Evening Stroll During Lockdown

As far as places to be locked down, Burbank is pretty good. Less crowded that the city over the hill, and the weather was perfect throughout March and April.

Getting a bit on the warm side now, but it's still lovely at dawn and dusk. More photos here.

But Only the British Kind with a U

So this happened. Click to see the larger version, or you can go to the site. 

I am not sure what it's specifically about. Maybe for trying to get out assignments to people, spreading them out when a lot of people were suddenly out of work? Or maybe the digital material I'm overseeing side-by-side with a big event comic and a young readers graphic novel.

Or maybe just a slow news day.

Big Box Full of Crap

In Jersey City news, apparently Liberty Storage wants to close and turn into an 8-story hotel. It was only a matter of time--it's located directly adjacent to Liberty State Park.

This makes me wistful for an earlier time when I'd drop off Henry the 1990 Ford Taurus at Liberty Storage for 2-3 months, and he'd live next to the sailboats and RVs in their parking lot, while I'd live in Australia, Spain, Mexico, Kuwait, Uganda, Egypt, wherever. My car lived in the storage lot as often as it lived in front of my apartment.

I kept all my stuff in Liberty Storage for about four years.

After the first year, I should've just thrown in a match.

Here's a photo, but it's low-res as it's the only scan I have of a physical photo, which is...wait for it...in a box at A-1 Storage in Jersey City.

Some people never learn.

Semi-Progess in Burbank

It took a global pandemic to get Burbank to automate its pedestrian walk signals. 

This is only temporary, of course, because this is car country.

I'm sure there will still be plenty of motorcycle cops out ticketing people jaywalking across alleys, though.

"Pedestrians in Burbank will no longer need to worry about pressing a button at traffic intersections to activate the walk signal as the city has automated the process in response to the coronavirus pandemic.

The Best That We Can Do

Here's a free concert. Kinda brief.

Longtime pal Steve B and I were going to see X at the Wiltern tonight for my birthday (which was a few days ago) but I guess we get to see this instead.

I always loved this band. I even spray-painted the cover to More Fun In the New World onto the back of a black denim jacket when I was a teenager. I only wore it a few times before giving it away though...broadcasting affinities makes me uncomfortable, even for awesome music.

Maskmaker Maskmaker Make Me A Mask

Look! It's my unsolicited opinion on face masks.

How exciting for us, surely.

The pleated kind and similar (like a cloth version of a surgical mask) are more comfortable than the bra-cup looking masks, but your glasses fog up. This isn't a problem if you don't wear glasses, but today I put on my sunglasses and they fogged up immediately.

The bra-cup ones are better for people with glasses, but they feel a bit more suffocate-y.

Both of the above are more comfortable then the N95 pro masks, the kind I've worn while tiling the floor or scraping something likely to include lead paint or toxic fumes.

I'm pretty sure the comfort is inversely proportional to the efficacy. Meaning...the more breezy the mask, the more pleasant it is to wear. The more you feel like you're going to hyperventilate from being unable to breathe normally, the more likely the mask is to be doing its job.

Of course, you might not want to take medical advice from a comic book editor. This is purely anecdotal.

At least the handmade ones look like a bit more fun. Here are a few I've been working on recently. 

The Before Photo

Remember back in February when I had the little pop-out bay window roof redone on my Jersey City house? And the drainage system down the house's side?

I'd been thinking about asking the roofing company if they are working during quarantine. Now seems like a great time to get the roof redone, when my tenants are in another state, and my house/cat-sitter could handle the work crews.

I know this isn't likely to happen, I thought. How would I get a construction permit? I idly went to the roofer's website to see if they were open. No indication. I clicked the Instagram link to see if that had more current info.

And found this. Oh, ha ha...oh no. My house is the cautionary tale on the roofing company's social media!

Best Birthday Pressie

March, 2017. Emerald City Comic Con.  Boss and I met up with Gene Luen Yang. This wasn't our first meeting with Gene—he was already writing comics for us. But I'd had great results with the DC Super Hero Girls series I'd been producing for a few years, and we were ready to expand.

"I have this idea," Gene said. "It's about Superman."

Boss and I leaned forward. Yes? 

"And he smashes the Klan. It's based on the old radio show."

We both approved his idea on the spot. Sure, we still had to run it through the P&L process, but neither of us ever had a single doubt, and as anticipated, neither did anyone else.

Three years in the making, and the bound preliminary copies showed up today on my doorstep during social distancing lockdown.

It's beautiful. Perfect.

I can't count the number of amazing books I've had the privilege to work on on one hand, but I can count them on two.

This is one of them.

Happy Earth Day 2020

Gonna wait until evening to dig into this pile of bounty. I'm conflicted about how to view today. Yes, it's my Earth Day, but I'm not 8 years old or 40, so it's not exactly a huge deal.

And I've certainly had my share of bad Earth Days, and this isn't one of those. I usually go home this time of year and have dinner with friends, but obviously I had to cancel my flight this time.

My most memorable this-is-odd Earth Day was during the last MariesWorldTour. I'll post that day's account in below, so we can all relive it together.

* * * * *

I woke up on the Endurance ferry (why would I worry about that name, NO REASON) from Calabar to Limbe just in time to catch the end of a rain shower outside and a Nollywood video inside.

Where was my passport? I was starting to get nervous. A man from the shipping company had taken my passport at the start of the journey and I'd figured it would show up eventually. Now I was getting worried.

We pulled into the Limbe port and anchored.

Whole New World

People protesting the stay-at-home orders should read some firsthand accounts by health workers. I have...and I'm ready to stay home until the governor of CA, the mayor of LA, Elizabeth Warren, my friends in NYC, Spain, and Italy, and my mom all tell me it's okay to go out again.

But it's not just about me not wanting to end up drowning in phlegm (alone, but that's just the icing on the goop when you think of drowning in phlegm). It's also about not adding to the dangers of exhausted people working in hospitals.

And yes, I'm statistically on the safer side of all this, but you know what, I didn't try to climb Mt. Kilimanjaro either. Because the thing about altitude sickness is you can't know if you get it until you've got it. And at that point, it's a little late to be going "Oh, hey, I didn't know I'd get altitude sickness."

Only the finest in mask fashion for my trip to the building dumpster.