Hello, all.

So, I am going to be experimenting a bit.   You will notice that the panels are somewhat larger, and there are fewer of them.

This is on purpose.

It is actually easier for me to fit some of my loquacious dialogue into larger panels without spoiling the visual.  Also, if I just put out straight 800×600 panels, it means I am not fiddle-farting around with the layouts as much.  I want to see if it brings more of a cinematic feel to the story.

Oh, and by the way, I’ll be trying this out five days a week.   It should be the same or less work for me, and an update of from 1-4 panels a day for you.  Will it slow down the story?  Will it give me a larger canvas to work on?  Will it all deepen the experience for the readers?

How the hell do I know?  That’s why it’s an experiment.

So - Monday expect a new update.  At least one panel, probably more. Then the same on Tuesday, and Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.  And so on until we get sick of it.

Warmest regards,

JED

Couple of new things in the Hot Stuff section.

This is me trying to get warmed up again.

Warm regards,

JED

Hi, guys.  Long time, no write.

Yes, Uncle John still remembers how to type.   In fact, I have some news.

I will be making a few changes and experimenting with some new things on the comic in the coming weeks. Have no fear - hopefully you all will actually like it, and it will have no negative effect on the frequency of updates. More on this later.

But I am well aware that the galleries have gone a long time with no new stuff, and I am also looking at the art for the past few months and thinking that it’s getting a bit stale and repetitive, and no longer really my best work.   I am a little stalled, frankly, and artistically feeling like I’m in a slump.  So, that is where you come in.

For the first time, I am publishing a poll thanks to pollcode.com so that all the readers of this, my own humble contribution to the debasement of Western culture, can anonymously sound off on what you would like to generally see in the galleries.   Naturally, as I know many of you already do, you can also tell me directly in the comments, but hopefully by doing it this way we can hear from those who may be shy or don’t have the time or desire to post that they really want to see Zona covered in whipped cream with her top off.   Or Mentl covered in whipped cream with his top off.  Or either set of twins, covered in whipped cream with their tops off - or anything else more creative that may have nothing to do with whipped cream or “The Challenges of Zona” at all.

So - click on the little radio buttons.  Give me some feedback.

Warmest regards,

JED

I know, I know - it’s been a lonnnng time coming.  But Valentine’s Day is on us, and I wanted to put up a testament to love.

Enjoy

Warm regards,

JED

Sorry.  Can’t finish the page tonight.   Election night here in the US.

Can barely sit still.

Hope every American voted, whoever you voted for.

In CA there’s still a couple hours left to vote.

Today is Samhain, also Day of The Dead and All Hallow’s Eve.  The traditional meaning of the day is that there is a division between the world of the living and the world of the dead, and on this night, that veil is thin and messages, thoughts, images and other communication passes easily between.  We’re supposed to remember our dead and honor them.   I took some time this morning and jotted down some of my dead - the ones I could think of.  Nobody especially famous, but important in one way or another to me.  Just putting it down this way with the way that they died also tells you a bit about the shape of my life.  Other people, living and dead, form the framework of any individual’s life and story.  We can’t exist alone, and we need the relationships with others to survive and thrive.  If Jean-Paul Sartre is right that “Hell is other people,” then the corollary must also be true, that heaven can be found there, also, and everything else in between.  So here follows a not-terribly exhaustive list of my dead:

Howard, my mother’s dad - emphysema and heart disease. Age 80

Mark Greenke, schoolmate - Car accident. Age 17

John, my father’s dad - radiation poisoning from primitive lung cancer treatment. Age 74

Berlie, my father’s mother - stroke. Age 73

Mary, my mother’s mother - in her sleep. Age 89

Jocelyn, lover and friend - killed by a terrorist bomb on Pan Am 103. Age 26

Robert, my father’s brother - not sure. Age 72

Fran, Robert’s wife - not sure.

Marco - friend - AIDS. Age 32

Stan - friend - AIDS. Age 27

Gary - friend - AIDS. Age 30

Oscar - friend and jeweler - AIDS. Age 34

Lil - surrogate aunt - stroke.  Age 75

Mary Kaye - dear friend - suicide by shotgun. Age 38

Greystoke - dear friend - cancer. Age 10

Rita - mother - stroke. Age 68.

Jim - father - lung cancer. Age 76.

Inconcievable - dear friend and companion - pituitary malfunction. Age 19.

Evy - adopted Jewish grandmother and saint - finally decided she was done here. Age 98.

Kathy - friend and neighbor. Trapped in her burning house. - age 70.

Kevin - friend and fellow performer. “long illness.”  Age?  Never knew. A few years on one side or the other of me.

The Traveller

Something a little different.

Hope it hands you a little giggle.

New update tomorrow/Saturday!

Warm regards,

I got sucked into a Time vortex.

Actually, that’s even partly true.  I got caught up in a bit of a surprise I’m making you all for Samhain.  Hope to have it up tomorrow, or maybe Thursday and there WILL be a Zona update on Friday.

I hope you like it.  Not saying more than that, because you lot are all so clever I  really have to watch what I say these days to even have surprises at all!

Warm regards,

JED

My favorite niece - the especially brilliant and beautiful one (Seriously:  Blonde, blue-eyes, gorgeous - could model.  Could give my imaginary heroines a run for their money, not kidding)  - just gave birth to Uncle John’s first Great-Nephew.

Beautiful baby boy.

Like all our family, he’s a genius, of course, and will grow up into a physical Adonis to take the world by storm and be adored by millions.

Not that I’m prejudiced, or anything.

Warm regards,

JED

My lifelong friend Dino (yes, the Dino who runs Soulgeek)  lost his father very recently and, of course, I went to the funeral today. The older we get, as Mary Smich said in her famous column, (wrongly attributed to Kurt Vonnegut)

“Understand that friends come and go, but with a precious few you

should hold on. Work hard to bridge the gaps in geography and
lifestyle, because the older you get, the more you need the people
who knew you when you were young.”

Dino and I have known each other 35 years, which is scary enough, but we come from much the same place, for all our manifold differences. As depressed as I was for feeling such frank disdain for the place of my birth, especially its current state which is even worse than it was when I left almost thirty years ago, it was curiously comfortable and familiar being in his mother’s little casita with the rest of his family and friends, most of whom were known to me and some even also friends of mine. Some just passing acquaintances, but with whom I could easily converse and pass the time of day or share a remembrance of my dear friend, our shared experience and their basic decency on an important occasion making up for all that divided us by race, language, religion (or lack of it) and all the rest. Funny how familiar the feel of the grass, the sound and smell and touch of the neighborhood and all of it was. It wasn’t my neighborhood - it was in the more brown part of town, after all, and especially in the `70s that mattered (though never really to Dino or his family or mine) but we weren’t richer, smarter, or better than they were. We worked hard, they did too. I was a geek, so was he. We were both weird and neurotic in our own way, which is why, I think, we became and remain friends.

And we still are weird, neurotic geeks at our age, as undignified as it might seem to some. Hell, they say that 50 is the new 20.

(Don’t ask me who “they” are. Just know that most of “them” are over 50. )

And on this very day my eldest niece gave birth to her and her beloved husband’s first child.

Not sure exactly why I am writing this to you, other than that you have all somehow become an extension of my mishpucha (It’s Yiddish, look it up ) and these are some thoughts I had that I thought i needed to share.

Working on the new page. Shouldn’t be too much longer.

Warmest regards,

JED