7/24
I raised the price of my fantastic deal on the Great Taste of Deep Fried a couple bucks to compensate for shipping after a considerate customer pointed out that I was only charging half of what the shipping actually cost. Do you wonder why I'm not driving a Jaguar?

So rather than go through a million PayPal maneuvers to adjust the postage, I am simply raising the price from $5.00 to $7.00. It's still a great bargain though, more than half off. And I still need a new computer, so don't hesitate!

I don't have time at the moment to go into the Israel/Lebanon crap. I will get back to it later this week (looks like it will still be a raging inferno over there at least until Friday. The US has its wildfires, the MidEast has Ketusha season). In the meantime I have some cat puke to wrangle. My roommate's cats keep vomiting logs. It's like they are tired of using their asshole and are full-on shitting through their mouth. Chew on that imagery.
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7/19
Why is this week's update late? What could be the reason except that my FRIKKIN' HARD DRIVE SELF-DESTRUCTED TAKING MONTHS OF UN-BACKED UP WORK WITH IT FUCK FUCK FUUUCCCCKK!!!!!

Fortunately, I kept the dinosaur computer my current model replaced. And so with only a few extra hours of effort spent wrestling with my .006 microhertz processor, I am able to bring you this week's strip.

Fooey. Well, in the immortal words of the immortal Sarah Silverman, when God gives you AIDS, make lemonAIDS. The death of my computer provides me with the perfect and undeniable excuse to buy a new one. I am eyeing up one of those popular white cubes that are all the rage, and this will naturally cost more money than an engagement ring made from God's wisdom tooth. So if you haven't bought anything off my site, guess what time it is?

To help get you kind folks to shake a few shekels loose, I have plummeted the price of The Great Taste of Deep Fried, my 128 page paperback, normally $12.00, to just $5.00 $7.00 Don't delay! Help Jason get his life back on track!

By the way, this disaster--neatly timed to coincide Israel's completely reasonable bombing of Lebanon back into the stone age (I thought I smelled Mossad in my apartment)--has also cost me most of the names on my mailing list, as well as the e-mail addies of the people who write me frequently. For those of you who have wanted off my list, this is your chance to scramble over the wall. As for the rest of you, drop me a line letting me know how to reach you. If you want to be back on the e-mail list, make "subscribe" your subject line.

When next we speak, I hope to be as streamlined and zippy as a Jetson. Until then, I will be shaking my fist towards Jerusalem.

Update: Okay, fine. I just watched two monarch butterflies chase each other on my front lawn. YOU try staying grumpy after that.
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7/10
This past Saturday there was an effervescent gay pride parade in Rochester. I do not normally race to pride parades, especially when there are plaga-infested zombies on my TV screen that need 600 rounds of 20mm love shot in their eyes, but my girlfriend, who hugs anything with a rainbow on it, called me from the event to let me know there were protesters hassling the assembled throngs of the Globtog* community. Politics? At a parade?? This was chocolate to my ears! So off I went with my roommate Kevin in tow (actually he walks faster than me, so technically I was in tow, but now I'm just splitting ends).

I have lived in Rochester for over three years and never attended this event, didn't even know there was such a thing. Imagine my surprise to see how vivacious and noisy an affair it was, a mini Mardi Gras for the Rust Belt. I shouldn't have been surprised-- Rochester is festival city. Just that morning I had attended the Corn Hill Arts Festival, one of the innumerable occasions to eat funnel cake and buy gourmet mustard that storm through Rochester like human wave attacks from the middle of spring well into the fall.

Of course, arts festivals don't normally host dozens of tedious X-tians on every corner holding up signs claiming that cross-dressing is an abomination to God. I strongly suspect that the driving force behind anti-gay protesters is the bullhorn industry, since every member of Christ's horde seemed to have one.

Ahh, but they haven't yet invented the bullhorn or the disdain that can compete with my counter-heckling! To those gathered around a sign proclaiming the sin-cleansing power of Christ's blood I shouted, in my best impression of Professor Harold Hill, "That's right my friends! New and improved powdered Christ's blood will wash away any sin! Grass sins, blood sins...even iodine! No sin is too original for all-temperature Jesus to erase!" Several audible chuckles.

Another holy roller shouted about the centuries that a passing assemblage of gay flag twirlers could look forward to in hell. Now really, how desiccated must your soul be to pick on a cute, dumpy little dyke doing choreographed semaphore? I shouted over his voice, "That's right homosexuals! Your soul will burn in hell for a million years. Do I hear two million? I have two million, will someone give me three? Three million over here do I have four? Four million years once....four million twice....sold to Satan!" More chuckles. I should be doing stand up in San Fran.

We--Kevin, Eva and I--followed the parade to its destination, a pride fest set up in the spacious parking lot behind the Village Gate Plaza, Rochester's premier alternative shopping 'plex. There I dined on pulled pork (no jokes please), contemplated purchasing a pair of mesh underpants for exactly one trillionth of a hummingbird's heartbeat, and then departed. Shine on, you crazy pink triangles!

*GLB&TG. Why does the sexual identity spectrum sound like something that comes with kettle chips and a pickle?
...

Please do watch DumDum's press conference of this past Friday. Besides demonstrating more of the trademark testiness he has evinced ever since the press began to creep out of its shell, he reiterated one of his favorite intellectual butterflies, that being that war is magic!

In the video, scroll to minute 52:00 and hear his "Koizumi story". As he has done several times in the past, DumDum waxes nostalgic about how Japan and America miraculously become "close friends."

"What happened is, Japan adopted a Japanese style democracy after World War II (...) If you look at the development in the far east, it's pretty remarkable, innit? South Korea has emerged into a vibrant capitalist society(...)Taiwan making progress, China's got opening markets(...) the region is relatively peaceful except for one outpost, one system that's not open and transparent (...) and that's North Korea."

If anyone still wonders why we are up to our eyebrows in camel shit in Iraq, see the above. Time and again the President has painted a wistful picture about how love came into the hearts of Imperial Japan and the great Sleeping Dragon of the West, demonstrating that he left "World War II: The Motion Picture" during the last five minutes to shake a few drops from the lizard, not realizing that something important happened before the credit roll, namely a couple of vaporized cities and a Roman-style occupation.

As for the rest of his rosy Kodachrome of the east, Bush's gloss on the relationship between China and Taiwan should have everyone scratching their head, since this could very well be a battleground a few years from now. Add the fact that South Korea's prosperity came with the bloody sundering of the peninsula, plus his noteworthy exclusion of Vietnam from his Rockwellian portrait of a region that has known naught but peace, and you get a fairly clear idea about the gumdrop forest that is this bozo's mindscape. No wonder Iraq is such a cock up. He doesn't even know we are at war! What's happening there is just the fuzzy muddle of history that hovers between an event like 9/11 and some dipshit at a podium decades later plucking daisies off of soldiers' graves.

But what do we expect from someone whose presidential library will likely comprise one room with a leather recliner, a plasma screen TV and a shelf holding five "Football's Greatest Bloopers" videos? God bless anyone who can blank out what is happening in the Middle East the way George Bush does.
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7/2
Hmm. Swiftboats, SWIFTgate...there must be a Glengarry Glen Ross parallel here.

The Swiftboat ads:symbolic highpoint of the Bush administration, using slanderous charges of cowardice from actual 'Nam vets to shit on the reputation of a war hero and obscure the fact that the President's only service in uniform was landing on an aircraft carrier to prematurely ejaculate over a job half done. And the nation swallowed it! To have swum naked in the Bog of Eternal Stench and come out smelling sweeter than Angelina Jolie's tit milk...surely this was a Millennium in American politics.

Now, the SWIFT controversy: the latest chapter in the administration's unprecedented campaign of intrusion into the People's privacy. The frothing denunciation from the President himself, as well as the unmitigated howl of rage from conservative attack dogs in both Congress and the press charging sedition, treason. loitering and necrophilia all hint at one thing: there are stickier wickets yet to come! The outlandish hubris of the New York Times must be chilled before they find out...what? Torture prisons in Oregon? An animatronic Osama torso in a Century City TV studio? A two-way monitor with Bush's smiling face hidden behind your Get Fuzzy calendar? All are becoming increasingly likely.

Will these like-named events bookend DumDum's career? A soaring epiphany of political manipulation and a sordid nadir of high stakes dumpster diving? Could justice really be so poetic as to announce itself in this way?

Pleasepleasepleasepleaseplease!
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6/26
Monday already? Shit! I am busy in the middle of drawing cartoons that actually pay...for MAD frikikn' magazine, niggaz! Deep Fried, if you start pulling your weight maybe I'll write about you next week. In the meantime, back of the soup line, my comic byblow!

Your unproftability is why you are in black&white this week! You don't deserve color! I have given you years of love, and you have only repaid my in phone calls from collection agents! Maybe this will teach you to make a few bucks for Daddy once in a while.

In fact, I think I will make you black&white most of the time now! Yeah! Serves you right!

Okay, maybe I was a little hard on Deep Fried. I'll bring him a slice of pizza when his mom is watching that Charlie Sheen show. As for the color... well, I am afraid I am going to have to take Deep Fried back to its roots. Sorry Deepsters. I love the extra hues but its a laborious step I really don't have the time for at the moment. Feel free to rip me an additional soft serve dispenser over it on my forum.
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6/20
"And on the third day they went to his sepulchre to weep, or maybe to rub some oil on his dead flesh--they were crazy for corpse oil rubdowns in those days--and lo they found the stone had been rolled away, and on the stone sat an angel, and his dress was red and his pumps were likewise red and his wig was after the manner of a Ronette, and he spake to them most spakily, saying "Girlfren, Beepo hath returned!"

I know you probably heard about this on CNN first, but yes, I have resurrected Beepo at last. And if there is any dissatisfaction with the manner of his return I will only say that Lyle had become very much like the unwelcome roommate he portrayed in the strip. A needy parasite that I couldn't wait to rid myself of, thus requiring a slight acceleration of his departure.

In any event, Lyle's abrupt and ignominious departure is well in keeping with the nature of Lyman, his forebear, who vanished from Garfield one day never to return or ever again be acknowledged. To the Phantom Zone I banish thee, Lyle, there to dwell with your face smushed up against a revolving space rectangle for all Eternity.

Anyway, I am durn happy to have Beepo back! There are a hell of a lot of strips I can't do without him. As I joked about in this strip, it is difficult to carry a comic starring only Han Solo. Eventually you will need other characters to express the emotions your hero is incapable of, and a "Beepo" is a natural adaptation for any cartoon in which a "naughty" or "outrageous" manifestation of the cartoonist's undiagnosed psychopathology has been given top billing.

So welcome back, my omega personality. God bless you and all the masturbation jokes you make possible!

News, news...anything in the news? Coupla soldiers taken hostage...great, great. Lemmee wring my hands about that. Not being flip, but what can you do, huh?

Let's see what happy nugs CNN has for me...Oh fuck, they found them! Shit, mutilated and booby trapped? Fuuuuck. To be honest, shit like this could really tip my needle into the "we must convert the savages zone", except for the fact that Dum Dum keeps reiterating that his victory strategy is "When they stand up, we will bug the fuck out and leave flaming 'Back to the Future' tracks behind us, Amen!" Ah well. We were almost sharing a soda at the malt shop, Georgie.

Iraq, Iraq...how long until you "stand up", you wobbly pre-toddler? Will it be enough for us to watch you haul yourself up by clinging to the arm of a couch before we float, or will we have to see you take a few steps first? Maybe we should double-diaper you, just to make that inevitable fall on your ass a little cushier.

It would be good of you readers to bear an important fact in mind, because it's bound to come up later (if recent history is an indicator, about three years after the right questions should have been asked) and that is the matter of what our "victory" is meant to look like. We can assume at this point that decades of occupation would make about as much sense as a horse shit enema, but what do we want? Saddam is gone, the boo boo weapons were never there...so what's worth sticking around for?

Well, there is still the matter of our big ol' American footprint, which is what any hyperpower wants to remain after a quick bit of conquest, and even moreso if you are trying to help your population percieve a more extensive war as being worthwhile. Yes, the government wants the occupation over, but depart Iraq? Never! If Iraq is ever to be remembered as more than a dumb act of futility where we refought a war we had already won, we will need to leave a sizable military garrison in place, replacing the juicy bases in Saudi Arabia we closed after 9/11 in a semi-obvious concession to al-Qaeda. The neo-conservative movement has, since its inception, had designs on the Middle East that superceded any temporal difficulties with Saddam. Aside from smokescreen issues like thwarting jihadists and establishing democracy, our real and honest goal is a full-time military presence in Sovereign Iraq for generations to come, whether circumstances warrant it or not.

This ambition has never been hidden behind more than a fig leaf of promised "draw downs" of troop levels, leading one to conclude that at the end of the day tens of thousands of soldiers would be in Iraq well past the next ice age. Our previous military adventures around the world make this strategy fairly obvious. Why would we invade a country, spending hundreds of billions of dollars and an oil tanker's worth of blood in the process, if we didn't eventually expect to get paid and laid? If our real and phantasmagoric enemies in Iraq have been expunged, while the task that requires actual elbow grease (defeating the insurgency) has been taken off the table ala the "Stand Up/ Bug Out" strategy, you would think that there's no way to argue for a U.S. presence in Iraq for more than a couple of additional years, just long enough to steady the new Republic of Jenga before we jet. So why the hell are we building four permanent "super-bases" in Iraq, some larger than Rammstein Air Force Base in Germany?

Because the war was never about Saddam. It was always about after Saddam. "Imperialism" is not just a word that grungy Marxists toss around out of lack of argument. It does generate measurable phenomena that mark it's explicit influence. These bases aren't little canvas tent M.A.S.H. units. They have Pizza Huts! They have mini-golf! Ever think that America's sons would have their mangled corpses booby trapped in the name of a permanent presence for Putt-Putt in Iraq?

The elephant in the room is that there is no exit strategy because exiting is not an option. The longer the resistance lasts, the longer Iraq will "need" us. "How can we abandon Iraq to al-Qaeda?" goes the argument, "How can we risk leaving Iran unchecked?"comes the next. ("What if China gets the same idea?" no one says aloud.)

It will be a while before the notion that our naked intention to stay in Iraq well past the end of the party, illustrated by our collossal investment in permanent bases, hits the mainstream. The realization that this is why Iran is enriching uranium, why al-Qaeda has found so many willing suicide bombs in Bahdad, and that this was, afterall, the reason we started this fucking war, may be a little longer in the dawning.
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6/16
Meet the new boss, same as the old boss!
Ladies and gentlemen, the new Iraqi Idol and the face that will be haunting the nightmares of America's future war widows for as long as they need an archvillain to hiss at, Abu Ayyub Couscous al-Masri!

al-Masri: "What? Me evil?"

Sexy, huh? And his keffiyeh is tres chic, a big improvement over El Zarko's thuggy little skullcap. Well done, Mr. Rove, FearBot or whoever it is that picks our villains these days!

Masri takes the (alleged) helm of the (purported) terror super squad al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia (betcha didn't know that we were at war with them too, huh?). He will continue El Zarko's mission of committing 5% of the atrocities in Iraq while receiving 100% of the blame. Not because no one in Iraq is more vicious than him, mind you, or even that a larger organization than al-Qaeda does not exist. I can't speak to either of these. The fact is, however, that this guy now has al-Qaeda in his name, which means that we can use him to perpetuate the myth, now larger and better marketed than most major religions, that we are actually in Iraq to war with al-Qaeda, not a guerrilla movement inspired by our occupation.

Naturally we will be reminded for the next 6-15 months that it is better we are fighting al-Masri in Iraq than him fighting us in Baltimore or Hot Springs or blah blah snoooore. Look at him! He's a deer caught in the headlights of a war he never wanted! He knows that it is we who have picked him, not the other way around. And why? Because our "dead supervillain" trading card set still needs a few more gory heads. It takes a lot of mangled arabs to make up for not catching the only one that we all actually want.



Sigh. Just don't go trying to roll off the stretcher when your time comes, fella. They are only going to claim you were trying to flee from a hallucination of the Statue of Liberty giving a horseyback ride to a thousand Iraqi children while lifting her leg to piss a 900 league stream of amber democracy onto the Ka'bah.
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6/13
As you can see, I've put a fresh coat of spiff on the ol' website. Check out the new fan art page, and then let me know what you really think at my spankin' new Deep Fried forum, hosted by Talkaboutcomics.com. Tired of the one-sided dialogues that are my blog entries, or want to yell at me for not putting enough Slamwich in the weekly strip? Now's your chance to sound off! Get sounding!

6/12
What? Monday already? Oh, just read the damn strip. You already know I hate humanity.

6/8
Let us this day be grateful for the smithereening of self-made public enemy Abu Musab Moammar Hitler El Zarkowitz, whose head-chopping prowess would have made him the envy of Robespierre. Poor Abu. A Zartan with dreams of Destro-ship. How now your chameleon powers my fine cup of paste?

We can only hope that just prior to the dropping of the twin 500lb bombs that took him out (rumored to have been nicknamed "Gigli" and "Coupling") that he solved a mysterious Chinese puzzle box and that his flayed body is even now attached to a twirling wooden pillar while a patrician bondage demon stands nearby contemplating an eternity of fun with El Zarko's ball's and a hot glue gun.

We should also be thankful to our military for using a minimum of force to obliterate Abu, taking out probably only two or three school children in the process (their monthly limit is four). Thanks to their good work this war probably only has five, six years of juice left in it, tops.

6/5
I'm afraid that I will have to deny you the lumberjack breakfast of anger sausage and rantjacks that I had prepared for this Monday. Though the commentary I intended was as sharp as a guillotine and as bitter as Sweet 'N Low, I have concluded that my point--that conservative pundits are genuinely more loathsome than terrorists-- does not require ten tedious 'graphs from me to be made plain, since I'm sure 90% of you already agree with the sentiment.

For those of you who don't, I invite you to compare one of the recent screeds from the Voice of Bin Ladin (Osama bin Ladin apparently only exists as a sholuder's-up apparition on videotape now. Who knew that an evil Max Headroom would one day become the antichrist?) to any selection from Ann Coulter's columns archive.

Remember: one of these persons may right now be squatting in a basement hideaway, dropping a million riyals into the PayPal account of a suicide bomb bent on bloody mayhem in our own nation, while the other is a Cornell graduate and media professional who "was named one of the top 100 Public Intellectuals by federal judge Richard Posner in 2001 " (whoop dee shit). Yet after comparing the wordsmithing of Ann (or Michelle, or Bill, or any like-minded pigeon dropping for that matter) to the arch beard of our time, I dare you to find Osama's sentiments, his language or his politics anything less than Lincolnesque in comparison.

Of course, another reason for such a truncated assault on the conservarazzi is that getting a daily brainful of political spam is now so much part of our intellectual diet that, like a Reese's 'n Oreo Death By Caramel Volcano Parfait consumed thrice daily at Friday's, you have probably forgotten what made you enjoy it in the first place. I'm sorry Party leader O'Brien, but hatred is more exhausting than love.

True, I will smile ear to ear on the day that I hear that Rush Limbaugh has choked to death on a $1000 dollar plate of lobster ravioli at a fundraiser for Condi Rice's 2008 presidential run, just as my frown touched my knees when I heard that Pat Robertson was not on the airplane he owns that crashed recently, killing several people who, at the very least probably worked for him (and so not a total wash). But I cannot be troubled to stoke the embers of pure rage against these people as I once did, especially when there are so many horrible varieties of cancer which are apt to claim most of them anyway. Glee!

Rather, I would like to discuss bowling. I really suck at bowling, as I do with most activities that require motion or dexterity. Every time I bowl with my girlfriend I try a new strategy--"power release", "zen center pin", "three steps right"--which never yields me a score greater than 98, while Eva's unwavering technique (I will generously call it "plonking") beats me two games out of three each time.

Um...shit. I have no point to make. Just burns me up, is all. I should probably practice once in a while when she's not there.

Yeah.

Hate that fuckin' O'Reilly!

5/25
I am grateful that so many of you missed seeing me at the Motor City Comic-Con (roughly the entire population of America), as I had my usual number of run-ins with the convention's costumed community.

Things started off fine with a visit from Playmate of the Year, 2018: Zatanna ! But then...

OHH! Sucker punched by Baby Super Girl! After catching my breath I took her out with a kryptonite-stuffed Elmo.


















Good times, good times

...

I can't quite understand why Ann "California Mountain Snake" Coulter is going to bat for John McCain, whom she normally regards as a case of genital herpes infecting the Republican party, but here she is, swinging away.

Actually, she's just trying to club to death another left wing baby seal. This time it's Jean Rohe, a student at the New School (established in 1919--time for a name change, guys?) who used the opportunity of her commencement speech to lambaste guest speaker John McCain, whose own speech followed hers. As usual, Ann whips out the ad hominem attacks that have made her the darling of conservative intelligentsia, calling Rohe a communist and a toady for her earnest, if banal, dressing down of the Senator. I guess when you are the kind of guest speaker that inspires the audience to hurl pies, you are going to be a little bitter towards those who receive standing ovations.

...

In his White House briefing today, Tony Snow, hoping to downplay expectations about the upcoming Bush/Blair Action Press Conference, said:

" I know there's a real desire to think that these guys are going to sit around, almost like with a chess board figuring out how all the pieces are going to move. Right now the most important thing to do is to take the measure of the new (Iraqi) government and figure out (...) what's going to be feasible."

I think it's pretty clear at this stage that Bush is more of a Connect Four enthusiast than a grand master. He's just waiting for that magic day when, win or lose, he can finally slide that lever at the bottom of the rack, watch the checkers fall and then run to the living room to watch the Blue Falcon and Dino Mutt. Personally, I hope we leave England to pick up the pieces. Does it appear to anyone that our friends across the pond don't actually do very much for us over there? I think THAT after three years it might be nice of the brits to sacrifice a few hundred of their own Humvee drivers to Iraq's angry highway god while our boys cool their heels in the well behaved part of town, yes?

5/15
If you are near a newsstand anytime soon, check out the current issue of MAD magazine (the one with Alfred E. Neuman whacking Kobe Bryant in the nards with a broom handle, the imp!). Ignore the Brokeback Mountain parody and forego the fold-in (What infestation are more and more Americans fearing lately? You'll just have to find out later) and go directly to the Strip Club feature. The first cartoon, "Victory Roll", was drawn by yours truly, my first appearance ever in those hallowed pages. BEAM!

Better still, buy that issue this weekend at the Motor City Comic-Con. Detroiters, if you've got a few spare quarters jingling in your pockets, why not give them to me? I will be happy to answer all your Deep Fried inquiries, like "Where do you come up with this stuff?" (A: They are all cribbed from Bazooka Joe wrappers), "Have you gotten in trouble for Weapon Brown?" (A: I've got a Tijuana bible from 1958 drawn by a mister "Charlie Schlotz" that keeps the Schulz estate out of my hair), and "Can I take a piece of candy?" (A: Sure, now that you've pawed through all my comics and still refused to buy even one, why shouldn't your free entertainment experience be completed with a tasty morsel meant as a reward for those who actually purchase my work? Have three, fucker!).

Gonna be good times.

5/9
I don't normally like to borrow video clips from other websites that have done the hard work of converting them from TV to Internet media (which is Jason-latin for "I will be doing this a lot from now on now that I have learned the source code"), but this bit is just so purely, purely Bush that it must be multiplied.

5/8
This past Saturday was Free Comic Day, a nationwide promotion held at comic shops around the country to entice new, hopefully preadolescent readers to pick up a comic book and become decade long consumers of same.

As I sat at my card table in front of Rochester's Comics Etc., and with my merchandise--a difficult to categorize anthology of drug and child molestation gags--moving about as well as it usually does under these circumstances, I could not help but reflect on the self-sabotaging nature of the entire exercise. Free Comic Day, though a noble effort to boost the sagging sales of comic periodicals (the word "sagging" was officially appended to the word "sales", where such relates to comic books, in 1994) is as benighted a promotion as Take Your Daughter to Work Day, Black History Month or "Support Our Troops" magnets; a feel-good desperation ploy that ignores the larger issue of why comics don't sell.

I had a lot of time to consider this question on Free Comic Day as I debated The Israeli/Arab situation with a wiry, white-bearded crank with his parka tucked into his pants who, though he was haunting an event meant for children, did not happen to be scaring away throngs of preteens. It is a pleasure to see any child buying comics these days. I am 34, and I rarely see two people younger than myself at any one time in a comic shop. They may as well be cigar bars.

But that is par for the course. The Big Two have, at this point, completely abandoned children as a market for the goofy, juvenile schlock that superhero comics are, were, and ever shall be. I'm not knocking it. I like superheroes! But they are stupid. They are meant for a stupid audience. An audience that hasn't discovered girls yet.

Back in the Golden, Silver and other metallic ages, before the idea that "comics aren't just for kids" had begun it's Hulk-like rampage through the industry, the major companies seemed to understand this. It showed in their advertising. Here is an ad from a 1965 issue of Wonder Woman:



Silly Putty! A perfect preoccupation for a boy or girl to waste their allowance on after s/he had bought a cedar chest full of comic books at the local drug store!

Even in 1991, Marvel and DC still seemed to have their finger on the pulse of their product's appropriate audience:



Console games! Just what you'd expect a dateless 12 year old to have a hankering for after enjoying a little Justice League!

And what will we find being sold betwixt the pages of a comic book these days? Behold what greeted me as I read the first issue of Civil War, this year's major league crossover event from Marvel Comics:




There's a million complaints I could make about Civil War itself--the hacky story cribbed from The Incredibles, the over-rendered artwork that makes the superheroes look like costume-contest entrants at Wonder Con, the allowance-busting $4.00 pricetag--but a Civic ad?? For fuck's sake, a new Civic wouldn't even be a person's first car! It would be their second! If you are pimping men in spandex with wings on their head to people who are refinancing their mortgages, you have pretty much lowered the flag on the comic industry.

From "comics aren't just for kids" to "comics aren't meant for kids" in less than half a generation. Now,I love mature, adult themed comic books, but I love making a buck off them too. That is impossible to do without a base of young readers growing up and looking for products like mine to graduate to. Comic books are like cigarettes; after a certain naive period of your life, you are not likely to pick up the habit.

So how can Free Comic Day be considered anything but a farce when the engine that drives the industry is deep-sixing it's own market? The problem isn't that children aren't coming to comic stores (finding nothing cheap enough or age appropriate enough for them to buy when they do); the problem is that they have to go there to find comics in the first place! The post-bubble mentality, where DC and Marvel do everything they can to pen in the fans they made 15- 20 years ago without investing a dime's worth of interest in farming a new generation for their product is the anaconda that is crushing the comic world. Comics are no longer sold where children are likely to find them by accident: convenience stores, pharmacies, video stores...these should be the comic shops, as they were in the past. Not some out of the way specialty store tucked away in the bad part of town, or a Barnes and Nobel that is locked up in a suburban strip mall, inaccessible except by Mom's whim.

The major players are helped in this effort by Diamond, the monopoly distributor which has done so much good putting comic books in the hands of new readers, by pricing independents out of their catalog, perpetuating a self-destructive no return policy, leaving major sales territories unexploited and keeping the Big Two wedded to them in exclusive deals. In collusion with the media giants that own the comics industry they have Pied Pipered juveniles away from comics almost entirely, leaving the future of a children's medium to a demographic of adult men who...how can I put this nicely?...aren't exactly repopulating the herd.

Now, I'm one to complain about an industry eating itself alive, right? I'm trying to sell black and white stoner humor in the era of South Park. The point is, if the major players had stuck to a strategy of selling to children instead of building Hollywood properties then at this point there would still be meat and drink for all. But the college kids who should be swarming the cons looking for adult material to graduate to from Spider-Man have not emerged in the last ten years. Maybe that's because so many kids' comics feature villains whose weapon is rape, not giant weather machines. I don't know.

So please, retire Free Comic Day. Desperate stores tossing a handful of children the scraps from their nickel bins isn't going to make a pimple's worth of difference at this point. Abandoning the Code wsn't a blow for creativity, it was a death knell for the market. We need comics sold to boys, not men; we need Superman racked in checkout lanes next to People and the Enquirer; and we need some competition for Diamond.

Short of this, expect to see Marvel running ads for Geritol in the not too distant future.

5/4
Steven Colbert is apparently after John Stewart's job as comedy's Sammy "the Bull" Gravano. His acid-in-the-face speech at the recent White House Correspondent's Dinner has spawned a congratulatory website (as well as a small doric temple in Greece).

Crooks and Liars has video clips of the media's effort to smooth its own feathers. This one is particularly risable. Apparently, all jokes about Tuesdays are now in bad taste. Sorry, Morrie!

5/1
It took me a little while to get why it was considered significant that our servant population chose May 1st to boycott businesses and schools as their response to the completely reasonable proposal circulating in Washington that we erect a Great Wall of Arizona along our border. Thanks be to Lou Dobbs for making it clear. May Day! That one kooky day of the year when people who won't get with the program let the world know that they do get tired of being treated like toilet paper.

And hoorah to our beloved wetbacks for actually having the cajones (in english, "cajones") to turn A Day Without a Mexican from a shitty Blockbuster rental into the first new three-day weekend holiday in years! Kinda makes me wish my parents had come to this country in the back of a pick-up.

While I'm sure this event will eventually lead to, if nothing else, a 1$ margarita deal at Don Pablo's (Uno de Mayo! Courtesy of the Don and Cuervo), it also offers yet another refresher in how the wealthy see events like this. Lou Dobbs' harumphing reveals a discreet but easily understood divide between true capitalists (that is, those with the actual capital), and those beneath them (wage earners, be they left or right). Says Lou:

In fact, a meat-packing job paid $19 an hour in 1980, but today that same job pays closer to $9 an hour, according to the Labor Department. That's entirely consistent with what we've been reporting -- that illegal aliens depress wages for U.S. workers by as much as $200 billion a year in addition to placing a tremendous burden on hospitals, schools and other social services.

First, note who Lou deems the culprit in the actual wage depression: the immigrant, who comes here, puts his employer in a headlock and demands that he be paid half of what an anglo makes, with no bathroom breaks. The idea that the aggressor in the effort to keep profits up and labor expendable might be the manufacturer--whose wealth, lobbyists and almighty color have more clout in our culture than ten thousand hispanic DJs ever could--is so foreign to Lou that anyone suggesting it might as well have antennae sprouting from their forehead.

And as for that "tremendous burden" of social services expended, well, when did a necktie like Lou Dobbs ever want to expend more than a dime in healthcare even for our citizens, much less the beaner that picked the lettuce for his Cobb Salad? You won't hear Lou arguing much against using American dollars to build hundreds of hospitals in Iraq that we'll never get to enjoy ourselves, but I guess the plus there is that we are also spending the lucre to fill them.

Lou's editorial is also filled with the same quaking fear of "the left" that we have come to expect whenever someone hits the streets chanting a catchy couplet. This is not surprising. In a day when the cyclopean profits of major corporations have even their mascot in the Oval Office gulping aloud in public, one starts to see torches and pitchforks in every act of defiance. Can't let the price of hamburger go up a penny, even for a day! Today that penny might be the difference between commuting home and camping out at the office, falling asleep to the gentle hum of the Canon 7850.

4/27
Back from Pittsburgh in one piece, thank you. The convention, one I have attended almost every year since 1999, is one of the most indy-friendly shows around, and one that knows how to treat the talent (free pop and McFood twice a day!). This year's show was particularly profitable for me, despite nationwide pump prices that should have had attendees stuffing their wallets up their asses like Jews fleeing Poland. I sold a healthy amount of comics and prints, plus a raft of original art to a single fan wearing a monocle and a diamond the size of a Chunky bar in his tie. But the biggest surprise was the materialization from out of my own brain of the late Beepo the Clown!

This grease-painted apparition is none other than my most beloved and treasured fan of old. Of course I'm speaking of (consults notation on back of ATM receipt) Mike Sonovic! Can you tell me why it has taken this long for one of you readers to don a costume celebrating my characters? I'm in this business for the ego massage and not the money, people!

Mike scared people away from my table for an hour or so before spreading the gospel of Deep Fried around the con and handing out stickers. For my amusement, he also engaged in many comic antics worthy of his clowncestors.

Here's Beepo taking on Wolverine for the title of "Man Who Has Gone Longest Without Being Laid."

When Beepo finally met his maker, his first instinct was to put out a cigarette in my eye. Joke's on him, though. Eye patches look cool!

No, Layne Toth the Hardest Working Kid In Comics (and the con's own Jean-Benet Ramsey)! Don't take money from Beepo! You don't know what he'll want from you later! What's gotten into you??

Oh shit. Well, that's what you get for drinking from Beepo's juice box.

That's Usagi Yojimbo on the right, and a guy who probably slept with him later that evening on the left.

"Still...time...to...save...Han!!"

"Someone told me there was a guy dressed up as big piece of toast around here."

This is "Pyramid Head" from Silent Hill, a monster who gets off on raping his victims. Go on. Guess if he's Japanese.












Next stop:the Motor City Comicon. Anyone who shows up with a small child dressed as Clarissa will be given one of everything at my table. Start sewing!

4/20
So Scott McClellan got kicked to the curb, eh? I don't think it is exaggeration to say that clearly my O.L.P cartoon shook the earth and sundered the temple of Washington. Behold he who is son of God!

Don't forget, 4/20 is America's pot holiday! Spark a bowl, watch my holiday special and puff for world peace.

If you are near Pittsburgh this weekend, come and see me at the show. Next week's strip will be a little late because of my travel commitments, but all the tastier for the waiting.

4/17
Happy Christianity Invention Day, folks! It was on this day, 81 zoptillion phlorgs ago (or longer? I know the Christians think the earth's age is is something ridiculously inaccurate) that Christ's apostles sat around the kitchen table crunching unleavened bread, trying to think of a way to build a new religion off of it ("'Passover'? Nah, it's been done.") when suddenly some unremembered one of them, his gospel now known only to a tantric sex cult founded by Jan Vermeer, changed history and rational discourse forever. "Waitaminit!" he chirped, "How 'bout we tell 'em that the boss came back from the dead? Now that's a hook!"

The idea took, but that was just the start! Pretty soon nothing was off limits. Stone-proof whores! Neighborphilia! Water into figs...no! Wine! It was history's first religion by committee, and all our Easter traditions have their origins in that smoke-filled hutment (James the Lesser is reported to be the first to have suggested "a feast of sweetened brown hare and jellied legumes.")

Ah, but some people just don't understand the spirit of the holiday. Take Kevin Ray Underwood, recently captured for murdering a ten year old girl, hiding her body in his closet and planning to eat her. No no no, Kevin! You hide the chocolate and let the children eat that. Is this such a hard concept to grasp??

But who can blame citizens for not knowing their assholes from their elbows and the norms of our pagan cum Catholic fertility rites from a Roger Corman film? Our brains are so much Pop Secret in the propaganda microwave these days. Can you believe that every particle of the ad campaign that got us into Iraq is being recuperated for war with Iran?

No, of course you can't. You can't believe that the madman, the hostile regime, the nuclear ticking bomb, the no consequence military option, the oppressed millions longing for a purple finger to call their own...the same lemon we were sold three years ago is back on the lot, lacking even the benefit of a fresh coat of primer, with the same grinning huckster pumping our right hand while shoving a complimentary ribbon magnet into our left and steering us past the fine print straight to the dotted line.

Is war with Iran inevitable? Of course it is! Hasn't Iraq, and all the profligate lies, memos, smear campaigns, SOTU speeches, revealed secret identities, yellowcake, executive leaks, eschatology and bubble occupancy that made it possible provided enough concrete proof that whenever the president claims "all options are on the table" what he really means is that only a single option, peace, is not?

4/12
Those of you coming to the Pittsburgh Comicon will have the chance to bid on some of my goodies in their annual charity auction. Below is what you can snap up if your wallet is as big as your heart.

This is a signed copy of the Well Heeled print that you know you are horny for, the original art for page 17 of Weapon Brown (featuring a tasteful nip shot of Mint), and a copy of the Weapon Brown comic itself. They are being offered as a unit.

I want a lot of bids on this from my fans! I am not going to be embarrassed again by that 8-year old cartoonist who was written up in USA Today, goddamnit!
...

I guess I have been waiting for the right obnoxious opinion to ooze forth before commenting on the immigration fracas. No one will be surprised that it took one of my evergreen archery targets to cause my venom to issue forth. Viper, fire!

(link)

There is nothing novel about the opinions expressed above, of course. It's a fairly straightforward snapshot of the conservative attitude towards what has been unfolding in the streets in the last two weeks. Two successful white people invoking their flag while they look over their shoulders with troubled eyebrows at the horror gripping the southwest. Their "let them eat cake" attitude yields to middle class fear about impending revolution, since the sudden manifestation of America's servant class in the streets instead of the fields has only one parallel in our culture, that being movies about tentacled invaders from another galaxy.

Deposited in place of a punchline is a crystalline jewel of smug elitism, written in the author's own snot, proclaiming that immigrants--their fingernails caked with dirt, many with friends and family dead in the desert or in the backs of unventilated trailers--are the ones who do not "get" America.

I think they understand America perfectly. We are a country that is happy to let millions of foreigners risk life and limb to crawl beneath the gates of Fortress America, to take jobs at substandard wages which come with no benefits, no overtime, no profit-sharing, no Social Security (no retirement), no OSHA protection, and with deportation as the instant reward for raising one's voice against any of this. Meanwhile, scabby vigilante groups and radio bigots stab fat, manicured fingers at the blight that is the immigrant, never balancing the picture by even hinting at the degree to which capitalists and consumers fatten themselves on the cheap labor these parasites provide. Call them illegals, or undocumented if you must, but what they are are coolies.

And now, in the best spirit of our nation, they are letting us know that they have figured it out.

In Chris Muir's comic strip one can hear ancient echoes of landed gentry sneering at the Irish or Italians for having the audacity to swarm our shores with nary a trust fund to their name, willing to actually work for a living! Now, of course, those proles are considered to be the very muscle fiber that this nation was built from. But not then. It will take another half century of assimilation for today's whites (mostly composed of assimilated ethnics considered non-white in their time) to find the romance in a desert crossing that they now ascribe to an ocean passage. That is, if they can be convinced that a concrete wall is not the logical equivalent of Ellis Island.

4/11
I am recommending that everyone read Sam Harris' book The End of Faith: Religion, Terror and The Future of Reason. It's an intelligent and eye-opening rebuke of one of the leading fallacies of our culture, that religious belief, when used as a redoubt for justifying any position where wits are matched, needs must be tolerated and accommodated. Harris argues that faith should not be treated as prima facia evidence for the soundness of an argument, even if you disagree with or dismiss the claims being made, and does so with convincing eloquence. He also provides an escape hatch for conflicted liberals who have had trouble reconciling their disdain for our president and his snake-handling base with a politically correct defense of Osama'a noggin'-lopping kinfolk. In short: Islam? Not that great a religion, folks.

One hopes that a few Democratic hopefuls for 2008 will read Harris' words.


4/6
As I wait for the paint to dry on a hydrocephalic caricature of a Ford executive that I have been commissioned to paint, I will now finally, after many delays, insist that every reader of this blog rent Me, You and Everyone We Know, which is by far the most memorable movie I have seen in years.

Written, directed and starred in by mild mannered kook Miranda July, Me, You and Everyone We Know is a creepily sweet homage to life's gentle perversities and love's eccentricities, evoking Tod Solondz's stranger-in-a-black-van bleakness and the barren longing of Punch Drunk Love. At the same time its is so weirdly funny and upbeat that it is virtually a date movie (although it would help if your significant other had a few piercings).

Rest assured that Deep Fried fans, visitors from the fifth dimension that you are, have a better than average chance of enjoying this dark and tender film, and of having an extremely difficult time explaining to your friends why you did.

4/3
You have probably heard of the recently disclosed White House Memo that reveals that Bush and Blair, over a cup of tea and butter pie (butter pie?) decided in January 2003 that the best way to make sure their 300,000 troop incentive for Saddam's cooperation didn't go to waste was to... well, start a war. Among the little nudges they came up with was tricking Saddam into shooting down a plane. From the Guardian:

Mr Bush told Mr Blair that the US was so worried about the failure to find hard evidence against Saddam that it thought of "flying U2 reconnaissance aircraft planes with fighter cover over Iraq, painted in UN colours". Mr Bush added: "If Saddam fired on them, he would be in breach [of UN resolutions]".

Hate to be an "I told you so."

4/1
With con season upon us ("Connnnnnnnnnn!!!!"), I am pleased to announce the debut of a fantastic new item in the Deep Fried store. Behold!

Is this edible or what?? What you are seeing is a digital print, painted by maestro comic artist Joe Linsner, portraying my own Mint and Marcy, the saucy sapphists from Weapon Brown who parody the smoldering passions of "Peanuts" Peppermint Patty and Marcie.

"Well Heeled" is 11" x 17", professionally printed on high quality paper. It comes signed by both myself and Joe Linsner and ships in a sturdy plastic sleeve. A remarque edition with a little drawing done by me will be on sale at the Pittsburgh Comicon later this month, but you web purchasers can get the print with a discounted copy of Weapon Brown! Do I have to tell you to order today? I don't think so.

...

I gots a couple links to share. First off, watch these babies. Is this cute, or kinda creepy? The babies look like they may have formed a cult and are holding their parents prisoner. Something about that fun house laughter tells me that once the giggles stop, the chainsaws come out.

Those Manson infants aren't anywhere near as disturbing as these collected quotes from conservative triumphalists, which were spit out on cue like baseballs from a pitching machine in 2003, just after "Mission Accomplished". Note how many of those pundits were expecting snivelling mea culpas from chastened liberals, who clearly should have fallen on their knees and begged the President for the honor of cleaning his anus with a Q-tip.

My, how the worm turns! Do you think armchair Solid Snakes like William Safire ( "What about remaining danger from Baathist torturers and war criminals forming pockets of resistance and plotting vengeance? (Their death wish is our command.)") and Chris Matthews ( "We're all neo-cons now." ) have any intention of acknowledging the role that their blind, partisan cock-fluffing had to do with the calamity that is Iraq? The sheer villainy of their reality-fucking, both before and after the war began, ought to have everyone in this country smashing their televisions and burning down party headquarters (which? take your pick). The castaways on Lost don't endure as much mental sodomy from their hostile, supernatural wonderland as our entire nation has from the people who serve as the lens through which foggy, complicated matters are supposedly made clear.

Where am I going with this? Jesus, where can any of us go with this??

3/27
I had no idea that someone had created a Wikipedia article about my own Weapon Brown! I'm effervescent with delight! Anyone here want to take a crack at writing a wiki page about Deep Fried itself? I feast on exposure!

The entries for the "Mallard Lays an Egg" contest are here. Congrats to Mary Jane (last name redacted for security purposes)! She wins a free copy of Deep Fried and a photo of my shaven testicles (I shoulda mentioned that that was also part of the prize. Sorry, MJ).

I'd like to say more, but I have finally managed to download the episode of South Park where they kill Chef, and that trumps all.

3/23
Michelle Malkin, whose pubes I call for the forced removal of in this week's strip, makes a distinction between Christians today that should come as no surprise to anyone. Turns out that the difference between a good Christian and a bad Christian is their politics!

This is the only way to interpret Malkin's snarky response to the rescue of three Christian Peace Activists in Iraq today. First, Michelle makes sure her readers know that they were left wing (the fact that they were engaged in peace activism being the giveaway, since the Bible tells us that Jesus was a beef-eating redneck who drove a Ford Tahoe with a gun rack and a set of rubber testicles hanging from the rear bumper). She then carps that in the Christian Peacemaker Team's web statement about the rescue, the activists don't give proper adulation to the commandos who freed them, nor do they immediately call for public funding of hand jobs for all Navy SEALS, as a proper Christian hostage would have.

Then follows a few open letters to the CPT from Malkin's readers lambasting the hostages for their ingratitude, which we can assume included calling their rescuers "baby killers" while clawing at their eyes and trying to force their way back into the kidnappers' den to wash their abductors' feet with their hair.

Just what do people like Malkin think Christ's message was, anyway? I know this is a well-trod subject, and that the right wing's manifest hypocrisy on the matter began roughly one second after the last particle of oxygen escaped Jesus' lungs, but seriously, who does she consider to be her teammates in the war for Man's soul? Michelle, like most people who are Christian in fervor only, seems to think that "peace" means simply an absence of gunfire achieved after the enemy has bled his last corpuscle, and so sees soldiers as our true missionaries to Iraq. No wonder the war is going so well.

3/20
Three years of fun in the Iraqi sun and no end in sight! Give your Republican friends the finger today.

I was prowling the web the other day and once again came across that high colonic of comedy, Mallard Fillmore. It seems cartoonist Bruce Tinsley's sense of humor, already so microscopic that it could not escape the gravity well of a Rice Krispy, has finally dried up. Here's his strip from February 6.



Tinsley's conceit is that anyone actually expects a punchline in his cartoon. The last panel of a typical Mallard strip consists of something very much like the above: a flat Pepsi of a rejoinder usually delivered with a raised eyebrow so that the reader (presumably afflicted with Asperger's Syndrome) is cued that Mallard's apparent endorsement of Bill Clinton's fidelity or Cindy Sheehan's stoicism is in fact ironic.

Having admitted that he's got no gas left in his tank, Tinsley, in the same week, decided to take his strip to a "self serve" format.



A chance to take the helm of Americas leading source for five seconds of guranteed boredom?? Count me in!



Photoshop your own punchline for Mallard and e-mail them to me. I'll post them on the site next week, and then mail them to Bruce Tinsley so he can finally see what his strip would be like if he didn't eat children's souls for breakfast. Funniest entry gets a free copy of Deep Fried!

...

Hey kids, did you know Mallard is based on a real live Republican fellatio machine? Why it's none other than Fox News' Brit "your jizz is like a fine Pinot Noir to me, Mr. President" Humes! Observe the near tantrum he throws while trying to dislodge President Pooh Bear from the rabbit hole of impeachable domestic spying he's gotten stuck in. Have you called your senator in support of Feingold's censure resolution yet?

3/13
Fuuuuuck. Monday the 13th. Isn't that a Garfield shtick? On Monday the 13th he hides from a flying pie that seeks him out like a Hellfire missile? Maybe I am dating myself. That routine could have been defunct for ten years and I'd never know. Last time I read Garfield he looked about as bored at being in his strip as I was to be reading it. It was three panels of him just pulling out Pookie's eyes for the hell of it. The strip smelled like gin.

A coupla Palestinian kids sure got Monday the thirteenthed the other day, didn't they? When will these brats learn not to stand next to parked cars in the Occupied Territories? Those things attract missiles like Tom Cruise attracts body thetans.

This tragedy--civilians being killed during an assassination strike, which happens roughly every time Israel decides to take out a militant--is a nice counterpoint to how the Mossad is portrayed in "Munich". It would have been nice if the kids had been splattered on the day of the Oscars. Do you think the Academy still would have chosen to run the scene where Eric Banna and his Howling Commandos barely avoid blowing up a Palestinian child with a phone bomb? Someone should tell Israel's Apache pilots that they're supposed to be emulating Spielberg's Care Bears and not Duke Nukem. Ah, but that would be committing the cardinal sin of disclosing that reality is not the dreamworks Hollywood's sorcerers would like it to be. An Aurora, IL school teacher undertook to reveal this recently, and later found that a mild rant he went on in his sophomore geography class had been taped by one of his students and spread over the Internet. This was fodder for the right wing for a solid week, more proof that the moonunits (or whatever that cliché is that they love so much--anyone caught using it should be culled like Chinese poultry) are contaminating the nation's li'l puddinheads.

For some reason the conservative Diet of Worms concluded that Jay Bennish's greatest heresy is that he is a geography teacher, and since geography has never played a role in world events this alone disqualifies him from discussing politics with his teenage students, much less taking a point of view. That they have attacked him on these grounds, instead of Bennish's less defensible violation of Godwin's Law, is to be expected. The very notion of educating children about the facts of life is antithetical to the neo-compassionate-dominionist-billionaire agenda. It is far worse to suggest that America serves the interests of plutocrats and imperialists than to correct the factual errors of Republicans-in-waiting like Sean Allen, the little snitchy hero of this tale, as caught on his own tape:

Bennish: How did Israel and the modern Israeli state even come into existence in the first place?Allen: We gave it to them.

Right. America just pulled the Holy Land out of her back pocket and dropped it in the Jews' guitar case as she rushed to catch the subway. England, World War I, the United Nations...these had nothing to do with it. We gave it to them. "A land without a people for a people without a land", as the ad campaign went. Who needs to know more than that?

I'm sure those dead Palestinian kids had two cents worth sharing.
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Deep Fried is now alive and thriving on Cracked.com! This is the website of the rejuvenated Cracked Magazine, the earnest competition to MAD which alone survived the mental illness comedy wars of the 70s and 80s, outlasting such stalwarts as Crazy, Sick, Touched In The Head, Pathological Public Masturbator and I'm On My Meds And Doing Fine Now Monthly. Go there and rate this week's strip 5 butts! 3/6
Before I go into detail about my New York odyssey, you are all commanded by the Eye of Zamoo to vote for my best girl Eva as best colorist in the Comics Buyer's Guide's Annual Fan Awards. Eva has edged out some tough competition to earn her nomination, so let's support the gal who keeps me sane and organized enough to keep this site going! Vote for her boss Joe Linsner in the "best cover artist" category while you're at it. My circle of friends runneth over with talent!

Alright now, everybody sing! "New York, New York-- It's a toddlin' town! The murder rate's up but prostitution is down! The WTC is just a hole in the ground! New York, New York--it's a TODDDDLIN' TOWN!"

So, last weekend's New York trip paid for about 30% of itself in cash, but more than made up the rest in pure adrenaline! New York sold me their whole seat but I only needed the edge!

First stop on my adventure was the New York Comic-Con, which was held at the Jacob Javits center. I arrived there at noon on Saturday, fifteen pounds of materials in tow, to find that, despite having the maximum occupancy of a Borg cube, the Javits Center had oversold the show and the fire marshall was turning away about a thousand disappointed geeks, including yours truly.

Though I considered using my juice with Stan Lee to have him pull some strings with Gov. Pataki, I instead opted to slip out the back door and enter the convention through the loading dock, circumventing the fire marshall (and stealing his pic-a-nic basket in the process!). Inside I made me prearranged rendezvous' with cartooning firebrand Ted Rall and comics writer Keith Giffen, my shining hope for a future in mainstream comics. Jason-1, vicissitudes of karma-0.

There were a few Marvel heroes and storm troopers wandering about, as well as some martyrs wearing aisle-constricting Ugly Doll suits, but nothing out of the ordinary for a comic book convention. I strolled until my feet hurt, suggested imprisonment to the women who sold me a three dollar bottle of Coke, and was a week's worth of pooped by the end of the day.

But my day had by no means ended.Ted had invited me to go out drinking with himself and cartoonist Stephanie McMilllan, who was having a signing that night for her new book, "Attitude featuring Stephanie McMilllan's Minimum Security." So, from the Javits Center it was down, down to the east Village, every one of my footfalls a reminder that Sketchers are the worst walking shoe since granite clogs. After a brief stop at the Mars Bar on 1st street, the diviest dive I have ever had the pleasure of experiencing (the place is decorated after the fashion of one of Sid Vicious' hotel rooms) it was on to the quiet of a small, populous Mexican restaurant called The Sombrero. There I joined Ted, Steph and their entourage and was plied with frozen margaritas. This led to an enthusiastic discussion of revolutionary politics, where I did taste one of the key ingredients to the recipe of failure that is leftism in this country: an inability to admit that communism sucks.

I had heard it rumored that this problem existed, but I didn't really quite believe it until I beheld the contortions that several at the table went through to accommodate Stalin's admittance into the Worker's Hall of Fame. "When you have a revolution, obviously the forces of counter-revolution will amass in one end of the new party." Went one argument "And, I'm sorry, but how else do you deal with that but by brute force?"

Well, one might suggest through a competitive democratic system instead of liquidating millions of kulaks. But then, why suffer a bunch of counter-revolutionaries at all? Those scab pickers are always pointing out everyone's mistakes, like the efforts of the Mustache-in-Chief to atomize the population to the point where the secret police can drink 'em up with a straw.

Another argument trumpeted the achievement of Russia to industrialize their society faster than America could ever have wished for. And...? To what end? A reduced standard of living for the entire country? A centuries old culture of music, literature and innovation reduced to a desert of mental slavery in service to the dream of a steam-driven economy? Is it so hard to accept that centralized government could be worse than a Czar?

Ultimately the gauntlet was thrown down to me: how much freer are we in the United States than under a man like Stalin? I couldn't stand up in this restaurant, for instance, and shout a cheer for Osama bin Laden or death to our President any more than a Trotskyist could call for Stalin's head after 1936.

At which point, I (lubricated, I admit, by those fine margarita's) stood up and shouted both.

This led to many sweaty palms amongst our group, and I offered copious apologies to Stephanie's husband, a Bangladeshi who, in the biggest surprise of the evening, did not think it wise to be sitting near a man shouting admiration for public enemy #1. The next day I too would be jolted by my recklessness, but this was mitigated by the actual response of the Sombrero's patrons that evening: a few stares, and then...nothing. No boos, no empinadas hurled our way, certainly no jack boots.

My point? This is still America, and cowering under the blankets while the unstoppable George Bush razes the countryside just seems a little...unneccessary. The left's defeatism is home grown, not the result of skilled thrusts and parries by a nakedly corrupt Republican party. It arises from having no fresh notions for social justice to put forth, leading to stale rehasings of discredited methods and motives that leave its adherants frustrated and self-indulgently paranoid. No one is coming for them, because no one cares.

The Democratic party is an equal collaborator in this malaise. John Kerry is its spokesman. Aristocratic, boring, a millionaire sop to the middle class. A guy who voted against the first Gulf War when the world was behind us but voted for the second when the world was shouting a collective "ixnay". How can the Democrats rally anyone to their standard when leaders like this, those people who lost the Supreme Court, lost the surplus and are now losing us the Fourth Amendment are dancing around it like a maypole?

If you want a revolution in this country, stop thinking of revolutions. Start thinking of hard work, and real action. Start thinking about what kind of ideas should be moving the country, and what kind of people. The people who shat their pants when Dean screamed? Where have they gotten us?

Pick up your phone and ask the NSA. You don't even have to dial.
...

UPDATE: I can't believe it has taken me until now to congratulate my brother Damon and his fine lady Jennifer on the birth of their son, Carson Mephistopholes Yungbluth. Here's looking at you, squirt!



3/2
I have returned safely and soundlessly from NYC, where my crimes are too numerous to enter into at the moment. Rest assured I will have tales to tell in the next few days. Meanwhile, enjoy the fabulous other realms of my site!

2/23
Just to give you advance warning, my travel schedule this weekend means that next week's strip will be posted in the middle of the week instead of Monday. For God's sake, don't give up on me!!!!

2/22
I is back! "Later today" turned into early tomorrow, but I am one busy man so I forgive myself. I am going to be in NYC this weekend for the New York Comic-Con, but only as an attendee. I will be walking around, pressing flesh and making connections. I may have something brewing at DC Comics, so keep your fingers crossed for me. If you've been praying for a sick relative, why don't you send some of that mojo my way as well? Aunt Tilly really isn't likely to pull through this time, and deep down you know this.

I will also be presenting an A/V version of Zogg at Tonic, a NYC bar on Norfolk St., as part of their monthly Little Theater performance art show. I have taken the evil space babies and added a touch of animation and a gurgly voiceover for display purposes, and will debut this new and improved Cuddly Menace on Monday, February 27th at 8 PM. The file is a bit chunky right now, but when I get back I will slim it down and put it on the site.

Okay, if you haven't seen the viral that I spoof in this week's strip, A) you are what lame would like to be when it grows up and joins the Lame Corps., and B) here it is. In the future, we will all be a TV show for 15 minutes.

Speaking of the ad box, any Lost fans reading this? How about the interesting psychic shell game that the last episode played with current events? The righteous Iraqi tortures the American, because all's fair in warfare, especially when you're in the trenches on a luxury island blessed with an as yet undisclosed fountain of Prell and cliff walls that bleed Aquafresh.

The final exchange between Sayid and Charlie is also interesting, as once again it is the arab torturer who reminds the white guy (a Brit, our "ally"), that one need not feel remorse for doing despicable things when the enemy is without mercy. It reminds me of a conversation I had with a certain dick at a party once, where that guy implied much the same thing, stating that "he who starts the fight sets the rules." I suppose this means that if your enemy is running a death camp anything that you do up to and including exterminating all untermenschen is by the book, sí?

I've made this complaint before, about Battlestar Galactica, but I will reiterate since I have a better nose for propaganda than Paul Giamatti has for wine. Obviously anything on television having to do with torture during wartime is pulled right from the headlines, and frequently you see the issue softsoaped in a way that must make Elmer Cheney curl his lip in simulation of a human smile. Be it BG, 24, or Lost, the message is always the same: the beefy hunks with the guns know what's best, so close your eyes, spread your legs and remember the Pentagon while they go and pull out some toenails.

Abu Ghraib? Gitmo? Murdered Afghani taxi drivers? Hey, that's par for the course in this "new kind of war that has never been seen before on this planet or even conceptualized in the mind of Yahweh its THAT fucking new!" And when the CIA has the stepson of Osama bin Laden's fifth lieutenant's green grocer strapped to an electrified bedspring, you don't need a buncha ACLU pussies showing up at the door waving around bills of quaint little "rights".

Just remember, the first thing Bush declared after 9/11 was that this "war" would be generational, which means that we have only seen the opening salvos of what our entertainment industry will be telling us we have to give up, turn our heads from or swallow Jenna Jameson style in the years to come.

On a happier note, see the sale-o-meter up top budging forward a bit? That's thanks to you folks! Keep those purchases coming! I got boxes and boxes of comic books all poking their snouts over the edges like adorable puppies looking for a home. If I can just get my comic strip as popular as Lost I can mitigate some of Hollywood's evil! But its all up to you! You are why Sayid tortures! YOU!!!

2/21
Bad Jason! Updates are Mondays! B-a-a-a-ad!

Okay, I will post this itsy blog for now. Tune in later today for more grist.

2/14
Looks like Ann Coulter finally said something that even the most gyroscopic conservatives couldn't spin away.

At the recently held Conservative Political Action Conference, Coulter (the product of an experiment that crossed a Madagascar hissing cockroach with Magda Goebbels) said that America's message to Arabs should be "raghead talks tough, raghead faces consequences."

Ah, what do you expect from a blonde?

2/9
I just scoped CNN's headline about the thwarted shoe bomb attacks...of four years ago. Besides the inherent comedy of the story ("Shoe bomb plot foiled. Buster Sheikh Brown eludes capture"), and its faint whiff of propaganda nerve gas, does it not also seem like the plot made no sense?

How does one hijack a plane with a shoe bomb? A shoe, by it's very nature, is not threatening. You can't cut a throat with a Ked. I suppose you could garrotte someone with the laces, but that seems needlessly complicated.

And just what would the hijacker say to intimidate the pilots? "Fly us into the ground or I swear to Allah I'll blow us out of the sky"? If you have gone through the trouble of smuggling an exploding Hushpuppy onto a plane, then, like Richard Reed, the only thing that really makes sense is to light the fuse the moment you regurgitate your Zippo.

Add to this the fact that after 9/11 the passengers would know that charging the terrorists was their only means of survival, I gotta tell you, I doubt that skyjackings are very much part of al Qaeda's tool kit these days.

2/3
State of the Union? In a minute, in a minute. First though, maybe some of you NASA scientists out there could tell me what the statistical odds are of encountering the song "Shipoopi" twice in one day, from two completely different sources? I mean, that's got to be as infrequent an occurrence as potato salad transmogrifying into ingots of platinum, right? And yet, it happened to me last Sunday! First I heard Garrison Keilor sing it on Prairie Home Companion, then later that night Homer Simpson was singing it on Family Guy (except they were calling Homer "Peter" for some reason).

And I can remember exactly when I heard "Shipoopi" last. It was during Monicagate, like, twenty damn years ago! The TV was showing the future cum gargler performing the number in a high school version of The Music Man. So, for two decades not a single note of "Shipoopi" hits my ear, and then twice in one day?! I'm not saying I think this means that a comet is going to hit the earth on Super Bowl Sunday or something, but that would be more likely than hearing "Shipoopi" twice in one day! For Crissakes, what are the odds of a song even being called "Shipoopi"? It's a nonsense word! If you heard two complete strangers use the word "buttergobbletboogertoes" in two completely different contexts in a single day, you'd think a comet was going to hit Ford Field, wouldn't you?

Anyway, I don't mean to scare any of you who are holding Super bowl tickets into scalping them on E-Bay or nothing. No, I mean that. I don't even like the Super Bowl. I don't even know who's playing. Go Sabretooths! See?

Okay, the State of the Union. My call: Who gives a shit? Ten minutes of speech, eighty minutes of standing ovations, not a single "boo" from the pussycrats. Yawn. Saw it last year. Guess what? We're still losing Iraq.

My sniveling request for validation last week reaped dozens of e-mails from readers who were not the least bit outraged that I snuffed Beepo the Clown. Apparently my fans are a bunch of jaded cynics who grew up watching blood soaked weather reports on Eyewitness News and think that this is just a stunt, that I don't have what it takes to actually kill Beepo for keeps, that my balls (in Spanish, "cajones", in Spanglish, "calzones") are too tiny for the task.

Listen, if I wanted to bring back Beepo, why was I briefing Congress? Think about it. But if you still think you can sway me you could always sign this petition, started by starry-eyed dreamer O'dell Hicks (who I keep confusing with O'dell Hudson, but that's a lame joke so I won't make it).

In the meantime, it was delightful finding out that my audience has a pulse! Keep those electronic epistles flowing. Just don't put "Al Qaeda" or "First Amendment" or "Right Wing Cabal" in the subject line, because that's a sure fire way to get them noticed by the NSA.

Speaking of which, Congress is starting hearings on the wiretaps on Monday. Isn't it funny? Remember all the times that you said something notorious about the President over the phone to your friends, and then qualified it with something like "I sure hope the CIA isn't listening! Tee hee!"

Tee hee. THEY WERE. Let your Congressman know that you will be voting on this issue!

1/30
Electric chair quantities of leg pain, courtesy of sciatica, prevent OW me from responding to all the e-mails my fishing expedition netted this week, but OW have patience, I will provide a more thorough update in a couple FUCK! days.

1/25
Ex-CUSE me, but I just killed off one of my major characters here! I know I have a couple hundred regular visitors to this site, I expect a couple hundred e-mails about this! Come on people. Beepo? Dead? Does this concern anyone?

Echo...

Okay, time for much ado about Google. The world's most popular search engine seemed poised to be this week's Golden Globe winner for "Best Protection of Privacy" for flipping off the Bush administration in their effort to acquire a week's worth of Google searches and results. It's part of an ongoing campaign of bullshit to protect the Amish of the world from being subjected to unwelcome images of hirsute clams when they do web searches for innocuous words like "pussy". Google stepped up and showed some backbone, unlike their competitors, in resisting the government's subpoena.

But when it came to odious moves against free expression by the Chinese government, Google's spine was just so much origami in their hands.

Google, in order to expand into China's unfathomable, Romulan Empire-sized market, has agreed to participate in government censorship of those things which might make a neo-totalitarian government uncomfortable, ideas such as multiple political parties, accountability for crimes against one's citizenry, and the rights of religious groups to assemble in areas other than a prison yard.

This is a perfectly American business attitude, where ideas about the broad, liberating ideals your nation represents (not to mention your product) ends at the water's edge. If our government wants Google's records, I'm sure a few trillion yuan would be enough to entice them into Uncle Sam's black van.

The free flow of information provided by the Internet is possibly the most valuable resource of this millennium. It is vital for the growth of the mind, for artistic and creative freedom, for the improvement of politics and religion. Google's agreement to provide the citizens of China with access to everything but the information they need most is a slap in the face to everyone who wishes to advance in that country: the workers who are still not free to sell their labor at prices they negotiate, the faithful who dare to express their thoughts in a land that has married one party rule to the pursuit of the almighty buck, and of course, the real forces for change in China: the demonstrators. Those erased heroes who were crushed in Tiananmen Square, those revolutionaries in the name of our original dream, the one we embraced before comfort replaced it: democracy. They started a rebellion, albeit a brief one, the likes of which never emerged in Iraq, a country whose "freedom" we cherish so very dearly that we are bleeding for it at the rate of four quarts a day.

Can the owners of Google, whose Hippocratic, pre-bubble slogan "do no evil" implies a conscientious business philosophy, not see the disconnect here? The name "Google" itself implies the near infinite amount of mind-expanding knowledge their service provides through its unlimited connection to the Internet. What will their enterprise in China be called? "Hundred?"

A country's ideals are not simply found in its willingness to kill others for an advantage of two cents on a barrel of oil. There is the battle of integrity, and the fact that the free market is no less a worthy battleground for it than a desert or a jungle is a taboo concept in our country. It is not liberalism that softens a nation's character, it is the lack of it. And where we see the resolve of liberal-minded citizens waning we find in its place the soft bellies of the luxury class, people who only care if they got theirs, and to hell with those who want some for themselves. To them, freedom, if it must be practiced at all, should be done in such a way that it can be shot as a movie for later consumption. It is a commodity to be rationed, and delivered only through one form of action: rifle fire.

At the very least, Google owes it to the world to take the fortune they will rake in from their sub-education of China's millions and apply most of it towards efforts to subvert the censorship they have been bribed into accepting. They have handed the people of China a candle and blown out the flame. They have done evil.

But returning to Google's initial good-deed, how about the psychic one-two punch of Bush trying to rummage through Google's memory banks the same week he took to the road to defend unfettered government spying on John Q. Anybody? We have already seen the sparkling results of what happens when corporations have too much information on you: telemarketers at every meal, department stores asking for your zip code so they can avalanche you with ever more circulars and mailers (for your own good, of course.) But think of what an inquisitive government could learn about everyone on the Net from a week's worth of Google snoops: the stories that make them tick, the people in the news that most interest them, and of course, every fetish, wet dream and criminal interest under the sun. If you were a White House pollster, looking to find what gets America's most marketable demographics double-clicking, isn't that the kind of information you'd subvert a Constitution to acquire?

Read their own words. Included within Rebuilding America's Defenses, the Project for a New American Century's blueprint for right wing dominion that the Bush administration has thus far followed to the letter, is this ambition: to "Control the new 'international commons' of space and 'cyberspace,' and pave the way for the creation of a new military service — U.S. Space Forces — with the mission of space control."

So answer this question: considering that the Justice Department is run by Bush's friend with benefits Alberto "Waterboard" Gonzales, and considering that Bush is currently on an honest to God whistlestop tour to sell the idea that the Fourth Amendment is more of a suggestion really, do you think the White House won't get a peek at those records?

Call your fucking Congressman.

1/14
For years, Bill Clinton's baby milk factory has been the Republicans' canard of choice when reaching for an example of Democratic butterfingers. You would think that with the entire Iraq war available as a counterpoint that the compassionate conservatives would have abandoned this example by now. But in case a few true believers are still hanging on to it for nostalgia's sake, we now have this latest tat for that particular tit: the Damadola slaughter.

Eight men. Five women. Five children. No Zawahiri.

By all means, do watch the CNN video clip available through the above link. Consider the fascist comedy that is Wolf Blitzer standing in his holodeck studio like some sort of omniscient Jack Kirby cosmic overseer. The level of spectacular glitz and cyber whiz-bang is in direct disproportion to the humanity of the reporting.

Listen to the indifference reporter David Ensor expresses as he reports that "as many as five of (those killed) might have been al Qaeda personnel." And the 13 others? Does the fact that at best we are killing two innocents for every one suspect even register with the cyborgs of news? And how does one calculate which five were al Qaeda? Does a child standing near a rifle count? Perhaps a woman's womb could be called a "training base", thereby making her a target of opportunity?

Oh, but it's falsely reporting the flushing of a Koran that leads to their unjustifiable hatred of us, right?

1/09
How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Bill O'Reilly

Presently my lower back feels as though it has been replaced with that of a seventy-three-year old steel pourer, the consequence of years of lousy drawing table posture. For years my entreaties to my employer, Me, for an ergonomically designed chair and an extra lump of coal for the furnace have fallen on talk radio-deafened ears. OSHA has been no help either. I've filed complaint after complaint with them, but I have a powerful lobby in Washington to resist my interests, and I may as well go begging for adequate body armor from the Pentagon.

Such suffering is par for the course for a cartoonist. In order to bring laughter and truth to the masses we gladly endure the scourges of ink-stained tongues, bits of tape in our hair, numb toes from unheated studios and below average vintages of Riesling with our pasta con tartufi. However, in pursuit of artistic excellence I have recently completed a gauntlet so Promethean that had it been part of Christ's own Passion, Mel Gibson would have refused to film it on grounds of poor taste.

I have read Those Who Trespass, Bill O'Reilly's first "novel".

Any liberal Lex Luthor who has ever yearned to discover Bill O'Reilly's kryptonite should treat themselves to at least a few pages of Those Who Trespass. Granted, if you've ever read one of Bill's columns or skimmed a chapter of one of his non-fiction works while searching for a gift for your sister in Barnes and Nobel, you are already familiar with Bill's artlessness. Any two graphs of the man's truncated, self-indulgent spew reveals that Bill O'Reilly is to the written word what Steven Hawking is to the spoken.

Those Who Trespass, however, is a love letter to his enemies. A smorgasbord of hackery and cliché made all the more sumptuous by O'Reilly's overweening pride for his skills as a novelist. With the gusto of a palsied jailhouse tattoo artist working in printer's ink, O'Reilly has crafted one of the most unsuspenseful, unintriguing and unresearched crime novels in the history of the Universe and, I would calculate, at least five collapses and regenerations thereof. My ass wrote a better story on the Charmin I wiped it with this morning.

Plainly I am shooting fish in a barrel here, but I'm sure Bill himself would forgive me. It is the dispersal of accumulated O'Reillytoxin through screeds such as this that prevents the masses from stampeding into his studio and crapping their outrage down his throat one dump at a time. And when the inevitable truth and reconciliation commission is convened at the end of Bill's career, Those Who Trespass will certainly be listed among his highest crimes.

This alleged thriller takes place near to, but never quite in, the thick of the network news business. Since this is O'Reilly's home turf it is amazing how desiccated his portrayal of the industry is. A few phrases of jargon, a couple dropped names and a little bitter snarkiness for the talentless among the mighty and there you have it: the sum total of Bill O'Reilly's decades of experience in one of the world's most interesting industries.

But that's to be expected, since everything O'Reilly writes is concerned only with O'Reilly. And, never immodest, Bill casts himself not once but twice in his own novel.

First we have Shannon Michaels, ace reporter, ice cold and professional...like Bill O'Reilly! Details such as his physique and career are lifted directly from Bill's CV, as is Shannon's taste for revenge and women's perky nipples. Someone has been committing the world's most poorly plotted executions against the bigwigs of GNN, the Global News Network. Could it be Michaels?

Only one person can answer that question: hard-bitten NYC detective Tommy O'Malley. Aggressive and unflinching...like Bill O'Reilly!...O'Malley will use anything it takes to stop the killer from striking again, short of investigating alibis or risking a lawsuit.

The fact that Bill hasn't gone to the trouble of disguising a single facet of his protagonists' true identity as the author (a literary technique called "being a lazy fuck"), the reader, though never at risk from being en