Courtyard

Probably the longest I've spent drawing any single picture.
Turned out well though.

Old Gregg

Have you ever drunk Bailey's from a shoe?

Crabgirl

Felt like redesigning Crabgirl. I'm sure she'll be back someday. Just maybe not in the same comic.

Ramona Flowers

Ramona Flowers from Scott Pilgrim by Bryan Lee O'Malley.

Peanuts

Reasons why Peppermint Patty is the goddam best of them Peanuts.

I read a lot of Peanuts when I was a kid. Had a whole heap of beat up, coffee stained, albums that I read over and over until they fell apart or disappeared into thin air.

My favorite character was always Peppermint Patty and here’s why:

She’s the most complex. You can sum-up most of the other Peanuts in a word or a sentence or two but Patty is slightly deeper than that. Sure you can just label her as the Tomboy of the group which is a fair assessment. She was raised by her dad so likes baseball and football and she dresses like a boy. Most people come to conclusion that she is the most likely one to be gay along with her ubiquitous shadow- Marcie. She does however have a side of her that wants to be pretty and feminine when she’s not skinning her knees and climbing trees. There was a whole story arc, I remember, where she trained with snoopy to enter an ice dancing contest. She was quite excited to get to wear a fancy sequin leotard. I think she screwed it up in the end. Possibly because Snoopy isn’t an Olympic skating coach or human as Patty seems to think.

Furthermore, despite the Marcie possibility, there’s a whole ton of evidence to suggest that Patty loves Charlie Brown. She’s always asking him leading questions and bugging him but seeing as Charlie Brown is as oblivious as Patty is inept they never work it out. I think she once dated Snoopy to make him jealous. Yeah that’ll work.

Charlie Brown was forever trying to date this mysterious unnamed red head that he was borderline stalking. He probably would have been happier with Patty. Hey they’re only, like, ten. It probably would have happened eventually. She’d have been good for him. Charlie Brown may be a magnet for bullies but Patty don’t take no shit. Imagine if Lucy had tried to pull that football moving crap while Patty was around. Yeah just imagine it. Feels good don’t it. Eff you Lucy. You trust abusing piece of shit.

Also you could imagine sometime in High School and Marcie is having issues with coming out and some assholes are giving her crap and Patty has her back even though Patty hadn’t quite twigged what Marcie was even talking about.

Patty is also a bit of an idiot. She went years thinking that Snoopy was just some big-nosed kid. She’s always flunking math and probably bringing Marcie down with her. One of the great things of having more than one female character is that some of them can be idiots without it seeming like a commentary on women as a whole. Which is way more interesting than the standard model of having a single female character who acts as a paragon of all positive female characteristics (yawn).

Probably her biggest flaw is her bossing around of Marcie. Marcie is way smarter than Patty but Patty is in charge. I don’t think it’s malicious it’s just what happens when introvert meets extrovert. I reckon Marcie would probably grow apart from Patty in the future. Marcie go off the college and Patty would take or more blue collar route. She’d look back on her time with Patty fondly but she inevitably had to move away and find something that their friendship lacked.

The best thing about Patty though is that she’s inherently a good and noble person. She is loyal and cheerful and fun. She isn’t a psychopath like Lucy, or a snob like Sally or a monomaniac like Schroeder, or overly anxious like Linus, or semi-mythical like the red-headed little girl. I’m sure 20 year old Charlie Brown works it out in the end.

Lis from Seconds

Lis from Seconds by Bryan Lee O'Malley. Although not as well known as O'Malley's Scott Pilgrim, Seconds, is still a great book. It's about this girl who runs a restaurant who comes across a kooky house spirit called Lis who grants her the power to get a do-over on events with ensuing chaos. Read it.

Frank

Important mission