Where Are You?

This is a panel from Objet d'Art, which I'm about a third of the way through. This panel is a reference to this: 

This was showcased in Manga! Manga! The World of Japanese Comics and it was one of my earliest exposures to manga. It's from a comic called A Song of Wind and Trees by Keiko Takemiya, which I've never read. The character in this panel is actually a boy (in the manga version). 

Below is a cover I did for a magazine called Eat the Book which may or may not see the light of day. 

 And here's the black and white version.

In the past few months I've made some cartoonists friends- which is new for me.  I got to hang out with Josh Simmons who did, among other things, a book called The Furry Trap. I really like the painting he did for the cover.

And here's the first page to his story Cockbone.

I've also been hanging out with a cartoonist named Aubrey Harding. Here's a couple watercolor paintings from his website Bitches at the Zoo.

BUTTS!

That's a childhood reference to a poorly dubbed version of Aliens I saw on TV as a kid.
"Maybe you haven't been keeping up on current events but we just got our BUTTS! kicked pal!"

My oldest comics pal is Dustin Weaver, who's on fire right now writing and drawing his own comics. There's  his ongoing serial Amnia Cycle- an improv sci-fi comic in the tradition of The Airtight Garage.

One of my personal pleasures in seeing this comic unfold is how Dustin works in concepts that have been floating in his imagination for years. My favorite sequence so far is Tara's discovery of the dual planet system Dasra and Nasatia.

Dustin actually came up with this idea way back in high school. I've lifted the idea from him myself- it's such a cool concept. The name of the planets came from a story concept we worked on together years ago.

I think it's important for artists to day-dream and have a backlog of ideas, regardless of whether or not you plan to use them. You never know when they'll come in handy. This is a beautiful example of that.

Dustin's got another side comic going called Sagittarius A*

That weird critter in the last panel comes from a goofy religion Dustin and I came up with called Whuddism. You might call the creature in that last panel a manifestation of Whudda.

There are many manifestations of Whudda throughout folklore and pop culture. One of the earliest examples would be Hanuman- the ancient Hindu god.

Related to Hanuman would be Son Goku- the Monkey king, a Taoist figure from the Chinese novel Journey to the West.

Probably the closest relative to Whudda would be Glomer, the magical sidekick from the Punky Brewster animated series. In the Whuddist religion Glomer is Whudda's chief angel.

Praise be to Whudda and his angel Glomer.

There's even a manifestation of Whudda in the Transformers cartoon- Primacron- the creator of the monster planet Unicron.

And as embarrassing as it is to post an image from Southpark , that show's conception of God is very much in line with the Whuddist tradition.

In closing I would like to say a few words from the Book of Ron:

You can hold Church in a Rocket

But you can't hold your Rocket in Church

That is all.