Here's the first in a series of five original comic strips I did for Comic Shop News, the weekly newspaper distributed to those comic shops willing to pay for copies. (It used to be something ridiculously cheap, like five cents a copy; not sure what it is now. I still find new issues in comic... Continue Reading →
1998 changed my life, but it also made me realize that Innocent Bystander couldn’t survive on its own. Without a well-paying day job to support me, I couldn’t keep pouring money into a self-published comics series that couldn’t sustain itself. In short, minus the gory details, I went into considerable debt financing my so-called comics... Continue Reading →
Just about every time I roam up to the beach behind the Hotel del Coronado, there's some kind of special sand castle. I don't know if the hotel has a sand castle specialist—I've seen ones for weddings and even proposals, I believe—or there's just a talented sand castle builder who stops by on a regular... Continue Reading →
There are a number of things which will always scream "CALIFORNIA!" to me, and this is one of them, along with Volkswagen vans and palm trees: the ubiquitous In-N-Outs which dot the landscape of Southern California. A family-owned chain, it's almost a cult, and its uber-friendly workers (who, for a long time, boasted the best... Continue Reading →
I spent a most enjoyable evening with Groucho Marx the other night. Yes, he’s been dead for well over four decades now, but his spirit lives on in writer/actor/director/producer Frank Ferrante, someone I’ve known for close to three decades (that’s a lot of decades for one paragraph). A new filmed version of Frank’s wonderful one-man... Continue Reading →
Spring is definitely in the air here in Coronado, as the photo above shows. While most of the trees around me—palm and evergreens—stay green year 'round, some with flowers (along with bushes) are starting to come into full bloom. This lovely scene is from the old ferry landing in Coronado, with downtown San Diego off... Continue Reading →
The 1960s were a turbulent time in the history of our country, in fact, in the history of the entire world. And adding to that turbulence was my own little ongoing battle with my mother over whether or not I was allowed to stay up late on Saturday night and watch monster movies on television.... Continue Reading →
It looks spectacular in the daytime and even better at night, providing the neon is cared for and all lit up. The Loma Theatre is, sadly, no longer a movie theater, but it is a bookstore, which in my mind is the next best thing for it to be. It was opened in 1945, and... Continue Reading →
Last weekend (April 1-3), I attended WonderCon 2022 at the Anaheim Convention Center. This was the first time the show has been held since 2019, and truth be told, at that point in time I was gainfully employed by San Diego Comic Convention, better known as Comic-Con International, the same company who puts on WonderCon,... Continue Reading →
I feel like the world is on the precipice right now, just dangling on the edge. It's so difficult to find some sense of normalcy. We start to come out of a two-year pandemic siege and the nutjob ruling Russia decides to start invading Ukraine, with some unspecified restoring Mother Russia glory in mind. Will... Continue Reading →
An amazing Hollywood bio, a trio of comics-related histories, and a small stack of graphic novels make up my March readings … a record-setting (for me at least!) ten books for the month. Buster Keaton: A Filmmaker’s Life by James Curtis We seem to be undergoing a mini-renaissance devoted to the silent film comedic actor/writer/director... Continue Reading →
innocent bystander 
Recent Comments