Lately, in these long (too long) stretches between posts, I’ve been doing a lot of everything and not enough of anything. I’m writing, as always, but with the closing date for our new house looming closer with every day, I find myself spending far too much time on the phone hassling mortgage brokers and insurance agents. I hate doing it, but the rush I get from successfully negotiating a bank fee should be outlawed.

I’ve received some interesting mail, lately. Yesterday, I opened the mailbox to find a copy of Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, a wonderfully alive and detailed reference tome that is as pleasurable as it is useful. I picked it up for what amounted to be a nominal shipping and handling fee, and think it is the perfect addition for my steadily-growing reference collection.

That was yesterday. The mail today was even more exciting. There is a perfectly whimsical online comic called Minus, that ran from February 2006 to July 2008 when the artist, Ryan Armand, abandoned it to move on to other projects. The strip was nominated for an Eisner Award in 2007, and even in its dormancy remains one of the best web-only comics on the tubes.

Minus, the title character, is the name of a little girl who possesses nearly god-like powers that allow her to turn anything she imagines into reality. The intrigue of the comic lies in Minus’ inability to understand the significance of the worlds she creates. There are runs of several strips that follow Minus as she constructs beautifully nuanced universes, complete with their own inhabitants, governments and landscapes–only to destroy them on a whim. The strip is touching, clever, unexpected, and often beautiful.

My exciting mail day came when I found a poster-tube leaning against the inside of my door. I’d ordered a print of a particularly impressive Minus strip, and had forgotten about it until then. Inside the tube I found a full-sized reproduction, signed by the artist. It was cause for celebration, but it wasn’t anything I didn’t expect. The surprise came when from inside the reproduction fell an 8.5×11 piece of printer paper with an original drawing that Armand made just for me. The drawing was of his heroine floating away on the string of a balloon–a reference to another one of his comics I mentioned I liked. On the back of the paper was a scribbled message from the artist.

If I get anywhere near my scanner in the near future, I’ll post a scan of the original piece. Until then, happy hunting. And take a look through Armand’s other strips if you have the time. They’re worth it.

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