TO BE CONTINUED!

TO BE CONTINUED……

to be continued!…..

1. I could simply open up multiple trash bags and toss ‘em out. I do not want to do this.

2. I could sell them. Multiple attempts to offer them to a comic book shop have elcited responses of “we’ll give you a $1.98 for 15 long boxes of comics from the 70s and 80s. Uhm no.

3. I could sell them online. Last year I noticed one BlueSky comic collector looking to complete his DC Comics Presents collection and it just so happened that I had the first 50 issues or so and then a couple dozen scattered over the rest of the run. I took pictures and was very excited and then he responded with a snide “they’re not in good condition” - which was not true - but I realized that I wasn’t about to part with my beloved books to someone who was haggling with me over, well, peanuts. (As a side note, right up front I admitted that I didn’t have a lot of experience selling on line and then, after the transaction went awry, he posted how I didn’t know what I was doing - and my internal response was ‘uhm yes, I admitted that from the get go’. The block button is a lovely invention and saved me from having further conversations with this person).

4. However, I could try to sell them online again but I’m not sure that I have the patience for it. If you sell online, how do you do this w/o losing your mind?

What I have been doing, instead of going round and round, is I’ve been donating certain comics to Housing Works. Housing Works is a New York non-profit that will take donations of furniture, clothing, books, etc and sell them. The profits from the sale of these items goes to fund HIV/AIDS organizations. I’ve donated probably thousands of dollars worth of items to Housing Works over the past 20 years (only ‘gently used’ items of course, they aren’t a dumping ground for garbage).

When I write “certain comics”, I mean comics that are more recent and more likely to be of interest to someone who happens upon them. My most recent ‘big dump’ was about four years worth of Wonder Woman - I started collecting again around 2019 and the book was a constant item on my pull list throughout covid and up until Tom King got his hands on her and dragged out a mostly dull story for 20 issues - when I realized that at $4 a pop, 20 issues equaled $80 - and I most certainly did not think that the story he was telling was worth $80 (sorry, Tom King, you’re super cute and Trinity is awesome, but those 20 issues draaaaaaaaaag). At one point, I realized that I had about 50 issues or more and that I would almost certainly never re-read them. And while removing them from my collection wouldn’t make THAT much of a dent, I figured every little bit helps. So off they went and hopefully someone discovered them and loved them.

I’ve done with other titles and ‘regular’ books off the shelf that I re-read and then passed along to Housing Works. It’s been a kind of weird but fabulous experience. One set of books that did not go to Housing Works was my collection of Harry Potter hardcovers - about a year or so ago I realized that the chances of ever reading them again was slim to none and that someone else could love them - in this case, there’s a school that I know of that does book fairs so off they went. A few months ago, I also donated a dozen children’s picture books that I’ve loved for 30 years. The school was appreciative for both donations.

So this week’s donation consists of three years of Jeremy Adams’ Flash (spectacular run, I re-read a couple weeks ago and, while I really loved them, I am happy to donate and let someone else discover them) and The Sculptor book that I wrote about last week. In that link, I also wrote about the early 90s run of Animal Man by Grant Morrison. Although they are not current, I know there is zero market for re-sale - so they’re going to go in this week’s donation too. They were quite dark for the time, but these days? They’d probably be considered light reading.

Do you donate your old comic books? Do you just keep them hoping for a day when they’ll be worth something? Do you haunt Ebay hoping for a good deal to complete your collection?

I’ll tell you what - if you’re a DC comic collector and you are looking for something to complete your collection from the mid 70s - early 80s, I probably still have it. Reach out to me and I’ll let you know if I have it. BTW I am not a wheeler/dealer, lol, I am just a guy who loves his comics and wants them to go to someone who loves comics as much as or more than I do. :)

I started the strip in 2016 but MEMO (the comic strip) didn’t reach 100 until summer 2020 - I had posted a few strips about Nanny feeling gloomy (you’ll find out why at some point in our current serial) and joined Angie and Juniper at The Tangled Winkie in its first appearance.

For #200, we were well into THE PARTY at that point. This makes the first time that M.A.R.T.H.A. connects into the world of Nanny, Angie and Juniper and, again, we are at The Tangled Winkie.

A few months later, I was into another serial with the other set of characters from MEMO (the comic strip), The Lone Apple. I haven’t written much about him in this relaunch but, briefly, he’s a super hero on an alternate world. In the LEGION OF BUGS serial, he and his bestie, The Masked Grape, thwart the evil villian Mighty Ant. In MEMO 300, Mighty Ant unleashes the legion of bugs from the serial’s title:

and, yeah, Mighty Ant had a Twitter account for awhile. I tried to keep it updated but it wasn’t something that I found I had time for what with holding down a 5 -6 day a week corporate events job and putting together a daily strip. But it was fun. At one point, Mighty Ant celebrates that the account has 6 followers. :)

In MEMO (the comic strip) #400, I kicked off the next Lone Apple serial, THE SQUEEZE.

I’m going to hold off on writing too much about this right now because it’s going to show up fairly soon in THE NANNY & THE PROFESSOR and I’ll have more to say about it then.

Onward - MEMO 500 was a big deal and was at the tail end of my experiment of creating a daily strip.

I ‘cheated’ a bit by re-using old art but did create a few new pieces (notably the ‘fab four’ centerpiece of - from L to R- the Masked Grape, the Lone Apple, Angie and Juniper). Looking at this now makes me want to revisit this and create an entirely new piece. As a side note, the Husband liked this so much that he put it on t shirts for us and gave it to me as a Christmas present. :)

Finally, MEMO (the comic strip) 600 - this illustrates perfectly how I’ve been feeling these past couple years. It’s from the TV show HACKS.

That’s it for the anniversary strips - check out MEMO (the comic strip) this weekend (well, hopefully this weekend, I just finished a pretty intense work week) for MEMO 700! :)

The quick read was Michael J. Fox’s “Future Boy” about being cast in the original “Back to the Future”. This is not anything close to a tell all - it’s more like an extended LinkedIn post praising everyone around him, but Fox is so cheery about it all that it’s hard to find fault especially in this day when everyone’s angry all the time (although in many cases, it’s warranted).

I loved the original BTTF and saw it while I was a camp counselor at a Lutheran camp in Texas in July of 1985. After a tough week, a bunch of us stumbled to the local mall and poured ourselves into the movie theater, almost not caring what we were going to see. It was and is a stunning piece of work.

“Future Boy” assumes that you know the movie in and out and takes you for a fun ride. BTW, I read this book in about five hours so it’s perfect for a plane ride from one coast to the next. A side note: I picked it up from my local library - and in these days of living in the hinterlands of Westchester and doing contract work, I am grateful to have a place to go to pick up all the books I’d like to read that I don’t also want or need to own.

The second book was the graphic novel, “The Sculptor” by Scott McCloud. It’s beautifully illustrated and all but it was a slog to get through - dark, depressing and, in some ways, nihilistic - a graduate of the ‘comics are only good if you want to slit your wrists after reading it’ school of thought, I think. I used to think these types of projects were Very Meaningful and therefore Very Important and therefore Very Good… but, it’s just such a drain. A few days later, I’m still shaking it off. Blech. Stay away.

A quick interlude here - I’ve been purging my comics but have been re-reading them before taking them to New York’s Housing Works as a donation. I know I ought to try to get a few bucks for them but honestly, last year a brief foray into trying to sell 50 issues of a title from the late 70s/early 80s was such a slog that I decided that it’s not worth the effort. Anyway, I re-read what issues of “Animal Man” I have from Grant Morrison’s early 90s run and, I know I thought that they were “it” at the time, but they have not aged well. Part of this is probably because every writer in the last 30 years has used some variation of his story style - here the hero is aware that he’s in a comic book - but re-reading the way it was handled this many years later in 2026, well, it just feels lazy, indulgent, and overdone. Blech again. Stay away.

The third book I read was a delightful change of pace - Eric Orner’s “Smahtguy”, the life of Barney Frank. I’d always admired Orner’s style on his weekly comic strip, “The Mostly Unfabulous Life of Ethan Green” and was thrilled when I found out that he was going to be a featured speaker at MoCCA (Museum of Cartoon and Comic Book Art) Fest this year. Not only is Eric a wonderful artist, but he is also a terrfic storyteller and I found in him something with whom I share a recognition of a shared, though separate history of the gay male community, especially as that community expressed itself in 90s era New York. “Smahtguy” is a great read and will take you on a romp through 30 years of political history from the perspective of Frank, who has had a front row seat to much of it. Highly recommended.

This upcoming week, I’ll be diving into the 75th anniversary edition of Edith Hamilton’s book on “Mythology”. I’ve wanted to read this for some time and almost as soon as I requested it from the local library, it arrived. With an insanely busy week ahead at work, I am looking forward to immersing myself in ancient stories every morning and afternoon during my commute from/to the hinterlands of Westchester.

And, in addition to all of that, I’ll be working on the 700th edition of MEMO (the comic strip) which I would be excited about but an episode that I had mapped out suddenly doesn’t fit the structure any more so I have to scrap and start from scratch. This happens. Sometimes the narrative takes its own path and at some point one must simply give in to it because the characters know their story better than I do. Thankfully they are very forth coming about what they’re up to. :)

What are you reading this week?

I knew we’d be spending a lot of time in Nanny’s house so I created a general floorplan for both the ground and 2nd story and as each room has come up, I’ve had fun fleshing it out with furniture, paint, and art. One of my little joys in this has been creating ‘props’ that I can use over and over again - like the white bowl with the orange stripe; it’s made a couple appearances already. I’ve included a large size of the first panel since there’s a lot of detail and it’s a piece that I’m particularly happy with.

Next week: hurricane Marlene shows up on Nanny’s doorstep - don’t miss it! :)

Sometimes the characters speak and I listen and that’s how this week’s strip came about. I love the weird relationship that Lulu and bobbysherman have and I’m planning on exploring that more in upcoming strips.

Placing this strip under a piece of furniture posed some challenges -

First, in what room is this taking place? I did a diagram of the whole house so I would always know where in it we are, but wasn’t sure where to place this. Eventually, with a little trial and error, I eventually decided on the dining room which is adjacent to the kitchen.

Then I had to create a piece of furniture that was the right height for bobbysherman to fit under and yet still low enough to the ground that Lulu was going to have to crane her neck - the visual of Lulu having to lean over gave me a little giggle so I wanted to keep it if at all possible.

Once I settled on where they were, I needed to know if there was anything in the background that needed to be included for it to feel right - I got to work on the entire corner and, along the way, included the dining room table and the sun streaming in from the window. I liked it so much that I wanted to include it in the strip itself and am presenting it below for you to get a better look at it.

Finally the last challenge was bobbysherman himself - I thought drawing him would be a steep learning curve but I got there a bit quicker than I thought I would. I’m still learning but light years further than I had been… so that’s a good thing! :)

As a side note, the painting on the upper right of the panel has a scene that I grabbed from an edition of MEMO (the comic strip) last year. I include visuals from past strips often and it’s just a fun little thing that I do as it makes the MEMO-verse seem a little bit more cohesive somehow.

Thanks for reading this week’s installment - and see you back in 7 days with the next thrilling episode!

For every strip I do, whether it’s a one panel gag or a sequential story, I first write out a script, then draw my equivalent of ‘storyboards’ where I lay the ideas out and get a sense of where everyone will go. Some days it’s easy, some days it’s more challening. This one came to me fairly fully baked - I wanted to do a week without too much background but I also wanted to establish Nanny’s kitchen table as I plan on using it in the future.

Here’s the storyboard:

Most things ended up in the final version, but I had an idea for a perspective in the last panel that I couldn’t quite pull off although I did do a version of it in the second to last panel.

Finally: you might be wondering who that is on Tommy’s t shirt - well, it’s The Masked Grape and we’ll eventually get back to him and his pal, The Lone Apple, but those are stories for another day. ;)

Today’s strip was, in some ways, several years in the making. Back in 2020, I dared myself to use my excessive nervous energy from lockdowns to create a daily comic strip.

Anyway, along the way, I got it in my head to create a robot character and out popped M.A.R.T.H.A. At first his appearance was just a series of sight gags:

but pretty quickly I started to think of his backstory. Along came a scientist, Johnson who got to do a little exposition:

He popped up in the background for a few strips although the only time that M.A.R.T.H.A. ever actually saw him was at a boardwalk cafe.

When I concieved of the current serial, I wanted to include elements from the original set of strips. I know no one reading now would know either way but I thought it would be fun nonetheless. There was a thought in my head that all I had to do was cut the two ‘flashback’ panels from previous strips, but that didn’t work out.

The first of the two previously used strips is in the first row, third panel - once I plopped it in, though, I realized that the Ginsberg headline wouldn’t make any sense to anyone since she died 6 years ago. So I decided to re-draw. And since I was re-drawing, I decided to use the slightly re-designed look for the scientist.

The second strip I wanted to refer to in this week’s story, was from a reveal during THE PARTY. Here’s the original:

But without the rest of the strip for context, the last panel alone didn’t seem to work. I fiddled with some options ultimately re-drawing and changing the perspective as well as including Johnson (whose presence is only implied in the original).

Anyway, that’s a little of the story behind today’s strip. Let me know your thoughts and, as they say, please ‘like’, comment and share. :)

What can I say about Paris that hasn’t been said a thousand times or more? The Husband’s mom was named Mona Lisa and we have a collection of “Mona’s” in our home so, since we were going to be soclose to Paris while in London, we decided to take a “quick trip” to Paris on the Eurostar. We are both so glad we did.

So many highlights - and many unexpected moments - like the guy who chased after us while we were at Sacre Coeur taking a photo of the far off Tower Eifel - we were taking a picture of the Eifel Towrer and he had taken a picture of us taking the picture. How very meta!

Anyway, he ran after me and offered to air drop the pic. Now, I don’t know about you but that really sounded like a scam of some sort. He noticed my hesitation and offered to show me the air drop settings - there was an option for “allow for the next ten minutes only”. I felt abit better about it and allowed the drop. However, I was so worried that I immediately turned the feature off as soon as I got the pictures and even turned the phone off lol.

But I’m glad that I took the chance as it’s now one of our all time favorite photos. I got his name from the air drop records but I have not been able to track him down. I probably never will but I wish we lived in a world where I was less suspicious - I would buy he and his girlfriend a drink for their thoughtfulness.

There was also the unexpected moment of walking along the Seine and realizing that a double rainbow filled the sky behind us - and then we saw it again later while we were still on the Tower. Those pictures are included too, of course.

Probably the most moving and meaningful unexpected moment came on our final morning - our train wasn’t going to leave until 4pm so we had a good chunk of a day to fill - we took a long walk from our hotel to Notre Dame, buying a pint of rasberries along the way (not pictured) and then, once at the church, we happened to arrive just as a mid day service was starting. I’m not Catholic but what a thrill going to church at Notre Dame!

We had such an incredible time in Paris and we cannot wait to go back and explore more. We covered a lot of ground in 48 hours, but that doesn’t begin to scratch the surface, of course.

First, Monday (3/9) was my birthday (I love celebrating my birthday)- thanks to those who dropped well wishes, always appreciated! I spent last weekend toggling between celebrations with my husband and my head buried deep in iMovie creating a video diary from our trip to London and Paris in January which I posted and you can see here. It's been two months since that trip and I figure it's now or never. Warning, it’s 12 minutes which, in the era of short attention spans, might seem like the equivalent of watching all 9 Star Wars movies in a row. :)

Second, I’ve been at the contract job for the past six weeks and it’s been busy but not crazy (what a nice change!!). I’m starting to run events after spending some time onboarding and learning how the team works and (knock on wood) so far so good. In addition, because of my extensive emcee and theatrical experience, I was asked to lead/‘emcee’ a new coffee taste test event they're calling "baristAI" - it's like being a wine somm but with coffee (as a side note, did you know that there is such a thing as a ‘water somm’? I kid you not. My work friends and I learned all about this when a ‘water somm’ reached out to me, promoting their service at a previous job. I honestly thought it was a joke but no, apparently it’s a real thing, but I digress).

Anyway, this taste test uses an AI agent to record answers and collect data. It was developed by a group of colleagues outside the country and they thought it might be a fun service that the events department could offer account executives as a way to show how the AI agent works in real life.

So a few of us from the event and culinary team worked together to assemble all the pieces and it turned out pretty good (“pretty good” is my Midwestern way of saying it went incredibly well). It’s one of those rare things when you look around the room and feel like everyone there has your back…. and you feel like they might be starting to feel confident that I have their back as well.

Anyway, it was a nice accomplishment and I’m starting to exhale. But not really. This weekend, I'm gonna hunker down to finish the "Paris diary" video from our Jan trip (which will be much shorter than the epic 12 minutes) and I am hungry to get to my comics and the memoir.

Drop a note to say hey and wishing each of you a fabulous Friday and an awesome weekend!

I still love London with a white hot intensity, but, interestingly, he and I fell in love with Paris (I’d been before but it had honestly always just felt cold and distant to me). When we returned, I wanted to put this video diary together immediately, but (sigh) Life got in the way (hence a lack of postings these past few weeks). Thankfully, my schedule is finally tamping down a bit for me to get back to writing and comics.

Anyway, I first encountered London when I was there on a study abroad program in 1986 - it’s where I came out and met my first boyfriend. I went back to work for 6 months in 1987-88 and then have been back many times over the years. You could easily say that I’ve had a 40 year love affair with London.

Below is a picture of me at Stonehenge - the left is from October 1986 and the right is from January 2026. I didn’t take the original with me so I wasn’t standing in the exact same place but you get the drift.

As a side note, in 1986 I sure was proud of that leather jacket that I bought at Bermans.

And, as another side note, just after the 2026 picture, the hat I was wearing blew off my head and into the adjacent pasture - a security guard, a large Scottish man, who raved about Scotland, retrieved it for me. We ended up buying a beautiful plaid ‘flat cap’ in the Stonehenge store after the Mister expressed his preference for that over the faux fedora.

In my fantasies, I find a way to live/work in London again for six months or so before I get too old to do so, but I know that the likliehood is small for so many reasons (not only age but world events and all) but I will continue to love the city and the country for as long as I live.

I first created this ‘headshot’ graphic for my 50th and various friends labeled it “the history of the hair”. Well, they weren’t wrong. My hair has been stick straight, curly (well, <blush> permed to within an inch of its life for a couple years), parted, mohawked, high and tighted and so on.

During Covid I also shaved it all down to make it easier to manage during lockdowns. I loved the look but it was not well received by those around me. As I age, the hair gets thinner and at some point, I may not have much of a choice (I”m secretly looking forward to this day - I think a beard and a shaved head is a very sexy look). Anyway, I updated for my 60th and just now for my 62nd.

There’s a few photos missing from 1996 - 2005 owing to my other career. When I first made this, I was having all sorts of thoughts and feelings about that and opted to leave it out. As I wrestle with it all and how public I want to be about it, I think I may re construct this at some point and include those shots in… but no time today to do that.

Anyway, my actual birthday is a work day so (frown) on that but whatchagonnado? The Husband and I had a couple of dinners and cocktails this weekend and this year, that’s enough. :)