Dustinland – Early Life Crisis

This is one of those serious comics. Sometimes you just have to get something off your chest. Maybe you just write it down and don’t show anyone. Maybe you draw something. Maybe you write a song. Maybe you just tell a friend. Maybe you put up a post in your blog. I don’t know what works for you. I just know that sometimes I need to put something down in comic form. It might not make any difference, it might not make the world a better place, but at least it helps me feel better, despite what you may think after reading this week’s sob story. And maybe there’s someone out there who will read my comic and relate to it and they’ll feel better too. I guess that’s what art is really about. Coping, connecting, and feeling just a little bit less alone.

Birdy 1,000!!!!!!!!

Wow. I cannot believe there have been 1,000 Birdys. This strip started out as a silly little joke — a satirical statement on the sad state of comic strips today. But then people started following it, and now there are plenty of Birdy fans who don’t like Dustinland. Speaking of Birdy fans, Birdy 999 is an actual photo sent in by an awesome reader who found himself in Tokyo for work. I mean, are you kidding? A little grumpy blue bird refusing free food with a hearty “NO!”? Incredible.

Anyway, enjoy Birdy 1,000 — and thanks so much to Edgar Vicioso for all your hardwork in making it happen!

* note, as of 8:40, Tuesday, Birdy 1,000 has been changed to a Flash file to save my bandwidth. The page looks a little different but that’s out of my control since I know nothing about Flash or Javascript or Flashava Jashweaver.swf.mov files.

Dustinland — Facebook Flake Frustration

When I was in college, there was no Myspace. No Friendster. People didn’t even have cell phones or iPods. So now finally Facebook is catching on big with people my age, people who couldn’t be a part of the original site back when it was strictly a college thing. And let me tell you, people come out of the woodwork on this site worse than they ever did on Myspace or any other site I’ve been a part of. But the thing I don’t get, the thing I talk about in this week’s Dustinland, is this: why would you search for someone from your past, send them a message, then not reply back once they respond to you? I can see just clicking “Add as friend” but once you go through the trouble to send a message, you’re saying, hello, I’d like to start a dialogue with you. And okay, fine. I have no problem send a paragraph of email to someone I haven’t seen since second grade if that’s what they want. But don’t leave me hanging then. Don’t leave me feeling like I’m the asshole begging for a friend here. It’s like asking someone out on a date, then not picking them up. Unbelievable. I know a lot of this can be attributed to laziness but that’s no excuse. I think our generation is just too ADD. Nobody has the time for anything anymore. People used to write letters. Now they can’t even type in a few sentences.

Rex In The City in July MAD Magazine

Make sure to pick up a copy of the July issue of MAD Magazine (a Narnia spoof is on the cover)! I’ve got a “Rex in the City” strip in there. For those of you who don’t know, “Rex in the City” is a strip of mine that occasionally runs in MAD. The main character is named — surprise — Rex, and the strip is closer to Dustinland than it is to Birdy. It’s pretty obvious where I got the title, and sadly, I just found out that the show is actually “Sex AND the City” not “IN the city.” I mean, I don’t watch the show and when people say it out loud, it’s hard to tell if it’s IT or AND. Oh well. I learned this from a comment on Reddit regarding this recent Birdy strip, and the comment went something like this: “It’s Sex AND the City, and your comic is shit.” Yikes. Sorry SJP fans — it’s Birdy, not me. Okay, it’s me too. That show fucking blows.

Dustinland — Babies and Zebras

Everyone I know seems to be having babies. My office is ridiculous. Babies everywhere. Every day someone else is bringing in their newborn. And they’re all so cute. Oh, look at me — I’m an adorable baby! Here to replace you! And take all your stuff and be totally ungrateful and grow up to be a surly teenager who likes horrible music and doesn’t want to be seen with you at the mall! And that’s the subject of this week’s Dustinland. Well, that and the creeping anxiety all these babies give me, since I know that there’s a ticking clock, just clicking away until my turn at daddyhood. Thankfully it’s not very close to midnight but even the thought of having to take it seriously is enough to make a grown child like me cry.

Birdy found Waldo

I think this Birdy is pretty awesome, if I don’t say so myself.

Dustinland — CERN’s Large Hadron Collider

This week’s Dustinland is on some real life nerd isht. I don’t know if you read sites like Reddit, but a while back there were links to stories about this giant particle accelerator all over the place. Apparently it’s a pretty big deal and they’re about to use it to do some crazy experiments and learn some stuff about the universe. Some haters are saying it could create black holes and destroy Earth and that the scientists are being all reckless and stuff, just like when they were first testing the atomic bomb and they were like “this might blow up the entire atmosphere but let’s give it a shot anyway.” Most people seem to think the hadron collider will not destroy the planet so I’m feeling pretty good about it. Relax everyone — Earth will not be destroyed this summer in one fell swoop.  Now go back to slowly destroying it.

Dustinland – Half Day

There are some things that just send certain people over the edge, and for me, this is one of them. I mean, when someone is walking out the door at 5:00 PM, you don’t say anything other than “See you tomorrow” or “Have a nice night.” Maybe you can say “Nice to see you’re getting off at a decent hour finally,” but even that may be pushing via subtle connotations. See, I’m leaving work at the end of the day. What business is that of yours? Do you have to work late? WHOOPDEESHIT! Oh look at you, the martyr! Cry me a river asshole! First of all, how do you know I didn’t just work late every night for two months? Second, either way, SHUT UP and mind your business or I will throw your passive aggressive ass out the window, just like I did in this week’s Dustinland.

Of course in real life I’d probably just smile and make some awkward little unfunny joke. But inside I’d be throwing you out the window.