Lots of new orders this week! Thanks noobs! You make a brother feel loved.

By the way, Deep Fried v.2 #4 has not fallen into a black hole. In fact, I just finished coloring the back cover. So, despite dishing out so many excuses for its delay that British Petroleum is thinking of hiring me as a press agent, Deep Fried #4, complete with the awesome fans-only Great Pumpkin story, will soon be ready for you!

So, if you are a Beepo, Roadkill, Clarissa, Ghastly Cash, Slamwich or (yes) even a Weapon Brown fan, send me an e-mail containing your fan comments and it may be printed in the new issue! Make your subject line “And the Horse You Rode In On” so I don’t confuse it for a penis pill ad.

The above header is how I feel after having had my praises sung in the video of a panel that took place at the just completed Heroes-Con. The boost to my ego comes courtesy of writer Chris Sims of Comics Alliance, who has reached the level of Operating Blockhead VIII!

Hello to all you new Debbie Downers who have only just discovered Clarissa from her sudden fame courtesy of Digg and Reddit and the nice person who posted Stuffed Friend without my permission.

There is another Clarissa story for you to enjoy here, and plenty more in The Great Taste of Deep Fried and Deep Fried vol. 2 #1, both available in my store.

Clarissa seems to be inspiring her share of fans on Deviant Art, too! Lookit this and this. Wow… why do people have such a dark opinion of my cute little waif? I’ve always imagined her as having a lot of cross-over appeal to fans of cartoons like Doug and Hey Arnold!

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There was a terrorist attack in Pakistan on Thursday, in which gunmen killed or injured hundreds of worshippers at two different mosques.

The attack was blamed on the “Pakistan Taliban”, a name we are starting to hear all too frequently. I mean, I could have sworn we went into that area to wipe out the Taliban. Nine years later, there are two of them.

Interesting note: blaming this on the Taliban is just smoke and mirrors to disguise the real cause of the slaughter. The people killed were Ahmadis, a minority religious sect. And discrimination against them is actually written into the Pakistani Constitution.

Credit where credit is due.

The wave of left-wing reactionism to Rand Paul has nearly crested, but surfs still up! From Crooks and Liars, a little Glenn Beckery based on (of all things) a Tweet from a Neo Nazi:

“Neo-Nazis have just as much right as anyone else to contribute to campaigns… Clearly, the expectation is for their guy to do right by them when he gets there, and frankly, there’s no reason for them to doubt that, based on the evidence.”

SPARE. ME. I have not yet been blown away by Rand, but have you seen his competition? Kentucky Democrat Jack Conway is such an off-the-shelf politician that  he probably comes three to a blister pack! His face looks like it was made to wear pancake makeup, and his rhetoric is so trite he may as well have a draw string. “Brighter tomorrows” and “Now-is-the-time’s” roll off his tongue as though he were the hypnotized candidate in a scheme hatched by Lex Luthor.

Back to Rand. Soft spoken, somewhat clumsy with the English language in the manner of his father Ron Paul, hair that looks like a pile of dog shit… and willing to tell the truth about his actual philosophies, at least so long as he can avoid a backlash from the right and the left, neither of whom actually welcome conversations about controversial subjects (though they doth protest otherwise).

The thing that liberals have yet to understand is, at the end of the day there are going to be Republicans in Congress no matter what, and Rand Paul is the kind we can deal with.

There are three types of conservatives vying for Tea Party momentum: one faction is the theocrat/tinfoil hat brigade belonging to Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck. A second is the plutocrat wing of Gingrich and Romney, and the third and most imperiled is the libertarian wing. But if I had to name the Republican least likely to appear on the Sunday talk shows trying to repeal the Bill of Rights the next time some Pakistani parks a U-Haul full of horse manure and bottle rockets in Times Square, it would be Rand Paul.

Rand’s style of Libertarianism is largely unfamiliar to the public at large, but any attempt to play him as a racist or regressive are premature. He believes in smaller government, yes, and he has actually made a bold move by critiquing the Civil Rights Act. The only thing ballsier would be running a cartoon of Mohammed in his campaign literature. Is the Civil Rights Act as it is written the best law for our country? I’d be willing to bet it is. But then again, I have never been asked to consider the question before. Thanks Rand!

There’s lots of real life objections that can be thrown against Rand Paul that don’t require Code Pink to start attending his rallies, especially his Atlas Shrugged attitude towards business. His abortion stance is also foolhardy. But slandering him with charges of Nazisim? Are we really going to go down the Fox News road of playing the Hitler card every time an anti-status quo candidate rears his head?

I think Rand Paul is probably naive and Utopian, but he is also against the PATRIOT Act. Has Obama come out against that? Rand takes a jaded eye towards the defense budget and isn’t afraid to discuss the Military Industrial Complex in pejorative terms, either. Obama ramped up the Afghan War and the world’s goody two-shoes gave him a Nobel Peace Prize for it!

Time will tell whether Rand Paul is actually his own man and continues to speak his mind, or if the Republicans (aided and abetted by Rachel Maddow and others who can’t see the forest for the trees) prove to him that Americans on the left and right actually prefer a Party of No.

Just a little live-blogging from the Wild Pig show on my friend’s iPad. I take back every bad thing I ever said about this overhyped waste of money. It is the tits with a side of booyah.

Decent attendance yesterday, not so much today, but hey, it’s Sunday. Met the brains behind Alien Loves Predator, Box Brown of Bellen, David Willis from Shortpacked. I’m at his table now. Say “hi” David!

Helloes.

SEE? That was the real David Willis! How cool is this consumerist waste of resources??

Anyway, I apparently can’t scroll up to correct a previous paragraph because I am using the screen keyboard to type, and the php doesn’t work correctly using this interface. Technology sucks when it stops rocking. Back to work for me!

Life appears to be mimicking crappy art. It looks like Little Orpahn Annie has had her day:

Daddy Warbucks’s favorite little tyke may have used pluck to survive the past 86 years in daily newspapers, but now she’s apparently outta luck. Come June 13, her clear-eyed vision of the world will her syndicate, Tribune Media Services, sends her off into the sunset.

As fans of this site know, her best years are ahead of her. As well as some great cleavage!

On paper, few people could be less qualified for leading America through the dark shoals that surround her than Mitt Romney.

In an age where everyone pretends to care for grassroots substance, Romney distinguishes himself as a man made for America’s plasma screens. His Ken Doll looks and velour speaking voice are right out of Republican central casting. His enormous wealth –accumulated through the unproductive buying and selling of money that is damning the titans of Wall Street–  declares him as a plutocrat, while his desire to see the estate tax repealed so that his princelings can spend the rest of their lives swimming in unmerited loot reveals that Mitt thinks he was born to the purple.

Mitt has a finger in the wind when it comes to conservative causes that matter most these days, such as public health care and abortion and gay rights. He wishes to be a moderate in a party with a PR machine that chews up anyone not willing to tattoo a flag on their chest. And he’s a Mormon.

It’s that last thing which should be a big blip on the nation’s radar.

Acknowledging the facts of a politicians’ religion is oddly taboo, considering how much importance we place on politicians stroking their crosses in public. Pols on the left and right rarely criticize someone’s actual beliefs. If they do, it is to mock a specific personality who espouses it, like Jerry Falwell or Jeremiah Wright. “Let the blood of the preacher be on the congregants” seems to be the rule. It is an oblique way to paint a potential leader as outside the mainstream without having to explain what makes for “sensible” religious belief (helpful if you belong to a church with a greater appetite for boycock than NAMBLA).

Yes, targeting a person’s religion can be slimy. That said, believe me when I say that Mitt Romney’s Mormonism is absolutely the only criterion we should use to judge his fitness for office.

And why shouldn’t it be? Absent this intriguing albatross, what else defines him? He is the portrait of establishment politics; a man who opinion polls his every word before they escape his lips, a friend of wealth, and whiter than a shampoo commercial. If his faith can’t recommend him then there really isn’t anything to distinguish Mitt Romney from a department store mannequin.

What else will he run on? Bringing the Olympics to Salt Lake City? Hey, that’s great if you’re an apparel company that wants to wrap your brand in the red, white and blue, but those aren’t exactly manufacturing jobs. He doesn’t have any real dirt under his fingernails; on the contrary:  he’s a career politician like his old man, trying to get the job that pop couldn’t snare. Hasn’t George Bush ended our love affair with aristocracy?

Nope, its gotta be that weird jabberwocky from Utah that we use to define Mitt. And that could very well be a good thing.

Think of the advantages of breaking the religion barrier the way Obama broke the color barrier. Any atheist should be excited at the prospect of a man of non-traditional faith openly guiding the ship of state, if for no other reason than it sounds the all-clear for people of no faith to run.  

The fact of the matter is, a majority of mainline Christians don’t consider Mormons to be part of the body of Christ, since the Mormon concept of God is something out of Foreigner’s “StarRider”. But if you think that reading gold plates out of hats or buying mysterious scrolls off of passing mummy peddlers doesn’t mean that your faith isn’t just so much snake oil, then I’ve got a Shroud of Turin to sell you.

So, breaking the monopoly on Old World Christianity in the White House? Big plus. Of course, that assumes that Romney’s faith is as hollow as a Jack-O-Lantern, that the mysteries of Mormonism won’t be guiding his decisions as he pilots the Battlestar America away from Cylon tyranny.

And what are the Mormon mysteries? Well, we know that the Mormons’ think America, not Israel, is the Promised Land, and that they have some celestial race theories about blacks and Indians that have  been sealed in  Tupperware since the 70s. The polygamy thing is so hopelessly out in the open it almost seems unfair to mention it. And anyway, that tidbit is hardly weirder than circumcision.

But Mitt isn’t just a pew-filler. He was a Mormon bishop (a high-ranking lay position) for several years in Massachusetts. He has ministered to congregants of all stripes, and if this demonstrates that he at least has a common touch, it also shows that he is no cynic either. He is a True Believer, and what those beliefs mean for how Mitt Romney would govern the nation matters. If a president believed that the Greatest Nation on Earth was also the Promised Land, and he subscribed to a belief in American prehistory that is manifestly false, you’d be nuts not to be a little concerned.

Mormonism has been making political inroads through other sources as well. Glenn Beck, the Svengali of Tea Partyism, is, of course, a Mormon. To that end, he has been pushing a book called the 5000 Year Leap, a quasi-religious peon to the Founding Prophets…er, fathers, that mixes in masturbatory praise for the authors of the Constitution with the outright suggestion that our founding documents are actually Holy Writ.

How closely Mitt Romney affiliates himself to this undercurrent of the Right Wing is yet to be seen. Mitt recently yoked himself to conservative Utah Senator Bob Bennet in that state’s recent GOP convention, which failed to nominate him for the Republican primary. This means that the two-term Senator’s seat will now almost surely fall to one of the Tea Baggers that felled him, most of whom would lose a Humanitarian of the Year award to Hannibal Lecter, and some of whom cite the 5000 Year Leap as an inspiration.

So, Mitt may be too soft-boiled for what the Republicans are becoming. Then again, by 2012, the crazy train may have traveled as far from the station as the GOP wants, and they may be looking for a President who can walk the walk without talkin’ the talk. When that day comes, they can rely on this quote from Romney:

“And I’m really proud of the fact that wherever I go, people say, ‘We love the fact that you’re a person of faith, you believe in God, you believe in the Bible, you believe that Jesus Christ is the savior of the world.’ Those are my beliefs, they form who I am. And one of the great elements of America is that we accept people of all faiths as long as they share our values and our love for this great country.”

And if this great country is also the Holy Land, and if the President of the Holy Land follows a prophet who supercedes Mohammed the Final Prophet, why should we worry about the can of worms this may open?

I’m back from my treacherous journey around the nation setting up at one show after the next and paying more money for beer than anyone since Prohibition. I’m gratified to see that so many of you have been clawing at my door like the Living Dead hoping for a new strip. The bloody streaks on the window are like valentines to my ego.

Now that my travels to the depths of fandom are over, I can at last fulfill your desires. But a bit more patience please, as I am writing this blog from a pressurized tank meant to prevent the bends.

New strip on Friday! In the meantime, here’s a carnival of memories for you to enjoy from Chicago and Pittsburgh.

I ran into this guy at C2E2. What’s that character’s name again? Black Vulcan? Black Lighning? Something to do with electricity as I recall. Black Voltage?

This isn’t what it looks like. Lord Vader is just checking my teeth for tartar.

Here’s my setup at the Pittsburgh Comicon. Who amongst you wouldn’t buy comics from a guy with such an awesome booth? Because you have a lot of company.

Black Tesla? Black Kilowatt? It’s on the tip of my tongue…

This picture may hurt Aquaman’s new job as pitchman for Red Lobster.

Day One of the Pittsburgh Comicon, and I am going through a phase I call “con puberty”, where I begin to absorb the likeness of my products.

By Day Two the transformation is nearly complete, and security is forced to drag me off to quarantine lest someone accidentally feed me after midnight.

Don’t let these ectomorphs fool you: not all of that muscle is airbrushed!

Now I remember! Black Static Shock! It’s funny though… he’s really wearing more blue than black.

What’s wrong with my life that I have time to watch more than 16 seconds of the Southern Republican Leadership Conference? What man with a functioning sex organ would pass his weekend wrestling with C-Span’s stuttering video stream so he could catch every word of Mike Pence’s call for “fast-acting tax relief” for the wealthy? I knew the Republican’s were trying to reinvent their brand, but I had no idea their new brand would be Rolaids.

That might be  appropriate, however, considering how in love the Republicans are with bromides. So many hosannahs offered up to God, the Declaration of Independence and our can-do spirit, and not a single fucking idea about how to paddle the nation away from an onrushing waterfall.  The conference was a Willy Wonka factory of catch phrases, buzz words and felatio for Israel, all totaling to one crystal clear agenda for the nation that will adrenalize Republicans straight through to November: We Want Our Power Back!

Ron Paul: Strawman

All the Republican’s best gimmicks were in attendance at the 3 day New Orleans event; Bobby “The Mummy” Jindal, both black Republicans and, of course, Her Nibs. Everyone had a cock up the other’s ass as they delivered one retread of the Party’s favorite talking points after another. It was almost as if they were in competition to see who could deliver the weakest teleprompter joke before “Who Dat”-ing their way into the short term memories of the residents of that city which, under the vigilant gazeof our last president, became ground zero for a Roland Emmerich movie.

Many were the hollow pledges to repeal healthcare reform, and bountiful were the efforts to turn that “Party of No” albatross into a Republican badge of honor for sticking to their guns. Newt Gingrich promised a campaign of “2+2=4″ signage,  hoping that this subversive anti-communist  tactic from Poland will resonate with Americans who are terrified at the prospect that Obama will attempt to try KSM in their living rooms.

But God and the Teabaggers were the real guests of honor. The Republicans could scarcely decide which deserved more ram’s blood. The Deity was all but promised a ziggurat-sized throne of ivory and gold when the Republicans retake the nation, and why not? The Right has become completely unmoored since they realized there will be no money for them to play with the next time they have the White House, and considering the Faustian bargain they have made with lunatics they would usually not toss a rhetorical farthing to, we can expect that conservatives will be doubling down on religion and nationalism to justify their existence in the years to come.

Rather than try to bridge the gulf between themselves and the Democrats, the Republicans declared their strategy loud and proud: the partisanship will grow and grow and fucking swallow the sun by November!! The Republican agenda is now exactly the inverse of Ronald Reagan’s, and that is why they worship at his altar. He is the last relic of an age before the great Thousand Year Winter  swallowed their cause and scattered their tribe. The Republicans have no Cold War to win, no Greatest Generation to build an American Dream for, not a cent for another adventure overseas. Their rhetoric is an appeal to patriotism for patriotism’s sake, but to what end? Liz Cheney’s new McCarthyism? Newt Gingrich’s gay baiting? Are these the pillars of a Renaissance?

RNC Chairman Michael Steele came out swinging hard in his speech, but he swung at a lot of air. How does he reconcile his “Coming to America” melting pot grandeur with the conservatives’ xenophobic stance against immigration? When he tried boosting the crowd’s capitalist spirits by saying “America’s enemies have never been the wealthy or the strong”, was he admitting that her enemies are the poor and weak? Finally, some honesty from the GOP!

And then, like some Heavy Metal centurion, Ron Paul rocked the house! You’ve got to hand it to this guy: he draws more genuine love and enthusiasm from young Republicans than Sarah Palin could if she whored Bristol out for nickel blowjobs. Paul offered not a peck on the cheek for the theocrats and plutocrats who preceded him. He alone called bullshit on rumors of Obama’s socialism, denounced American empire and called  for an end to the war, and was applauded for every word. And just to squeeze the Party’s teabags a little, he went and won the conference strawpoll for #1 conservative!

Well, not exactly. Mitt Romney edged Paul out by a single vote. Romney’s strategy was a stroke of genius: he didn’t show up. But he did  allegedly spread a lot of influence around in the form of tchotchkes and the like. Should give you an idea about how he’ll run for president.

Ron doesn’t have dough. He shows up, and crowds cheer. Kids cheer. The Republicans will be the last people to understand what this means.