Holiday piece No. 15

At the end of every year I send out a holiday piece to friends and family who have had an impact on my life during the year, but as my audience has grown to include readers (via website visits, Facebook, Instagram, & Twitter follows) I don’t know personally, I want to share the joy with my “virtual” friends as well. Thanks for taking the time to visit this blog or follow my weekly Watusi webcomic. It’s much appreciated!

Longtime readers may recognize this year’s holiday piece as a colored version of my curmudgeonly one from 2002 … but while coloring it for use as a notecard this year, I couldn’t help but notice that 2018 was featured as one of my projections. If anything, I was being too generous, as Christmas promotion has already leapfrogged Labor Day– heck, there are places that stock decorations year round! (grumble grumble) Anyway…

Best wishes for a happy 2019!

[January 2023 UPDATE: all three “Continuity and Vine” collections are now available in my Gumroad Store!]

From the Back Issue Bin: “Continuity and Vine”

Starting in 2001 I wrote and drew a comic strip for The Tornado, a local (Lawrence, KS) weekly. “Continuity and Vine” was my chance to snark about pop culture, art, history, and whatever else caught my fancy. Including comics about comics:

Unfortunately, six months into the strip’s run the Twin Towers were destroyed and cartooning about movie marketing schemes and celebrity misadventures didn’t seem so important any more. Over the next year, the strip veered into overtly political territory and was getting darker in tone than I enjoyed. Also during that time a number of things happened to lead me to end the strip: The Tornado folded, posting strips on my website at the time wasn’t very satisfying for me, I wasn’t able to find a syndicate interested in the strip, and Watusi jams were keeping me busier (and making me happier) than “C&V” was. The final nail in the “Continuity and Vine” coffin, though, happened when someone at a show said he was glad to read my comics … so he’d know what to think about the news! I certainly wasn’t writing these strips to become some sort of political guru!

“Continuity and Vine” revisited: the island strips

When I closed out my old website there was a fair amount of content I wanted to continue providing a home for … including this “Continuity and Vine” strip from 2001. The island strips were some of my favorites from that entire project, before it veered into overtly political territory. Plus, from the creative side, it was gratifying to experience how they just fell into place– five themed strips in a couple of days. Hope you enjoy!

I’ve also been testing out e-books as a way to keep select out-of-print materials available. If you have an e-reader that can handle .pdfs, feel free to download the collection Days of Wine and Anthrax, where you can read all the island strips, along with other “Continuity and Vine” comics. Let me know how it works on your reader!

[August 2015 UPDATE: the .pdf version of this collection is now available in my Selz store!]
[May 2022 UPDATE: I’ve closed my Selz store.]
[January 2023 UPDATE: all three “Continuity and Vine” collections are now available in my Gumroad Store!]