in my excitement over lunchbox funnies on wednesday (see below), i totally forgot to mention that the guest strip i did for dean trippe’s awesome butterfly comic is up this week. go check it out! i actually drew it quite a while ago and i still like it. which is a rare thing for me.

and speaking of lunchbox funnies. a big thanks to everyone that’s taken the time to link or comment over there this week. we’re all very appreciative of the big support we’ve gotten for an all-ages collective, especially in today’s market. keep an eye on the site. we’re going to continue updating it with fun and goodies!

i’m back from my little vacation! and it wasn’t as stressful as i thought it was. actually, it was very nice. i was able to see many, many family members and visit some old friends. spent most of the time just playing video games (hooray for wii sports and guitar hero!). it’s probably a good thing i decided to wait to buy a wii. i would never get any work done. in fact, you can blame the wii for me not having any art to post from my trip. can’t say i miss january’s weather in ohio though. i’m happy to be back in a state that the sun isn’t afraid to show up in. :)

anyhoo, much has happened in my short absence. the biggest of which is one of those web collectives i mentioned a little while ago went live. this one is called lunchbox funnies and it’s an all-ages webcomic collective which includes cow & buffalo and these seven other comics:

ryan estrada’s aki alliance
dave roman’s astronaut elementary
dean trippe’s butterfly
ovi nedelcu’s lunchbox
ryan sias’s silent kimbly
tyler martin’s wally & osborne
trade loeffler’s zip and li’l bit

i’m probably the biggest fan of these guys then anyone, so when they asked if i wanted to be part of lbf it was pretty much a no-brainer. i feel very blessed to be part of the group. there’s a great newsarama article here that explains what the alliance is all about better then what i can, so if you get a chance read that. but pretty much, lunchbox funnies was formed to generate more awareness of eight awesome comics that can be enjoyed by people of all ages. and hopefully, one day, we’ll be able to manufacture these:

also, cow & buffalo has a new forum because of this. click over there and say hullo!

there was a time last month when i wasn’t quite as busy as i am now. because of that i was able draw a guest strip for one of my favorite web comics, pirate and alien. tyson smith’s celebrating his first month with his first child so october is officially guest month over there. my silly strip went up today. check it out!

tomorrow very early in the morning i’m going to go and get some wisdom teeth removed and a few cavities filled. one of the wisdom teeth is impacted which should be a whole lot of fun. i can’t wait. i’ll likely be in pain for a couple days afterwards which i’m also really looking forward too. it’s the start to a great week! anyhoo, i don’t talk about comics, movies and music enough…

music- i’m really in to sufjan stevens right now. i can’t get his song chicago out of my head. i’ve got to thank my friend jeff denton for introducing me to him.

movies- saw snakes on a plane this weekend and it was every bit as bad as i hoped it would be. i was hysterical. now i’m ready for the fall crop of films, which are usually a big breath of fresh air after the ridiculous and over-the-top summer ones.

comics- my new favorite web comic is zip and li’l bit by trade loeffler. the story is just getting started but i already love it. the art is amazing (love his linework) and there are plenty of sheep. lots of sheep is always a good reason to read a comic.

on the paper side of things, i’m really into the x-men books again after suffering through many, many bad issues (except astonishing of course). mike carey and chris bachalo are a big part of my recovering interest but ed brubaker and billy tan are doing an awesome job as well. and, it’s not really x-men related, but everybody who’s into superhero comics should check out nextwave by warren ellis and stuart immonen. it’s absurdedly awesome.

speaking of x-men, i created a new x-character! she’s got magical mutant pixie powers and there’s even an ‘x’ in her name! i call her piXie! (i’m so lame..)

dean trippe is back from out of the country and he’s started updating butterfly again. if anyone here reads dc comics, particularly all the crisis stuff that’s happened, there’s a fun play on a certain character(s) name(s) for the latest. dean’s also put up his list of alternate butterfly winners. surprisingly, i’m one of the ten runners up. mine i just did for fun, and i don’t think it’s all too original, so it’s kinda embarrassing to see my entry amidst all these very cool, much more creative concepts (such as joel carroll’s to the left there). my favorite has got to be moth by adam cadwell. the character just feels so wonderfully right. it reminds of the good ol’ disney animated television days when darkwing duck had mega duck as his evil counterpart.

dean did give my butterfly a good name though. it actually wasn’t untill six hours later where i was like “aah! funny..” and if you don’t read many comics, particularly x-factor, ya might not get that either.

speaking of comics, i keep forgetting to mention a very cool new feature that dc comics has on their website right now. some of you may be aware of the 52 comic they recently started publishing. a weekly comic set in real time examining a missing year in the dc universe directly after the events of infinite crisis (hey, not all of my buffalog readers read comics!). well, writer/artist keith giffin is drawing all the breakdowns for this massive series and you can view some of these rough plotted out pages here. it was fun comparing his breakdowns to the actual finished pages until i realized i had more important things i could be doing with my life. part of me likes keith’s style more then the finished artwork but that’s also the part of me that enjoys the simple cartoonish approach to things. joe bennit’s been doing a fine job.

i think the moral of today’s incredibly geeky post is that for those of you that don’t, read more comics! that is all.

jerry’s who i nominated to follow me on jp anhonen’s comic co project. and man, did he do an awesome job! i love how he’s continuing the story and his take on the characters. i’m also even more excited now that’s he’s a part of parable! go read his page right now (comic 3, page 4).

and jerry, if you’re reading this you need to email me with some coloring tips :)

comic co is a fun online project started by jp ahonen. the idea is to create three 33 page comics with each page being done by a different artist and with that artist having the opportunity to decide who they want to follow them. the fun part is that the first page of all three comics is the same but because of the multiple involvement there’s no telling where each story will go.

i recently added to all the fun. click on the panels above to see the full page, but you have to read the pages before mine first! i followed up jouni nummela on comic 3, page 3.

for the maybe two of you out there that don’t know, there’s a new copper up today. this one’s one of my favorites, for reason’s besides the obvious (yes, the giant mushrooms). i have so many projects going on right now, along with a full-time job that’s slowly sucking me dry, that i’m trying not to get to overwhelmed. i’m just trying to do one thing at a time, moving on to the next, and making sure i’m telling jen i love her at least once a day (i really hope i’m not forgetting that last one). i know with kazu working on both amulet and flight, he’s probably in a similar situation right now. it might be what sparked this latest copper idea, it might not. regardless, it’s beautiful as usual.