I was approached by a writer whose work I greatly admire to collaborate on a pitch for a potential new comic project. It’s meant a short interruption in Socks and Barney but new S&B strips are on the way. Sorry for the delay. When I’m free to post some preview art from the new project, I will.

– Steve

Socks and Barney original art is now available for sale. Each piece is an 11×17 one-of-a-kind illustration inked on plate bristol. The lettering is printed on the board beforehand and all the characters are inked in brush. (Though Socks’ whiskers are done with a thin Micron pen :)  ). Each piece is signed.

The only pages that are available at this time are the ones from 2009. I’ll be adding paypal “buy now” buttons to the pages. In the mean time, if you’re interested in a piece or want to buy more than one, pop me a note (#228 is no longer available).

– Steve

I was trying to figure out why I have so little interest in seeing the Watchmen movie and I think it’s because the adaptation is supposed to be so faithful to the original.

In that case, what’s the point? It’s not going to be better than the original.

I wanted to see Sam Raimi’s take on Spider-man, Jon Favreau’s take on Iron Man, Bryan Singer’s take on X-Men and Superman, Christopher Nolan’s take on Batman, Tim Burton’s take on Batman and Ang Lee’s take on the Hulk.

In all those cases, I like the director’s work and wanted to see their version of the character(s) and story.

The only thing I’m curious to see in Zack Snyder’s take on Watchmen is seeing how well they recreated the sets and scenes from the comic.

Watchmen is simply a brilliant graphic novel. The design, the execution, the literary strength not only expanded the comics form, it fully embraced the medium and was a uniquely built from the ground up to work as a comic book.

A movie version of it holds, for me, as much interest as an operatic version or a radio version.

I’ll probably see it some day. But I’m in no hurry.

I did reread the graphic novel though. It’s still terrific.

– Steve

Jim Cramer on December 2, 2008:  “U.S. Will Not Have Another Great Depression”

Jim Cramer on April 3, 2009: “Right now, right here on this show — I am pronouncing the Depression over.”

The thing we will not have is over. And it’s the subject of Monday’s strip.

The reason the “experts” didn’t call it a depression before now is because they’re part of the problem.

The mainstream media was propping up the economy. They downplayed the warning signs of the housing bubble and the combination house-of-cards and pyramid scheme of the bogus securities markets. They knew, rightly so, that if the markets tanked, they’d be screwed.

The economy was in the crapper following the dot com burst. The fed and markets created and green-lit the synthetic securities and housing bubble in order to do what every good CEO does, put a band aid on the problem and get your golden parachute before the next sucker takes over.

I don’t blame Cramer, per se. The real villains were the real estate industry “experts” who went on TV and dismissed all talk of a housing bubble as nonsense. I blame every “news” program that decided to give those bastards equal time opposite reasonable observers who said that the pattern of near-geometric increases in housing prices which were being sold to people with poorer and poorer financial prospects was obviously doomed.

But the media outlets knew that as long as people kept buying houses they couldn’t afford, that the media outlets would be okay - filling their air time and commercial space with ads for real estate and financial services. Those are the numbers I want to see: how many column inches of the Washington Post and New York Times were filled with ads for real estate? How many for financial services? How many hours of commercial time on CNN and Fox were for real estate and financial services?

That’s why the media is hurting now - those ads are gone.

With each month that the bubble didn’t burst, our condition got worse. Each day, more and more people were being suckered into the system by a cowardly, ignorant and/or complicit media.

The argument being made by media and “experts” who are now trying to cover their asses is: you don’t yell “fire” in a crowded movie theater.

You do if it’s on fire.

And you try to make sure everyone gets out in as orderly and as safely a manner as possible and you make God damned sure nobody else enters. Pretending it’s not on fire or glossing over the risk just gets more people hurt. And making a buck at their expense of their suffering is pure evil.

– Steve

This is just weird. The GOP has been blasting Obama’s economic plans - and from a libertarian and small-government perspective, there’s a case to be made - but what do they present when they announce their counter-budget… a 19-page document that contains no numbers. Seriously.

Jason Linkins of Huffington Post has a good summary and video clips of the trainwreck and aftermath here.

I overheard the above line at a coffee shop the other day. A woman was talking about how Obama’s presence on TV made her feel good. A few days later, that same sentiment was part of a review of the President’s second prime-time press conference in the Washington Post. The same edition of the Post (I think it was the same one - it’s been a crazy week), had a front page story about the Obama administration’s apalling continuation of Bush’s expansion of the “states secret privilege.   I really thought the honeymoon would be over by now. The continued adoration is the inspiration for Thursday’s strip.

Cool news. I just found out the collection of my Astounding Space Thrills comics (published by IDW) has been nominated for a Rondo Award. Check out rondoaward.com for details.

The first page of my new comic project Bloop has been posted at http://www.bloopstree.com.

The week on the road was just what I needed. Great fun, great people, pure exhaustion and I’m more excited than ever about comics. Megacon has - for years - been more of a manga/anime show than a pure comic book show and the I took the opportunity to launch my new project BloopsTree.com. Bloop is a space monkey character I’ve worked on over the years but thanks to the past 18 months and 250 comic strips spent drawing Socks and Barney, my skills are where they need to be to relaunch Bloop in a format that feels right.

Bloop won’t follow the daily episodic format of Socks and Barney but will feature two new, color pages a week of a extended storyline. My blog at Bloop will focus on the production of the strip and the pursuit of a publisher for the collected work.

I’ll be continuing Socks and Barney, not to worry. Each project scratches a different itch.

Thanks again to everyone for your continued support!

– Steve

I’m heading to Megacon in Orlando, Florida. I’ll be there promoting my new web project - which I’ll be linking to shortly. If you’re in the area, be sure to stop on by.

Socks and Barney will be on vacation until I get back but I may see about posting a strip without the use of my fancy schamncy studio and scanner.

– Steve