Complaint Department

Ugggh so I did something awful to my back by slipping on the ice in a hilarious fashion. I didn't make it out to the studio today and I think bending over my drawing table will hurt too much.

waah waah waah

here's some sketchbook page instead.

xo

mm

Giant Cat

That's all.

Don't Touch the Floor

I used to play this a lot. I know someone who made it from the living room sofa to the toilet without touching the floor. Then he peed into it while standing on it. This was in college. Classic.

Also, I just got a second book of Andre Francois's work, The Half-Naked Knight. I already had The Tattooed Sailor. They are both amazing. His jokes are funny, but in this really weird, sobering way. He reminds me a lot of Saul Steinberg too. The Half Naked Knight has some drawings about artists, which are beautiful and spot on, man.

Here are some of my favorites...they pretty much sum up how I feel every day. Well, flowers coming out of my head is how I hope to feel.

Jim Lawson draws a Freddy Strip!

So, after I graduated from Hampshire College in 2006, I got to be an intern at Mirage Studios in Northampton, MA. I didn't know that much about comics but I knew I wanted to do them and know more about them. I got to work with Jim Lawson, Michael Dooney, Eric Talbot, and Steve Murphy (I didn't see Peter Laird much...). I mostly scanned all the back issues for the archives. (Also I got to see the basement, which is full of every TMNT object ever created!)

They were all so awesome to me, and lent me comics, and took me to the comic shop that they went to every week. It was an incredible experience, and propelled me towards the cartooning life that I have now...

AND guess what...Jim Lawson drew a Freddy strip!!! Do you know Jim's work? He is amazing. You can read his whole book Paleo:Loner on this blog. I always loved his work a lot, and he is just an all around really great person. I'm so glad to have this beautiful version of Freddy drawn by him!!!

Thanks Jim!!!

You can read the other strips here: http://www.mmmendes.com/freddy/dailies/

Eats

Chuck and I went to Beirut Restaurant in Troy, NY today after buying some comic books. It was awesome. We were the only ones there and their son was doing his homework at one of the tables and it was like we were in this couples' home. The food was awesome too. He handed us the paper plates of Baba Ghannouj like they were on the finest china. Highly recommended!

This really happened to me. I think it's the first embarrassing moment I had in my life, that I can remember. I was the kind of kid who wouldn't be in photos. I yelled at people to stop when they tried to sing Happy Birthday to me. Any kind of attention was bad.

Then once I was at an Italian restaurant with a whole ton of my family, aunts and uncles and stuff, and I ordered a club soda, and everybody laughed at me. I slid off the booth and under the table with humiliation.

Trauma! To this day I can't drink club soda. That's a lie. I can. But I don't want to much.

Sailing, Sailing

No much to say on the home front, except that I got these new slippers for myself that are basically like if you took a sheep and turned it inside out and then put it on your feet. They are amaaazzziingg.

Farts are Funny

And here's a sketchbook page. I'm working on a new character for a new story...

It's a Guest!

Another guest strip, this time by Alex Kim! Alex is my long time CCS and Sundays buddy. He is incredibly talented. He also has great hair. You should definitely read all of his stuff, especially the most recent one he's posted on his blog, Night Machine. I mean, look at this! It's insane! Those colors!

oh, p.s.

School Sux!

Also, I read some really great things on the internet today.

An interview with the wonderful Steve Bissette. I miss that guy.

this comic by Max de Radigués that I missed a while ago in 7Days weekly

This comic by Vanessa Davis for Tablet magazine (all of her comics are amazing! I especially like this one because it's about Zumba, and I'm one of the 12 million or whatever people that are doing Zumba right now)

And this! My best bud, also known as Chef Zoe, has brought her place of work, Cafe Xoho, into the best new restaurants in Tel Aviv of 2011! GOD I wish it were easier for me to get over there.

Happy Hollandaise

I had a vacation! It was lovely. I hope yours was also lovely.

I mean, every day is kind of a vacation here.

Here is the first comic strip that I have drawn in 2012.

I don't know how many of you have been following my blog since last year...but if you have, thank you a million. And thank you for looking at it now if you never have before, and everyone in between.

For those of you who have been following me that long, you probably knew that 2011 was a shitty time. It was a struggle for a lot of reasons...or maybe for no reason at all. I shared a lot of it on this blog, a lot of dark stuff...

And then, things actually got way worse before they started to get better. But, I'm here. I made it. I am planning on writing about it more in the future, when I am a little further away from it. (It's weird calling it "it". What is it even? Depression I guess. It's a scary word.) Right now I'm working on being here and focusing on the good things in my life.

So, yeah. I love all of you. Thanks for your responses and thoughts when things were bad and when they are good. I'm already feeling like 2012 is going to be awesome.

At least, I'm going to stop taking things so seriously. That was wicked boring. It's time to laugh more. At everything. Like these old episodes of Keeping up with the Kardashians that I can't stop watching.

Here, I made these terrariums for my family for Jesus's Birthday

Click through for more pictures.

xo,

mm