The One And Only

Waltzing in Perdition is about to bring something new to the table. Something I’ve been trying not to bring, in fact.

I used to sneak my dad’s Koh-I-Noor Rapidograph pens and draw cartoons. It used to drive him stark raving mad, being more the artist than I was and father to five kids with no sense of boundary line and no shame when it came to pilfering his favored tools of the trade. I suppose it was the professional precision in the pens themselves, the exactness of each line, the perfect pitch black of the india ink. Or perhaps the special casing in which they resided and displayed like some set of rare jewels. Whatever it was, I couldn’t keep my hands off the forbidden fruit and the only solution to keep him from locking them (or me) away permanently was to get me my own set.

Which he did, which I loved, and with which I proudly drew my cartoons with gusto. That is, until the day, many years later, I misplaced my entire collection never to find them again. Which happened to be the same day I found myself on a phone call needing to occupy my mind by doodling. Which found me reaching instinctively for a pen and grasping that pen you see up top. And commandeering the paper on the desk I happened to be sitting at—a very cheap copy paper. Into which the ink from this pen bled in a way that can only be described as conversational (let it go).

All that nonsense to say that, after having access to the best pens and the best papers, and demanding as much with no forgivenss, my world was rearranged in the space of five minutes and the pedestal on which everything enjoyed unchallenged status fell over with no ceremony and no effort. And all that nonsense to say that there is soon coming to WiP cartoons to accompany certain stories, perhaps (brace yourselves, those of you who have been asking me for decades for this one) an actual comic strip.

I’m still thinking about that one.

So. That pen up top? The company who makes them actually stopped making them several years back, and the only place I could find them was on eBay. Fine. Just last evening, while on the phone with the best WordPress coder on planet earth, it was suggested I bring to the blog my own illustrations. I met the idea with something embarrassingly close to a whine because I could no longer find my pen even on eBay. Tendering from him a perfectly aimed reprimand (one artist to another) (allowed) resulting in my scouring the internet to discover (joy of joys) that the company which manufactured the pen has brought them back into production. Something about a certain cartoonist out west stringing up the board of directors or something like that IForgetOkayThanksBye.

So I ordered a dozen.

Stay tuned for a return to the drawing board, folks.