I haven’t been doing much commissioned work recently, but I’ve been plugging away nonetheless, posting comics, videos, and sketchbook pages to my Patreon on a regular basis. On any given week I might post a book report comic drawn on a library call slip, like this one about Sarah Polley’s memoir:
A month and change into the quarantine, and things have settled into a routine. Every morning I wake up around 6:30, have coffee and a frozen banana for breakfast (I’m trying to avoid putting on quarantine weight as well as using less toilet paper), feed Winston, post dreams to Facebook, and then work until noon, when I have… another cup of coffee (and feed Winston some dry food). Eve usually answers work emails for an hour or so in the morning, then goes outside to do stuff in the garden. After noon I usually put in a little time pulling weeds (the focus this week- bluebells!), work in the studio for a few more hours, maybe take a leisurely bike ride around the neighborhood in the afternoon. At seven, just before dinner, (and around the time Winston gets his third feeding- he’s a growing boy), Eve & I go outside and bang pots and pans or beat on a drum with our neighbors. Theoretically, this ritual honors essential workers, but mostly it just lets off steam. Then Eve & I watch TV: So far we’ve watched Season 3 of Ozark, Mrs. Fletcher, Avenue 5, Season 9 of Curb Your Enthusiasm, Some of Dave and What We Do In The Shadows, and two and a half seasons of Better Things. I usually get sleepy and head off to bed between 9 and 10.
Some weekly events punctuate the Groundhog’s Day sameness. Saturday morning we do our weekly Zoom conference with scattered family. Wednesday evening garbage goes out. Various podcasts arrive on schedule to tell me what day it is. Ken Jennings’s Trivia Quiz email tells me it’s Tuesday.
I’ve been making little tweaks here and there to my Patreon page. Recently, I decided to add links connecting all the Call Slip Comics I have posted over the past few years. Cheer your confinement by recalling the bygone days of when libraries were still open! Now you can read the strips in order, starting from the very first:
David Chelsea is reading: Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up With Me
by Mariko Tamaki and Rosemary Valero-O’Connell
Continue reading Quarantine Continues
I have sad news to report. My old friend Steven Abrams died late last month of a heart attack at the age of 54. I first met Steve in 1992 at the San Diego Comics Convention when he was an intern with my first publisher Eclipse, and when he moved to New York shortly afterwards he became my assistant and letterer on Welcome To The Zone. After I moved to Portland and Steve moved to LA, we kept in touch by mail, even when everyone else had switched to pixels, and actually Steve was my last regular snail mail pen pal.
David Chelsea is watching:The Little Hours
starring Kate Micucci
Continue reading RIP, Steven Abrams
Here’s something I’ve been meaning to post about for some time, and I have finally found a break in my hectic schedule (which has lately consisted mostly of napping and coughing up phlegm- I’m coming off a bad cold).
David Chelsea is reading:Laughter in the Dark
by Vladimir Nabokov
Continue reading End Strips And Call Slips