Dragon and Goat

Oak Park’s Book Table Closing!

We just heard that our local book store is closing, and while we have a couple used bookstores in the area, unless something steps-in we’ll have a pretty big hole for local bookworms to consume, well, books.

Dragon and Goat have been there since about the time we moved to OP, so if you’re in the area stop by to get one of the last copies of THYME BANDIT before this local gem is shuttered for all eternity…

We just heard that our local book store is closing, and while we have a couple used bookstores in the area, unless something steps in we’ll have a pretty big hole for local bookworms to consume, well, books.

Aside from featuring our books, we will miss a brick and mortar bookstore that’s become part of our everyday life pretty quickly. Our kid loves popping in before piano lessons or getting presents for people- and it takes me back to when I used to go to bookstores and would beeline for the fantasy/scifi/humor section. Don’t get me wrong- I love libraries and OP libraries are pretty great (internal politicking aside…) but there’s something about owning a copy of a book.

I usually write in books that I own, penciling in thoughts and underlining quotes for future use. (Though, not usually with comics- those are usually tagged up like Trump’s ear with sticky notes!) I don’t buy an exorbitant amounts of books because I generally like to keep them, so I’m pretty selective. Usually it’s a book that I know I can go back to- like the fantasy novels I read back in middle school that I occasionally revisit or some cultural, historical, or theoretical text that I can use in later writing, projects, or classes.

Most of my experiences with book stores growing up were through chain stores like Walden’s, Books-a-Million, or Barnes and Noble. They were always full of such potential, offering up a stack of bound paper to consume and ignite my imagination.

As Amazon edged out their brick and mortar big box book slingers, indie bookstores have become more important to support. I do sell books on Spamazon- bc, well, as an indie creator and publisher I need the distribution, but I keep a few books off their monstrous site and have been working to get more titles over to a slightly better platform- that’s better for indie bookstores.

Hopefully this announcement will inspire someone else to take up the Book Table’s reins. And hopefully those new owners…will dedicate a solid month to featuring Dragon and Goat in a window? I don’t know- we’ve got the books! Maybe I can design some sort of animatronic Macy’s window display?

Resurrecting the Woolly Mammoth with: SCIENCE!

Okay, so maybe not resurrecting the woolly mammoth just yet, but recently my friends at the Aiden Lab Center for Genome Architecture and their collaborators across the globe have published a paper in CELL about their research into how 3D structures of DNA are preserved in the fossilized remains of a wooly mammoth that is 52,000 years old!

This discovery allows for quicker assembly of genomes through their Hi-C mapping process and better understanding of gene expression in the woolly mammoth genome. Their goal isn’t really to bring back the woolly mammoth but their are some scientists working on it- for some reason?

Anyway, for the paper I created some of the graphics, some elephants, a horse, cow, and a scientist shooting beef jerky with a shot gun! Plus a Houston Astro pitcher throwing a fastball at the beef jerky and someone running it over with a car- I mean, that’s my kind of science!

The paper is here in CELL: Volume 187, ISSUE 14, P3541-3562.e51, July 11, 2024 and directly-click-through-able at: https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(24)00642-1

I also created some feature images/ cover proposals for the journal that are also floating around there in media packets and some other articles picking up the article. Didn’t make the cover but maybe next time!

C2E2- Day 2 & 3- Wait…was that Really 2 Months Ago?!

C2E2- Day 2 & 3- Wait…was that Really 2 Months Ago?! I am skeptical about how time works now. Well, here’s a recap anyway.

I am skeptical about how time works now.Okay, well, to be fair I got sick at C2E2, had to teach afterwards and spent the next month catching up on grading and finishing out the semester. I was guzzling copious amounts of hot tea and coffee- so I made it through, but by the end my voice was going and the next week was rough. This is the problem with Lecturing being your other gig…

Still C2E2 did not disappoint- too much! It didn’t seem to me to be up to full speed as it was pre-pandemic, but it was great connecting with some new fans and old fans. However, I will say since this was my first one back since 2019, the ‘old’ fans are MUCH older. Still the great thing about doing comics for kids is that their keeps being a new group growing into Dragon and Goat!

The crowds were pretty dense, and I did notice people maybe not as curious for new stuff as they had been in past years. Since I don’t do fan art or prints and still stubbornly cling to transmitting comics through printed books- it can be difficult to compete with the familiar comic worlds when your carving out your own cartoon spaces.

If you find yourself at a Comic Con in the near future (especially if you haven’t been before) be sure to hit Artist Alley up. There are lots of great original artists there who are happy to chat about their projects and even sketch up some fun stuff for you.

The cosplay game was strong, though! Lots of great cosplayers and creative energy out there. It’s fantastic to see how 3D Printing has really boomed. While I still recognize a fair amount of the costumes out there- there’s definitely A LOT that are getting more more out of my cartoon lexicon. I guess I need to up my binging this summer- to the Crunchy Roll!

All in all, though, it was great to get back on a show floor and see people face to face. Here are some of my favorite pics- definitely let me know if you recognize a character that I don’t. Sometimes they just look cool and even I have no idea where the character is from. While cosplay began maybe as an extension of fandom- I really like seeing it becoming a space for original characters to take life as well!

The Dragon and Goat books going strong- the S’Particles came out 10 years ago!

C2E2 Day 1 Starting off with a Bang!

C2E2 Day One was busier than usual! Not lots of time to wander but lots of awesome cosplayers passing the table!

See you at C2E2 in Chicago this Weekend!

We’re looking forward to getting back to C2E2 this weekend April 26-28! Come say ‘hi’ at our Table M-8. We’ll have the newest Dragon and Goat book Magic Mountain and loads of other comics.

Happy Pi-Day: Have Slice- of Book!

Happy Pi-Day, One and All!

In honor of the International Day of the Number that Helps us Calculate the Dimensions of All Things Round – we’re offering a steep discount of our very special Dragon and Goat book: PI-RAT ISLAND! Today only you can buy the book from our website for 3.14285714286% off!

Full of Mathe-magics, squid-footed pirates, and, of course, Pi-rats, this book is a great introduction to teh Dragon and Goat series for you all ages readers!

Just click the book below to hop on over to the Ye Olde Dragon and Goat Shoppe and check out some pages below!

Happy holidays from us at Dragon and Goat!

Well, a bit late- but here’s to a happier year in 2024! This is our holiday card from this past season. Our kid wanted to have us in an elf toy workshop, and while I was really wanting to do a holiday Star Wars card (maybe next year?), I realized that my step-dad’s hardware store would make for a perfect toy-making studio, so we elf-ed up.

It was definitely a bittersweet year-end since we had lost my step-dad this past May, and I’ve been scrambling to deal with everything in the wake of his passing. Even though my dad was and is still very much my dad, my step-dad was a father-figure for me growing up with him and my mom.

He owned a hardware store that he had for two decades at the center of my hometown. I grew up working there at the age of nine, running the register, loading and unloading straw and concrete fountains, and building wagons. He made his own wreaths (hence Alli making the wreath) and sold Christmas trees (never cut- always balled) that I would drive over to North Carolina with him to get in the winters, rolling down the window so not to breathe too much smoke from his ever-present cigarettes while writing and drawing in my notebooks.

Joe Waggoner Hardware pen and ink wash on paper. from 1999.

Over the years I drew his shop a couple times for him in pen and ink. The first was a Christmas present I made in high school and the other was one that he had asked for of the original site when it was a service station. He gave me an old print out that someone had brought him of the photo, and I finished it the summer of 2019.

I have a lot of fond memories of the place. I learned to work, use tools, make stuff. I learned to sit around and be bored and find things to do whether it was smashing nickels in the vice or making keys. The back office was one of my first studios where I’d devour comics, build worlds for Dungeons and Dragons, or write and draw inspired by the muses in Playboys that I would sneak down from the upper shelves.

Early on he sold ducks and chicks until that operation got shut down, my step-sister sold lemonade out the front, and somehow my step-brother and I ran a burger and Coke stand during the Iris Festival- and were not shut down by the local food inspector. We helped haul and unload pumpkins, concrete, and loads and loads of flowers to his enormous green house. A forest of banana trees grew up behind the green house out of the plant clippings he composted that kids from local elementary schools would visit.

I helped him make signs to put out front, carving out a gigantic goose and a rabbit out of plywood as well as a nine-foot tall five-headed pink flamingo that I made at art school. He always supported my weird art even if he didn’t always get it.

One of my happiest moments after I had moved out and gone to the University of Tennessee was when I came back to the store and found a plywood board that he had painted completely abstractly- a technicolor Jackson Pollock drip painting. I had myself been slinging paint in a pretty abstract phase of art making, and he told me my latest paintings had inspired him to throw some around after he had finished painting some of the concrete rabbits and other critters he had put out that season.

I still haven’t even begun to really unpack the loss of my step-dad, but I was pretty glad to have gotten to go back to the Corner (that’s what we always called it) after his passing. While it had been a kind of albatross for him once he had closed shop and had difficulty selling the property, the store somehow avoided demolition and became a taproom. It opened right around his 75^th birthday about when he was dying and I had came back to help. Though he wasn’t able to make it, my step-siblings were able to have a few drinks in the bays that we spent so much of our childhoods.

Since his passing I’ve been pretty busy managing things for my mom, my family, and, of course, teaching. While it’s caused a back log in creative output, it’s also been a good time for me to future-think and decide what it is I’m wanting to do in the near and far.

Monkey Prince Flash Sale!

Unbeknownst to me Amazon is, I guess, doing a Flash Sale of my book- the Monkey Prince! Now is a great time to pick up a copy (it’s like $3.23 as of this posting?!) and I’ll still get normal royalties, so almost no money will be going to Jeff Bezos! Pick up a copy or two for early holiday presents and be sure to leave some positive reviews! Feel free to grab any of my other books from the Dragonandgoat.com website and you’ll get a signed copy from me!

Happy Birthday, Dragon!

Today- Aug. 8- Dragon celebrates his 115th birthday! He likes to climb mountains on his birthday to give him perspective on the past years.

Dragon and Goat Bricked Out

I realized I never posted my Lego Dragon and Goats I made a little bit ago, but I ended up doing a few iterations of Dragon and a couple of Goat- I still need to do a small Goat, and I’ll probably shoot for a couple super smalls of the pair!

So these (above) were the first two and fun to get a sense of working with the bricks that can send Legos out in multiple directions- that we didn’t have a lot of back in the day.

The next 2 I decided to take advantage of the curves that are now available. The mouths were pretty tough to figure out in my head before buying the bricks and hoping that I was guessing right as to how everything would come together!

Not visible here is that on the Big Goat his ears and tail are hinged to move. I still want to make a Dragon that chomps, though…

So which of the five is your favorite? I’m still partial to the first Dragon (above in the middle), but we’ll see how the littlest Goat turns out once I make it!