Whine and Cheese

Dolly Parton passed away today.

I won't re-write what so many others have written so well about her. It's just a bit overwhelming when such a constant positive force in the world moves on to the next. Most of us can honestly say that we grew up with her in our peripheral orbit. My parents were huge fans, so her 45's were in our record collection. She was on the various country shows in re-runs, like "The Porter Wagoner Show" and "Hee-Haw." Her song "9 to 5" played every day on WCTT at 3 PM on my way home from school. She performed "Potential New Boyfriend" three consecutive weeks on "Solid Gold," which was then used for the music video. The 1980s had her on the big screen in a string of comedies that we could now rent and play at home with VCRs and movie channels.

My mom said she met her once. Mom briefly worked in a restaurant back in the 1960's. Mom waited on her and said she was very sweet. I asked Mom if she thought Dolly remembered her. She said she doubted it, but it was a big thrill for her.

The chorus in Heaven will be a bit more amazing tonight.


Dolly Parton

Well, it's taken nearly seven months, but Issue 39 is posted!

I've had a lot of fun creating this issue, as I got to create a lot of fun (and somewhat goofy) characters for it. No spoilers obviously, but there's something of a twist (as usual).

I hope everyone enjoys Issue 39 - "A Throng of Villains!" (Yes, I used a thesaurus for that wording) You can read it by clicking on the cover below. Any questions, thoughts or criticisms, I welcome them all.

My mother used to sit for hours and hours crocheting while watching television. Often she was crocheting a new blanket with a new pattern, or just burning through some scrap yarn to make something random. Either way, it was usually amazingly beautiful as my mom had serious creative talents. It kept her mind occupied and her hands busy.

I completely understand that thought process. I often do my comic book for the same reason. Creative outlets are relaxing, especially in stressful times (like now).

I finished the final edit last night and posted Issue 37 today. I love the feeling of getting an issue done. This issue has been oddly fun, as some of the panels turned out far better than I expected, if I do say so myself. I'm happy with the final result, especially the cover. There is something so pleasing about drawing Grizzly and then coloring it.

I hope you enjoy Issue 37 - "Wrestling Demons." You can read the whole issue by clicking the cover below.


Grizzly & The Bear Patrol #37 - Wrestling Demons

Questions, comments, or criticisms? Hit me with them. :)

Last night, I finished up the latest issue of "Grizzly and Bear Patrol." I had tried to upload the issue to the journal, but the system kept locking up after getting a few pages in, so I had to give up.

I've been working on this one for a few months, due to work and other delays, but I will say that I'm pretty happy with the end result. You can read the full issue by clicking on the cover below.

After a LOT of work, I finally got this issue done. It's not that I dreaded working on it, but my day job has been very overwhelming of late. I was lucky to draw or ink or color a single page a night. I'm very pleased how this issue turned out though. Notes about the issue are on the last page. I hope you all enjoy it.



( Issue 33 - Hunting for Bear )

Questions, comments, criticism -- just let me know.

Ugh! That first day back to work after being off for the holidays is ROUGH! I managed to get through it all, but I'm already looking forward to the weekend.

I managed to count my found money jar for 2022. The total was nothing outstanding and it seemed to follow less than the average, if I exclude the one double-digit outlier. If the missing value from 2019 was the average, I'd have found over $50 since I started doing this.

Lately, I have been enjoying horror comics. They are usually in black and white, printed on newsprint, and often have more than one story in them. After the last issue of "Grizzly and The Bear Patrol," I decided that I wanted to give a horror comic a try. Coloring them in black and white saved me a lot of time and, having three different stories, I created them in stages, finishing each story completely before starting the next installment.

Loving horror movies like I do, it took some time for me to pick the stories. I selected these three from the six or seven possibilities I drafted. So there may be a second issue in the future.

These are a bit more adult than the Bear Patrol comics, but not so adult that I think most of my usual comic readers will be offended.

So, enjoy "Grisly #1"...



( Grisly #1 )

Questions, comments, criticisms - I welcome them all, just send me a reply below or a message privately.

Recently, I cashed in a lot of Amazon points (and some real cash) and bought the "Marvel Universe - Deluxe Edition" omnibus and the "Who's Who in DC" omnibus. Both are collections of character profiles from each comic book company that came out in the 1980's.

While the information is very dated, it assembles the information from the heyday of comic book reading for me. As a kid who was very much in love with comic books and enjoyed thumbing through the encyclopedias when bored, these books hit a happy place for me on multiple fronts.

One of the character changes that occurred in the 1980s that always has the flavor of the time was the transformation of Aurora, a mutant member of Alpha Flight in the Marvel Universe. She could fly at supersonic speeds, having identical powers to her twin brother and teammate Northstar. She also had multiple personalities. After an altercation with her brother regarding her behavior, she severed all ties with him. As a final "f@%k you" to him, she had her powers altered by her scientist boyfriend, so they were no longer identical to her twin's. Her flight speed was diminished to the speed of sound, but she could generate bright light, a power that usually required contact with her twin. This hair and costume change came with her new found freedom.


Aurora in the mid-1980s

This outfit is TOTALLY 80s! The hairstyle, the jagged edges of the sleeve cuffs, the short gold lame gloves and sloping edge boots -- all of them scream 80s. I particularly love the alternating thick black lines around the bursts on her costume. Sadly, this costume only looked good when drawn by artist John Byrne who designed it and subsequent artists either didn't do it justice or changed it. Artist (and gay muscle hottie) Phil Jimenez made it look good in recent years when he drew some flashbacks, but this costume is likely left in the 80s for the most part.

Still, I enjoy revisiting them in the omnibus and the trade paperback of Alpha Flight from wayback when.

I went to the grocery store tonight. Traffic was a mess, mostly due to the main bridge between Covington, KY and Cincinnati, OH being shut down and everyone taking the side roads around.

The grocery was busy, but I managed to find everything I wanted and few things that caught my eye along the way. The one thing that caught my attention was the toilet paper aisle, as it was nearly empty again. With the governors of both Ohio and Kentucky making more serious lockdown arrangements, I assume that everyone is going back into hoarder mode. You'd think they'd have learned from last time, but apparently not.

After getting home and unloading the groceries, I made dinner. Tonight's dinner was a variation of what we in my family came to call "Poor Man's Pizza." When I was a kid, we really couldn't afford to order pizza often, but often craved the flavor of it. So we kids came up with making our pizza by putting spaghetti sauce and American cheese on white bread and toasting it in the oven. We often had the fixings for it, so it became a staple among the kids. My folks didn't seem to mind.

My variation tonight was low carb -- Low carb wheat bread toasted with Velvetta cheese, dunked into pizza sauce with garlic salt. I admit that it tasted pretty good, almost as good as the version from my youth, back when "low carb" had no meaning.

In the dream I was still in college at Berea. I had been home for a few days, and when I returned to campus I stopped off at a small café run by a woman named Millie. I had stayed there for a couple of days, maybe even three or four, just hanging out. I’m not sure why. Millie was a very sweet lady and I got to know her and a bunch of other regulars, one was named Sarge. Sarge was an older man. In my time there, Millie had given me three T-shirts, some of which were bright and glowing. I had put them in my backpack. When the café had closed each night, I returned the dorm and slept there. On my last day at the café, I was told that Sarge had passed away. I was there to comfort Millie. Millie at some point was dancing while she was cleaning up when two female friends of mine had come in to get me. One of them had told me that Sarge had seen his death coming, that he had a procedure where he saw the blood clot break up in his body and move on a screen.

It was time to go back to the dorm. I was supposed to meet someone for a class or some thing in the second floor of the Draper building later that night. As we went outside, I had to find my shoes among many that were left outside the café. I guess I had taken them off. I found my gym shoes, only to realize that I had worn them in a hurry and they were not the usual pair I would wear. It indicated to me that I had been gone for sometime and had not planned on being out very long, as these were the shoes I’d slip on to get the mail.

I crossed the street after going down a very steep staircase to the sidewalk. I ran to the Draper building. I went upstairs and heard someone call to me. I passed out as I turned around and woke up in a room naked. My clothes and backpack were gone.

I stumbled around and tried to leave the building, and as I walked towards a certain door I felt someone’s hands on my butt covering them. I turned around and saw a man in a suit top telling me that I couldn’t go in a particular room as there were children eating dinner in there. I begged his pardon, as I remember they were children in the building, and went back to my dorm to get clothes.

When I went back to the dorm, I could not remember the electronic lock code to get to the stairwell to my room. I was going to piggyback on someone going in before I was stopped by a resident assistant. He told me he was sorry to do this, but it was the rules. Apparently, I had been documented as having been out of the dorm for several days, an apparent campus infraction, and I was being taken to the police department. I tried to explain to the man where I had been, but was told to be quiet and get in line.

The line was full of rough characters, just yelling at each other and pushing each other around. There was one woman in the group, a girl name Stacy who I went to college with and worked with at the campus library. Everyone kept apologizing to me, but I kept following their direction. We got on the bus, with me and Stacy in the last row. An older man with a mustache was in charge of the group and sat next to me.

On the drive over, a roughneck with red hair and a thick earring sitting in the front row, kept turning and giving me grief. I had no idea who he was, but he seem to know me. He made some negative remark towards me, and I told him that I didn’t give a damn what his opinion of me was. A young black female student in his row turned around and told me to let it go, or be quiet. The man next to me told us both to shut up.

Unsure of what was happening, I did what she said. When we got to the police station, everyone got off the bus. I wondered if I’d get a jumpsuit to wear. we were handed small cards, typed with our names and our violation. I found mine in my stack and pass the rest along.

We still in line to get our mugshots, which involves holding the little card next to our face. A Young female guard or officer took my card, read it, and handed it back to me, giving me her condolences. I read the card while I stood in line and my charge was sacrilege, but it was spelled "SACRALEGE."

On the back of the card was a notation for everyone to take it easy on me as I have been home because my father had passed. I then woke up.