Open Letter, Saturday, December 25, 2004

This Christmas is my first as a full-time cartoonist. Celebrating the birth of the Savior is quieter and more worshipful when I’ve got so much to personally be thankful for. Sure, it’s going to be a lean year gift-wise, but we’ve got food, clothing, and family to share it with. Wise men of any generation would be hard pressed to ask for more.

(Whiny, ungrateful children are another matter, but I don’t think we have any of those.)

I hope this holy day finds you well, wherever your path leads and whatever your faith founds. Peace on Earth, goodwill to mankind.

–Howard

Single-panel Opinion piece is one click away!

I made a breakthrough in coloring on Friday. Mostly it amounted to a simple set of steps that I could repeat over and over to do the rich coloring Jean Elmore used to do for me (and which I miss quite a bit.) I’m not using that process on Schlock Mercenary yet, because it’s too time-consuming, but as I refine it and improve my technique, you can bet we’ll see some neat new coloring in the Sunday strips.

So… what does it look like?

A neighbor brought over some fresh, home-made bread as a Christmas gift, and they brought honey butter along with it. Feeling munchy and just a little low this evening, I spread some honey-butter on a slice of the bread, took a bite, and thought “needs more honey.”

The honey is in the cupboard over the stove. Reaching up for it my eye was caught by the bottle of “XXXTRA HOT” habanero sauce I got at Walmart for $1.69. It’s mild by comparison to the OTHER stuff I doctor my spicy foods with, but it’s still at least an order of magnitude past Tabasco, which I can just about drink straight.

Anyway, my mind was on hot sauce as I drizzled honey over this slice of bread. I finished the bread off, and my mind was still on hot sauce. Specifically, “what would hot sauce be like in honey? And what would I put it on?” And then it came to me… WARM TORTILLAS.

I had all three necessary ingredients. I began. The recipe goes like this:

1 tbsp honey
1 drop 25,000-ish Scoville habenero sauce
1 tortilla

Mix the first two ingredients. Warm the third. Dip the third in the mixture, and eat up.

It was amazing. It was a total pick-me-up, and not just because of the sugar. Capsicum, how I love thee…

–Howard