A million and a half years ago, when the internet was a young thing barely into its adolescence, I did a web-comic that I would post to my live journal, titled very appropriately, Stumped. Stumped was me having fun with doing single funny (at least to me they were funny, the jury never came back on whether or not they were funny to anyone else) comic strips. It was me learning how to tell a joke using my favorite medium, and on occasion I told them fairly well. I did a grand total of 6 Stumped comic strips, a lofty number back then and I had always planned to go back and do more of them as they were some of the most fun I've had putting pencil to paper and stylus to tablet. Life got in the way of me making any more Stumped comics, at least on a regular basis. My career of comic book artist went from speculative to actual and the free time with which I had in abundance suddenly vanished as I now had people paying me to do what I used to do to get out of doing any real work. 

Skip forward to the current day and age. The internet has left adolescence far behind. Live journal is still there, but the blog has, well, I don't have to tell you do I? In fact if you are still reading this I am completely surprised and flattered. Not so much because it is dull, but because it is far more than 140 characters. As for me, I'm married and careered, and still under deadline and spend a lot of time thinking about that funny strip that I used to do and how much I enjoyed it. This week I was low. I couldn't get my head unscrewed from my rectum and just needed something to make me laugh.  Leafing through an old sketchbook, I came across a page that had eight panels sketched out and found myself giggling. I put the deadlines aside just for a little while and spent time drawing for myself.  I humbly present the results here.

I of course showed it to my wife.  She is a PhD candidate and much smarter than I am, and in her wisdom said I should do more of these. And you know what, that feels right. Like I said she is much smarter than I am.  So expect this to be the first of what is hopefully many more attempts at me being funny, and if you have to blame someone, blame my wife. I'm not guaranteeing any kind of schedule, but I am going to do more of them.  Welcome to Stumped.