TRUE SWAMP No. 2, which debuted just a month ago in Minneapolis.  It’s 24 more pages of the new stuff you’ve been peeping on this site (actually, it extends 2 pages farther than what I’ve posted here– I’ll post those 2 pages in a couple of weeks).

and

THE TRUE SWAMP T-SHIRT, with a logo designed by the Metal underground’s notorious “Lord of the Logos” Christophe Szpajdel. That this even happened is just bonkers, and it looks really damn sweet.  This is the first True Swamp shirt since the one I sold 30 pcs of at San Diego Con 1995 (the old one bore the classic ripply TS logo which was drawn in 1993 by my friend Carlos Walker.)

Now, much like a month ago when I posted about the Minneapolis show, we are broke as HELL, so what I want from you people tomorrow is a fucking sellout!  Buy the above items, along with KLAGEN and TRUE SWAMP No. 1, like crazy, and rest content in the knowledge that your money will be spent on groceries, laundry, dog food and metrocards until my next paycheck drops on the 15th.

(I’ll also have some copies of 2000′s TRUE SWAMP: UNDERWOODS AND OVERTIME and 2001′s TRUE SWAMP: STONEGROUND AND HILLBOUND.)

WHAT I’M WORKIN’ ON

I don’t want to get too specific about whys and wherefores, but the time is upon me to digitize and clean up all the pages from the original 5-issue run of TRUE SWAMP from the nineties.  No, not just so I can post them on this site.  Yes, for an exciting reason.  Yes, it’s going to demand most of my scant free time for a few months during which I may not be able to crank out many new TS pages (the original art for the nineties Issue 2 is gonna be particularly challenging to curate,) but I’ll post plenty of goodies to keep you alert.

The Sudden Unexplained Death in Childhood Program: http://www.sudc.org

or Women For Women International:http://www.womenforwomen.org.

Here is an update from Tom himself.

I don’t relish going back to the usual business of this blog as if to ‘move on’ from this horrific event. I don’t know if I have even comprehended it yet.  The world seems bizarre; thin, permeable, shrill.

I hope everyone knows about the comics reading at KGB Bar in about an hour.  This was an event Tom ran every year, and he passed the keys to Robyn Chapman upon leaving New York.  I think there will be a lot of people there who are glad to see one another, and the lineup is fantastic (there is an important addition to the lineup shown at the above link: my dear friend Jeffrey Lewis will also be reading!) Funds will be raised there for the abovementioned organizations.

In a couple of days I’ll start talking to you about things I want you to buy from me at Brooklyn Comics And Graphics Festival…

But it was not just about the school– Tom, Leela and I spent an important chapter of our lives in Gainesville, and we were all in on the secret of what a magical little city it is.  Tom and Leela were parents now: their daughter Rosalie Lightning was born in 2009 and now she’d grow up there, in a fantasyland of lizards, ponds, elder trees, curtains of moss, bicycles and the coolest community in the Southeast.

Tom and Leela and Rosalie scheduled a day-long going-away picnic in Prospect Park the weekend right before they moved.  I was so looking forward to it.  Vicissitudes of New York City survival had kept me away from their part of Brooklyn for months.  Then the stupid hurricane developed and the picnic had to be cancelled so everyone could huddle up with supplies in Zones B and C.  So incredibly frustrating, but then again, I envisioned many trips to Gainesville to talk at the school, sit on the porch with my friends, and watch Rosalie at play.

Now she is gone overnight, with no explanation that my mind can accept, as if Death can just wander around plucking children up as it pleases without concern for the rules of how life is supposed to go.  My friends are in a horror world I don’t even know if I can understand, past some mountains and behind a veil; I want to touch them and protect them but there’s no way to do that.

Several of us in New York who love them fiercely decided yesterday to take up a fund raiser to help them with whatever they face next.  Tom and Leela did not go on their mission with much treasure in tow; it was a shoe-string quest that in part relied on good fortune and help from friends. Now they have met the worst fortune, and though raising money might seem a meager response to what’s happened on a spiritual level, it will help.  Please visit and share this link:

http://www.laurenweinstein.com/2011/11/rosalie-lightning/

I can’t tell you how excited I am to put out two issues of anything within a single year.  When was the last time that happened?  (Answer: before I had a day job…)

Also, I am fucking broke as shit and will be bringing some original TRUE SWAMP artwork to the show.  Not that those two facts have anything to do with each other.  No, not at all.  But let me know if you are going to MIX and there are any pages from my work (swamp or otherwise) that you might want to own.

Autumn is the best, isn’t it?

Ever wonder if I knew how to use colors besides green? (You may still be wondering after this…)

Ever get tired of waiting for a comic with a haunted fishtank in it?

In 2003 I wore Nickelodeon Magazine comics editor Chris Duffy’s defenses down and sold him the following 2-pager.  Though it remains my only published work for kids, Chris and I hit it off, and today we enjoy the kind of warm relationship that only exists between a 2nd Level Thief and his Dungeon Master.

I have a busted scanner and no dough to fix it this week, so please enjoy this special off-swamp edition…