Blog

  • Karuna

    Starting today I’ve got a new story running on my Webcomics nation site, called “Karuna”. This is actually a true story, about something that happened to me while I was walking around the UC Berkeley campus as a sophomore in college. It was such a bizarre experience that I felt I should draw it as…

  • Comics and the mainstream

    Tom Spurgeon makes some points on why comics shouldn’t strive to be in the mainstream. I’ve addressed the ways I believe the form can become a major force in American culture in a number of writings. I’m not wholly in disagreement with is thoughts, but they afford me the opportunity to reiterate my beliefs by…

  • “Evolution” of comics

    In reading several of year end wrap ups for the webcomics scene, I’ve seen the term “evolution of the art form” of comics used several times. I just have one question: What does this phrase mean? There are two ways in which the word “evolution” is used, and I’m curious what people intend. In everyday…

  • Reminiscence

    I’ve posted another segment of Permutations today. Here’s some background on the piece “Reminiscence”: The first page for this one sat on my desk for about a month before I wrote the rest of it in one sitting in a sort of stream-of-consciousness method. I think that writing in this way makes authors connect to…

  • Cupid Du Coeur

    I’ve posted another segment of Permutations today. Here’s some background on the piece “Cupid Du Coeur”: I greatly enjoyed the mixing of visual styles in this piece. Much of the computer work was done without much planning and with a large amount of trial and error to see what worked. The photo from the first…

  • Musings on Time and Space

    One of the papers I’m currently writing is about how “time” is understood across sequences of panels. Scott McCloud’s basic position on this is that “time = space,” so moving through space means that time is passing in graphic form. I have numerous problems with this, but more than anything it has made me question…

  • Introspection and the haze of definitions

    In one of my linguistics classes last year, my professor claimed that the arbitrariness of language was noted as early as 2500 years ago in China, by the philosopher Laozi. For those who don’t know, arbitrariness means that the sounds of language don’t have any direct connection to what they mean, they are purely conventional…

  • Origin of the Species, mon

    Whoever thought of this is brilliant. I’ve heard that we’re in the age of the remix, and this is certainly the coolest presentation of “Origin of the Species” I’ve ever seen. Be sure to listen to the samples, mon!

  • Time

    I’ve posted another segment of Permutations today. Here’s some background on the piece “Time” in that collection: Inspired by a chapter of the book Einstein’s Dreams by Alan Lightman, the crosshatching was done with various sizes of technical pens and literally took several days to do. After I finished it, I made my roommate at…

  • We the People 101

    One of the projects I’ve been working on slowly over the past several months is a new edition of the book I did with Thom Hartmann, We the People: A Call to Take Back America. The new version is going to break up the original into three smaller books, to be released as history textbooks…