The Moose Riders, Page 43

This page? Two weeks early. First time in two years that I’ve had more than 1 page in the buffer.

My wife is pretty good at anticipating potential conflict and figuring out ways to avoid it, or defusing it when it can’t be avoided. I tend to react with angry yelling. In calm moments I can see that her method is more effective, but when I do the whole firm-yet-calm-correction thing and it doesn’t work, I lose my brain.

So a friend of mine told me last week that she saw someone wearing a Moose Riders shirt at a local Sam’s. My first thought was, “Isn’t there some sort of motorcycle club that calls themselves ‘Moose Riders?’ Probably a coincidence.” Then she told me the shirt ALSO had my name on it. That would be a pretty major coincidence. It’s possible that the Moose Riders has an actual fan, but given the fact that this person lives near me, she could simply be a friend doing me a favor be spreading word of the Moose Riders through fashion. Either way, friend or fan, if you are reading this and that was you at Sam’s the other day, send me a pic of you in your fancy shirt so I can make a fan gallery of some sort!

This also brings up the issue of Moose Riders merchandise. Is there a call for MR t-shirts? This comic isn’t exactly full of funny catch-phrases, but I could put together some shirts with the logo or characters or something if anyone is interested. Not exactly sure how to have them produced–I know there are a ton of POD services out there for this, but I don’t know much about their print quality. I think I might like to have them screen-printed, but I don’t really want to put the cash up front for that. Thoughts?

Blog

Donate to CC4F–Stop Human Trafficking!


‘Sup, homies? Ready to do something nice for the human race? Well, here’s your chance. Comic Creators for Freedom begins their annual donation drive today. Donate $5 or more and you get a totally sweet wallpaper showing 127-ish female characters in this epic snowball fight. Even more importantly, your generous donation gets split between two very worthy causes in the fight against human trafficking, Love 146 and Gracehaven House. Help out.

CC4F Drive starts next Monday!

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can
change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.” -Margaret
Mead

Wednesday, January 11th is National Human Trafficking Awareness Day. To participate, we formed the Comic Creators for Freedom – a group of over 100 comic book creators who volunteered our artistic talents to raise money and awareness for this cause. You may not know it, but there are currently 27 million enslaved people worldwide- more than double the number of enslaved Africans during the trans-Atlantic slave trade. UNICEF estimates that 1.2 million children every year are sold into slavery, most of it sexual. The US Department of Justice estimates 16,000 victims of human trafficking are brought into the United States every year. Unlike slavery in the past, what is happening today is happening in secret.
It won’t end until awareness is raised, and people like you and me take a stand.

So here’s what we did: each creator contributed an original drawing of one of our own female characters, and combined them into a single wallpaper image! The wallpaper features characters from all over the web, including
Girls with Slingshots, The Dreamland Chronicles, Kukuburi, Earthsong Saga, Looking for Group, Love and Capes, The Dreamer, The Moose Riders, and tons more! Donate today to download this unique, once-in-a-lifetime wallpaper. The Donations Drive will last for two weeks, from Monday January 9th – 20th. All proceeds will be split evenly between Love 146 and Gracehaven House- two organizations working on rehabilitation of victims and prevention of this crime.

To learn more about the CC4F visit www.comiccreatorsforfreedom. To learn more about the problem, visit http://love146.org/slavery. (Note: contains adult themes and actual accounts of sex slavery.)

Comic Creators for Freedom!

CCF BadgeOk, so there’s this group of cartoonists/illustrators that have been doing this awesome fundraising thing to help put a stop to human trafficking. The theme this time around is “Epic Snowball Fight!” Each participant is drawing one of their female characters either throwing or getting hit by a snowball. All these characters will be put together into a big snowy Battle Royale wallpaper for the fine folks who donate during the big drive in January. Cool, right? Anyhow, I volunteered to be a part of it. I’m drawing Lola–you can see an early shot of the WIP over on my dribble account.

Changes

I’ve upgraded to the latest version of WordPress, Webcomic, and Inkblot, and a few things have changed a bit. Still trying to tweak some stuff, but I wanted to point out the new Character pages I’ve got set up for the Moose Riders. This finally gives the kids their names, which should make my son happy. Now if you look at the bottom of each individual post, there will be a list of each of the main characters. If you click a name, it will take you to a page with a character description and a list of every page that character appears on. Cool, huh? Anyhow, here they are: Lola, Westley, and Moose.

Busy week. Will try to get 25 finished up later next week.

William H. James, 1917-2009

Let me start by saying that Grandpa Sex Machine is NOT based on my grandfather.

My real grandpa was definitely a charming guy who flirted with every woman he met, but he had class and was always a gentleman (not like Gus).

I’ve always heard the stories about how tough Grandpa was–how after he,  his crew mates, and their B-25 got shot up with .50 caliber machine guns and they were getting ready to land, he threatened the pilot that pulled into the flight path in front of him, even though the other guy out-ranked him.  How he kept the bullet in his back for 10 days because the flight surgeon said, “I’ll come back for that later–I’m too drunk right now.”  How they got shot down over China, bounced off a rice paddy, and flew the rest of the way home.  How after being stationed on Guam  his job was to fly inside typhoons (those are hurricanes to you and me).  On purpose.  Repeatedly.  How there were times inside a typhoon when they had the nose pointed straight down and the throttle all the way up but the altimeter kept climbing.

Those are the stories I heard about Grandpa.  What I knew about him first-hand was that he was the man who taught me the importance of filling every crater in your waffle with syrup.  He taught me the whole concept of “Ladies First,” including the bit about holding the door open.  We built a birdhouse together.  We sat at the bar together when I was little and he’d drink a dry martini while I drank a Shirley Temple.  He always insisted on picking up the tab.  He’s the first person I knew with a home computer (an Apple II+), and he encouraged my sister and me to use it/play with it/learn about it.

He had plans to live to 102 and get shot by a jealous husband, but it didn’t quite work out that way.

I love you Grandpa, and I miss you.

Grandpa’s Skate Deck

Are you in desperate need of some Grandpa Sex Machine merchandise?  I thought so.  That’s why I did you the favor of making Gus available on a skate deck.
GSM skate deck

But wait, there’s more!  For all of you old farts (like me) that’ll break a hip if you try to ollie, here’s the GSM longboard, built for cruisin’.

And finally, because all the kids dig the snow sports these days, the GSM snowboard, featuring Grandpa printed on a genuine Donek snowboard.  Sweet.

So think about this stuff for your Valentine–because nothing says “I Love You” like a dirty old man with a thong on his head.