Page 166 now online.

Well!  Welcome to 2010, everybody.  It makes me a leeeetle bit ill to think that this will be year 4 of Family Man and me only at page 166, but then, this comic was designed to be a learning experience and an ongoing project rather than an efficient StoryBlast.  I’m an immensely better artist and stronger storyteller than I was circa 2006 thanks to the weekly grindstone this comic offers (and the feedback you provide).  Thanks for your continued interest, those of you who follow along at home.

I’ll be hauling up to Seattle to take care of my pops, who got his whole dang knee replaced this week; I look forward to many amusing conversations involving the influence of painkillers and many exotic therapy routines performed with rainbow-hued rubber bands. Next week’s page is a simple one, so I’ll be updating while away, although the page for the 20th might come in late.

If you have any store orders, get ‘em in within the next 12 hours, or else it’ll just wait for me to get back.

Cheers, all!  Happy New Year.

This Gentle Surgery

Once more the bright blade of a morning breeze
glides almost too easily through me,

and from the scuffle I’ve been sutured to
some flap of me is freed: I am severed

like a simile: an honest tenor
trembling toward the vehicle I mean

to be: a blackbird licking half notes
from the muscled, sap-damp branches

of the sugar maple tree . . . though I am still
a part of any part of every particle

of me, though I’ll be softly reconstructed
by the white gloves of metonymy,

I grieve: there is no feeling in a cut
that doesn’t heal a bit too much.

– Malachi Black
photo by dannyeastwood

Page 165 of Family Man!

There’s nothing like a week in which you find yourself running searches on “European conifer species” and “historical menarche” for the same project.  Nothing like it at all.

Next page: will be in the glorious new year of 2010!  Shiny.

I’ll see if I don’t have a good summary to what turned out to be a rather tumultuous year for yours truly (professionally speaking; personally it’s been rather kind).

But really, I’m more excited about everything I’d like to attempt in the new year.  That’s the way it should be!  Stay tuned for new and exciting nonsense.

Here’s the last Animals for Animals painting that went up for public sale – a fruit bat!  A tip of the hat to Jenn, who suggested the concertina.

Thanks to everybody who purchased one of the animals this month; thanks to you I’ll be able to donate at least $550 to Heifer International (I had to raise a bit past that to cover all the transaction fees from Paypal, Etsy, and my postage service).

As soon as the deposit clears, I will be donating the money to Heifer for a Knitting Basket, which represents two llamas and two sheep, and a Hope Basket, which will go towards some rabbits and chickens.

You’ll also be seeing an owl and a dormouse posted here soon (if the people who asked for them are okay with the world getting to see them once they’re finished!).

If you’d like more information on Heifer International, they’ve got a great website, and their print catalogue is the only charity publication that elicits smiles from me when it turns up in the mail.

Page 164 of Family Man, now online!

A little bit late, but better than never!  It’s rather hard to draw Ariana smiling.

I’ve had A Trying Week between some runaway freelance work and putting all the orders I can into the mail before Christmas hits.  Tomorrow’s probably your last day to order something from me and have it turn up in time (barring USPS complication, mind you), so go nuts.

Thanks all of you who’ve bought something from me!  That money goes directly into the Keep Dylan From Starving fund these days, and it’s a pleasure to send nonsense out into the world.

The penultimate Animals for Animals watercolor!  Next I’ll do a bat, and then I have one or two that have been specifically commissioned (I’m workin’ on em gang, don’t worry!) and won’t be for sale.

FOR SALE NOW AT ETSY.

…why, what else did you think hens would read?  Tolstoy?  I doubt it.

This piece does double-duty as part of 12 Days of Periscope Christmas over at ComicsAlliance.  Thanks to Laura Hudson for coming up with the brilliant notion of hiring us all on to illustrate the classic carol all comic-book style.

Joy, shipmate, Joy!
(Pleas’d to my soul at death I cry,)
Our life is closed, our life begins,
The long, long anchorage we leave,
The ship is clear at last, she leaps!
She swiftly courses from the shore,
Joy, shipmate, joy.

Walt Whitman
photo by Davie;

——

In the contemporary Methodist tradition, the third Sunday in Advent is the week of Joy.  Advent used to be a much starker time, focusing on the end of the world and the coming day of reckoning, rather than anticipation of the arrival of an infant Christ.  I was struggling with, for this week’s poem, whether to trend towards the Joy or the End.

But why choose, when you can just have Walt Whitman?  (Next year: Emily Dickinson.)

Today’s Animals for Animals:  musical bees!  Once I had the Morning Glory Victrola idea I couldn’t help myself, even though I know that fewer people are obsessed with cute insects. Up for sale at Etsy.

Bees are the second animal I’ve painted that Heifer International actually deals with (although granted, not bumblebees like these)!  Apiaries are apparently an amazing income supplement in rural communities, and with honeybees on the wane, encouraging cultivation is more important than ever.

Wednesday’s animal was: Gaming Rats.

I realized after painting it that it’s a chillingly accurate psychological portrait of my family’s game nights.  My dad is a tender-hearted pacifist who refuses to adopt the ruthless capitalist strategy necessary to win at Monopoly.  Whereas my mom is a heartless predator, and I’m her cheerful apprentice.

I’m knocking at the door of my $500 goal!  Yay!

Page 163 of Family Man now online!

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Oh, little Ariana.  You are going to be making that face a whole bunch more as time goes on. And so will I if I have to draw too many more pages of grass.  (I’m kidding, it’s actually kind of a relief to do something loose; it’s just a pain to ink all those blades.)

And hey check it out, kids, if you order a copy of Bite Me! between now and Christmas you get a free drawing inside.  If you order the fancy package that already includes a drawing, well!  In addition to a drawing of one of the main characters you ALSO will get the complimentary addition of a chicken looking on at them.  I know how to bring it.

Today’s Animals for Animals original watercolor fundraiser is a Knitting Hedgehog!

What a sweet little fellow.  Maybe he’s knitting a full-body scarf for a weasel friend.

For sale on Etsy!

Today’s Heifer International fundraising painting-for-sale:  a Connected Otter!

It’s not a MacBook.  It’s a ShellBook!  (that’s why it works underwater.)  This otter understands that in today’s wired world, being down on the river bottom eating a fish is no excuse for being out of touch.

Behold!  Another day, another fundraising critter for Heifer International.  These things keep selling immediately!  (If you want a good leap on one then I recommended hanging around my Twitter account between 11 and 3 Pacific.)

I love this one so much, guys.  Witness ye the Leggy Llama.

Also already sold!  I think I’ll start noodging the price up a little bit, since folks seem to be very enthusiastic about both the paintings and the beneficiary.

After I raise $500 I will produce prints so that those of you without much spending money can contribute, too!

Here’s today’s (already sold) painting for my Animals for Animals fundraiser on behalf of Heifer International:  a Possessive Raven!

Turn-offs:  sharing.  Turn-ons:  shiny things.  This one was pretty fun to do – painting in those crazy oil-spill highlights that ravens have in their feathers.  This one was sold for $50, since it took me a bit longer and has lots of colors.

Total raised so far:  $130, which is enough to buy a whole llama or goat!  Two of my favorite ungulates of all time!

I did a raven because so many people suggested it, so if there’s a critter you’d like to see me depict next, post a comment.

Page 162 of Family Man now online!

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And now we’re back to full story pages; a piece from the past.  Woo, even a few weeks off and I feel rusty!  Soon enough we’ll get back into the present day (well, present day circa September, 1768…) and see what Luther’s up to.

Meanwhile, in case you missed it this past weekend, Erika Moen and I, under the supervision of Bill Mudron and Katie Lane, recorded two solid hours of talk about comics, working as a freelancer, and several other topics beside!  I’m editing the podcast version, but you can also view the video Ustream version right here on Erika’s channel. Plenty of questions answered about Family Man!

If you check in here but once a week, please also make sure to keep an eye on this journal or my Twitter feed as I sell off original watercolors (every day possible this month!) to raise money for Heifer International.

And lastly, on the afternoon of the 5th I’ll be at the Legends of Webcomics open house here in Portland with Meredith Gran, Aaron Diaz, that jerk Erika again, and Luke Mahan, selling all sorts of fun and exciting things and, surely, being delightful.  Details here!

Today’s Heifer International fundraising watercolor is a literary hare!

Writing her memoirs, no doubt!  An entire chapter is dedicated to yesterday’s fox and what a doofus he is.  Also what sell-outs bunnies are.

This one sold instantly (wow dang), but there will be more on the way this week!  If you have a request for a particularly fun animal you’d like to see me do, post it in comments and I’ll throw it into the hat.

And, just to start keeping records, Animals For Animals has now raised $80.  That’s enough for four rabbits or half of a llama!

People have started asking if I’ll produce prints of the animals for sale.  The answer is yes, but I want to encourage sales of originals before I start selling reproductions (although I would like for proceeds from print sales to go to Heifer as well).

Stay tuned!

Every year I try to make a Christmas donation to my favorite charity – Heifer International, a wonderful organization that purchases animals (from bees to buffalo)as well as veterinary care and training  for impoverished families the world over.  (Read more on their site.)

This year it’s a bit harder for me to donate than usual, since I’ve made the transition to being a self-supporting artist.  Many of the friends with whom I used to go in on an animal purchase are in the same financial situation.

It seemed to me that this was an opportunity – for me to make things, for you to purchase something lasting, and for a family in the larger world to benefit from it!  For the month of December, I will be creating and then selling watercolor paintings of animals (as often as I can manage!).  When I finish, I’ll count up what’s been raised and then buy the most animal possible!

My offering today:  an enemy of many of the animals Heifer sponsors, a fox!  Little does he realize that his dastardly deeds will ultimately be doing good.

This crafty fellow is on sale at Etsy for $40.  It is a lovely little painting, and I will guarantee arrival by mail to any part of the world in time for Christmas, and that it will be packaged fancy-like.

Chapter 3 of Family Man has begun!

…and there’s a new website!

Change your links, everybody!  Family Man now lives on one single website, and that’s http://www.lutherlevy.com.  It’ll update there every week, and all the notes and extra features you have come to love (or merely tolerate) live there with it, along with many new bells and whistles and an all-over shinyness.

And a new chapter is off and running, with yet more exciting bunny imagery.  Sorry, bunnies of the world; it’s nothing personal.

Happy Thanksgiving to all those of you in the U.S. of A!  Now go play.

Finishing the website and putting together a book pitch have delayed me for another week.  But that’s okay, because it gives me the opportunity to make some long overdue fan-art for the best ever webcomic set in Ancient Rome: SPQR Blues by Klio!

Yessir, that’s Vesuvius in the background.  The volcano is to SPQR Blues what werewolves are to Family Man:  you never know when it’s going to kick in.

SPQR Blues, beyond being a great ensemble soap opera, is also one of those rare works of historical fiction that make the time and place it depicts feel both cozily familiar…and completely foreign.

Klio’s delicate and conservative linework can be consumed in large doses with no dangerous side effects, and the obstacles and heartbreaks of daily life in a complicated society make for very tasty reading as well.

There’s an immense archive available for your reading pleasure, so shoo!  Go read!

Nostalgia.

Remember the 1340’s? We were doing a dance called the Catapult.
You always wore brown, the color craze of the decade,
and I was draped in one of those capes that were popular,
the ones with unicorns and pomegranates in needlework.
Everyone would pause for beer and onions in the afternoon,
and at night we would play a game called “Find the Cow.”
Everything was hand-lettered then, not like today.

Where has the summer of 1572 gone? Brocade and sonnet
marathons were the rage. We used to dress up in the flags
of rival baronies and conquer one another in cold rooms of stone.
Out on the dance floor we were all doing the Struggle
while your sister practiced the Daphne all alone in her room.
We borrowed the jargon of farriers for our slang.
These days language seems transparent, a badly broken code.

The 1790’s will never come again. Childhood was big.
People would take walks to the very tops of hills
and write down what they saw in their journals without speaking.
Our collars were high and our hats were extremely soft.
We would surprise each other with alphabets made of twigs.
It was a wonderful time to be alive, or even dead.

I am very fond of the period between 1815 and 1821.
Europe trembled while we sat still for our portraits.
And I would love to return to 1901 if only for a moment,
time enough to wind up a music box and do a few dance steps,
or shoot me back to 1922 or 1941, or at least let me
recapture the serenity of last month when we picked
berries and glided through afternoons in a canoe.

Even this morning would be an improvement over the present.
I was in the garden then, surrounded by the hum of bees
and the Latin names of flowers, watching the early light
flash off the slanted windows of the greenhouse
and silver the limbs on the rows of dark hemlocks.

As usual, I was thinking about the moments of the past,
letting my memory rush over them like water
rushing over the stones on the bottom of a stream.
I was even thinking a little about the future, that place
where people are doing a dance we cannot imagine,
a dance whose name we can only guess.

Billy Collins
photograph by (Eric)

Soon we’ll back to regular updates and I’ll roll out the new website, but in the meantime, here’s our third week of art devoted to some of my favorite comics online.  This week we move away from longform narrative comics and head for strip land, with Arthur (duck) and Flaco (lizard) from Dave Kellett’s Sheldon.

There are many strips online that I enjoy deeply, but Sheldon is the only one that makes me feel like I’m a little kid again, pressing my nose with delight against the daily newsprint funnies while I wolf down a bowl of Rice Chex before school.  Calvin & Hobbes was a strip at the time which, even if I didn’t get every joke, was so exuberant that I loved every panel.  I think 9 year-old me would’ve felt the same way about Sheldon.

As it is, 26 year-old me happily returns to Sheldon every day, snerking at the obscure “grown-up” or pop culture jokes and quietly enjoying the sheer silliness of it all.

Dave Kellett is also a bonafide funnybook scholar and a stand-up fella.  Bless the internet for bringing him to us in this day and age!