You might not even realise that internalised critical voice is there, until one day it shuts up for a while and the silence where it was is blissful.

Thanks to everyone who came and said hello and bought comics at the Alternative Press Fair. Bemusement, rather than thanks, to that one guy who declared “There’s a fuckin’ MINGE in your comic,” like it was an insult or something. The only possible response was a cheery grin and “Yes. Yes there is.”

Then the next day I went to Orbital Comics, who are now stocking One Word For Everything and also Urban Beasts, by boyfriend Dan with Karen and Anna Rubins. Go! Buy! Enjoy their giant beanbags and their exhibition of original thriller-comic art by Arthur Ranson!

And check out the new Stockists page above. It seemed worth making a page now that I have more than two stockists. I’d like to get some more to add to that. If there’s a comic shop in your city that takes small-press stuff, please comment and let me know.

Inspired by this article by Barbara Ehrenreich, and also her earlier book Bait And Switch which describes how life coaches train unemployed people to believe that the only thing standing between them and a brilliant new job is themselves. Not, y’know, the crap state of the economy, or the thousands of other equally brilliant unemployed people after the same job, or dodgy hiring and firing practices or any larger social forces like that. Just themselves. (And if they still don’t manage to get one, it’s their fault.)

It’s a beautiful thought, and one that I’ve been tempted by from time to time, the idea that your thoughts create your reality. (And they do, up to a point. Belief is a very powerful force.) It’s just odd how often a statement like that is followed by one like ‘…so the poor are just not wishing hard enough’, and odd how something that sounds pretty radical always seems to end up as an excuse for the way things are.

Update schedule FAIL! But here it is, the last part of this series, a day late. It seems sort of appropriate that this was a struggle to finish because I was up to my neck in bureaucracy and stress.

It’s only good ethical practice to let you know that this comic is a conscious act of magic. (Shave my head, I wanna be wanna be wanna be Grant Morrison.)

And I can’t show you a youtube of it, but this is the song that was in my head while I was doing this: The Weakerthans – A New Name For Everything

So I have inexplicably decided to rename this series of strips after a pretentious line from a Covenant song. Covenant being a goth techno band I was into in the early noughties. Okayyy.

This is part 2 of 3.

I’ve been a hermit lately – several weeks of a lingering cold and ice and then SNOW, lots of it. It doesn’t help that I keep missing Tuesday comics pub because I’m busy making comics. But! Next month I’ll have a stall at the Alternative Press Fair near Euston Station in London, selling comics and craft stuff. Come and say hello!

This was still unformed and not ready to go up yet when my friend James texted me this morning to wish me a happy Epiphany. And it seemed too good a moment to, er, waste.

This is my wish for all of you for the shiny new decade.

Someone’s set up a Livejournal feed for me (thank you) – you can read my comics on your friends page by going to http://syndicated.livejournal.com/wasted_rss/

A thing rather like this strip except that it’s a song: the excellent ‘Mutants Here I Am’ by Plundersonics. Woman relates bizarre story of turning into giant monster in the most bored, drawling, disaffected voice imaginable, featuring lines like ‘The usual. Spectacular. Adventures’ and ‘Until I lost body parts it was fun.’