HAPPY 2024 CRAZIES!!! MAY IT NOT BE THE BOTTOM OF THE BARREL!!!

It's that time again folks.  Christmas may be over, but there's still enough of that residual happiness to keep us through to New Year's Day at least.  Obviously, 2023 was a bit of a mixed bag for most of us, as Mike and Mindy are so cheekily demonstrating.  It certainly wasn't a highlight year for me.  Quite few downs actually.  But like I told my doctor over a decade ago when I had a near lethal bout with pneumonia: I'm too damn stubborn to quit!  We made it through and have a fresh start come Monday.  So let's all pledge to make 2024 a good year full of happiness and healing.  Seriously, I turn 40 in April.  I gotta have SOMETHING other than that to look forward to! 

And that's a wrap on December and 2023!  January's gonna be a fun month folks as our annual Fight Against Inflation returns with more art over-pumped with hilarity!  It's also the 10th Anniversary of Bubble Fox, so be sure to come back and learn all about the celebration of the CRAZIEST Fox in comics!  Until next time, take care and please be safe on New Year's Eve.  Be smart with how you celebrate.  Alcohol and firearms are a very bad mix and we all wanna go far into the new year.  Until then, I'll catch y'all later and Happy New Year!

MINDY... SLEDDING QUEEN!!!

We are back CRAZIES and halfway to Christmas already!  Time really does fly doesn't it?  By the time this posts, I'll have just finished an insane run at work and will be hopefully gearing up for my annual Knott's Berry Farm Christmas trip!  Longtime readers know that I am HUGE theme park fan!  Living in Southern California certainly helps as there's quite a few to choose from between San Diego and Los Angeles.  Knott's was among the first theme parks ever and has such a unique history to it as it happened all organically as opposed to being planned.  It's always a fun time there, but Christmas time at Knott's is especially something else.  It's like stepping into Emmet Otter's Jugband Christmas!  But that's a tale for another day.  Y'all came to look at art, and I got some!  Enjoy...

This kids is why your mom always wants you wearing cleaning underwear.  You never know WHAT circumstance might pop up.  Also, be careful when sledding.  Snow can really get deep!  This was another piece from my first foray into illo_advent back in 2016.  For those that don't know, illo-advent is simply an art-inspired Advent calendar where a new holiday-themed drawing is posted every day between December 1 and Christmas Day.  It can be a challenge for sure and in recent years, I've gone to having a theme to go along with it and it's helped immensely!  One of those themes even became my first picture book, Wendy's Christmas Chaos (Available on Amazon folks!) and will eventually result in another!  For those on BlueSky as well as what's left of Twitter, this year's theme is the Christmas Pageant Players, and it's been a LOT of fun so far! 

Well, another week down as we edge closer to Christmas, but don't fret!  Next week is a double dose of CRAZY to make sure we head into the holiday weekend properly!  Also, Happy Hanukkah to those who celebrate as tomorrow's the last night!  Save some latkes and jelly donuts for me!  And remember dear readers to please think of others this holiday season.  Many are in need, so please help by donating to food, clothing and toy drives if you can.  It does not take much to help those less fortunate.  Until next time, take care3, stay safe and I'll catch y'all later!

MINDY'S BOOMIN' BLOOMERS, PT. 1!!!

Welcome back my CRAZIES!!!  Halfway through February already and hopefully the world is on the rebound.  Time marches on here at the CRAZYVERSE with more Mike & Mindy fun from some pals over on Twitter!  In recent years, one of the more popular trends among artists on social media is the "Draw This In Your Style" Challenge.  The premise is pretty simple: An artist posts something they drew and challenge others to draw it in their own styles.  I'd taken part in a few of these challenges myself and decided as it was M&M's anniversary last year, why not see if anyone would be interested in drawing one of their wildest moments in their own styles?  Well, amazingly enough, I got some entries, of which I will now share them with you fine folks!  Enjoy...

Vas Littlecrow

David Buist

Andrew Fraser

James Mellor

Read It Daddy

Ray Betancourt

For those who don't remember, this came from a panel from the August 2012 Mike & Mindy comic where Mindy attempts to hold in a sneeze only for the sneeze to shoot out on the other end, causing her bloomers to blow up and explode, much to Mike's amusement.  Mindy's bloomers were often a source of cheap laughs over the years, and probably no more so than in this legendary strip!  Thanks again to my wonderful pals who took time out of their own drawing schedules to give Mindy an explosive tribute!

Well, that's all for now.  One post just wasn't enough to capture all this madness, so next week, we'll finish off February on a high note with even MORE puffy bloomer madness! So be sure to come back and check it out!  Until then, stay safe, take care and I'll catch y'all later!

ADVENTURES WITH ALICE!!!

 Welcome to September CRAZIES!!!  Well, things are still in a secluded state, but we're soldiering on here as best we can.  I don't know what the future holds, but I'll be doing my best to carry on and give you folks something to look forward to every week, and this week is no exception.  So let's get on with the show and take a look at today's art.  Enjoy...

Careful Alice.  Those wonderland mushrooms have been known to have some pretty weird side effects!  Today's art comes from Animal Alphabets who, for their fourth theme, decided to go with creatures of the fairy tale realm.  Exactly how Alice, a human, fit the creature description is a little above my comprehension, but she was fun to draw and honestly, I'm always looking for reasons to draw giant mushrooms, so it all works out fine!

Well, that's all for today.  We'll be back next time with a fairy tale icon so big, you'll be huffing and puffing just to keep up with him!  Until then, Atay safe, take care and I'll catch y'all later!

MIKE AND MINDY RETURN!!! 10 YEARS HELIUM, BLOOMERS, MAYHEM AND... ASPARAGUS!!!

It's here!  The moment we've all been waiting for!  Mike and Mindy, the tykes that started it all, have come out of cartoon retirement to celebrate ten years of shenanigans, most of it involving helium, bloomers and other assorted mayhem!  The story of M&M is actually a pretty simple one.  After years of doodling and drawing but not really having much direction,  I came up with these two kids who popped up in another series I was working on at the time called Mushrooms.  Their initial appearances were as random kids in one-off comics with no real plans for them beyond that.  Somehow, the thought of a boy and girl duo really appealed to me and after a few more scribbles, there they were: Mike & Mindy!  They informally debuted on the Kids Love Comics blog back in January of 2010.  Ray Friesen, a cartoonist I had met at Comic Con sometime earlier, was kind enough to give me a shot and posted them for me.  After further thought and encouragement, I started what is now known as The CRAZYVERSE the very next month, the blog for all things CRAZY!  Well, if your definition of crazy is my comics, art and convention pics, then yes, all things CRAZY!  At the time, I had no social media presence, so it was a bit of a surprise when M&M started gaining a little bit of traction with fans.  By 2011, I finally added Twitter to the mix and things really took off from there!  In all, Mike & Mindy ran from February 2010 to December 2014.  They appeared in over 60 individual comics, three books, numerous splash pages, T-shirts, sketch cards and even quite a few guest comics to boot!  Although it's been over five years now since they ended, ten years is still a remarkable deal, and so all this month, we are celebrating their achievement!  Today marks the first NEW M&M comic since they ended (The two-page comic that appeared a few years ago had been drawn while they were still going, it just hadn't posted yet).  In addition to today, another new comic will bookend this month and we have plenty of guest comics in between!  So sit back and enjoy this revealing look at Mike and Mindy, as well as another old friend longtime CRAZIES might recognize!  Enjoy...

Dinner and a show?  Who could ask for more?  The Giant, Dancing Asparagus?  Hmm, okay!  You got him!  In addition to Mike and Mindy, this spirited vegetable has also made a return, though he never formally retired.  I just had no real reason to use him in anything after!  The Dancing Asparagus has a storied history.  He was born of the Buns & Wieners Club jam comics and somehow sorta became my character.  Given the content of my comics, I guess a giant, dancing vegetable really wasn't much of a stretch.  As far as personality goes, he really had none.  He literally would just show up and start dancing!  So I guess today's comic is not only monumental in that it features Mike and Mindy's return, but it also marks the first time ever that the Dancing Asparagus has had a job AND a name!  Asparago just seemed like a good fit for a magician/dancer.  As for the gag, I guess Asparago had been watching some Benny Hill or Looney Tunes prior to taking up magic because this is definitely a trick out of those playbooks!  Mike and Mindy seemed to be taking it quite well.  If you can't have an underwear dance party with a giant, mutant vegetable, who can you have an underwear dance party with?

That's all for today.  We got a guest comic on Wednesday that's full of youthful promise, so be sure to come back and check it out!  Until then, take care and I'll catch y'all later and welcome back Mike and Mindy!

KICKING OFF CHRISTMAS WITH A LITTLE BIT O' CHAOS!!!

WELCOME TO DECEMBER CRAZIES!!!  And with that, welcome to the Christmas Season!  I know, it's been Christmas at every department store since October, but now it's okay to proudly display that ugly sweater with the light-up snowman you have hidden in your closet!  You wanna know what goes good with an ugly Christmas sweater?  A funny Christmas book!  And I just so happen to have one now available on Amazon!  Yup!  I have officially crossed over into the realm of picture books with my first offering, the hilarious Wendy's Christmas Chaos!  Peppertown star Wendy had been in hiatus long enough, so last year, she leapt from the comics to the pen and ink drawings of my ill_advent theme.  Well, actually, it goes a bit deeper than that.  You can say it all started back in 2016...

I had never taken part in anything like Inktober or illo_advent before, so this year marked a first.  For those not in the know, both take place on social media platforms, usually Twitter and Instagram, and you just post a drawing a day throughout the duration.  Both have themes, but some, like me, just do our own deal.  Since I was new to the concept, for ill_advent, I just did a bunch of random Christmas scenes involving the CRAZYVERSE characters.  One such drawing had Wendy eyeing a gift she couldn't open yet (See above image).  Two years would pass and I just kept coming back to that image and it always felt like more could come from it.  Fast forward to 2018 and suddenly I have a revelation: EVERY page for the 25 days of illo_advent would be part of a story!  Far from groundbreaking as many people have done it already, but this was a breakthrough for me.  I'd longed to get back to drawing Peppertown, but time just wasn't on my side, and this seemed like a good way to at least get little Wendy back out in the open.

In the end, I had a blast drawing it!  The art and story got a great reaction from the Twitter CRAZIES and generated a lot of interest in seeing it as a book.  A few days after Christmas last year, I took a good long look at things and agreed I did have something there.  In addition to posting art, I'd also posted a rhyme with each piece of art that I'd tweeted out and found that to be enjoyable too.  So the decision was made: Wendy's Christmas tale was gonna be a book!  But first, some things needed to be fleshed out a bit...

Funny as it was, 25 pages wasn't going to be enough for this tale.  Granted, it didn't need to be much longer than it already was, but some gags did require some setup pages, particularly the beginning.  If you go back on Twitter, the story literally just starts right before the madness ensues!  So the work began and new art and rhymes were created!  The above art, for example, was not originally in the illo_advent feed.  With everything drawn and corrected, all that was left was to put it all together and publish it!  That's a story I'd rather not talk about though.  It was a learning experience to say the least, but I'm through it now!

All in all, I could not be happier with the book!  The colors are great, the action is fast paced and the rhymes are pretty darn good if I do say so myself!  The above and below pics were illo_advent originals that have now been colored and polished and look even better on the printed page!

For those who aren't on Twitter, the Cliff Notes version is Wendy's not patient enough to wait until Christmas morning to open her presents and gives in to peeking, only to learn that her gifts have been charmed by elves to prank her any time she tries to peek early.  After catching the elves, she tries to trick them by disguising herself as Santa Claus, leading to disastrous results from the clearly-not-buying it elves!  What follows is a cat-and-mouse chase that culminates in a harsh but earnestly learned lesson about patience and karma!  It's a fun tale for any age, even the grownups!  So be sure to pick up a copy!  It's now available on Amazon and even qualifies for FREE shipping with a certain purchase amount!  Not a bad deal eh?  So pick up you copy of Wendy's Christmas Chaos today!  It's the perfect counter to the sappy Hallmark holiday specials!

Before I end this week's post, a HUGE thanks goes out to Joshua Hauke and Warren Frantz for their help as I created this book.  Both gave me a ton of advice throughout the whole process, especially on the cover art and Warren, being a Kindergarten teacher, tested it out on several grade levels at his school.  It was a huge relief when he reported back that the kids loved it and wanted another story!  Tell the Kindersmurfs that I'm happy to oblige, Warren.  But they have to take a lesson from Wendy and be patient!  I'm blessed to have such great pals like Warren and Josh.

And that's all for now folks.  Posting a bit earlier than normal this week so that I can get the marketing machine up and running, hence the reason you're seeing this on Monday.  We'll be back next week on our normal Wednesday schedule with some more Holiday fun!  As always at this time of year, try to think of others.  There are many out there who won't have such a merry Christmas without a little help, so please donate to food, toy and clothing drives,  Even some spare change in a Salvation Army bucket can make a world of difference for some.  Share the love this holiday!  Anyway, take care and I'll catch y'all later!

MIKE AND MINDY: THE BARE NECESSITIES OF LIFE!!!

One week to go until Turkey Day!  So far I got my food supplies, my pants with the elastic waistband and extra baggy legs and enough Joel-era episodes of Mystery Science Theater 3000 to hold my own custom classic Turkey Day Marathon!  All in all, I'm good to go!  And now you will be too, because Mike and Mindy are still at it and still keeping the critters out of the clutches of Farmer Zeke!  Have they succeeded today?  See for yourself!  Enjoy...

Not sure what's dumber here: That Mike and Mindy actually thought putting there clothes on Tom Turkey and Sammy Swine would work or that Farmer Zeke actually fell for it?  This dumbass don't deserve a turkey and ham for Thanksgiving if he keeps missing the obvious!

So ends another week in November.  We'll be back next time to see if Mike and Mindy were successfully able to float another ruse past Farmer Zeke.  The holidays are approaching fast folks, with Thanksgiving itself next week.  Food banks are open and we can all spare a can or two.  Please donate and help today!  Anyway, take care and I'll catch y'all later!