Go hang yourself, you old M.D.!
You shall not sneer at me.
Pick up your hat and stethoscope,
Go wash your mouth with laundry soap;
I contemplate a joy exquisite
I’m not paying you for your visit.
I did not call you to be told
My malady is a common cold.
By pounding brow and swollen lip;
By fever’s hot and scaly grip;
By those two red redundant eyes
That weep like woeful April skies;
By racking snuffle, snort, and sniff;
By handkerchief after handkerchief;
This cold you wave away as naught
Is the damnedest cold man ever caught!
Give ear, you scientific fossil!
Here is the genuine Cold Colossal;
The Cold of which researchers dream,
The Perfect Cold, the Cold Supreme.
This honored system humbly holds
The Super-cold to end all colds;
The Cold Crusading for Democracy;
The Führer of the Streptococcracy.
Bacilli swarm within my portals
Such as were ne’er conceived by mortals,
But bred by scientists wise and hoary
In some Olympic laboratory;
Bacteria as large as mice,
With feet of fire and heads of ice
Who never interrupt for slumber
Their stamping elephantine rumba.
A common cold, gadzooks, forsooth!
Ah, yes. And Lincoln was jostled by Booth;
Don Juan was a budding gallant,
And Shakespeare’s plays show signs of talent;
The Arctic winter is fairly coolish,
And your diagnosis is fairly foolish.
Oh what a derision history holds
For the man who belittled the Cold of Colds!
Ogden Nash
Photo by petrichor
Ariana’s mysterious doings continue in their mysteriousness. Let me tell you, the research I did for panel four was one of the more stomach-addling things I’ve researched yet for this comic. There will be others!
Appearances: unless this incipient cold takes me down, I’ll be at the Wordstock Festival here in Portland this weekend with Erika Moen. I won’t have books to sell (I’m reserving my stock for APE, so that California folks get a shot at the last of the first edition), but I’ll have prints and minis and buttons and stickers, and if you order the book from me I’ll send it to you with free shipping as well as a limited edition print.
Then I’ll be at the Alternative Press Expo (APE) in San Francisco on October 17-18, gossiping about dead people with fellow history cartoonist Kate Beaton at Table 440.
I’ll see y’all there!
oh my poor little creature
poor creature
you are too blithe
for your own misery,
you would let pus run rivers
from your fox’s ears so long as they heard
the faintest mumbles
of good,
boy.
you do not have sense
to whimper when I tug green scabs
from your belly.
You kiss me through
broken teeth.
We return you to your
home and through a screen
we see the frail
decrepitude that is your
(euphemism) mother
and while we
burn with indignation on your
behalf you
run blissly to her
lap
oh would that we all were so
sweet in our suffering
that we might feel relief of
pain as only a
multiplying of the
sufficient love
which we received even in our most broken
state
and that the
Bad People
proved to be only
elderly and
careless
we might all then slip
at our time through the back
gate and into the
arms of a
loving god who will
wash our wounds and say
oh my poor little creature
poor creature
photograph by Pete Millis
This past weekend I was at the Small Press Expo (SPX) in Maryland, frolicking with my fellow cartoonists and other assorted comics industry folk and their associated people.
It was a dang good time, which I needed very sorely since it has been, shall we say, a challenging six months. I sold out of books on the afternoon of the first day – and in fact I only have 30-some books left in this printing.
So it’s back at the printers for another round, and I’m keeping those 30 in reserve for APE, where I will be splittin’ my table with Ms. Kate Beaton (history nerds unite). If you order a book online before Halloween – which is when I’ll start shipping the second printing – I will throw in a snazzy extra Bite Me! print that I am devising this week.
Anyway. Next week will see a new page of Family Man, but in the meantime, here is my brief and fragmentary convention report for SPX, in cartoon form, drawn 30,000 feet in the air on only three hours of sleep and a cup of airplane tea. DOES IT SHOW.
Seriously, the Miss Teen Maryland USA pageant orientation, right next door. Hundreds of long-limbed, insectile lasses with no visible pores and heels higher than the Empire State Building. The contrast between the pageant girls and the females of SPX was enough to suggest that the human species is actually sexual trimorphic.
I am sure that Kate appreciated my help a whole lot, especially that bit where I frightened all her customers. Seriously though, she is a classy lady. Once or twice she was convinced that she had been horrible to somebody when really she had said “thank you” in a gentle voice and then politely excused herself to attend a panel.
We’ll be shackin’ up together at APE, so be sure to come witness the amazing power of the Goofus and Gallant history show. (hint: I am Goofus)
Apparently next door at the beauty pageant they were introducing themselves under hot lights, and the AC had to be cranked up to guarantee that no make-up would run or sweat stains would appear. The result was several thousand shivering nerds. I myself resorted to wrapping a pashmina around my head to save my frontal lobe from icing over completely.
The party outside of the Ignatz awards was very enjoyable. Towards the end of a very strong hotel martini I wound up spending some quality time with Jim Ottaviani. A few years ago, Jim O saved me from the purgatory of temping at the local hospital by having me draw Wire Mothers for him.
I rewarded him by failing to realize that 9 by 12 inches is not the same proportion as 6 by 9 inches, but luckily he is a forgiving guy. The conversation then segued into a discussion about how much we like secular humanism.
Pastries: the Comics Bakery table was overflowing with delicious homemade treats, and still further veggie pastries were fetched from the pastry shop a few blocks from the convention. Also I stayed at Carla Speed McNeil‘s house, and her fabulous husband Mike kept doing things like making biscuits, chocolate cookies (“to go with the sorbet I made”), scones, etc. The result was that I probably took in a whole stick of butter over the course of the weekend.
Before she took me to the Metro to catch my flight, Carla left me unattended in her studio. The result is that I now know more about her upcoming projects (Finder and otherwise!) than any of you sorry fools, and she has some inexplicable stains on her penciled pages. Also I got to see her Eisner award. You could use it to kill a man no problem.
And that is all I had the energy to draw on the flight home. It was a really great time – I will be back again next year if it’s up to me. Thanks to everybody who stopped by or who shared my company over the weekend. I’ll see some of you in San Francisco in a few weeks! (with the last copies of the first edition…)
WARNING: NOT SAFE FOR WORK. Unless you live in one of those European countries where you regularly see ads on the sides of pharmacies that are more explicit than this.
No page next week because I will be at the Small Press Expo this weekend! I’ll be hunkering down at the table of Carol “Klio” Burrell of SPQR Blues excellence. Look for her in the program and come sample our exciting historical fiction wares.
Among the wares I’ll be selling is this new 7×10 print, which you can click to see at full size:
Other than the page prints, this is the first bit of genuine Family Man merchandise I’ve created. I hope to have more such things this year while (my agent and) I determine how I’ll be making Volume One, aka Chapters 1 & 2, available in print.
I’ll see some of you in Maryland! And the rest of you, in the virtual funny papers.