Prattle Call

This week’s new Dustinland comic is about the nervous polite chit chat that most meetings begin with. This is not limited to remote meetings, although they seem to make it a bit worse. But even in the office you have it. There’s that silence when everyone is just filing in and the first attendees feel the need to fill the void with something, but we’re not all friends so we all just wind up talking about the most nothingness of nothings. It’s honestly not even talking, it’s more like a ritual of politeness, like bowing.

I think the most painful for me personally is people from warm sunny places like LA talking about the weather. Either that or “got any weekend plans?”

Resignation

This week’s new Dustinland comic is about what it’s like to start a new gig during a pandemic.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I love working from home. But I love the freedom to WFH when I want or need to. What is wearing on me is the need to WFH all the time. It just starts to get depressing being in the same room all day, every day, and then even when you’re in this sort of life-changing situation, you’re still there, and the feeling of newness that usually comes with a new job is muted.

Have you experienced this? That would mean you’re part of The Great Resignation — the huge amount of people getting new jobs during 2021. Hence the title. See what I did there?

March of Progress

This week’s new Dustinland comic is about the steady devolution of my wardrobe during pandemic quarantine times. I do like the title quite a bit… in case you don’t get it right off the bat, the classic illustration of ape evolving into man is called “March of Progress” and it’s March, but the progress I’m talking about is not quite as positive. More like, progressing into extreme comfort yet ultra-laziness.

Additionally, the strip is in a bit of a different format than my usual downward scrollers, harkening back to the olden days of horizontal comics meant for the desktop. However, in this case, it’s more horizontal than ever before… one long image, scrolling left to right. I did this really to test what’s possible on mobile (sorry desktoppers). I’ve been looking at a lot of comic art lately and feeling a bit constrained by the tiny boxes we have to fit our art into these days in order to be seen, since most people are looking at everything on their tiny phones. So everything is a square. Content for squares. Which is fine. I like being read. And easy — just cut and paste a ton of square templates and go to town. But it certainly does limit storytelling. In some ways, it would be like telling a cinematographer you can only use one lens for an entire movie.

We’ll see how this works. If people enjoy it, maybe I’ll try a few more experiments in the coming weeks.

Won’t Take This Sitting Down

This week’s new Dustinland comic is about what it’s like to deal with remote learning and WFH at the same time. Either one on its own… not so bad. Both together…. prettttttttty frustrating.

Also, extra note here. I often portray my wife as being the sitcom foil to my dad dreams. It’s not really like that in real life, but it is a convenient and easy to understand mechanism that serves my purposes and lets the joke always be on me. Just like Chris Rock… I got my comic wife, and my real wife.

Home Grueling

Ahhh this new Dustinland comic is NOT about politics for a change. Really nice to take a break from that. Not that I am suggesting it’s time to take a break from caring, but after election season, we all deserve a break.

This week’s strip is about home schooling during quarantine. But it’s not like, super stressful or serious. It’s just good clean fun at the expense of frustrated parents, who would be frustrated anyway by something else, but now it’s this, or that, or the other thing your kid is doing when you’re home together all day. And all winter. Oh boy it’s gonna be a lonngggggg winter.

Cracks

This week’s new Dustinland comic is obviously about the stress caused by months of quarantine. For me personally, it’s less about the fear of getting sick and more about dealing with the monotony and frustrations of day to day existence right now. In particular, balancing work and parenting. Of course I am grateful for my awesome life etc… it’s just that right now there’s a lot of bullshit going on and it’s hard to not let it slowly get to you. This past week I really noticed it creeping in.

As for the absurdist ending, that’s not meant to be something negative, but most people take it that way. Really it just means that life is meaningless is silly, so why stress over it. Just laugh and go with the flow and try to enjoy it, or at least “enjoy” it. Kind of like a dark version of eastern philosophy, but without the enlightenment or reincarnation parts.

Essential

This new Dustinland comic is about the people keeping our society functioning right now… or better yet, it’s about how it feels to not be one of them. I mean, in terms of the complexity of the way our economy works, everyone is “necessary” in the sense that all these parts keep the money moving, keep tax dollars flowing… basically us “unessential” white collar workers do help pay the essential workers. But it still feels weird working from home and having some person making minimum wage bring food to my house like a servant. I’m grateful of course. I have a great life. These are just weird times that make certain things about our civilization hit home.