Tiny Tea Dispatch #020
I got it in my head to find all the ‘Red Knight’* comics that contain sci-fi elements. Don’t ask why. I just remembered reading one which contained a robot and I had to get to the bottom of this. I mean, when you think ‘knight’, you don’t really expect to see robots, right? As it turns out, one particular run goes in all kinds of directions, including monster movie territory and sci-fi (tip of the hat to Laszlo for instantly recognizing it).
Long story short, I few albums on eBay for peanuts and they do not disappoint (just ignore the actual script or story, and don’t mind the uneven quality of the drawings).
My favorite so far, is ‘The Black Tower’, which contains humanoid robots whose designs are ripped-off from old sci-fi movies and series such as Lost in Space and Star Wars.
Oh, and the mad scientist is called ‘Albertstein’. Yeah… 😀
~~ Ink well ~~
These are two Pelikans from the 1950’s: the 400NN (top one, with the stripes) and the 120 (the green one). I bought them for my birthday later this month and after a little bit of work, they’red great.
I *think* these will by my last vintage fountain pens. I’m switching to 4/5ths at work, so that limits my budget somewhat 😛 In an ideal world, I would complete my collection of with a couple more models (like the 100 and the Ibis) but the ones I have now are the absolute best models so I can live with it.
~~ Drawing ~~
I finished my comic early in September. It was difficult to write but I got so many great reactions on it, it was definitely worth the time and turmoil.
If you haven’t seen it on my site or social media, I got diagnosed with autism right before the pandemic, which is a strange thing to hear as an adult. This comic is my way of explaining what that means and telling people “Hey, don’t freak out about it”.
The absolute high-end of sharing this comic, was people telling me how well some of the imagery explained their own experiences or how they were going to use this comic to explain it to others. That’s about the biggest compliment you can get as a cartoonist.
Meanwhile it’s October again! That means a new month of daily ink drawings! For this year, I’m going with ‘weird and creepy faces’ as a theme. I can finally put some of my pens and inks to good use.
You can follow along on my Instagram or Twitter for the daily updates. I’ll also collect them on the site at the end of the month.
Yes, I did revive my Twitter account but it’s ‘broadcast only’. I’m only using it to share things I originally posted somewhere else. Not checking the notifications, not installing the app, not using the DM’s. I would like to keep whatever little sanity I have left.
~~ Writing ~~
The last of the Transmissions went up this month. Thanks to everyone for following along! It’s been a great ride and I hope to revisit the astronaut’s adventures in the new year but I want to do a few other things first.
Anyway, read the last month here, hope you enjoy it:
~~ Reading ~~
I read 2 books that are highly relevant to my relatively recent autism diagnosis:
- ‘Maar je ziet er helemaal niet autistisch uit’, by Bianca Toeps (also available in English as ‘But you don’t look autistic at all’)
- and ‘Anders gaat ook‘ (by Elise Cordaro, who also has ADHD)
I had been looking online to find information about living as an adult with autism (and other types of neurodiversity) but was having very little luck finding coherent information or experiences that were similar to mine. There are a few blogs and YouTube channels from adults with autism but it wasn’t going deep enough.
The online content just left me with big gaps. Until some nice people recommended these books. (Well, Booo asked some people for book recommendations and they were kind enough to give them).
Despite the off-putting covers (I just don’t like books with huge author portraits on the cover, makes me think of TV chefs and self-help bullshit), these put a lot of what I previously found out into a semi-coherent whole and the experiences really resonated with me. That’s essentially what a good book on a topic does, of course, but for some reason I had forgotten that was a thing books do?
Anyways, highly recommended.
~~ Final notes ~~
As mentioned, I’m switching to a-bit-less-than-full-time at the day job. I want to use the extra day to carve out time for my creative projects. I have so many things listed that I never get to except during vacation days, which just stresses me out.
During the summer months, a lot of us had to work at that capacity because of the crisis, combined with working-from-home, and it was a lot more pleasant than the work regime I had to function in the years before. So I’m taking this for another spin, see how it goes.
A few things that are on my plate at the moment: the October drawings, rebuild the website, turn the Transmissions into a book, work on a commission and come up with another (tri-)weekly project to replace the Transmissions (possibly a comic).
I won’t be able to tackle it all at once, but I do think I can get most of it done by the new year, going one step at a time.
That’s it for the past month and looking forward a bit.
As always, I hope you are doing okay and finding some time for yourself.
Until next month!
~~ Links ~~
- My Autism comic: https://rembo.me/comics/as/
- Transmissions: https://transmissions.rembo.me
- Book: ‘Maar je ziet er helemaal niet autistisch uit’
- (also available in English as ‘But you don’t look autistic at all’)
- Book: ‘Anders gaat ook’
- Red knight wiki: https://deroderidder.fandom.com/nl/wiki/Karel_Biddeloo%27s_reeks
* For you non-Belgians out there: ‘De Rode Ridder’ is a long-running comic series (started in 1959) about a red knight who roams the lands doing good deeds, running into various historic and fantasy characters.