Much news on the horizon, which is massive but supple–like a former female bodybuilder who still does calisthenics but is hardly still competitive. Forgive me if that metaphor is completely sprained (probably a power-lifting injury)–I thought I’d laid in bed for an hour, then got up and realized I’d mis-set my alarm clock. Meaning I woke up at 5am this morning.

First of all, yesterday was my sister Shawna’s birthday. She is now 32, which somehow makes me feel older than actually being 34.  Happy birthday Shawna!  And today is my friend Nixon’s birthday, who I think is now 36.  Now that’s old!  I need to call him–I’m terrible with the phone. 

Also, in case you missed it earlier, I am now on Twitter. I’m eschewing the whole tweet/twit/rude-lady-word line of self-deprecating jokes, because a) they’re too easy, and b) everyone else has already done them. In any case, if you’re into Twitter you should follow me, although whatever I put there is likely as interesting or less than what’s right here.

This Saturday is Free Comic Book Day, which we’ll be celebrating in high fashion at Heroes Aren’t Hard To Find.  I think we’re hosting somewhere between 15 and 20 different studly guests, who will be signing autographs and doing free sketches under two different tents.  Plus, of course, free comics–about 20 different titles, including Drawn & Quarterly’s John Stanley book, which is I believe a gorgeous advertisement for their forthcoming Melvyn Monster book.  Color me excited!  I’m trying to think of a joke involving spelling my name “Dharbyn”, but all I’m coming up with is wild-woman references.  I woke up early.

Also debuting on Free Comic Book Day will be Wide Awake Press’s ANCIENT AGE online anthology, in which I have an 8-page story called “The Under-Achiever.”  That’s the first panel up there.  I don’t want to give the story away, but I will say it is set in ancient Rome and has an unhappy ending, as nearly all stories set in ancient Rome do.  This is the second year I’ve had something in the WAP FCBD anthology–last year’s “Piltdown” had my one-page strip “Door To Door” in it.  I’ll say more about this this week in a separate post.

Just one week later, I’ll be winging northwards to the Toronto Comic Arts Festival, set appropriately in lovely Toronto, Ontario, Canada.  TCAF is a lot of fun, and features many more Canadians than our American comics conventions.  They’re very proud of it actually, almost insultingly so.  Almost.  I’ll be up there tabling with Joe Lambert and Chuck McBuck and Alexis Frederick-Frost, all of whom are CCS graduates and studbolts.  I guess they want me to get their drinks for them or something–I’ll be pretty outclassed. 

Speaking of outclassed, I’ve also been invited to be on a panel at the show.  I’m not sure what it’s called, but here’s the description:

Join Frank Santoro, Robin McConnell, Dash Shaw, Dustin Harbin and Robert Dayton for a look at how mainstream comics of the silver and bronze age have a relevance and impact on modern alternative comics. The panel will explore the legacy of some of the more interesting “mainstream” work from the 70’s through to the 90’s.

I don’t know anything about any of that, and told them so, but they want me anyway. It’s nice to be wanted! If I don’t have anything to add, I’m just going to get Dash to draw me naked versions of all the female characters from Bottomless Bellybutton while everyone else talks about Paul Gulacy.

And last up on my dancecard is this summer’s Heroes Convention (June 19-21), which is 70% of what I do for a living all year.  Really, my dancecard is a big HeroesCon flyer, and I jot down my other engagements on the back.  I’ll point you in the direction of the HeroesCon website for all the details, because jeez-oh-man, are there a lot of them. 

Whew!  This horizon sure is corpulent!  Busy summer will hopefully lead to a relaxed fall. Oh snap! I almost forgot to mention this week’s DHARBIN! strip, which I posted a day early this week (yesterday). So much to do!

In this week’s strip, we explore mating-themes once more.  Hey, sue me, it’s spring.  You’ll also notice that it’s a day early, unless you’re reading this on Monday or afterwards.  In that case, everything’s normal, nothing to see here.

I had thought about coloring this one, but I need to get started on putting DHARBIN! #2 together in time for TCAF, plus I have a ton of work to do this week getting ready for Free Comic Book Day at Heroes Aren’t Hard To Find, not to mention HeroesCon.  So pardon this shortish post, but I have numerous other things to talk about, which I will get to in subsequent posts.  In the meantime, cluck cluck.

Okay, okay, okay my bro’s: all done with that little slice of life story, yessirree. Special thanks to my coworkers Shawn Reynolds and Seth Peagler, who had some really sweet things to say about the first page. I am not particularly proud of this strip, so I am indebted to them for the encouragement, as it made me actually finish the thing up, as opposed to doing other stuff and forgetting about it eventually. 

No joke: I eat some praise up. IT’S LIKE HONEY TO ME.  But anyway, click here to see this badboy.

Also in the Dharb-news this week: I’m getting ready to fire up the might of Twitter for my work, and so I have signed myself up for Twitter. I’d like to pretend that it was purely for research purposes, you know for the whole work thing, but in all actuality I just can’t resist the lure of talking about myself EVEN MORE. So if you’re a Twitter-er, now you can get EVEN MORE of me, every day, all day.

For some reason, last night I woke up at 3 in the morning and could never get back to sleep. This isn’t all that remarkable, except that this NEVER happens to me–I’m a sound sleeper, and it usually takes me about 3 minutes to doze off each night. By 4 I had finally turned the light on to try and read myself back into slumber-ville–I read the rest of that Wired issue with the Paul Pope story that I lettered (remember that?). By 5 o’clock I just said screw it and got up to just go ahead and start working, and cleverly decided to walk the dog seconds before the heavens opened up and soaked us both.

As I type this I can barely keep my eyes open, but I WANTED YOU TO KNOW the great and noble lengths I go to each week to bring you ART, like Prometheus himself, harpy-scarred and grinning. Good night, Internet.

Paul Pope is a guy who is far far sweeter than he sometimes gets credit for. Witness him asking me to letter a 6-page story in the May 09 issue of WIRED Magazine–it’s a special “Mystery Issue”, guest-edited by J.J. Abrams, and Pope’s story was a Spock-centric prequel to the new Abrams-directed Star Trek prequel. That’s like prequel squared, I think. It’s new math.

Anyway, Paul drew the thing from a loose-ish script by a writer working pseudonymously as “K/O”, and for some reason Paul thought I should letter it. Yes Please! I am fortunate in a number of ways, but I think chief among these is the exceptional caliber and quality of my friends, which I am usually undeserving of.  Paul is no exception–I think over the years I’ve learned more about cartooning and the many strange pieces of esoteric information that make up its discipline from Paul than from any three other sources.  So it was super thrilling to be asked to do something with him. 

BUT! Enough about Paul Pope–plenty of people will sing his praises without my help. I want to let YOU, Dearest Internet, know that you may now sample this 6-page story for yourself! I was surprised to find that WIRED (is it supposed to be all-caps like that? I hope so) is only $5, which made me feel less stupid about buying five of them.  This will make you feel better about buying just one copy, presumably!

For the many millions of you who complained that last week’s rollerskating/kazoo strip was just NOT ENOUGH, dry your eyes!  The second page is now up, and the third and final page will see the blessed digital light of day in just one week.  I will write more later, as there are many exciting developments coming in the next couple of weeks, which I’m sure you want to hear all about.  In the meantime… enjoy.

The first of three pages, numbers 2 of 3 of which will appear here in subsequent weeks. I thought for a while that I would actually have all 3 pages done today, putting me 2 weeks ahead. But that did not happen. Special thanks to Wizzywig creator Ed Piskor for a late-night consult–I spent an extra hour adding greytones, which Ed (probably correctly) said was stupid. So here you see my strip, emperor’s-new-clothes-less.

This is a true story, LIKE EVERYTHING THAT COMES OUT OF MY MOUTH. I use to roller-skate everywhere when I was a kid. I didn’t learn how to ride a bike until I was in 3rd or 4th grade (such a crime!), so I roller-skated for transportation. But I didn’t have many friends, so I would often just roller-skate up and down the driveway. For HOURS. Not always with a kazoo (the kazoo shows up on page 2), but always imagining the whole neighborhood must be floored at my obvious and great skill.

As I hope you are.