Monthly Archives: January 2026

As of 01.26.2026

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My right arm is still not up to delivering mail. Or much else. With pain relievers I’m able to do some drawing and some typing. But progress is slow.   

Jake Parker’s number one rule for making comics is FINISH YOUR COMIC. I have violated this rule as many (possibly more) times as I have followed it. One of my current goals is to finish some of those stories. 

Late last year I collected a stack of stuff that my brother in California had been storing in a closet for far too many years. Besides the original art for Misspent Youths, there were prints and portfolios by artists that younger me had admired, some sketchbooks from my high school years and about a dozen pages from a comic I’d started drawing in, I think, 1992.

I don’t remember a lot of details about the project. It was being written by someone that I collaborated with fairly frequently over the years. He didn’t finish scripting this one. Based on the dialogue in the existing pages the story seemed to be about some folks facing an impending apocalypse. I like the art. I love finding new uses for old work.

The writer and I are no longer in contact. With past unfinished projects we had agreed that I could do whatever I wanted with the art, including writing a new story using it. So …

“Goblin Alpha Seven” is the project’s working title. (When I first started scanning the old art my working title was “Revelationaries”. I didn’t like it but I needed something to call the files.) I renamed the characters, rearranged the pages and wrote a new script. Now I’m finishing the old pages and drawing new ones.

This is one of the original pages.

This is the page updated. I’m not saying the page is finished yet. I’m still working on the story and the script. I may make changes.

Last week I listed the projects I’m going to be tracking. I’m not sure how to break down progress on them. Some sort of spreadsheet would be the most detailed and accurate method but, at the moment, I don’t know how to format that into WordPress. One more thing to figure out on the fly.

Goblin Alpha Seven (comic) – 40 pages
John Bell’s Oz Book (illustrations)
Mighty Nizz: Getting Dressed (comic) – 18 pages
Mighty Nizz: Tarot Deck (tarot deck) – 78 cards
Skookworks Webstore – 248 designs
Observations (comic) – 8 pages
Sunk Cost Elegy (comic) – 120 pages
The Surrilana Depths (comic) – (200 pages)
Daughter of Spiders (illustrated short story series) – number of stories, word count and number of illustrations to be determined.

Have a great week! See you next Monday!

As Of 01.19.2026 (Ouch. Whine.)

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Hello 2026!

And.

Drat.

Man plans. God laughs.

I’d planned to start the year with a listing of my current projects and notes saying where I was in the process of completing them. Every week I’d post an update and maybe a little art. Unfortunately, on Sunday, December 28th, I did something that makes using my right arm really painful. I don’t really know what it was. My right shoulder had been giving me trouble for a couple of months but it had seemed minor. The hurt wasn’t constant. There were a few positions that I couldn’t sit or lie in because then the shoulder hurt. I could deliver mail. I could draw. The initial discomfort got less as the days went by. Then, on the 28th, I spent an hour propped up in bed with a few pillows talking to my brother on my cell phone. Things seemed fine until I finished the call and tried to do something else. Suddenly my right shoulder hurt. A lot.

I called in sick on Monday. I went to urgent care on Tuesday. I got prescriptions for pain killers and muscle relaxants. Since then I’ve seen another doctor, been to the Emergency Room and had a round of acupuncture. I couldn’t draw for a couple of weeks. Sitting at my desk and typing was too uncomfortable for me to do anything with this site/newsletter. Pretty much anything that required using my right arm became something to be avoided. Embarrassingly, that meant that y’all who are subscribers got unfinished drafts of newsletters that I had prescheduled for publication. Sorry about that. I’ve taken down those posts. Revised and updated versions will appear over the next few weeks.

The acupuncture seems to have helped somewhat. As do the meds. Not enough for me to feel comfortable going to back delivering mail but enough that I’m able to type this. I’ve been able to work on art. A little. I’m waiting on my insurance company agreeing with my doctors that an MRI is necessary. My doctors would like one of those so they can better determine what my damage is and, therefore, how best to treat it.

I’d originally intended to post updates on Thursdays because the first newsletter was going to post on January 1st, a Thursday, and I wanted the posts to come out predictably. Today being Monday I’m now going to post on Mondays.

So …

Let’s see if we can get this mess organized, shall we?

I’ve got a bunch of projects “in progress”. There’s a part of me that wants to list every project that I’ve started, thought about or have in some stage of partial completion. But the more projects I have listed, the harder it will be to see that I’ve made progress on any of them. So, this morning, I’m just listing the projects that I’m actively working on rather than all the projects I want to have finished in this lifetime. And I’m giving myself a bit of a boundary – I won’t add a “new” project to my list until one of the current projects is finished.

This week I’m just listing the list. I’ll document progress next week. (Hopefully.)

Goblin Alpha Seven (comic) – 40 pages
John Bell’s Oz Book (illustrations)
Mighty Nizz: Getting Dressed (comic) – 18 pages
Mighty Nizz: Tarot Deck (tarot deck) – 78 cards
Skookworks Webstore – 248 designs
Observations (comic) – 8 pages
Sunk Cost Elegy (comic) – 120 pages
The Surrilana Depths (comic) – (200 pages)
Daughter of Spiders (illustrated short story series) – number of stories, word count and number of illustrations to be determined.

Yikes.

Happy New Year!