic is basically why.

This is what happens when I actually make good on a dumb Twitter idea.

I know a lot of comic geeks out there feel the need to choose sides in this whole Before Watchmen thing, as if this is the first time a giant corporation put its bottom line ahead of its moral integrity. But I will say this: The only people the publication of the Before Watchmen prequel comics affects are Alan Moore, Dave Gibbons, and the money-counters at DC Entertainment. So if you think it’s wrong that DC is publishing these comics…

… DON’T BUY THEM.

Instead, SEND ME ALL YOUR MONEYS.

And reblog/Tweet/like/pin this comic lots of times please.

Thanks.

Seriously, does this happen to anyone else? I always walk into Target planning to spend $15 and come out with hundreds less in my bank account. And there’s always the most random selection of stuff once you put it on the conveyor belt at the register. Underwear next to cereal next to a vacuum cleaner. None of which you really need. Well, maybe the underwear.

In other news, I’m running a half-marathon this weekend. Depending on how I do, maybe there’ll be a comic about that soon …

I loved the Avengers film more than I should have, but I’m kind of overwhelmed — though, sadly, not surprised — by how much Marvel/Disney whored out the Avengers license to shill for SO MANY products. Back in the day, it would have just been Burger King toys and Slurpee cups. But now? I’ve seen everything from Harley-Davidson motorcycles to fragrances. It’s crazy. When will too much be enough?

Probably by the time you get to the third panel of today’s strip.

That is a totally for-real thing. Somehow, I was voted “Best Sense of Humor” in sixth grade.

I meant to have this comic posted last week, but I got waylaid by, like, paying gigs or whatever. But I actually have another comic in the queue for next week. REALLY. And it doesn’t even feature a teenage me.