Whine and Cheese

One of the few things that has given me some solace this week was working on this comic book. There is an artistic concept called flow that I experience often. Wikipedia worded the definition so well, I'm going to post it:

"Flow in positive psychology, also known colloquially as being in the zone or locked in, is the mental state in which a person performing some activity is fully immersed in a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and enjoyment in the process of the activity. In essence, flow is characterized by the complete absorption in what one does, and a resulting transformation in one's sense of time. Flow is the melting together of action and consciousness; the state of finding a balance between a skill and how challenging that task is. It requires a high level of concentration. Flow is used as a coping skill for stress and anxiety when productively pursuing a form of leisure that matches one's skill set."

I've had some great moments of this lately, and it's definitely helped with my stress levels.

Last night, I got Issue 36 of "Grizzly and The Bear Patrol" finished. I wasn't sure I was going to be able to post it this weekend, but I got lucky and things fell into place. You can read the full issue by clicking on the cover below. I hope you enjoy Issue 36 - "Relative Discord."




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

I've been working on this issue for several months at this point. I was looking forward to taking a week off to finish this, but the looming government shutdown put the plans to take off on hold. So I've been doing a page a night or so until I got it done.

I'm pleased with the outcome to be honest. Where last issue had several Bear Patrollers take a back seat, I put those heroes in the forefront this issue. I think folks will get a chuckle out of some pages. Issue notes are attached to the last page.



( Issue 34 - Possession of Malice/To Werk and To Serve )

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

In the dream, I was visiting an Irish Pub while traveling in Ireland. I was a regular as the bar owner knew me. For some reason, the owner had left me in charge of the bar the next day. I didn't work there, just was a regular, but I knew some of the routines.

The next day came and I was trying to balance the till. There wasn't a specific amount to keep, but I wanted to see how much money was in it before I got started. It was a mess. There was a lot of coins, but very few bills, which didn't strike me as odd since the Irish is on the Euro with €1 and €2 coins. Also in the till was a growing bill from a specific individual whose tickets were in the thousands and a few $20 bills from the States.

Instead of doing the counting behind the bar, I was at one of the other tables trying to make heads or tails out of the various forms of payment. One of the guys in the bar at that time was complaining that I was taking up valuable real estate in the bar (which was huge, so there was plenty of room). The bartender told him to f*ck off because I was in charge that day.

One guy was getting pretty wasted early in the day and decided that he didn't like me being in charge. The drunk was getting loud and obnoxious and finally got up in my space to tell me his views on me. The owner had taught me how to deal with this situation. I stood up, let the drunk take a swing at me, and then I flattened his nose. The drunk went down cold and knocked out. I grabbed him by the belt and dragged him out of the bar.

The bar was part of a preservation site apparently, with tourists walking through the different parts of the site. I dragged the drunk though all the tourists, many of whom didn't flinch at the sight, making me think they had see this before. I took him into the courtyard, leaned him against a stone wall, and left him.

I then remembered that I left the money on the table. I hurried back to the bar, hoping that the bartender had kept an eye on it. And that's when the alarm went off to wake me.

This issue was a long-time coming. My last Bear Patrol issue was back in June 2021. I did take a break to do the Halloween "Grisly" comic, but I was eager to get back to the characters I love to create. There were a lot of setbacks in trying to get this issue done, including abandoning the previous story and several already penciled pages to restart anew. You can read more about that in the "Notes Page" toward the end. In addition, since the last issue, I have gotten a new computer which required me to download the newest version of the Comic Life software I use for panels and lettering. I know the software designers move things to make functions more user friendly, but sometimes it's like they are hiding them. Still, I eventually figured it out. I hope you enjoy this latest issue.


( Issue 32 - Fear The Reaper )

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

I finally got this issue finished. With my new position at work, my brain has been too frazzled at night to work on this, but I finally got my groove on and finished it last night. I was going to upload this last night, only to have a severe thunderstorm roll through and knock out my internet for the last 18 or so hours. With my internet connection back in action, I got this going again.

I had fun with this and based the story on a cartoon I'd drawn while playing with my iPad a few months back. I included it as a pin-up after the issue notes.

So, enjoy "The Hunger"...



( Issue 31 - The Hunger )

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

I was originally working on a different story, but could not get the story to come together, at least not to a point I was satisfied. Eventually, I put it aside and this story came much easier. I think given all the stresses of life of late, I thought this story might be more fun for everyone.

Behind the cut below is Issue 30 of "Grizzly and The Bear Patrol" with a story I originally called "Uncommon Scents," but eventually renamed "Dark Colours."



( Issue 30 - Dark Colours )

No speaker notes, as they are the last page of the comic now. Questions, comments, criticisms - I welcome them all, just send me a reply below or a message privately.

I don't remember many of the details of this dream, just the bit toward the end.

I was driving a truck in the snow, heading to see a psychologist for a session. I pulled off the highway into the driveway of the counselor's house, which was a large home. Not quite a mansion, but it had a large front foyer with two defined wings of the house. In the front, outside the main house, was a small "island" of sorts, which was covered with benches so people could it down.

I was originally going to park my truck in front of the house, but decided to park near a small gate house like structure further up the driveway entrance, believing the walk in the snow would be fun. There was already a car parked there and I had pulled behind it. Thinking that it was her current patient, I backed up and parked to the side as to not block them in.

Taking a moment to wipe the snow from my windows, I turned and walked toward the house, passing two men along the way.

In the island was the counselor, who turned out to be Angela Lansbury. I said hello to her, she smiled at me, gave me a brief hug, and told me to go on inside, that she'd be along in a moment. I don't remember if she was just getting some air or was smoking a cigarette, but there was a reason why she was out there.

And then I rolled over and woke up.

This one was a long time coming, though I seem to say that every time. My work life during the quarantine has actually grown much busier and my downtime seems to be geared more toward relaxation and decompression. I read somewhere that stress actually stifles creativity, so that's probably a big reason why getting this issue finished took so long.

Right now, because of our current political environment and the election, bigoted people are feeling emboldened to make their hate well known. Black people, gay people, and immigrants are all being targeted by people who feel "threatened" by the push for fairness and equality. It obviously influenced the coming story.

Behind the cut below is Issue 29 of "Grizzly and The Bear Patrol" with a story I call "Hoodlum Stains".



( Issue 29 - Hoodlum Stains )

No speaker notes, as they are the last page of the comic now. Questions, comments, criticisms - I welcome them all, just send me a reply below or a message privately.

Softball was last night. We played well, but I'm sore. I had a great dream and woke up (I think) due to Milo the Cat head-butting me. It's 5:30 AM, but I didn't want to forget the details. Sleepy, I rubbed the bruise on my left shin from last night's bounce that hit me while catching, climbed out of bed, and stumbled past the cats to my desktop in my comic book room.

I think I was in college and had been sent on an assignment to my hometown of Corbin, KY to interview an author, a humorist who had written three books. I had never read any of this books and stopped by Barnes & Noble (which my hometown doesn't have) with a friend and the author himself to buy his books, so I could read them first.

The author, whose name I don't recall, looked an awful lot like Kurt Vonnegut, an older gent with thick, curly gray hair, a wrinkled face with sunken eyes and a thick mustache, and a good sense of humor. While the author wasn't Kurt Vonnegut, I'll refer to him as Kurt. Having not read his books, I thought I was giving the author a great first impression. Luckily, the bookstore had his three books together in a compendium at a discount price. I'm sure he enjoyed that as well.

While I'm trying to steamroll through his book, we were giving him a tour of my hometown and all of the local characters that it seems to have. One of the stops was a small market across the street from my Mom's house, a white building with white bars on the teller's window. Like all local small markets, it had odds and ends.

At some point, we ended up in a beat up Ford Pinto with my Mom driving. The floor of the car was littered with various trash. A neighbor was there in front of the house and was either drunk or crazy, likely both. She was yelling at my mom for something, so I immediate took the offensive and told her to f-off and called her "crazy bitch" several times as she shouted obscenities back at me while readjusting her bra strap that had crept out of her sleeveless shirt. The insults from her tapered off as she walked away. Again, I was embarrassed as this was not the best second impression I could make.

"We should get out before she comes back with a gun," I said to Kurt the author.

Kurt got out with me before Mom parked the car. As I shut the door, the door slammed shut on a cinnamon coffee cake in the door frame, unleashing a cloud of powdered cinnamon in the air. I was shocked at first, reopened the car door, moved the cake, and slammed the door shut again, releasing a second cloud for the remainder that I missed.

We went into the house and Mom gave me a mini-recorder, which had her copy of the Kurt's book on audiotape to help me and so I could record the interview. I looked at my copy of the book and I was already near the end of the second book of the three, but it looks like Kurt had tabbed the rest of the book in the lower corner with dates for me. Causing more of a delay, we ran into a few locals on our front porch who had invited the author to a drag show downtown.

Kurt and I went to a small office in the building behind Mom's house to do the interview. The office was full of various papers, stacked high and falling over, and a small TV set that seemed to enamour Kurt with some 1980's television shows. We sat down at a desk. I had about 20 minutes to get this interview as it was getting close to dinner time and Kurt wanted Skyline Chili.

I grabbed the tape recorder, thinking this would be the fastest, then realized the only tape I had was the one inside and it had Mom's bootleg recording of his audiobook. I excused myself from the author and left him continue watching the TV show while I ran back to Mom to get a fresh tape. She handed me the remainder of a thee-piece candy bar, which stated that it came with two mini-audio cassettes on the front wrapper. Excited, I thanked her and ran back toward the office, unwrapping the last chunk for the fresh cassette, only to find that this was the last bit of the candy bar itself. Groaning, I chucked the candy into my mouth and ran across the street to a small market we had gone into earlier to see if they had them.

The small market was now FULL of stacks of tax forms and papers. I'm literally stepping over them to get to the register. As I poke my head through the white bars between us, a black and white spaniel pushed his head against me wanting to be petted. Several people were in the office, dressed like postal workers and carrying more forms. One of them saw me struggling with the attention-wanting puppy and asked what I needed. I asked if he had any blank mini-cassettes. He said no and held up regular-sized cassettes, asking me if they would do. I said no and must have looked disappointed. One of the other postal guys said that I had six minutes to get the cassette. I asked why six minutes and he said that was how long it takes to get to the store that has them.

Realizing how short a time I had left, I resigned myself to just taping over Mom's audiobook and that I'd have to buy her the actual audiobook to replace it. I ran back to the office to find Kurt still sitting there watching TV.

Apologizing profusely, I hit rewind on the tape recorder, suddenly remembering that I had no questions prepared and was going to have to wing it with what little I could recall from trying to power-read his books throughout the day. Instead of hitting him with all the usual questions whose answers I could get from the book jacket, I landed on one that I thought might get him at ease.

At that moment, I woke up, which ended my chances of getting the interview.

For those curious, the question was "What do you want to be when you grow up?"

I haven't posted much of late because there has not been much going on besides work, which has been pretty mentally overwhelming in the midst of everything going on in the world.

Last night I had a pretty cool dream though.

I was a teenager and had befriended a new family in town who had a lot of kids. A lot, like double-digit number, and they were all boys. One of their boys was flamboyantly gay, another was incredibly and technically smart, another was the jock. The mom was a beautiful blonde lady with a great body (obviously she worked out) and the dad was a slim, fit otter type with a beard.

The athletic boy had met a group of other teenagers who were putting together a floor hockey team (playing hockey with roller skates). He and I were excited to join this. I went home to tell my folks about this family and the hockey team. I don't remember who, but someone told me that the hockey team was being put on by one of those religious groups who espouse men's values, how to be a man, man's place in the family BS.

Knowing full well that I would not fit in with them, I had gone back over to the big family's house to tell them only to be distracted by the smart kid's automated riddle system. Seriously, the window in the front door flashed a folded riddle on a sheet that moved. I walked through the door to see how he'd set it up, only to find myself in the back of a truck and had gotten locked in. I pulled the sheet from the door to re-read the riddle and then found that I lacked the origami skills needed to refold the sheet so it would work.

When the truck stopped, two guys came in. One of them was very aggressive and said something threatening to me, including something about "being a man."

I picked him up and body slammed him to the truck floor.

The other guy looked startled and backed away from me. I told him to open the door unless he wanted the same. He said that I shouldn't have done that, opening the door and stepping back.

"Go suck a doorknob," I said, repeating my new favorite insult in our Corona virus world.

I made my way back to the big family's house where the mom and dad and some of the younger kids were home. I apologized to the smart kid for not being able to re-fold his riddle back to how it was.

I told the mom and dad about the hockey group, and how they wanted to teach boys to be men. And then did my Afterschool Special ending:

"If you want to be a man, have a job, take care of your kids, love your wife... or husband."

This got a smile from the mom and the dad shared it too. I excused myself as I was heading home for dinner.

I wasn't sure if the family was in on the trap as their kid's riddle seemed to be the bait for it, but I wasn't afraid. As I walked home, I ran into many of their boys heading home, said hi and kept heading for home.

And then I woke up.