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?

And now we meet the father. I will try to put together some drawings of the parents for the character pages shortly.

An old friend and strong supporter of The Moose Riders thinks that I should write commentary more often. Not sure if he wants info about what goes into a page, or just a general mind dump. I will maybe give a little of both today.

Chapter 2 is turning out to be a lot more dialogue heavy than Chapter 1. During #1, I got in the habit of not giving a whole lot of thought about word balloon placement during the drawing stages, because there were usually so few of them that I knew I’d be able to find room. Now that habit is biting me in the ass because I find myself having to cram a butt-load of words into these panels I’ve already drawn without covering up important bits, like faces and whatnot. I know sometimes I tend to get wordier than necessary, too. I’ve already pared down dialogue in the script significantly from the earliest drafts, but still find myself editing as I’m lettering in Illustrator.

Maurice Sendak was awesome. I love his work, I love his interviews. I was listening to Fresh Air a while back and heard Terry Gross’s interview with him. Assumed they were replaying it because he had died. Made me sad. Then I saw the Stephen Colbert’s interview with him. I thought, “Wait, Maurice Sendak is still alive?” then just enjoyed the interview because it’s brilliant. When I saw the tweets about his death on Tuesday morning, it took me a bit to sort out the whole “Isn’t he already dead?” thing. Now that I have mourned his loss and celebrated his resurrection two or three times, knowing that this time it’s for real and I won’t find out later that I was mistaken…I’m just sad. His work had a profound effect on my life.

Still thinking about MCA. As a kid, I wasn’t really a Beastie Boys fan. License to Ill was really all I knew of their work, and I thought Fight for your Right was pretty lame. Once I finally gave them a chance and listened to their other stuff, I was hooked. Paul’s Boutique, Check Your Head, and Hello Nasty get pretty heavy play on my iPod. When Adam Yauch was diagnosed with cancer, I was worried, but then the last I heard he was doing fine. I thought it was in remission or something. Clearly I wasn’t paying attention. The man was an artist, and I’m going to miss his work.

Final thought: Go see The Avengers as soon as humanly possible. It kicked so much ass. I’m a big Joss Whedon fan, and he did not disappoint. I thought it started out kind of plot-heavy, and aside from Tony Stark’s dialogue, didn’t seem all that Whedon-esque. That all changed once the Avengers had assembled on that fancy flying aircraft carrier thingy. Great character interaction.

And the Hulk? Holy freakin’ crap. No spoilers, but that one bit? Where he did that thing to that one guy? HOLY FREAKIN’ CRAP. I could not contain myself. I think my reaction might have embarrassed my son a bit. He must have missed the part where everyone else in the theater was having the same reaction.