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New Ideas, New Directions

Oy vey, what a week. Too much partying. Well, for Rick anyway. Went and saw Man Man play at the Loft on Wednesday night; they were awesome, of course, and Honus Honus is a lunatic genius onstage and a laid-back gentleman in person.

What else? Oh, I went to Florida for Christmas break. Drove there. Of all the cockamamie ideas. It was one of those, "We'll figure out what to do when we get there" trips, so of course I damn near run out of money, but it was still awesome in its own way - spent New Year's Eve in Key West, and stayed with a friend of a friend on Islamorada Key. Swam in the ocean for the first time in what, thirteen years? Looked at all the cool sea critters, saw an octopus, had a blast. The trip back wasn't so much fun - me and my travel partner had a bit of a falling out. We'll patch things up, I'm sure of it.

So! How bout dem comickal books, you ask? Well, me and the Joe were a-settin there figurin', and we reckoned it was 'bout high time we start collaboratin'. Not on the stories, mind you, but on the art: I'll ink some of his stories, he'll ink some of mine. Not sure how it'll work out, but that's the fun of it, and the real purpose is to get ourselves motivated. See, the problem for us is that we're so isolated, and drawing isn't really part of our jobs - this is a quasi-career hobby. Will we ever make any money off it? Who knows. I despair at our complete lack of business sense, at least on my end - we've got multitudes of obstacles with seemingly no way to get around them, and the only way to really deal with it is to put our heads down and just keep producing. This is what we were meant to do, our raison d'etre, if you will. Our dharma. Not to get all weird about it, but the joy we get from creating these picture-stories is matched only by the madness of our compulsion to create. We're both more than a little mad, and making comics is the way we channel the river of crazy boiling in our brain-boxes.

Got sidetracked there...what was I going on about? Oh yeah, collaboratin'. I've got this comic, still in its infancy, mind ye, not much more than a script and some concept sketches, but the script is solid. It's called Die Katze (there's supposed to be an umlaut there), and it's a German Expressionist nightmare about cats who worship an ancient Egyptian god. It's got some Lovecraft boiled into it, as these things tend to do, and every scene will be drenched in foreboding, deep shadows slithering up walls, and a museum full of unspeakable Victorian-era grodiness. I'll be doing the pencils, and Joe Haines will gild the corpse-smelling lily with his amazing jagged inkwork. As far as what's going to happen with Die Katze, I'm not sure how long of a series we'll end up with - it may just be a flash-in-the-pan project, and we'll see if it sells; who knows. The important thing is that we do it. I've already got a couple test pages worked up, and Joe's inks already look amazing.

Anyway, I'm all excited. Also sleep-deprived. I need sleep. I'll go to sleep now. Goodbye.

Rick Out (like a light).

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