Well, if  the brain really is the House of Ideas, it’s a good thing to occasionally rearrange the furniture.

Paris was great. Very artistically stimulating and personally reassuring to anyone trying to make comix as their chosen artform (you’ll be getting a bunch posts and reviews from my Paris trip this week on the blog).

I spent a lot of the time there looking at some of the painting that drove me most to become a painter and visiting comic shops that reminded me of the long-standing, childhood love I have for this kind of story-telling. It really was a treat to step outside of the American sensibility towards the comicbook industry and see what things are like in other markets. I really suggest anyone out there making comix (or any form of art) take time to do that now and again; look beyond what you think the goal is in your own success towards how others might enjoy the work you do.

So while I keep drawing pages for ULYSSES “SEEN” while on vacation (taking the work with me is actually my favorite kind of holiday!), Josh and Mike have been a bit busy with other jobs while I was gone. This has left me in the unusual and enviable position of being a bit ahead of schedule after a long trip.

(New pages will return to the site soon with six page installments so we can still finish “Telemachus” before Christmas.)

So I’ve actually had a week or so here to think about other projects besides this one and get some writing done. You may see some bits and pieces of those here (and on my facebook page).

The difficult thing about being focused on such a big project as ULYSSES  is how easy it is to lose one’s own narrative approach to the author you’re working with. Joyce is particularly easy to become lost in. While I’m a big fan of collaborations in comix, it’s sometimes nice to just get back to the kind of stories that are in my own head. It’s a story-tellers medium, after all. One that allows you to do things no single painting or drawing could manage. So some of the “No Sunday” entries in the following week will cover the writing process of comix, something that’s a bit of mystery to myself as well. I’d be happy for any comments and feedback from people who might understand the process differently (or better).

So, lots of words this week, folks, then bigger installments of the comic to catch us all up.