I’ve always wanted to draw a comic where one of the people speaking is speaking so much that it fills the entire panel, with the other person looking around confused. The revelation of Attention Whore’s real name last week, and the apparent guilt Winslow feels about not knowing it in the first place, seemed like the perfect opportunity to finally put this one on paper.

Starting a conversation in mixed company is almost prohibitively difficult. However, there are some clues to help us along. Here I have entered some observations into a brief outline and following commentary regarding the worst ways one might start a dinner conversation in mixed company. By simply avoiding these gaffes, you will be well on your way to an evening that satisfies you and your new friends.

Am I just getting older or is Slash Fiction just getting lazier? So, for those of you who are not familiar with slash fiction, this is erotic fan fiction with a man-on-man angle. And I kind of missed the whole slash phenomenon, though I had some friends were big fanatics about it. My friend, Meredith,

[continue reading…]

Many of my characters didn’t start out with names. They started out with titles, or no names at all. As Ben & Winslow has evolved, most of these characters have gotten a formal name. Attention Whore was the only hold-out. And I realized last year that if I wanted to keep drawing this character, I had to give her the dignity of a real, actual name. Even if she never actually uses the name much in the strip, I think it’s only fair. She’s had to put up with a lot of crap, bless her blue heart. I feel horrible for not giving her a name sooner.

“Why you are never coming with us to our boat in Antibes?” Giancarlo, my father’s Italian business partner, asks me through his thick accent as he furrows his brow. “You are not liking to be with us?”

It’s a dark boreal evening in January, 1977, and I’m in Paris for my junior year of college, living in a palatial duplex in the chic Montparnasse neighborhood with Giancarlo and Patricia, his American wife. When I arrived in September, they invited me to crash in their chambre de bonne—maid’s quarters. When I went to look for my own place, not wanting to be the homme who came to dîner, they were offended, and insisted I stay with them.