Yesterday is a mystery, tomorrow is a mystery, today is a mystery.

There’s only about 20 birthdays you should be allowed to celebrate. And the others? You’re wasting cake and paper….When you’re 20, you get a birthday. Any time you enter a new set of tens: 20, 30, 40, 50, you get a birthday. 21, you get an awesome birthday. And then, THAT’S IT. A birthday every ten years. “I’m 26!” Great, go to work. Who gives a s***?—Patton Oswalt on when you should get a birthday

To humble us: Things other people accomplished when they were your age.

“Oh, look honey: it’s my Citizen Kane year.”

(My wife rolls her eyes.)

To give us hope: late bloomers.

I’d like the middle path, please…and some cake!

For my birthday we drove down to Circleville to spend the weekend with my mom and dad. I always request pie instead of cake, so in addition to the two amazing full-sized peach pies my mom made, here is a tiny pie she made with an A inscribed in the dough.

Next to it is my diary from 1992. Here is the entry for June 16:

My birthday was today! I got a Bo Jackson starting lineup, Aqua Swim goggles, baseball cards, holders, Thro-yo, casette carry case, a Sox shirt, 5 casette tapes & 29 bucks!!! Best of all a boom box!!!! I am 9!!

I still have that boombox.

The Bo Jackson starting lineup is nowhere to be found.

After seeing the preview, I’m really excited for Scott McCloud’s MAKING COMICS, the third book in his UNDERSTANDING COMICS and REINVENTING COMICS trilogy.

Along with Dylan Horrocks’ essay on world-building, I count UNDERSTANDING COMICS as one of the biggest influences on the way I now think about not only comics, but storytelling in general.

Here’s what McCloud has to say about his new book:

“The book starts with a radical new look at the process of comics. I just blow past the layout, penciling, inking thing (which I really think only applies some of the time nowadays, when we have all these new tools).”

To me, technique is the last thing to worry about when starting to think about making comics. Maybe that’s because I never learned how to draw comics “the Marvel Way,” with brush and ink, and like McCloud, I use a computer and Wacom drawing tablet to make mine.

It sounds like McCloud is structuring the book around the choices (shown above) that have to be made during the creative process. What I’ll be interested in is whether he assigns a particular chronological order to these choices: whether, say, choice of moment must always come before choice of flow. (For me, sometimes choice of flow comes before everything.)

Regardless, I think it’s going to be a great book, and I’m bummed out that we have to wait until September to read it. Hopefully he’ll hit NEO as part of his 50-state tour.

* 23 years on the planet. Not to be confused with Bloomsday. Maybe one of these days I’ll spend it in Dublin…