Various updates: New friends, sketches, thank yous, and excuses...

Starting off, I'd like to thank John for providing the image in the post before this one. I didn't want to steal from a stranger, but I also didn't want a big honking link at the end of what I consider a pretty personal post. In gratitude, we should all go read some Bathroom Monologues. He just finished up a six-sentence theme week, and those are always pretty rad.

While we're linking things, everyone should go check out the new page sketches going up over at Justin's blog [re: Calamity Cash and the Town with No Name]. I hadn't talked to Justin in a couple of weeks, which is why there haven't been many comic-related updates lately. They look wonderful though, and I can't wait to head over and check out the finished pages like before.

The page he's on is particularly notable because it features eleven [!] panels on a page, which is a bit Dave Gibson of us, and I look forward to seeing how it came off. Most of the comics I work on end up with at least one page in them with far more than the recommended number of panels, which might be in part due to me still working out some pacing things, and also might be because as loose as I do pages there's always a possibility that something planned for four can pop up to the area of eight or twelve. I always feel like I'm partially fighting page count, trying to get more in a smaller space, and I just don't get as many chances to work with artists as I like -- especially just to practice.

Still, the sketches look marvelous, as usual, and I love Justin places his word bubbles. "Text exploders," I think he was calling them.

Maybe in my case, "exposition bombs."

A few months ago, I mentioned my cousin Travis does sampling and mixing under the moniker TCustomz, and produces various tracks for music artist as a hobby. He's very good, down right brilliant at it, and when we catch each other we talk music a little bit, which is fun for me because I enjoy talking about music, but don't run into many people who care to discuss it at any length [I guess at times, it can get heated]. I linked his myspace originally, but he's recently started up a blog, which you can find here. Can't recommend his stuff enough, and if he's reading, I've wanted to share TV Ghost's album "Cold Fish" with him. He's probably able to find it himself now, of course.

Been rocking out to it a lot lately.

Anyway, that's all for now. I know I haven't been posting as much this summer, particularly this month, but the past few entries have been important and I haven't wanted to knock them from the top of the page just because I watched "The Conversation" again and felt like talking about it. I'm still at it though. No worries there.