Today is the first birthday of my great-nephew, Nicholas Zepplin. Just wanted to share that.

A few weeks ago I added the link to donate to Compassionate Friends, a support group for those that have lost a child.

And now we have a link to Life Force Studios, the folks that have done about half of my tattoos and all of the tats based on Eli’s drawings for my sister.

I know it seems strange to pair these two things up, but really, it makes sense. Both of them have had a profound effect on my sister’s life after the loss of her son, and that seems like reason enough. Plus I really like Jack’s work. But that’s beside the point.

Sometime around 2 this morning my niece gave birth to her son. She has some absurdly long name in store for the poor kid and right now all I can remember is “Grayson”, after the original Robin’s last name. I’ll update later with the entire string, barring last name, to give them some semblance of privacy.

More comics to come. Remember to tell all of your friends about us. Eventually we will have ads on other sites, and then you can feel snobbish since you were here from the beginning.

UPDATE: The New Nephew’s full name is Grayson Nikoli Samuel Eliah. And no, that doesn’t include his last name. It’s gonna be fun once he reaches kindergarten. Ah, and forms will be a hoot.

I’ve been working on the comics for a little while now. I’m pulling an old trick used by most of the publishing world in that I’m doing this stuff weeks or months in advance. So, don’t go expecting a lot of topical content, but that really isn’t the concept of the comic at all, anyway.

The down side to a lot of lead time is it gives me plenty of time to fret over the state of the work before the rest of the world sees it. The comics are currently in their third iteration so far. They went from just a straight scan of the images made via rubber stamps and hand lettered by me to something that actually looks like someone competent stood over me and shook their head a lot.

I’m hoping that the current state of things will stay pretty stable. I think I like the way they look now; a nice blend of computer sameness and chaos of handmade things. But we’ll see. I still have a week or so to flip out and change everything again.

On other news, I still plan to have a link to donate to Compassionate Friends on the side bar. I just need a little time to fiddle with the code there. I’m also planning on putting up some Project Wonderful ads on the page as well as doing a little advertising of my own. This is really the first site that I’ve felt the need to bother doing a proper ad campaign for, so we’ll see how that goes.

Remember to check back often and see what’s happening on the site. Comics to come shortly.

The Original launch date for the actual comics was meant to be June 5. For some reason I thought this was the day that Eli died. But I think that was the day of the Funeral. I don’t remember. I also vaguely recall there being confusion concerning his death certificate being dated the 5th, but that might have something to do with the fact of Eli being an organ donor.

All I remember with certainty about the whole affair is lots of crying. And smoking. Lots and lots of smoking.

Anyway, launch date has been rectified to June 3, the first Tuesday after the anniversary. It seems important to start a Memorial at the end of something else. Continuity and what-not.

More random images from Eli to come in the interim before the start of the comic. Keep checking back and let me know what you think.