A New 'Toon Collection is Coming Soonish!

The spoils of procrastination

From about 2012 till 2018, I put together one, or sometimes two, books a year of my collected ‘toons from my website The Panda Chronicles. I got up to Book 8 (The Pinky Defense) and then I think the accumulated weight of the Former Guy’s malfeasance kind of got to me and I didn’t do another book until last year.

Being rather old school (not to mention old) I start in my sketchbook, write a script for a 4 panel ‘toon, figure out how to draw what I’ve written and where all the speech balloons should go. Then I do it all over again on a nice piece of smooth Bristol paper in pencil, making minor refinements and editing as I go. Then I draw over the pencil with pen and ink.

I’ve gotten much better at organizing them, from my early days of doing this, creating an annual numbering system, and storing the paper ‘toons in the order I did them. They are organized into folders after scanning them into my computer, where I can clean up any ink goobers, or places where the pencil didn’t erase cleanly.

When I’m ready to do a book, I take out my box of paper drawings and start rearranging them into coherent story lines. Once I’ve done that, I can find the already scanned and cleaned up images in the computer.

When I finally dragged myself out of my pandemic stupor, I realized I had enough books to make 3 new books, which seemed like a lot of work. As I went through the ‘toons, I realized many of them were overtly political, commenting on the events of the last 6 or 7 years. So I separated those out, and last year did a new book, Book 9 of the Panda Chronicles: What could Possibly Go Wrong? There are many politically adjacent ‘toons in there, because, hello? Have you been here since 2016?

As I arranged and sorted and then sorted again, I realized I didn’t want to make two books of the political ‘toons, even though I had enough. I wanted to make one backbreaking, heart stopping, rage, and anxiety producing volume of the ‘toons from the years of TFG, which unfortunately have not stopped since he was voted (resoundingly) out of office.

I’ll share more about it when it is closer to done. Because I have portrayed TFG as an extremely deranged cat named Mittens, I decided to call this book: Litter Box of Chaos: the Mittens Years. I mean, heck! Every one else is making bank by writing books about TFG. Why not me?

Here’s one more ‘toon from the book:

Well, I need to get out of my computer, as the wind is picking up and there is always the possibility of a power outage. I must grind coffee and put a little water aside. Priorities!

see you when the lights come back on!