Here, it’s all Bieber. During week one in Daegu, “Korea’s most colorful city,” which is actually, “Korea’s card catalogue of faded gray sky scrapers, overcast skies and endless stream of black Hyundai’s,” I digress into the infantilization that occurs when relocating to a new country. Neon signs are everywhere: small dashes and zeroes mixed into an array of disfigurement as if someone has jumbled the shapes together in a felt bag and then blindly arranged them into miniature squares. My rationalized excuse for not yet enrolling in Korean lessons is that I’m afraid Korean words might lose their beauty. What are probably cell phone adverts and other mindless billboard messages look like oversized scrabble pieces, as if the whole, uniform city is actually a playing board being used to somehow score points in life.

Happy Friday the 13th, everyone! Not only that, but I believe today is the first of several Friday the 13ths happening this year. I for one am glad that 2012 is the Year of the Dragon, because we’ll need that good luck to counteract all the bad luck. Or something. I’m not really sure how luck is supposed to work, exactly.

It was quite a wedding, Aunt Tilley being fifty-three and as independent as a horned owl although that’s the wrong bird for this story because the whole day revolved around guinea hens, especially Maud, about whom later. They couldn’t find a church that would accept the guinea hens—there were six of them—as part of the ceremony, even when Tilley explained that each bird would be wrapped in bridal lace to protect the carpeting. Yes, they said, but what if one gets away and flies up into the croft and sets there, surely some poop will fall and all that. So they used the old bandstand next to the skate park beside the Y and that was fine, with the wedding party up in the middle and the guinea hens being carried by the bridesmaids and the Unitarian minister losing his place every time a hen let out a squawk.

So here we are: the first Ben & Winslow comic of the new year. I’ve stuck to familiar themes of eating and monsters, which will hopefully lull you all into a false sense of security. Because strange stuff is afoot. Strange stuff is always afoot in the Ben & Winslow universe, but still. Don’t want you getting scared away early on.

I have noticed that my office has lately had an upswing of dudebros. You tend to not notice just one or two – polo shirts happen, everything’s cool – but when they start to congregate it gets very obvious that you’re in the middle of a Situation (and if you say that to a group

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