What You’ll Find Here

I’m a writer, editor, comedian, and occasional illustrator and graphic designer. You may have read my work on Cracked, Thrillist, CBS Local, or a few of the other sites I’ve worked for. Or maybe you stumbled across my book on BBQ in a clearance bin, in which case, happy grilling.

You can read the comic books and comedy articles I’ve written in the menu above, and see the latest happenings below.

War Crime Comics: The Hood

I am now a monthly columnist at 1-900-HOT-DOG, building upon my previous guest posts. Featuring a snazzy new painting of moi by old friend and polymath comic wizard Michael Bramley!

First article: War Crime Comics: The Hood, a Nerding Day adventure in which I look into the Golden Age of superhero comics to examine not all that glitters there. It turns out there was a superhero who was racist even by the standards of the 1940s, an era when our most successful left-wing President was creating concentration camps for Japanese people, and segregating Black soldiers was military policy.

It’s free to read, so you can have your bitter laugh on Patreon or the website, your pick.

Brendan McGinley is a centaur riding a unicorn, while being ridden by an ifrit. Tell your friends.

I don’t think history will look with exceptional favor on our current state of affairs, either, and the sheer number of people cool with racism’s tenacious grip on our society: the pushback on securing basic human rights for–cripes, everybody right now–is depressing. Latin American families are getting separated and caged at the border, Black people have to plea not to be murdered while many white folks are more concerned that they’re protesting their killings in the “wrong way,” Asians are getting randomly attacked by idiots, Middle-Eastern and Muslim folks are entering their third decade of institutional mistreatment like they’re not “real” Americans.

White folks…well, a lot of us are trying to do the right thing and support everyone else’s bid for fair treatment, but then again, a lot of Nazi dickheads are enjoying a moment. The whole damn world’s more insane than ever. So click above for jokes at the expense of racists and below for sober musings on comics’ long (and modern) history of racism.

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1-900-HOT-DOG: The Return of Count Spirochete

Our tour of Etiquette: Naval Style continues at 1-900-HOT-DOG with The Return of Count Spirochete. Newly empowered to seduce blondes and brunettes, our brave sailors found their lives now imperiled by the dreaded VD. I learned a lot watching this PSA for comedy, and most of what I learned involved terrible things happening to babies, which–gang, is not comedy, not at all. I think we’ve all learned today that there’s a dark side to sexually transmitted infections. Anyway, read it on the site above or Patreon, it’s free on both.

1-900-HOT-DOG: Blondes Prefer Gentlemen

Back in the ’60s the Navy realized that trapping a bunch of young men in metal canisters far from daily society was not the incubator for social poise that they needed. Discipline? Yes. Grace and charm? Not innately, no. So they made two films, “Blondes Prefer Gentlemen” and “How to Succeed With Brunettes” that have since passed into legend. I would summarize them as “Stop being a disgusting, selfish pig, you pig,” and since Brockway and Seanbaby gave me the green light to do so, summarize I did. Enjoy my latest comedic entry at 1-900-HOT-DOG, free to read on the website, though if you enjoy it, you should really join their Patreon. Five bucks a month gets you thirty mornings of content: a worthy price for your only guaranteed laughs in this dire world.

Honestly, though, the real get is the $10 tier. That gets you into the belly-shaking viewing parties that have become my biweekly joy. Anyway, enjoy my stuff! Tell them you want me to do more, and we’ll all share these fun times together…in naval hell.

The Return of…Micro-Face!

What’d you do with 2020? I spent every day grinding through Indelible, Inc. #6, which wasn’t originally a grind until I got into the third month or so of trying to organize the century-long spell that binds its villainous conspiracy. Along the way, I did an immense amount of reading into the history of, among other things, gnosticism, organized crime, and the Golden Age. I made a massive spreadsheet of characters who may or may not be in the public domain, and came across Micro-Face. Mr. Face, I noted, had all the powers of a smartphone with a bluetooth speaker, but I suppose that’s enough to defeat 1940s gangsters, all of whom were weird little guys what talked like dis, see?

Anyway, I started saving up these public domain possibles for a podcast idea, and noted to myself that unlike a lot of his contemporaries, there was no updating Micro-Face in a world where everyone’s already recording and being recorded, and even the quietest hamlet has at least one douchebag tooling around with his stereo blasting the worst music imaginable. But since he had somewhat similar powers to Scanner, our original creation from just a few years before we all carried glass supercomputers in our pocket, I did swap him into a flashback where a Golden Age version of Scanner had previously lived. Seemed like our storyline’s antagonist would always have a spy on hand. (And only later, upon reading a biography of one inspiration for him, did I find out how true that Scanner’s presence would ring.)

Seredipitously, and also just to prove me wrong, I visited LinkedIn to see my old friend and colleague Alex Segura had just written a Micro-Face redesign for NPR! And doing a cool job of it, too, sealing his invitation to this podcast idea once it comes to fruition. The odds are odd, I tell you.

Although not as odd as the truly bizarre Twilight, who debuted alongside Micro-Face in Clue Comics #1. Twilight’s an ex-detective turned Marine, assigned to be an undercover bodyguard to the “Slovic” minister, only to meet an escaped parrot squawking about a plot to murder the same. The parrot brings him a fortune card, so Twilight dons a…lion(?) costume, looking for all the world like the first furry.

And yet unwholesome in his own way that consenting adults could never yiff

And still the issue’s weirdest character is Boy King and his pet stone giant. Hillman was on some weird plane even while its heroes fought the usual mobsters and fifth columnists.

Just stay away from Checker, who also debuted in that issue, Alex. I’ve got big plans for him.

Little Nemo & the Nightmare Fiends: A Winsor McCay video game!

My decades-long fascination with Little Nemo has been well-documented (beginning with Iconography #0). But as I’ve spent quarantine researching platinum age public domain characters and learning game design, never did it occur to me to put the two together. Fortunately, the folks at Pie for Breakfast studios, who actually know what they’re doing, saw the potential of a Little Nemo in Slumberland game–and it is gorgeous. It’s everything you want a Winsor McCay comic to be. Like most elder millennials, I discovered the comic through NES. And with due respect to Ray Bradbury, that anime and its video game adaptation are somewhat afield of McCay’s vision.

But THIS…wow!