The upside of my horrid tech job is that it lets me do things I never expected to be able to do, like go to Provincetown for a week. I’m trying to take advantage while I can, no longer making the mistake of trusting the promise of getting jam tomorrow.

Cape Cod is beautiful, I spent a lot of time on the sandbars at low tide observing sea creatures and scavenging, hung out with friends, and went to gay dance parties. The highlight of the latter was the Atlantic House disco night that played three hours of old school bangers and made me see the appeal of these events.

I want to dance with cute guys to music I like, but the options are often The Only Homosexual At The Rock Show or Hating The Music At The Gay Bar. This was one of the few times I’ve really enjoyed myself at something like that. Matching music taste is not a requirement for a relationship, but I’d like some crossover so we could go see bands together, I’d like to share that understanding and language. Also, if I end up with someone who loves Taylor Swift (for example), he would play Taylor Swift in my apartment and I do not want to live like that. This goes both ways.

I’ll have two new books at Flamecon next month! Say I’m the Only Bee in Your Bonnet from last November got a print run (with added interior cover art), I pondered riso but went with laser because I’m not ready for lab time yet. In case you wondered, it’s set on July 8th 1995 when They Might Be Giants played The Stone Pony in Asbury Park, and the title is a line from their song Birdhouse in Your Soul.

The other book, This Must Be the Place, is freshly finished. I put together a playlist.

I’m not totally sure I like the watercolour and coloured pencil approach - painting first and putting lines on top after works well for single illustrations and sketches, but I prefer the immediacy and liveliness of lines going down first for comics. I have the tendency to overwork or lose detail when I start with painting. Darker colours obscure the pencil sketch lines too, which is annoying. I think I got away with it but I probably won’t do it again. I just love lines.

This Must Be the Place is sort of a true story - a lot of NewOldRare (excluding the romance) has a core of truth, but this is the closest to actual events so far, coming out ahead of Dear You. It more or less happened, except I was by myself. The weekend before the phalloplasty graft surgery in November 2023, I descended fully into madness. I’d been semi-quarantined for two weeks and not seen anyone or gone anywhere, I was worried about this eight hour surgery to carve a chunk off my side and turn it into a whole new body part, about the week being immobile in the ICU, about complications (which could be serious and could cause the graft to fail), about the months of recovery, and about how many more surgeries I had left to go (they told me two, it turned out to be four).

Late Saturday night on the weekend before surgery I stuck all my stickers on the side of my bookshelf and went through all my saved concert ticket stubs and arranged them in chronological order. I’d been carrying these things around for years, and suddenly I had to do something with them. In case I died.

I made the mixtape playlist in the comic, which I listened to while in the ICU. It made me hallucinate because I was on a lot of drugs and not eating or really sleeping. They woke me up every hour to check the graft, I couldn’t sit up or move my legs, I had a very unpleasant foam compression bandage around half my torso and a lot of staples and stitches and wires in me. I didn’t see anyone except surgeons (who don’t talk to you) and nurses (who will when they have time) until five or six days later. I was living in twilight behind a curtain with no windows, unable to sleep, surrounded by noise, listening to other people have a terrible time. I could text and listen to music.

It was strange. I’m incredibly lucky to have done this at all, but it was also awful. I’m glad I did it but I wish I didn’t have to. The last page of This Must Be the Place is based on a picture I took of myself in the ICU.

I’m currently deciding on my next comic - a 24 page NewOldRare short set the day after You’re So Cool, finish a Reservoir Dogs fan comic, a random standalone from my growing collection of scripts and thumbnails?

Beast of the Month

Sketchcards

Website Updates

I added This Must be the Place and some scanned sketchcards.

Upcoming Shows

Flamecon - August 15th and 16th - Manhattan, NY - Table P-02

If you want to pick up specific shirt sizes/colours, email me! I’m limited in how much stock I can physically carry but if I know you’re coming I’ll make sure to have what you want.

Recommendations
Ted Leo - a punk rock musician who meandered in the folkier direction over his career. I’m going to see him tonight, I first saw him about twenty years ago (I was barely eighteen) when he and his band The Pharmacists did a split with Blueline Medic and played a few brilliant bar shows in Australia. Ska fans may particularly enjoy Where Have All the Rude Boys Gone.

Madchester Night at TV Eye - speaking of dance parties, here’s an event with music I love and don’t often get to hear in the US.