Parasites for ten thousand, Alex

I’ve kept a low-key paid email list for a number of years for people who want to support my work. This is the first time I’ve ever released one publicly. Next month I’ll be sending my annual holiday cards in the mail to everyone on the list. You can sign up here.

There’s a lot in this week’s email so I’m going to bump a wrap-up of my trip to Copenhagen and the unpublishable Trump drawings I’ve been teasing until a later date.

I’ve been planning on showing you this sketch. It’s an alternate cartoon I was thinking of doing on Martin Shkreli the other week featuring the Avenging Uterus, who I haven’t drawn in… years? (Archive here.) I really wanted to bring the character back, but the simplicity of the other comic won over.

But then something really strange happened last weekend with Mr. Shkreli…

During the height of the controversy, Shkreli was digging the hole deeper with temper tantrums on Twitter before wisely locking his account down. Then last Friday I saw a tweet come into my feed from him. He’d unlocked his feed and was at it again. I decided to engage — this is hat social media is for!

I threw some dark at him, he responded to me, then we had this exchange.

The next day I followed up. When an anonymous account jumped in, that’s when things took a turn for the weird.

So I have $10,000 in my account now, will donate 90% to charity and will debate a random guy on Twitter about Martin Shkreli. This has to be the most anyone has paid to argue online — I’d pay to avoid it. I did look into the donor and while I don’t know if they want identified publicly or not, they are definitely of means and someone with a stake in this debate, so as shocking as this may seem to us normals, throwing around ten grand is nothing to them.

I’m looking into charities/foundations that focus on toxoplasmosis to donate to and should happen soon. I’ll be sure to keep you up to date!

NEW COMICS

Ben Carson has been repeatedly spouting nonsense in the wake of the mass shooting in Oregon, first saying the dead people should have rushed the shooter — as he claims he’d do — before blaming the holocaust on gun control, which is asinine and historically inaccurate.

His story about being stuck up at Popeye’s is even stranger because first, it flies in the face of his claim that he’d Batman a gunman with his bare fists. It’s detestable because he asks a gunman to redirect his barrel toward some low-wage parent or teenager manning the register at a grease pit.

Definitely the kind of leadership qualities we need in our commander-in-chief.

An LA Times humor columnist published one of those dreadful pieces complaining about Kids These Days in the form of a Millennial Pledge. Some examples:

• I am entitled to nothing.
• I will show up on time.
• Just once, I will try driving without texting.
• When meeting someone for the first time, I will always look him or her in the eye.
• Each year, I will pen at least one thank-you note, using what’s left of my cursive writing skills.
• When I don’t get my way, I will learn to roll with it.
• I will not go on a job interview in shorts and flip-flops, even if “this job is so beneath me.”
• Nothing is beneath me.

Thank You notes in cursive? If I was guessing I’d say this was written as a passive-agressive message to the author’s 16-year-old child.

There are a lot of problems with this piece, but I’ll try to keep it brief. I’m early millennial which puts me in my 30s. I came into adulthood around the time of 9/11, 14 years ago. A lot of my friends are getting married, having children, gaining footholds in their careers, and possibly squirreling away enough money outside of their students debt payments to put a down payment on their first house.

This idea that we’re all lazy, sitting around picking our noses and taking selfies might have purchase if we were still teenagers. I might be more receptive to it if it was A) actually funny and B) I couldn’t write circles around this guy ten years ago.

This is all treading over jokes the comic strip Zits pulled off 15 years ago — and they weren’t very funny then. I dare say he’s in the full grip of the laziness he deplores.

Three more things:

• You probably remember my piece for CNN on millennials. That’s worth another look in light of this.
• If you know what “spending the entire weekend exploring your mouth with a coffee straw” means, let me know. I’m still scratching my head on that one.
• The author’s follow up on the backlash manages to be even worse than the original column.

NEW DRAWINGS

Above we have just a little warmup comic I made this morning. Little things like this don’t really rise to the level of one of my regular comics, but I hope to include more of them on this list as time permits.

Below, drawings of Hillary and Trump.

I don’t think I’ve drawn Hillary in nearly forever and need to brush up. I’ve been avoiding election stuff as much as I’ve been able, but with the Democratic debate, we’re getting dangerously close to a saturation in coverage I can no longer ignore. You can see some drawings I whipped up during the debate here.

Also: I’ve reopened my Etsy shop to make it easy for people to buy my originals. I have these two drawings in there for cheap — $40 each — as well as some recent comics and last week’s drawings of Wayne LaPierre.

And next week I promise to show you those Donald Trump… let’s call them portraits.

- Matt

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