One-panel gag, 2007, ink with digital gray tones.

A collaborative cartoon, written by Brian McLachlan and drawn by me. Remember to read Brian's strip, The Princess Planet, beamed into your home every Sunday via Transmission-X!

Envy Adams, 2006, graphite.

New Scott Pilgrim this week! I'm excited!

Scott Pilgrim and Envy Adams created by Bryan Lee O'Malley.

Space Siren, 2006, ink with digital color.

Here's her frontside ...

Space Siren, 2006, ink with digital color.

... and here's her backside!

Hedges, Chris. War Is a Forces That Gives Us Meaning. New York: Anchor Books (a division of Random House, Inc.), 2003. Cover design by John Gall.

I finished reading this book last week and now recommend it to you.

War is appalling. How can war (or, one step removed, war imagery in literature, film, etc.) be also compelling?

Hedges bases his discussion upon the unspoken assumption that meaning in each moment must be created by the individual—and that task of creation can be frequently overwhelming. That said, the following excerpt seems to me a suitable thesis for the book:

"Lurking beneath the surface of every society, including ours, is the passionate yearning for a nationalist cause that exalts us, the kind that war alone is able to deliver. It reduces and at times erases the anxiety of individual consciousness. We abandon individual responsibility for a shared, unquestioned communal enterprise, however morally dubious" (45).

Drawing from literature and his own experiences as a war correspondent, Hedges reflects upon the search for meaning gone awry from which war results and which war, in turn, causes. Hedges asserts that neither meaning so desired nor happiness frequently discussed and pursued are ends unto themselves:

"We are tempted to reduce life to a simple search for happiness. Happiness, however, withers if there is no meaning. The other temptation is to disavow the search for happiness in order to be faithful to that which provides meaning. But to live only for meaning—indifferent to all happiness—makes us fanatic, self-righteous, and cold. It leaves us cut off from our own humanity and the humanity of others. We must hope for grace, for our lives to be sustained by moments of meaning and happiness, both equally worthy of human communion" (159).

As with any good book, I'm left with potent questions. For example, as an artist, what do I hope to communicate via violent imagery?

Link to Powell's listing for War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning

Darcy Dare, 2007, ink with digital color.

Architect Eliel Saarinen said, "Always design a thing by considering it in its next larger context—a chair in a room, a room in a house, a house in an environment, an environment in a city plan."

Darcy's current story, her larger context, is much about legacy so I tried to keep that in mind as I drafted the image above.

Larger context of a different kind: At the dawn of the 21st Century, I drew Darcy Dare in my wife's notebook. Since that time Darcy's appeared in a paper miniatures set (2002) and a short-lived proposal for an animated series (2004).