Josh Blair of Candy or Medicine reviewed Stupid Tales of Wolverine. Thanks Josh! We did try to warn you.

Speaking of reviews, today in the comments of a Rage Against the Manchine post, I read this 1974 review by Angela Carter of Linda Lovelace's fictional autobiography, and it has provoked a great many thoughts in me.

In the service of the god, she has taken the repertoire of sexual display from the commerce and intimacy of the brothel and allowed her performance to be frozen upon celluloid, condemned to a sequence of endless repetitions. In doing so, she has removed any element of tactile immediacy from her exposition of the potentialities of the body and therefore completely defused the sexual menace implicit in her own person and her polymorphously perverse talents. And that menace is enormous. If she can engulf a foot, what else could she not engulf? The owner of the foot in his entirety? The world itself?

Because remember this essay I posted a couple of months ago about how horror stories sometimes feature monstrous symbolic vaginae that threaten to absorb the protagonists into an undifferentiated state of pre-birth or of death, the loss of physical boundaries, and also how fascinating the idea that videotaping sex removes from it the highly desirable quality of awe. I didn't say they were well-formed thoughts. Now I'm going to take a shower.

Two new reviews of Flesh and Bone, each with unique insight that was fun for me to read about. Justin Giampaoli at the Poopsheet Foundation talked a little bit about the use of language in the book, and Derik Badman for Mad Ink Beard wrote a pretty in-depth analysis of some of the formal elements of the artwork and how they shape the narrative. These are things I really don't expect people to consider when they read my stuff.

I was slightly surprised to discover my work at this show at Powell's City of Books this month. Here I am next to my dead deer drawing. See the slight surprise scrawled plainly across my sweet face. Immediately after this I drank a PBR at Floating World.



I did this drawing on Christmas day and I'd like to turn it into a t-shirt, or a print, but I'm taking my time choosing the colors. Pulling the trigger on these things is hard for me. Maybe you should just tell me what color your couch is.

The soap smells of "Pitch-dark chocolate, sticky vanilla resin, black pepper, and traces of opoponax, vetiver, and aged patchouli." Buy it here.

I grew up in a two-person house, I live in a two-person house now, and two is the number of a thing that I usually like to have, so I guess it makes sense that I drew two virgin martyrs (Margaret and Catherine) and two ex libris (Subconscious and Amontillado). I drew only one gruesome logo for a screen printer friend, but the pun in his business name makes up for the singularness of the image, and hell, maybe I'll draw another. Most of the time I do.

Things I do every day: eat kale and sausage, listen to Sir Lucious Left Foot: the Son of Chico Dusty, ride the bus for two hours, smoke a single hand-rolled cigarette, apply for a job, have fucking rad idea.

I'm going to be selling some comics, art and tooth charms at the Arcana Soaps/Bee-yotch Honey trunk show tonight and tomorrow afternoon in North Portland. There's free absinthe cocktails and treats, and they take credit cards. Click the link for location, time, directions, and more reasons to come visit. A commission to illustrate an Arcana perfume label was the initial seed of inspiration for Flesh and Bone, so now you can experience the perfume and comic simultaneously, or buy them together as a Christmas gift of uniquely melancholy multisensory beauty.

There's a paragraph about Flesh and Bone in the Village Voice's article, "2010's Best Comics and Graphic Novels." Then they go on to describe X'ed Out by Charles Burns as "equally absorbing."

Do I do enough complaining about the Grand Guignol melodrama my personal life has become? Maybe comfort is my enemy, maybe I'm at my best when everything's blowing up in my face. My artwork benefits, so I'd be a fool to complain. It's all grist for the mill.

I think I wrote the most mundane horror porn comic ever. J. Caleb Mozzocco had some interesting things to say about Flesh and Bone here and here. It was also on Graphic Novel Reporter reviewer Peter Gutierrez's 2010 Favorites List.

Three of my favorite people have shows this month and they open tomorrow:

I've always been so damn uptight but these days my pilot is instinct. I either go to bed with my baby at eight or stay up with friends until two, I eat and read mostly for comfort, I let myself get drenched to the skin when it rains, and I tell people exactly what I want which makes them want to give it to me. I'm becoming a complete degenerate and my heart is spinning like a compass point at a magnetic pole.

I got to hang out with Vanessa Davis and Julia Wertz last week while they were here for their tour. I was a guest speaker for Jesse Reklaw's comics class at the IPRC--this means I was paid to talk about myself and boners for 45 minutes and left feeling like a pompous ass. Fifteen minutes later I got in trouble with my mom for answering her friend's question "Why is your comic for mature readers?" with "There are like witches having sex with Satan in it." Sean Christensen, Amy Kuttab and I dressed as a coven for Halloween.

Speaking of Sean Christensen, as I frequently do, he curated a Twin Peaks themed art show is at Guapo Comics and Coffee on 63rd and Foster this month and it's really excellent. I drew my contribution exhausted, with tears in my throat, and it is the most melancholy drawing I have ever made.