Claremont and Vampires

Plus My First Survey

I’ve been snowed in. You know what being snowed in means, right? Snow days aren’t just for kids! Woooooo!

It’s been fun, except for a toilet paper crisis. Will I face high winds, deep snow, and frostbite for modern civility? Yes. Yes I will.

I worry that I get less work done during snow days. Watching snow envelop your world is soothing and relaxing, so it’s important to shake that off. I always complain about working in the middle of the night when it cuts in on my sleep and it’s important not to let unexpected free time go to waste. Remember, these shows aren’t going to stream themselves. You’ve got to get in there and power through the episodes.

So I finished Lower Decks. I’m very proud of that. It took hours.

Snow also makes me think of classic Claremont strips. Well, they’re classic to me. There’s something about a little dog in a lot of snow that’s pleasing.

These were drawn back when I had a dog, and Payton (that was my dog) did indeed love to sit out in the snow. In fact, she had more fun in the snow than most kids. She was a Labrador Retriever, so she was more equipped to deal with it than Claremont. I’ve trudged through more miles of snow for my dog’s sake more than any other being.

It always snows when I have the longest commute. When I was a graphic artist, I worked three days in the office and two days at home. So naturally it only snowed when I was at the office. When it did snow a lot, a 35 minute commute turned into three hours.

I always had a Wednesday deadline of 5:00 PM for the local newspaper. Naturally, when big snow came, it was always on a Wednesday morning. I’d watch the staff slowly disappear one by one until there were only two people left in the building, me and the Marketing Director. The Marketing Director, of course, liked to give me the content for the ad early, say 4:00 PM. I’d race and extend the deadline as much as possible so that I could be out the door just in time for peak gridlock.

People always ask why I gave up graphic art, and there are too many wonderful reasons, but there’s one of them for you.

Whenever I was late, this was my excuse. Dogs can not only eat homework, they can also turn off alarms. Any serious dog owner can confirm this.

I still love this comic. It’s true, my Lab was great for home protection. She was big and loud. That’s most of the job, right there. But as far as defending me goes, I wouldn’t have been surprised if she could’ve learned some martial arts skills. Labs are pretty darn smart.

This is also a favorite. That’s actually my old drawing board with the old tools that I used. I miss them both. I got rid of the old drawing board because it was the size of a small car. It was formerly an engineering drawing board from bygone days when computers were fancy things only seen in movies. It was positively huge. Since I tend to move a lot, I grew very tired of hefting it up and down stairs. Now I draw on something very small and humble. An iPad. But I also have a small, humble drawing board with a very modern cup holder. I don’t know how they held their cups in the old days, but my guess is that they kept sliding off of the angled drawing board.

Let us abruptly switch gears to vampire comics. What? Yes, vampire comics! For whatever reason, I had a series of ideas involving Berle and vampires. Of course it was Berle! You don’t think I’d let a vampire attack any of my other characters, do you? These were pleasant fun, and could’ve become sort of a horror comic series, but I made no conscious effort to think of them. They just came to me.

When I look at the comic above, I still laugh at the “Shape of…A CROSS!” line. If you ever watched old Superfriends cartoons, you know that the Wonder Twins would announce their powers before enacting them in exactly the way Berle does. Only Berle doesn’t have any powers, just two arms. I suppose that’s a power for him.

Really, though, if I was a vampire I wouldn’t make it easy for the ol’ stake through the heart action. Please, vampires. Use protection.

So basically this small series is about defense FROM vampires or defense FOR vampires. They’re really about everyone’s safety. Maybe I was binging Buffy when I made these.

Ok, it’s time for my first survey! Yes, I actually thought of a question. As I write this, Penny is currently working in the book department. Any jokes about major American booksellers really boils down to one superstore.

I never mention names of stores. I mean, why bother? It doesn’t seem necessary to call out individual stores, especially of huge chains that dot the country. After all, what happens in Kentucky might not be relevant at all in Idaho. They’re technically the same store, but every place has their differences.

But another part of me wonders why I don’t. I mean, maybe it’s me being unnecessarily kind. If I have an issue with Target, why not mention Target? Just don’t be a jerk, right?

So I decided on a survey.

Hopefully that works. I’ve never done a survey before. If it doesn’t work, I’ll do a survey on why the survey didn’t work. Internet surveys are a fun and unscientific way to waste time. It’s important to remember that.