NOTICE: while i take a brief sabbatical from c&b and other aspects of internet life, my good friend and artist matt yokom is taking over cow & buffalo. i’ll be back in TWO weeks! -mike

A larger version of today’s strip can be viewed HERE.

Hey everyone thanks for all the feedback these last few weeks. It’s been a humbling experience trying to create, in my feeble attempt, to simulate a panel to panel storyline. Also humbling in that Mike trusted me enough to have me take over c&b for 2 months! So thanks again and let’s see how Mike can repair the damage!

- Matt!

NOTICE: while i take a brief sabbatical from c&b and other aspects of internet life, my good friend and artist matt yokom is taking over cow & buffalo! i’ll be back sometime in november. -mike

Hey all. I just got done reading Jeff Smith’s Bone graphic novel. Mike has been telling me for years how cool and fun it is and I just now decided to take his advice and read it. I bought the full epic volume in black & white and finished it in about a week. Without making this an official lengthy review and bore people to death with details, overall, it was a fun and charming book. The art is nice and inspiring to look at that makes you want to sketch in your sketchbook. It was your basic good vs. evil storyline with originality and a few instances of mild non-creative mediocrity that left me thinking, “that’s it?!” But definitely a fun read and kept me mostly entertained while reading it and wanting to actually finish the book. So there… and on top of that I happened to come across online an exhibit showcasing the work of Jeff Smith. Then to find out it’s in Columbus, OH. So the next week I drove down to see it. It was really cool to see a lot of the panels in person with bluelines, sketchlines and ink with little notes in the corner of the page. I tried to take a few pics inside the show but it was heavily armed with ninja assassins! I bought a poster and Book One of the colored Scholastic versions of the story… by the way… I absolutely love the coloring by Steve Hamaker.

Till next time! Cheers. -Matt!

NOTICE: while i take a brief sabbatical from c&b and other aspects of internet life, my good friend and artist matt yokom is taking over cow & buffalo! i’ll be back sometime in november. -mike

Five weeks into this and I haven’t introduced the new characters! Where are my manners… sorry, Mom.

First up, from week one, the goat. I’ve been bothering Mike for years to put a goat in the series… then what do I get? A giraffe named Andrew! So of course the first thing I’m doing is throwing a goat in my story and hope he makes the cut to enter into the c&b universe.

Next up, weeks two and three, we meet chickens, the chicken leader and Kevin the Zombie. I’ve always loved chickens, I don’t know why. It’s probably because I loved Gonzo so much from the Muppets. And Kevin- you can find out more about him here. There you will find the collective drawing stash of me and my friend Tim. A place where we rip on each other (and a few others) in visual form. Kevin is one of our bi-products and really should have his own reality TV show.

That’s it. I will be wrapping the story up soon so if you hate this arc, Mike will be back in two weeks and I’ll be getting back to my very hectic web and graphic design/children’s book/graphic novel life.

- Matt!

NOTICE: while i take a brief sabbatical from c&b and other aspects of internet life, my good friend and artist matt yokom is taking over cow & buffalo! i’ll be back sometime in november. -mike

Well, with Mike still on vacation and taking a break from his hectic life of daily blogging and drawing, I will take this time to make lists, a thing Mike does every once in a while on this site. I’ve known Mike for a long time and I still can’t figure out if his love for list making is a hobby or an action that will soon manifest itself into an extreme case of obsessive compulsive disorder. But by reading Cow & Buffalo all these years (and especially the Death Peach Saga) I think I already know the answer! So here’s my list in honor of Mike:

Music:

1. Plankeye
2. David Crowder Band
3. Skillet
4. The O.C. Supertones
5. Tie: Wallace & Gromit Curse of the Were-Rabbit Score (Julian Nott) & Edward Scissorhands Score (Danny Elfman)

Movies:

1. Wallace & Gromit Curse of the Were-Rabbit
2. Sword in the Stone
3. Braveheart
4. The Dark Knight
5. Kung Foo Panda

Books:

1. The Bible
2. “The Art of” any animated movie
3. Pilgrim’s Progress
4. Parable 1 (coming this December)!!
5. The Art of LOTR by Alan Lee & John Howe

Mike Moments:

1. Watching the same Spider-man Silly String Web Shooters commercial from our separate rooms and hearing each other yell, “Awesommmmme!” at the exact same time.
2. Actually going to Toy’s R’ Us that day to buy them and permanently silly string up the dorm room halls in a ‘no-hold-barred’ duel to the silly-string death. Mike won.
3. Mike teaching me how to play racquetball (never played before) and me winning 90% of the time.
4. Hanging out with his family whenever they come to Cleveland.
5. Driving for donuts and Slurpees at two in the morning listening to Steve Miller Band.

See ya next week! -Matt!

NOTICE: while i take a brief sabbatical from c&b and other aspects of internet life, my good friend and artist matt yokom is taking over cow & buffalo! i’ll be back sometime in november. -mike

Hey everyone! I am having a great time making these comics (whether they make sense or not). Drawing semi-realistic for most of my career, this was really fun to just let loose and draw Maihackian ® for a month! Anyhoo, I was just thinking the other day that I’ve known Mike for eleven years!

Day 1: I was in my dorm room meticulously unpacking my many Metallica/Pantera black t-shirts and my vast array of metal cds waiting for the other three roommates to arrive. What was I getting into and who would I be living with? The first encounter came: Todd, a fellow artist from Michigan; liked sports, rock n roll and just a cool guy! Whew, thank God, not a stereotypical, granola-eating, eccentric artist with drug problems who listens to The Doors or Grateful Dead!

Then came in Mike. Haha, long hair in a pony tail, a Tick t-shirt with flannel shirt, and beat up three sizes too large grungy pants. I thought at first he must have been a reject from some Seattle grunge band like Mother Love Bone or something. What’s this I thought, grunge and metal cannot mix!

Over the next few years at college and after many late night runs for Taco Bell, Coke Slurpees at 7/11, Pirate Donuts ® and other mischievous places, Mike turned out to be one of my best friends. And now eleven years later, with all those great memories, I am thankful to have Mike as a friend. He is the funniest person I know and a great illustrator (although I think he should also keep drawing realistic drawings from time to time– have you seen his watercolors?!). Get back safe from your vacation if you’re reading this, Mike, and get me something cool from France!

- Matt!

Mike, Matt and friends, circa 1999.

NOTICE: while i take a brief sabbatical from c&b and other aspects of internet life, my good friend and artist matt yokom is taking over cow & buffalo! i’ll be back sometime in november. -mike

Hey everyone! Wow, week 2 already?! Looks like Cow & Buffalo have their hooves full…or whoever is starring in their comic these days. Well, to keep the authenticity of Cow & Buffalo, I researched with intense and strenuous diligence and care in to what goes into creating a weekly comic strip such as the great Cow & Buffalo comic that is loved and adored by millions around the world (that’s what mike tells me). I was prepared to face the ultimate tests in comedic strategy, puns, and one-liners. Training like a ninja, but without swords, ninja stars, and bloody piles of death, I went on researching in black pajamas using my newly trained skill of stealth sneaking up on unsuspecting victims to unleash a fury of comedy. After my wife sighed and told me to get down from the couch, I realized comedy is not for everyone. It was until then I went to Master Cow himself, Mike Maihack, for advice.

“Master,” I asked him. “How do you do it? What is the secret for extensive epic plot outlines, growing lovable characters, and creating art that is on the verge of legendary? To what level of intensity do you calculate and devise such grand story arcs?” I waited in silence waiting to hear Mike utter the most prodigious & impressive words ever to be said, by any human….ever.

“Well, I just kind of make it up as I go…I don’t really even know what’s going to happen,” he said. “I like draw them the day before while I’m watching Avatar or Battlestar Galactica or something.”

Speechless, I quietly closed instant messenger and worked on this spectacle that is now before you. Boy, I bet you guys can’t wait to have Mike back. I’ll start the petition below to try to get Mike back from vacation sooner. See you next week!

- Matt!

NOTICE: while i take a brief sabbatical from c&b and other aspects of internet life, my good friend and artist matt yokom is taking over cow & buffalo! i’ll be back sometime in november. -mike

Hi there! My name is Matt and as you probably may know Mike is on vacation… a much needed vacation. I’m sure it must be rough living in a warm tropical environment such as Tampa- you know all that nice eighty degree weather probably stresses him out. I am from Ohio living mostly in dismal weather conditions and when I go on vacations, I usually go to warm weather environments in the winter (along with 70% of people over the age of sixty) like Tampa (side inquisitive observation: where would people from Tampa go to on vacation? Buffalo, NY?).

Anyhoo, this is the part I guess where mike usually says something about the comic and so I will too. And since I am taking over his site for a few weeks, I’m sure he won’t mind if I take a few creative licenses with it either! I mean, he’s probably not even going to look at his site for the next couple of weeks! But I promised him I wouldn’t go crazy and stick within the existing order of Cow & Buffalo. So with that I humbly present to you Cow & Buffalo in: New Fad.

- Matt!

p.s. Please go easy on the critiques, other than this strip here I did a while ago, this is my first shot! :) See ya next week!

happy ryan estrada day 2008 everyone! please enjoy this one of many ryan estrada guest strips scattered throughout the internets today. i’m particularly fond of the strip ryan did for c&b since the far side is my favorite newspaper strip of ALL TIME. although it might not always show, the far side has always been a huge influence on c&b. most importantly, gary larson wrote his cows as MALES! yes. he did. and he probably got all sorts of letters correcting him in this matter as well. we share a similar bond him and i.

ALSO- for my regular readers, in case you missed this sunday’s strip- make sure to click back and read it. it’s IMPORTANT!

i’m still catching up on a lot of things from the holidays (or rather because of the holidays), so please enjoy this fantastic guest strip by my good friend and artist matt yokom. in a weird way, i actually find it to be the perfect end cap to the whole superhero nonsense that just finished. even though it’s, like, before all that.

there were a few new cow sightings while i was away, so in case you missed them the journey cow page is still up. in fact, i think i’m going to keep it up for as long as those comics stay around. all those strips were so much fun and the creators involved were such good sports that i want to make sure there are permanent links to their efforts. and hey, who knows? if cow ever pops up in some places again, i’ll have a place to point them out.

i’ll be back next week with all new ridiculous, weekly adventures. promise!

fellow lunchbox funny ally ryan estrada, creator of the hilariously fantastic aki alliance and the world famous (and aptly named) ryan estrada expeditions, is generously affording me a week off by providing me this awesome cow & buffalo guest strip.

seriously- that last panel made my day. thanks, ryan!

i’ll be back next week as cow & buffalo’s latest epic crawls ever so slowly towards its inevitable conclusion. who will live? who will die? well, probably no one will die. but someone might stub a toe. WHO WILL IT BE!!!

yup, mastering suspense- four whole days a month.