Radiant Comics

Right now it’s January 31st and so far here in the suburbs of NYC it’s been a snowy winter. After any snow storm the first thing I have to do is clear the driveway. My driveway is a hill and it’s uphill to get out of it. Without clearing the driveway cars can’t make it up the hill. If I want to go out I have to get the snow out of there.

I have a John Deere riding mover. It’s an LT155 that I’ve had since the year 2000. It’s a bit old and battered but it still runs and gets the job done. Except for this last storm.

A couple of weekends ago we had two snow storms. On Saturday the 17th I cleared a few inches of snow off the driveway with the John Deere. Then on Sunday another inch or two fell. I hopped on the tractor, started it up, but as I went to plow the engine cut out. I started it multiple times but it wasn’t going anywhere.

Tractors in general, and mine specifically, have a safety switch on them. If there is no weight on the seat and the brake is taken off then the engine cuts out. A dead man switch. That’s what I suspected went wrong. The switch on the seat.

Luckily I had a backup. A few years ago a friend of my mother’s gave me a Toro Electric Shovel. It’s like a mini snow blower. It’s corded so you have to plug it in but I have a long outdoor extension cord for such tools. The Toro is only twelve inches wide and can only handle snow up to around six inches deep but it got the job done. It’s a bit heavy and takes some effort but it’s much better than shoveling. I was happy to have it.

The next thing I did was to order a new seat switch for the tractor. It came in on a day my brother in law was over. He’s a guy who is really good at fixing stuff. We put the seat switch in (an easy task) and then started up the tractor. As soon as the brake was off it stopped running. So much for an easy fix. My brother in law took a look at the tractor and discovered a second safety switch. This one was on the brake. Two dead man switches?!? That sounds like overkill to me.

I went inside and looked on the internet to order a new brake safety switch. This all took place on a Tuesday. That’s when I ordered. The problem was that there was a big storm hitting us the coming Sunday. A once in a decade size snow storm. The switch was coming by post office (there was no option for getting it faster) and the projected date of it arriving was from Friday to Monday. The store posted it on Wednesday but then it sat in a Florida post office for three days. I don’t think it even got out of Florida until Saturday. Needles to say it didn’t arrive in time.

On Friday my brother in law was nice enough to bring me over a big snowblower he had lying around. At first he had to get it started but he did. He showed me how to start it, it was gas powered and had a pull cord, and it started up for me on Friday easily.

On Sunday afternoon at around 12:30 PM I decided to clear the driveway. It was still snowing but there was already six inches on the ground. I went to start up the snow blower but it was about 10ºF out and the thing would not start. Pulling the cord was super hard. It felt like the engine was swimming in molasses. I was getting so tired trying to start the snow blower that I decided to switch to the Toro.

It’a a good thing I went out when I did because by the time I got the Toro out there was probably eight inches of snow. With that small twelve inch Toro it took me two and a half hours to clear the driveway. By the time I was done the part I had started with was covered again.

According to the internet a Toro Electric Shovel weighs 16 pounds. You have to push it through the snow and then drag it back to where you started to push it through the snow again. It’s a lot less work than lifting the snow as you shovel but it is still a bit of work. It’s very tiring on the arms and shoulders but easy on the back.

After I cleared the driveway that first time I was back an hour later to clear it again. I cleared four more inches this time. That took me an hour. After that I took a two hour break and then went back to clear another three inches. As I got to the top of the driveway it was covered in snow yet again so I turned around and cleared the driveway again of one to two inches of snow. That took me an hour and a half total.

After that I was done for the night. It was about 8:30PM as I finished. The next morning I went out for an hour and a half and cleared the last two inches. It took so long because of the snowplow clearing the road and pushing the road snow into the top of the driveway. The show was at least a foot deep and four feet wide up there. I had to skim the 16lb Toro on top of the pile and go across two or three times to move the snow. That still beat shoveling.

This was the most amount of snow we have gotten in about ten years. After the second time I cleared the driveway I went out into the middle of my yard and stuck a yardstick in the snow. It measured 14 inches. After the third time I cleared the driveway I did the same thing. The snow still measured 14 inches despite me clearing three more inches off the driveway. I would say we got about 16 to maybe 18 inches of snow but it’s not easy to measure as my measuring shows.

On Monday I was really tired. I mostly sat in a chair all day and rested up. On Wednesday the part for the John Deere arrived in the mail. On Thursday I put the part on and the tractor ran fine. I went out and cleared the very back of the driveway that I didn’t bother clearing with the Toro. It’s all good now but I sure wish that part arrived on Friday. It would have saved mea lot of pain and effort.

A altered art card I made.

I bought some Magic the Gathering cards this week. I bought them partly out of nostalgia and partly out of a desire to make some art out of them.

The nostalgia part has to do with the fact that I used to play the game back in the early 1990s and then again in the early 2000s. So it’s fun to look at the cards and read what they do. The instructions for the particular way to use a MTG card is always written on the front to it. I can read a card and imagine how I could use it in a game.

The other part of the nostalgia for these cards is that they are MTG Spider-Man cards and I used to read Spider-Man. I still read tons of comics every week, and occasionally Spider-Man, but I haven’t been a regular Spider-Man reader since the early 1980s.

It’s only been in recent years that Hasbro (they own MTG) has added cards to the game made from properties that they don’t own. They made some Lord of the Rings cards and some Final Fantasy cards. I didn’t buy any of those but the nostalgia wasn’t as strong with them as with Spider-Man.

At first I just bought a few individual Spider-Man cards off of eBay. I bought four of them and each was about $2.50 a piece. Each was a different version of Spidey. After getting those four I decided I wanted to see if I could get a bunch of cards at once. That’s usually called a “Lot” of cards so that’s what I searched for on eBay.

I’ve purchased lots of penny cards on eBay before. Usually one can get about a thousand MTG penny cards for around $30 shipped and taxed. But this time I was looking for Spider-Man cards specifically so that cuts down on the amount of lots that are out there. Since most of the lots are made up of the cheapest cards there aren’t many rare cards in a lot of a thousand cards.

I looked through a whole bunch of Spider-man MTG lots and most of them were not what I wanted. I wanted cheap and plentiful so most of the cards were out of my price range. They weren’t super expensive just more than I wanted to spend on a whim. The Spider-Man set is a new one so that made sense.

A altered art card I made.

I eventually found a lot that appealed to me. It was around a six hundred card set and had both Spider-Man and Final Fantasy cards in it. Plus some others. The set was around $34 shipped and taxed.

There weren’t a lot of specific cards shown in the listing or photos so I’d be taking a chance. It seemed to be a lot from just a guy getting rid of cards for whatever reason. He didn’t seem like a dealer to me. I checked the town he was selling from and it was a small town in NY State. I decided to give it a go and bough them.

When I got the cards I thought they were pretty cool. There were around twenty rare cards from the Spider-Man set so I’m guessing that they were definitely not from a dealer. Those rare cards were only worth about $2 a piece but add them all together and I thought I got a good deal. Plus there were some rare cards from the other sets in the lot. I was happy with it.

One of the things I’ve been trying to do with these MTG cards over the last few years (since COVID I think) is to figure out how to draw on them. They’ve got a thick coated surface so they’re not easy to draw on. Certainly pencil doesn’t work on such a surface so it’s tough to do any kind of preliminary drawings on them.

Over the years I’ve tested all sorts of markers on them and so far I find the ones that work the best are either the Sharpie extra fine markers or acrylic paint pens in general. No specific brand of paint pen. They all seem to cover the card pretty well. I’ve made various drawings on MTG cards over the years but I’ve never been thrilled by any of them.

I’ve also tried priming the surface of the card with various paints over the years but I haven’t really liked how any of them came out. Just this week I found something that I’ve liked best so far and that’s to use a wide white acrylic paint pen. I have a 15mm tip one and that only takes three strokes to cover the art area.

So far I like the coverage the paint pen gives me and I can draw on it with a variety of black markers. The problem comes with adding color. I can’t use any of the alcohol or water based color marker I have because they smear the black line. That doesn’t happen on regular paper but over that white paint pen it sure does.

I’m going to have to use color paint pens if I want some color but they are opaque. So they’ll cover up the black marker line and I’ll have to redo it after I add the color. That’s an extra step and it makes me have to be slow when using the paint pens to fill in color.

I also have no idea what I actually want to draw on these MTG cards. I’ve been thinking about somehow using stencils to make the drawing easier for me. I have no idea how to do that yet so I’ll have to see if it’s ever more than a notion.

I’m also thinking about mixing my Tiny Drawings with these MTG cards. I could draw just a face and a word ballon with a few words in it. I’m not sure if I’d even use color in this case but I think I will be able to pull this one off.

I could also paste things onto the card. I’ve done that before (also during COVID I think) when I pasted comic book panels onto some cards. That was fun but ultimately a little pointless. After doing a lot of them I never went back to it. I think it was more of a craft than an art.

I don’t know why I insist on trying to draw on Magic the Gathering cards. Regular pieces of paper are so much easier to draw on. I guess I need a new challenge every now and again. We’ll see how this one works out.

It took me a long time to become a Charles Burns fan. I don’t know why. Despite me being an indie comics reader since the early 1980s he was off my radar for a long time. It could be because his most famous work, “Black Hole,” took a decade to come out. It took from 1995 to 2005 to publish just 12 issues. I’ve bought other comics that took a long time to come out but missed this one. That’s the way it is with comics sometimes. If I miss the beginning issues I just say, “Oh, well…” and ignore it because I missed out.

By 2005 when they published the collected edition I was well aware of Burns and “Black Hole” so eventually I bought it. I ended up being a little ambivalent about it. I liked it but I didn’t like it as much as other people did. That always makes me feel like I’m missing out on something.

It wasn’t until 2010 and the “X’ed Out” trilogy of graphic novels that I became a real Charles Burns fan. Those things are weird, surrealistic, a bit European in style, and up my alley. It took a few years for him to do all three of them but I got them all and still like them a lot.

That brings us to 2025 and his latest graphic novel, “Final Cut.” It came out in the USA in one volume in 2024. It was first released in France, years earlier, as three volumes. This might be the first time I’ve heard of an American cartoonist having his stuff released in another country in another language first.

I bought “Final Cut” back in the end of July 2025 and gave it a read then but somehow it didn’t stick with me. As I write this it’s December 2025 and I gave it another read and really enjoyed it. Sometimes the second read, for me, really improves things. Often with the first read of something I’m caught up in the plot and what is or isn’t going to happen. That means I can miss some of the subtleties that are going on. I think that’s just human nature and our love of storytelling and wondering what’s coming next.

“Black Hole” (which I also liked better on a second read) is about teenage alienation. Or at least that’s what I’ve always read that it’s about. “Final Cut” is also about teenagers and there is some alienation but I think it’s more about coping with being on the edge of adulthood and trying to figure out who you are, where you fit in, and who you love. Plus “What the heck is love and what does it mean.”

There are two main characters. A boy and a girl. They appear to be high school age so I figure that they are around seventeen. They can drive and go off on their own and don’t appear to have jobs. He’s Brian and she’s Laurie. He is an aspiring filmmaker and appears to be on the spectrum. It’s mentioned that he’s on some sort of medication. She’s beautiful. That means a lot of people like her just for her looks but she’s trying to figure out what’s what just like everyone else.

There are a handful of other characters including the only adult in the story who is Brian’s mother. She has a drinking problem. Another character worth mentioning is Brian’s friend Jimmy. He is another aspiring film maker and works on films with Brian. Jimmy seems a lot more well adjusted than Brian but we never get into Jimmy’s head like we do Brian’s. Tina is a third important character as she becomes a rival for Brian as she becomes romantically interested in Laurie too.

The time period of this book seems to be the 1970s or 1980s. They shoot their movies on film cameras and edit the film by cutting and taping it. When they edit at all. There are no computers in sight.

I find Charles Burns art to be deceptively simple. His style is so clean lined and well defined that I think I know everything as I look at it but as I read his art and his stories have a lot of depth and hidden things in them.

Making movies becomes the thing that the plot revolves around. Brian and Jimmy want to make movies so they gather up their group of friends and it became a social event too. Brian wants Laurie to star in them and that’s okay with Jimmy. Scenes also revolve around them watching some of their old movies.

We also get a look at Brian’s literal dreams as the book goes on. They are related to the movies that he is making and also his interest in Laurie. One of the things that Brian is dealing with is that his vision of the movie is never matched by what they can actually do. His vision of Laurie is the same. She’s this beautiful perfect angel to him but in reality she’s a human being.

The narration in the book switches between Brian and Laurie. Usually when this happens in comics they change the color of the caption box but they don’t do that here. This led me to being confused the first time I read it. It takes a few sentences to realize that the narrator has changed. Sometimes more than a few. The second time through I knew this was coming so there was no confusion. I still think they should have used color in the captions to indicate the change. You don’t want your readers to be confused. Most won’t bother with a second time if they are.

I think Burns really captures something about the teenage state of existence with this book. It’s confusing and paralyzing as a lot of us have no idea what to do with all of our social, creative, and romantic energy. There are no good guys and bad guys in this book. Everyone is just trying to figure it out. That doesn’t make for smooth sailing.

I feel for the teenagers in this story more than I feel for characters in a lot of stories about teenagers. Often such stories are either looked at through nostalgic eyes or looked at through adult eyes with more wisdom than was actually there during teenage years. These teenagers feel more real to me and their discomfort with the way things are as opposed to how they want them to be feels real too.

I really enjoyed this second read. They’ll probably be more reads in the future.

I’ve been getting one of my “Dreams of Things” covers done once a week for well over a year now. Maybe it’s even been two years. Today is a Monday and I’ve been getting them done on that day since the end of May. Before that it was on Tuesdays and I think last year at this time it was Thursdays. I like to keep a schedule but I also have to mix up the schedule to keep things interesting.

The part I’ve been getting done on Mondays is to marker color them. All through the year I make pencil drawings at 6×9 inches that I then blow up and print out on 11×17 inch paper. I ink the drawings on that paper and then marker color right over the inks. The logos and trade dress are also printed out on that paper.

I got four covers pencilled over the weekend. I go through bursts of them. First I looked through one of my inkbooks (a sketchbook drawn in ink) and picked out some thumbnail drawings that I wanted to turn into finished covers. I like to do these in bunches so I have some choices of what I can draw. I picked out six thumbnails, blew them up to 6×9 inches, and then printed them out on 6×9 inch paper. I already had three or four of them still undrawn from the last time I did this so I had plenty of choices. From Friday to Sunday I drew four of them and then set them up for inking.

Though I have choices when I pencil them I usually color them in order. This week’s cover was number 308. I can’t believe I’ve made over 300 of these. Until recently I’ve always colored these with dye based alcohol markers. Copics, Blicks, and Artfinity markers. But recently I’ve added some Pantone pigment based ink markers into the mix. I did a couple of these cover with just the new pigment ink markers but this time I decided to use both.

Usually I take the inked cover that I’m going to color out the night before I’m going to work on it. I like to look at it and see if it gives me any ideas before I start it. For some reason the idea I got was plaid. I never draw plaid as my pattern on a cover but I was going to attempt to. The next morning that’s the first thing I did. I had a weird idea to make it Miami Dolphins colors. So I used an orange, a light blue, and then some yellow. I don’t remember yellow being in the Dolphins’ color scheme but the other two are. I used a straight edge to make the plaid lines nice and straight.

The next color I worked on was the triple blue waves behind the main figure’s head. For some reason the plaid and this blue were the only colors that I had in mind as I started this. Often colors suggest themselves to me as I go along but with this one it was only the blue. The rest of the colors all took a bit more contemplation than I’m used to. That is probably because of the plaid. It’s a pattern I’ve never used before on one of these covers so working with it was new.

The next color pattern was the wood grain on the right. I wanted a pattern to play with the plaid but it had to be dark and neutral. I went with one of my classic wood grains. It looks weird next to the plaid but this whole cover looks a little weird.

I put in those orange bars next. Top and bottom. I needed something simple and bright to ground the piece after all those patterns.

Then came the weird piano keys on top. They were just rectangles to begin with but then I used dark and light colors to give them more rectangles inside the original ones. I did them all in shades of grey because I wanted another neutral after all those patterns but then I didn’t like the grey so I colored over them with yellow. I like the yellow/grey combo.

I dropped the purple pattern in next to bounce off the orange. I also needed it to be a strong color that wouldn’t be overwhelmed by the plaid. I think after I put the plaid in it took all the rest of the colors to tame the plaid. No wonder I never use it!

After the purple came the red bar and the yellow brown circles. Nothing special with those two spots but they get the job done.

The three red, blue, and yellow fellows on the right side were next. I think I knew what color these guy were going to be all along too. They were in the back of my mind as I chose all the other colors plus they were simple to do.

The rest of the piece was coloring the figure. That took some contemplating! I went with the orange belt first and knew I wanted some purple in it too but everything else was up in the air! It’s hard to even describe my process for this part because it was slow going. I’d add in a little yellow, some pinks, a red and a brown here and there, and some dark purples.

This part was like organizing chaos. That plaid and all the other patterns in the piece made color choices hard. As a matter of fact I think chaos won. There are a lot more colors and patterns fighting with each other than is usual for me. My eye bounces all around this piece.

The last thing I did with this one was after I finished all the color I added in some more ink lines. I don’t always do that but sometimes I think it adds clarity. Especially when things get a little chaotic. I beefed up the lines around the circles and added some curves lines inside them. Then I added little tick marks inside the figure in certain spots to give the drawing some depth.

In the end despite the simple composition of this one it came out quite complex. The space is really different than I usually do and the word chaotic keeps coming to my mind. I like it.

I haven’t done a Friends walkthrough in a while so I think I’ll do one. I haven’t watched an episode in months so let’s see where I’m at. I’m on Season Eight Episode Five “The One With Rachel’s Date”. This first ran on October 25, 2001. Let me check my calendar and see what I was doing that day.

The only notation I have for that day is “Print Stuff.” That means that I was probably working on some digital prints. I’d draw stuff by hand on paper, scan it in, and then color it digitally. This was probably the very beginning of me making digital prints. I still make them today but not as often as I once did.

I also notice that I was working on my website earlier in the week. This was probably when I first got www.jaredosborn.com online. It has been a while.

On the Saturday following this Thursday I read that I played some touch football. I used to play some pickup games in New Jersey. Everybody who played was generally a person who worked at either Marvel Comics or Wizard Magazine. I think our last game was in January 2005.

Let’s get on with the show. We start with Monica working as a chef as Phoebe stops by. Phoebe takes a liking to the new sous chef, Tim, and flirts with him so Monica quickly hooks them up because she’s in a hurry. Monica is not yelling!

Here comes the theme song. I haven’t heard it in a while. It’s filled with nostalgia for me.

Next scene is at Chandler’s office. He starts with a joke and then Ross stops by. They’re heading out to lunch. A co-worker calls Chandler “Toby” and he just rolls with it. That’s Chandler’s plot for this episode. The guy thinks his name is Toby and it’s too embarrassing for Chandler to correct him because he’s been calling him that for five years.

Ross finds out after all these years that Chandler’s middle name is Muriel. “Your parents never even gave you a chance” is his reaction. Ha!

New scene. We’re on set with Joey on “Days of Our Lives” and Rachel is with him watching the monitor as Joey acts. Rachel gets an intro to one of the actors, Cash. This must be the date that the title refers to. If I remember correctly Rachel is pregnant (it’s early on) with Ross’s baby but they’re not together. So this sets up a jealousy angle.

Now we’re at Central Perk with Monica and Phoebe. Phoebe had a great date with Tim but Monica wants to fire him because he’s bad at his job. Some solid jokes and then Monica is convinced to give him another chance.

And we’re at Joey and Rachel’s apartment and it’s time for Rachel to find out that Cash wants to ask her out. Joey said he didn’t think she’d be dating anyone because she’s pregnant. Rachel says she wants the date. This is a solidly funny scene.

Back to Chandler’s office and a continuation of the Toby plot line. This is a mildly funny plot but there is really not much to say about it. It’s discomfort humor. Not my favorite type.

More Phoebe and Monica. Tim has got to be fired. But the twist is now that Phoebe wants to break up with him. He’s too clingy but she doesn’t want him to get dumped and fired on the same day.

More uncomfortable Chandler in the office humor.

That was a quick scene and now we’re back to Rachel and Joey as she’s about to go on her date. She’s not going to tell hime she’s pregnant. Ross walks in as Rachel is getting ready and it’s the first he hears about the date. It’s not weird for him. It’s regular. We get uncomfortable Ross. And then he gets upset.

The scene is Central Perk. Tim arrives and we know that Phoebe is about to break up with him. He’s really too wimpy for her. Before the breakup can happen Monica pages him 911 from the restaurant. Imagine that. A pager makes an appearance. This was before the age of the cell phone.

Meanwhile Ross and Joey are at his apartment. Ross is worried about the date. It’s a lot for him. His vision of him, a wife, and child all living together is moving further away form reality. A lot of sadness in this scene. Plus a couple of jokes.

Back to Chandler’s office. We didn’t get a lot of scenes of Chandler’s work place until these later seasons.

Now it’s time for Monica to fire Tim but Phoebe shows up. He gets fired and dumped at the same time. Funny scene but brutal for Tim. He’s a nice guy and takes the high road. He’s so nice that Monica decides to give him a second chance. Phoebe does not.

A newsstand scene as Ross and Rachel meet out on the street. The date didn’t go well. She told Cash that she was pregnant. He cheers her up by telling her about Chandler’s middle name. It’s a sweet scene as Rachel realizes that dating is over for her for a long time and Ross tells her how much she’ll love her baby.

Immediately Ross walks into Central Perk and Runs into Mona. A woman he met at Chandler and Monica’s wedding and liked. Rachel walks in and then walks out again to sad music.

The credits scene is one final Joke about Chandler being called Toby at the office.

Now it’s time to check out what was cut out of this script for syndication. A Monica yelling joke in the beginning. Then nothing until a “I’m not telling him I’m pregnant” joke later on. Finally a bit of the Chandler office stuff. Not a lot of stuff in this one but I still prefer it in.

I’m going to check my ratings from back when I rated all of these episodes on iTunes years ago. But first I think I’d rate it a three stars out of five right now. That means it’s an average episode. That’s still good but not special.

I gave it two stars back in the day! That means below average. That could also be because the one before this one, “The One With The Videotape” is a five star episode (the best). If I watched them back to back I could see how this one would pale in comparison. But after not having watched an episode in months this one seemed more near an average episode to me.

Until next episode.