D.J. Coffman - Sequential Artist, Thinker

Today is “cat gets fixed day!”- No longer will I have to hold him up like a prisoner in my basement and go and give him super treatment, or his daily fitness regimine. Hopefully after today the vulcan-like anger/passion will subside as he wonders…. hey, where did my balls go?

Yesterday was my son Dillon’s birthday. We had a special surprise lined up for him, and that’s all I’m going to say about that. That and THANKS to Jamie, we’re the coolest parents in the gosh darn world right now.

I CANTZ FEELZ MY LEGZ!!!! - Well, I can feel them. But there is a weird tingling numbness on my upper thighs above the knee, feels like very light pins and needles. In my brilliant self diagnosis (see, no health insurance for myself) I’ve deduced that the problem is a side effect of my previous lower back sprain a couple weeks go, wherein I still have a pinched nerve or crink of some kind. Doesn’t help that I’ve been sitting a lot lately, so I’m going to try to get some exercise every night at the kids football practice by walking the track and doing some stretches in the morning.  The numbness is mildly annoying, but I can’t complain too much, I have good friends who have lost legs or are stuck in wheelchairs who are some TOUGH mofos– so they should punch me in the nuts if I’m ever complaining about such things. Of to which, I am not. (sorry, about the rambling deadwood-speak)

WHat else… what else… I’ve been thinking about some complicated political issues lately. In my new side job, I’m hearing a lot of differing opinions about the war. Some people feel like the Flobots “don’t support the troops” or they’re just an anti-establishment band or something, but this couldn’t be farther from the truth. At all of their full sets, they mention the war, but also say no matter how you feel about it we need to support the troops there, pray for them and not just pull them out lickity split, but bring them home responsibly and not leave a vacuum behind. It’s a very tricky, delicate thing, and politics poured on top of it like gravy doesn’t help. I’m not very masterful in diplomatically speaking my mind, when I get an email that’s like “FUCK YOU! I HATE YOU!” I usually delete it and don’t respond. Years ago, I’d maybe write something witty back to make the person angrier, using my amazing passive aggressive superpowers. But I’ve witnessed some pretty tough conversations lately that really make you think about all sides of an issue. Where are people coming from? And the fact that there’s never just two sides to a story, there can be 3 or 4, 100. My friend Jamie seems to have a mastery of this, an easy intuitiveness that’s dead on in most cases. In the lyrics to some of their songs, they write about how words are more powerful than bombs, the pen mightier than the sword, etc… they don’t just talk that talk, I’ve seen the walk. It’s amazing how the right choice of words in what could spiral out into a VERY bad situation, can totally disarm and calm.

Anyways, thinking about all of this stuff is inspiring to me at best. At worst, it makes me want to get out and do more, and that’s not such a bad “worst”. My goal is to somehow be to put a little of that magic into my work somehow. Behind the scenes, I’m creating something special based on all of these things… something that blows the doors off of other stuff I’ve done in the past year or so.

“Change the SWORDS to WORDS and lift continents”, indeed.

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ON a lighter side– the Will Draws keep going along. I’m off to work on some of those post haste. I think I have about… somewhere like 400 waiting to do, and more keep filing in as I go. I have to thank people for their patience, if this were my full time thing, I’d be getting them out a lot quicker. My MAIN goal this week are the WIll Draws. I’m still on orders that came in around the 18th-19th, which was when we had the link on the Whedon blog. After that, I’m cranking into the Seth and Metafilter rush of orders. So crazy! It’s so much fun though! I really do want to collect them all now into one book or something just for fun too. I have a folder on my iphone, they fit perfect and they are awesome to scan through. You know the years and years I did comic strips, in newspapers and on the web, I never really liked to go back and “admire” and enjoy my work, I liked it when I was in the moment drawing it, but could never go back and feel the same way, in fact, i’d go back and realize how boring I’d drawn the talking heads in lame black and white comic strip, almost looking like copy-paste (the kind you see in a lot of online webcomics)– but with these little random things, they are SO much fun to go look back on, just the variety of things I get to draw… I swear, my mind just shuts off, because I come across some and I don’t even remember drawing them, it’s like I’m looking at the drawing for a first time again. You don’t really get that feeling in the day in and day out production of a comic strip. It’s no wonder most of those guys grow to be socially crippled and jaded as they feed that monster.