I’ve been tinkering with the idea of keeping LF as a black and white comic for a while. Naturally, I’d use color when it suited a particular strip, but I’ve always felt most comfortable working in the real of gradients over prisms.

Also, black and white comics would be easier and cheaper to print in collections. HMMMMM!

Well, I’d love to know what you guys think. Do you miss the color? Let me know!

On another note, I watched this awesome animation today. Got to share it with ya! I could just listen to the sounds and the physicality that creates. It’s really a treat.

Alma from Rodrigo Blaas on Vimeo.

Whether you are at home, a job interview, or trying to impress a girl the same problem always seems to come up: you can’t read Gossip Girl out loud that well.

Have no fear friends for I have all you need to know right here.

Speak in a confident clear voice:

The air is the canvas and your voice the brush. The brush must press hard onto the canvas, forever marking it. As too must your voice leave beautiful scars in the air between your lips and the ears of your audience. Practice at home with your pets. If they are not fearful of your mighty timbre then you are not yet loud enough.

Respect the source material:

Gossip Girl is a novel series about the girls of today. There has never been a more accurate portrayal of the better half of our species. When they talk about choosing a bathing suit for the pool party you can actually FEEL the chlorine on your own skin. If you do not experience this yet then you are not ready and must complete another two years of training. (Training: Hanging upside down by your toes while memorizing every Us Weekly.)

Read Gossip Girl outloud:

You are ready my disciple. Go forth into the Teen Drama section of your local Borders Bookstore and take the paperback beauties by the armful. They can never truly be tamed, the papyrus shrews they are, but they will do you proud as you read them out loud at your next AA meeting (a feat you before thought only Martin or that lady with “the sweater” could do). Narrate the events. Pause from dramatic tension. And give at least one character a strange accent for no particular reason.

That’s how I do it, anyway.

I could go on for hours trying to figure out the best way to recommend Inglorious Basterds. I could rave about the high tension, Reservoir Dogs-esqe moments. I could applaud everyone’s performance from the goofy but efficient U.S. soldiers to strangely likable Nazi detectives. I could applaud pacing of the film, which features tons of story and very little combat.

I could but I feel the last 15 minutes of that movie does that for me.

So here we go:

If you are at all (AT ALL) open to the possibility of seeing Hitler get shot in the face with a machine gun for an extended period of time then Inglorious Basterds is the movie for you.

There. Done.

In other news: the robot apocalypse will include earning your knot tying badge!

“August” is a word that inspires a tangy type of doom in my heart.

Dang! Why did I even Google "preying mantis"?

You, meaning every human being, are supposed to be outside during August. OUTSIDE. That’s where they keep all the praying mantises. That’s where the sun likes to hang around, looking for out-of-towners he can hassle.

They must be crazy.

I find it perfectly acceptable to stay indoors during August. Nay. I find it completely mandatory (my skin is basically rice paper on top of magnesium). August is not a FUN month to be outside during like May or October. It’s an awful period of time we must ENDURE, not celebrate.

So stay indoors.

If you are like me then follow these rules and you might… JUST MIGHT… live to see September.

• Stay in the basement. If basement is filled with bugs and mice then agree to whatever their terms may be, surrender, and stay in the basement.
• Eat tons of ice cream. Ice cream is fortified with all the special chemicals needed to bring a human body’s temperature down. The chemical I’ve had most success with recently is butter pecan, or “#BT-PCN”.
• If you must go outside, wear shorts. The only thing worse than seeing your hairy legs is seeing a guy sweating in his jeans so much his pant legs are making rivers.
• If you mustn’t go outside (you mustn’t) then don’t wear anything. Remember to pull down the blinds beforehand! Not for modesty’s sake. Rather, to keep birds from thinking you are a delicious pale worm and diving into the window’s glass to snatch you up.

Save a bird’s life.

And pray for Autumn.

Welp, there’s another trailer out for Where The Wild Things are (click here).

I still don’t really know why this movie is made. Or for who. The handwritten lettering and indie pop soundtrack screams “JUNO” (in a strange, almost banshee-like wail). But it’s based on a children’s book I’m not sure many kids are familiar with these days. The plot seems adult in tone, if not in cast, but why? So many strange liberties have been taken with the source material that it only seems to resemble itself through the mandatory inclusion of real-deal “wild things”.

This is Where the Wild Things are as I remember it:

A kid who is kind of a bastard runs away from home to a land full of pro-bastard inhabitants and then they gallop around like jerks. Finally, the kid misses home and returns to his Mom where he doesn’t even get punished for his previous bastard-ness. (This child grew up to commit tax fraud.)

The movie does looks good, yeah, but I can already feel myself to watching it in theaters while an ambient humming of “Whyyyyyyy?” buzzes in the back of my skull. Why THIS movie? Why THIS source material.

And why Juno?!

Dangit, I’m going to watch Horton Hears a Who again.