This is a cartoon that I’m doing for the next issue of Rocksalt. It’s in response to somebody else’s cartoon, but it mostly makes sense on its own.

A word about method; since my computer broke, I’ve been mostly drawing with uniball on vellum. I can’t live without layers, kids. There is something I truly love about the crisp surface of vellum, the way you’re almost cutting into it with the pen. I’m not one of those “pen barely touching the paper” types. I bearing down on the page like I’m incising hieroglyphs. My relationship with art is not easy, but it is fruitful.

So, for the first time ever, Rocksalt is running a budget surplus! The Kickstarter still has a week to go (and we’re definitely gonna make it), but it’s already past the cost of the next issue. That happened, and then one of the ads that I sold four months ago continues to pay off (that’s the nice thing about ads, once you sell them they tend to stay sold), so that’s it, we have about $100 into the cost of the next issue right now. Pretty cool! I’ve never had a profitable magazine before, I think I like it. Between the Kickstarter for this issue and the ads for this issue and the ads for next issue we should have the magazine fully funded through the rest of 2013. Once that is accomplished we can get started on upping the production schedule.

And once we do that, we can start getting more advertisers. And once we do that, we can start raising the rates. And once we do that, we can start paying the artists. And once we can do that, we can start making a profit.

Almost there! Only three little orders of magnitude left to go. So donate to the Kickstarter if you can and share the link if you’re not in the mood to pay for things today.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1162948954/rocksalt-back-to-school-edition