Originally it was "Legend of the Death Mamma", which is a short comic I scripted but haven't drawn yet.

I was thinking of using this as the title for my upcoming chainmail chicks comic book. The tagline would be "Swords, Skulls, and Kisses". Rated R for nudity, violence, and badassedness.

Got a ring to it, you think?

You know, I talk a big talk about trying to make my work more appealing to a wider audience. Trying to tone down the sex, make inroads to a general sort of folk. But in the end it might simply be the case that I’m an erotic cartoonist and I won’t be satisfied doing anything else.

For some reason it all comes back to tits.

In a sense I suppose that’s a juvenile way of thinking. I’m in some sort of arrested development. But then again I’m a faithful married man with two kids and a decent job. I’m a helluva nice guy. I’m pretty god damned normal, really. Besides the titty drawings and a pretty pervasive, but healthy, skepticism.

So arrested or not, developed or not, what I like to do when I’m not doing normal stuff (working, eating, cooking, chasing kids) is draw hot babes with swords.

And that’s kinda ok with me.

I upgraded to a 23" monitor...and it kicks ass. The space you gain is incredible. I can actually keep more tools on the desktop when I'm drawing and not hide them in the well.

Niiiice. This makes me want to draw and paint very naughty bits.

I was also thinking about being more open for commissions. Y'know...to help pay for this motherfucker.

What a fantastic weekend. Today was beautiful, though hotter than hell. Between the grilled goods, tasty treats, 4-wheeler rides, and throwing bottle rockets it was a day well spent. The kids had a blast and now they're sleeping like stones.

Hey...I'm about to hit 10,000 page views! That's kinda cool. I'll have to dance a jig.

Feeling the sauce. Got Dungeon Minds #107 on the drawing board, sketched and lettered. Rockets set to destroy.

Man, I am getting older than fuck. I’m so attuned to a daily routine that a simple vacation (gods love ‘em) can tailspin me into weeks of meandering like a dottering old fool. Shit, I’m only 40.

Oh gods…I’m 40.

At least I’m still vertical and drawing.

Yeah, life is actually pretty god damned good. The kids are awesome, the wife is tops, I’m stable and sane (?). And I still love to draw comics.

Next up: the decision whether or not to divide Dungeon Minds into two strips. One to be rated R, the other rated XXX. Serious business, folks. Serious business.

Now back to drawing Barb’s boobs.

Oh and hey, looks like I'm rounding up on the arbitrary but psychologically significant 10,000 pageviews.

I drew my first comic when I was about 10. It was 4 pages on a folded piece of paper.

I could not quit drawing comics if my life depended on it. When I talk, a balloon appears above my head. When I leave one place and go to another a caption appears and it says “Soon…” When I die my body will become a TPB.

There are two staples in my middle.

I am comics.

Just hit 9000 pageviews. The universe paused a moment, looked at me, then shrugged and went back to slaughtering trillions of tiny organisms, exploding millions of stars, and forever ending the bloodlines of at least two dozen advanced civilizations.

Meanwhile, I sip some tea and ponder the meaning of it all.

And I think of titties and smile.

Ok, so http://www.dungeonminds.com/ is now updated to the new version. It is much simpler (hell, it was simple before!). All the strips are there.

But I want to do some minor tweaking. For one thing, the gallery is just a random image rotation for now. Hit F5 and you get a new image. I'll gussy that up with thumbnails and all that jazz later. The other thing is the store. I'm going to offer some kind of crap like tee shirts and junk, just in case there is some crazed lunatic out there who wants Murkwand or Johanna or Barb on a shirt.

If anyone has any ideas just spit them out.

Next up: my 1000th post to FA. It is an auspicious number, you know...

You know, I often bemoan the fact that so much of my work is WAY outside the mainstream. I don’t mean mainstream for this website, or even for furry fandom, or even for comic erotic art in general. But I mean general, every day mainstream. I can’t print a copy of Dungeon Minds and show my family. Definitely can’t show my kids.

And that kinda sucks. I mean, I do have work that I can show, but all my energy these days is going into dirty comics.

But here’s the thing. Dungeon Minds is, so far, the closest I’ve come to being utterly happy drawing comics over a long stretch of time. When I took a break from it for the past month or two I was not very creative and not very happy with myself. I need this daily routine of drawing whatever I want. So I’m not sorry at all that I can and am doing it.

We don’t get to pick and choose what makes us tick. We can channel our energy, we can learn to be disciplined to some degree (more for some, less for others), but we don’t really have a choice about what it is that gives us bliss.

Drawing comics gives me bliss. Drawing unfiltered comics gives me even more bliss. When I create, I have to remove every filter I can find, I have to allow myself to explore freely and without any roadblocks. Right now when I do that I end up with dick, fart, and titty jokes in a dungeon setting. A year from now I might end up doing an autobio or exploring philosophy or something like that. I don’t know.

I’m rambling a bit, sleepy, heading off to bed so I can start another day workin’ for the company and juicing life for whatever little bits of sugar I can get out of it.

I hope some folks like my comics. I draw them for my own enjoyment, but I only post them because I like to share.

Good night, John Boy.

If you haven't read Oglaf you suck balls:

http://www.oglaf.com/blank-page/

I love this dude's work. Consistently funny, sexy, and fun to look at. The Viking strips kill me.

If its your first time, go to the beginning and have a fucking blast.

"Temple of Brog" is done and posted, bam. Might color it later.

In the meantime I'm ALMOST finished with Dungeon Minds #89...which I started like a fucking series of months ago. I mean, it's a good episode but trust me I haven't been working on it that long. I stopped cold turkey after inking it and now I'm just picking it back up for color and final lettering.

But bam motherfucker.

Comics are just fun. And I'm too damn old not to have fun.

Three pages inked, four pages to go on the first story. Looking cool, I think.

Starting to settle on the second short story for the comic. "With This Axe I Thee Bled"....

Got the project started, looking good. I’m not blistering with speed or anything, but I have two pages solidly penciled and lettered. Third page is started.

I haven’t settled on a title so I won’t name it yet. I’ll try to share some images as soon as I feel comfortable enough with the progress to do so. What I can say so far is that it isn’t porn but it isn’t all ages either. It is fantasy, it does have a busty femme lead.

In other words, I’m in my comfort zone.

In the hopeless pursuit of gettin’ the job done I have begun a special project. I wiped my slate clean, moved all open projects into a holding folder and made a commitment to only one task. It’s a comic, of course, and I’ll be working on it exclusively until it is finished. Well, exceptions for sketching and such, natch.

When I’m done I’ll have a comic book, which I will offer through one of the POD services like Ka-Blam or ComiXpress. This might sound a bit trivial but trust me when I say it is the medicine I need.

That and the occasional naked catgirl drawing.

You know its a sign that you're way out of synch when your FA New Submissions page says "4375S".

I’ve always admired comics creators who could focus on one thing, finish it, and move to the next thing. Or those who could just focus on that one open ended project forever.

I’m more like a pinball machine. I bounce around hitting lights and bells and making things go bang but not for very long. Sometimes I get a little hang time, hit a few extra buzzers, score some points…but the ball always ends up down the chute of doom only to return to its crazy, random work.

Yeah, that’s right. I’m in an extended artistic funk. I’ve generated a zillion new ideas, lots of new characters, but nothing that is sticking to my ribs. Nothing I care enough about to sink a lot of time into.

I’m not young anymore and if I ever had real dreams of being a big time comics artist those dreams are long, long gone. I’ve kinda always known I’d be underground forever. And that’s cool with me. But even here in the sub-basement of the lower chambers of comics if you’re not getting shit done it feels like a little death inside your soul every day.

I ain’t gonna live forever and I’d like to die with a crapwap of comics behind me.

Now back to the drawing board.

"I got pictures of naked ladies lyin' on the bed"

I tell ya, its sheer poetry.

www.dungeonminds.com is fired up again, updating regularly. But its WAAAAY behind where I'm at here. And I still have some PHP issues to resolve.

Freaking heat went out in the night. I'm cold. Need a blankie.

Yeah, so if you visit the official Dungeon Minds™© website you'll notice that it's stuck on like #30 or something. This is due to some kind of PHP version issue that suddenly came up. I've just been too fucking lazy to dig in and fix it.

I do not enjoy website coding and all that nonsense. I can do it, at least to the extent that I can get a site designed and live. But I'd rather be drawing. That's why I use things like WordPress...I can just upload shit and not have to fuck around with coding 99% of the time.

But I do need to get that sucker fixed. If anyone is haunting the site they think I've stopped working on the comic. Obviously that isn't true. I'm on #83 after only 5 months. That's a big ass record for me.

Now I'm going to take advantage of my time off work and draw some more tonight.

There’s a war on Christmas! Grab your guns and grenades, your blessed bullets and sling shots! The Godless are on the rise, spreading their foul “holiday” greetings, infiltrating all levels of local and Federal government with their evil agenda!

Arise, Soldiers of Light, and prepare for the coming slaughter! St. Nick himself is on a mission from Jesus and his sleigh is loaded with M-16s and rocket launchers, not toys! If you are a Godless Heathen then he’ll be bombing your chimney, not climbing down it!

Pray to God™© that your soul be saved or at least condemned to one of the more scenic vistas of Heck©™.

Oh…and Merry Christmas….

So yeah, I do these cycle things. I might be heavy into something for months then cold turkey it for years. I don't know why. The good news is this gets easier to deal with as I get older. I have more control over it, to some degree.

Take Zyn Dweomer for example. I was on fire with that comic for a year then nothing. Now I'm back into it, trying to finish up the dangling storyline while writing a series of new short stories for the comic. So that's cool.

Meanwhile all this cacophany of ideas has been duking it out in my head trying to win my attention. I've had catgirls, pig girls, robots, and barbarians yanking on my guts in all directions. But what I think will happen is a lot of this will just get played out in Dungeon Minds and Zyn Dweomer. I really don't want or need to start an entirely new series right now. Even though this is the time of the year - every year - when I either start a new project or reinvent an old one.

Got a nice break from working coming up. I'd like to spend it drawing new Dungeon Minds strips. Dirty ones. 'Tis the season...

Wow. So I’ve been drawing Dungeon Minds for like 4 months without looking up from the page, so-to-speak. I drew 74 of these in that time span, which absolutely blows away any of my previous records.

I’m going to slow it down a bit and let myself do other stuff too. I’ve got an idea bouncing around my head that involves lions, tigers, wolves, rabbits and mice.

The takeaway lesson for me from becoming a man of a certain age is that you should enjoy the shit out of what you do. I don’t mean just get a kick out of it or simply get by with it. I mean enjoy the shit out of it. Because one day it will all be over, baby.

Here endeth the lesson.

So let’s see now…I’ve already showed penetration, jizz, and a teaser bj…so I feel safe in saying that Dungeon Minds is officially a dirty minds comic. No shocker really, I love drawing erotic stuff. Mix it with fantasy humor and its just a shitload of fun.

The overwhelming majority of scripts are not explicit. Most of them are in the R rated range. I figure one out of every 6 or 7 will be a little more hardcore. Or something like that. I’m not making a formula or anything.

In fact, I’ve been thining about this a lot lately. I don’t get paid for this stuff, no one is telling me what to do. Yet I’m doing tons of it. I’ve already pushed the comic to the X-rated side. That means I have a perfect platform for doing whatever the fuck I want. Unfiltered, unhinged, fuck all comics. So I’m going to allow my mind to wander now and then and see what kind of stuff comes out.

Expect some strips that are less funny, more serious. Some that will be part of longer series. Some will be pastiches without a real punch line. And some that are just goofy, funny little gags with titties hanging out.

I’ve got a bunch of scripts that have been waiting in the wings for a few months. There is a whole series based on the Church of Satan vs. a rival evil cult. I’ve got tons of in-house drama to unleash. And a bunch of these little series like Leapft Netter’s Observations, Ecoknolwedgies of monsters, Ways to Die in a Dungeon, and of course Nipple Plates!

I might also do some strips that are in a different format. The current format, which I love, is designed to fit a typical manga-sized page (put the last two panels under the first two panels and it fits) so I might do some pages in that format that are more comic "book" and less comic "strip". This is useful when you want to do a longer, tighter story or when you want to emphasize the setting and such.

Should be fun if nothing else.

I don’t get over to the forum a whole lot so I don’t know what kinds of etiquette issues have been hashed out…but what is the prevailing wisdom about thanking folks for faving and watching? I used to thank every time, then I’d just thank once for a fave and not bombard people after that. I would always thank watchers for watching.

But I have read some journals and what-not where people actually dislike that.

My opinion is that thanking a person one time is both polite and respectful. Multiple times seems like overkill. But never thanking at all could send a message that you don’t give a fuck.

Currently I haven’t been posting “thanks” comments. It is easier that way, of course, but I don’t want to seem like a dickhead.