sex & drugs

poppies250.jpg

Here’s page 250-something of HABIBI, along with photos of poppies from my backyard (lush Portland).

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And here’s some of the sprawl of pages from chapter four. As alluded to in the last blog entry, working on a graphic novel can be tedious, isolating, and ridiculous. In terms of PROCESS, it’s probably not the brightest way to produce comics, because several years pass before a creator has new work on the shelves. It seems like all the “with-it youngsters” serialize their books online, sometimes in daily installments; but as a reader, I crave a self-contained reading experience, and intermissions of my own choosing. Half the pleasure of a book is reading it at your own pace. I’m resistant to serialization — and of disposable formats like the “pamphlet comic” and magazines and newspapers. There’s enough trees being sacrificed. Maybe the true issue is the length of a comic book. If only page 250 was the final page of HABIBI, instead of a little more than a third the way through. What do you think?

I guess what I’m trying to say is I’m ever grateful to all of you for your patience!

craigsex & drugs