On the advice of others, I medicated my stuffy head with capsaicin.

I took a can of Van Kamp’s Pork ‘n Beans, added a quarter-cup of brown sugar, and three chopped-up slices of dinner ham. I then took a half-cup of the resulting mixture (about a quarter of it) over to another bowl, and added a teaspoon of Blair’s Sudden Death Sauce.

Understand, please, that I’ve let myself go “out of shape” with regards to capsicum pain-gating over the last few weeks. I’m still no slouch, but this was easily as hot as the hottest stuff I was eating before — I selected the dosage for pain, not flavor or fun.

I’ll let Sandra describe what happened when I ate it. Suffice it to say that now my nose is no longer aching, and though it still runs, I can type without replacing soft-palate consonants.

There is one danger… I put weapons-grade capsicum in a dish known for its ability to induce flatulence. I could be farting tear-gas tomorrow…

–Howard

By dose is stuffed ub preddy good right dow.

Do you hab EDDY idea how hard it is to DRAW whed your dose is tryig to rudd all ober the page?

I hab a roll of toilet paber sittig dext to be, ad I’b goig through it like a fabily of four od their way hobe frob Bexico.

–Howard

I was drawing some Schlock Mercenary a couple of weeks ago, and was inking General Tagon’s rather square jawline. I remember looking at that line I was making, and suddenly having that disconnected, “where am I and what am I doing here?” feeling. I looked down at the line I was drawing was struck at the absurdity of the thought that folks would PAY me for drawing it. I mean, it was just a LINE, connected to another line. The line itself, seen up close, was scratchy and a little pale — a side effect of using pigment liners until they give up not only the ghost, but also any other malingering spirits in the neighborhood — hardly top-of-the-(ahem)-line stuff.

I pulled back and looked at the whole comic. It wasn’t done yet, and looked, unsurprisingly, very unfinished. Of course, even when I’m done inking my work looks unfinished. I color it to cover that up, as I’ve done since June of 2000. Looking down at it I was struck again by the thought that it wasn’t worth a day’s wage. The math is simple: if I’m going to live off of a daily comic, each daily comic I draw needs to be worth whatever money I have to earn in a day in order to get by, right? These days that’s about $100, and even then that’s with a pretty tight belt. So I looked down at that comic and thought “is that worth $100?”

Now don’t go thinking that I’m having some mid-life crisis, or a failure of faith, or anything like that. I like what I’m doing… no, I LOVE what I’m doing. Even the crassly commercial GWAVAMan is fun. It’s just that sometimes I can’t believe that I AM doing it.

Remember playing with the old “house” legos and making space-ships? This would have been 1978 or so, in my case. The transparent bricks that were the original Lego windows became “dilithium crystals,” (as a 10-year-old in the 70s what other spaceship crystals WERE there?) and every ship needed one. Later on, at age 16 or so, I realized that those crystals were the “Suspension of Disbelief” engines that allowed these funny, boxy ships to look sleek and powerful in the eyes of a 10-year old. Well, I think I need to fasten a transparent lego-brick to my desk somewhere, because this disbelief I experience from time to time certainly could use a good spot of suspending.

Yes, I expect people to pay for that line. This year the rate is $100 per daily collection of lines. Next year I’m doubling it. And people will not only pay, they’ll SMILE as they pay. See this here clear lego? PURE DILITHIUM.

–Howard

Well, I pencilled and inked all but one of the GWAVAMan strips that run in February and March, and the last one in the queue has been mostly pencilled. It awaits approval of character design, so unless I want to ink the other stuff on the page without seeing how the missing character fits, I’m done with pen-and-ink.

My hand hurts a lot. This means I’m a) holding the pen too tightly, b) pushing down too hard, rather than using a light touch with a larger nib, and c) out of practice. This is not multiple choice. This is “all of the above.” S’okay. My hand will be better tomorrow.

I’m really pleased with the way these strips turned out. I spend a little more time on them than I do on the daily doses of Schlock Mercenary I crank out. I know, it hardly seems fair that 20,000 fans don’t get my “A” game, but let’s face it… youse guys ain’t paying more than about 20% of my monthly bills. My generous commercial patrons, on the other hand, get my “stretch” work.

This is good news for Schlock fans… I’m being paid to stretch my artistic abilities. The Sunday coloring has already benefited from the techniques I’m developing as I work on GWAVAMan, and I’m sure that the rest of the art I do for Schlock will follow along similarly.