My latest story-line has been generating a lot of reader mail. Some really amazing reader mail. And I wanted to let everyone know that my dad is alive and well. Some people were worried that something was up. That this story was an indication that something terrible had happened. Yes and no.

Most of what is happening to Rip Sienna happened to my father back in 1996. October of 1996 to be exact. I was eight months into a new marriage when we got a phone call that dad bent over at work to pick up a dropped pen and almost passed out. So he went to the ER and they had him start a stress test and immediately admitted him to the ICU. Dad ended up having bypass surgery after his angioplasty and stent failed to do the job (scar tissue built up on the stent and re-closed the artery).

Two months later, dad’s at home and my mother dies unexpectedly. It was a real sucker-punch to the whole family. It devastated us. This was all before I ever drew the first PvP comic strip.

So this experience has been with me for sixteen years now. And while I has occurred to me to work through it via the strip, I never have until now really. I got through it, and I got comfortable not worrying bout the possibility of losing another parent. Until recently.

Five months ago, shortly after his visit here to Seattle (when we filmed his episode of the Kris and Scott Show), dad had a stroke. We got very lucky in that he was with someone when it happened and paramedics arrived within 10 minutes of being called. So his recovery has been swift and promising. Doctors expected a full recovery and everything indicates they’re right.

I’m in Dallas right now, visiting. Spending time with him at home. Yesterday Dad wanted to see Mission Impossible and he walked from the car to his seat and back afterwards…impressing us with his ability to forgo the cane he was using a month earlier. This is a man who in July could not use his left side at all and needed a nurse to move him from his bed into a wheelchair. Now he’s upset because “He doesn’t have his dance moves back yet.”

My father is the bravest man I know. Faced with this he has never lost his faith, humor or determination. He asked me recently if I had blogged about his stroke and I told him no. That I wanted to protect him and that I didn’t have his permission to talk about it nor was I planning to ask for it. He told me “You can talk about it. Tell them what happened and that I’m doing great.” Papa says hello.

Thank you to everyone who has written me this last week to express how this story has touched you personally. An artist can hope for no greater achievement than to connect with his audience. This story, these fears, are universal and innately human. We all experience them and struggle through them. Thank you for your stories and for your strength. Drawing these strips has been cathartic and has helped me work through a lot of self doubt and guilt.

I’m actually doing a horrible job. There’s so much I’m just not getting into these strips. Like the guilt I’m harboring over having moved away from my father. Or my brother. My poor sweet brother who wants to move to Seattle as well but remains behind to deal with the responsibility of being “Brent” in this situation. Or how I’m absolutely terrified to let go and breathe again, no matter how strong my dad gets. I’m just not good enough of a writer yet. I really should have waited another five years to tell this story.

But I needed to vent some pressure. I needed to express it artistically as best I could. So I’m shitting these out as they come to me.

I don’t know how to end this post, so I’ll do it messy and imperfectly. Like life.

Every year, people start looking back and making lists and I’m always impressed because I don’t think I can remember every thing I did during a year. At least not in enough detail to chronicle it.

I can remember enough of the highlights to say that 2011 was a pretty intense year. It was my wife’s first year in a new city since she was…born? Two maybe? We love it Seattle and we’re never leaving (maybe we’ll summer in Italy if we ever win the lottery). Kris and I raised over 60 grand in kickstarter funds to film a webseries. The Trenches launched. It was a good year. A busy year. And interesting year.

I’m more excited about looking ahead. 2011 isn’t quite over yet and I’m already starting work on 2012 projects. Thank God there are 2012 projects to work on and look forward to.

Thank everyone for allowing me another years of this job. Thank you for still caring about my work and what I have to say. It’s a real blessing. We were talking the other day about how nobody does for a living what they wanted to do when they were in the fourth grade. But we do. If everyone was like us the world would be full of police, firemen and astronauts.

Here’s to another great year. Here’s to 2012.

Reports surfaced this morning that the gentlemen over at The Cartoonist Studio (http://www.thecartooniststudio.com/) have launched their 2nd annual cartooning contest. The Daily Cartoonist reports that the contest will kick off February 6th. The Grand Prize? Your comic will run on GoComics.com and you will be paid “any advertising money generated on [the comic’s] GoComics.com page.” And… AND… an electronic-book publishing contract. There will also be prizes for two runners up.

I’m wondering why the grand prize isn’t a time machine, because the winner will need one for any of this to be relevant.

Dear Cartoonists Studio: This is not a prize. Anyone can put their comic on a webpage and populate it with ads from Google Adsense. GoComics.com isn’t promising (nor can it deliver) traffic. That has to be generated by the artist anyway, so why add a middleman? Also there is no such thing as an electronic-book publishing contract. That’s like selling freshman elevator passes on the first day of the spring semester.

Dear Syndicates: You are making yourselves look more and more out of touch with every passing day. The USC Anneberg School for Commincation and Journalism just released a study that predicts newspapers are gone in five years. If you want to survive beyond that cataclysmic event, you gotta figure out this online stuff soon.

So here’s what we’re going to do. I talked in length this morning with Brad Guigar, and we are both clearing time in our 2012 schedule to act as paid consultants to the highest bidder. We have over 30 years of combined experience in monetizing comic strips online. But most importantly, we have built a well-deserved trust with not only the audience but also the talent pool you’re targeting.

We have what you want.

Wait, I’m sorry, let me rephrase that.

We have what you NEED. And we are willing to sell it to you, for the right price.

Now, look, we already lost one syndicate this year. Who will we lose next year? Creators… I’m looking in your direction. King Features… I’m not sure we can help, to be honest. Your properties skew pretty old, and although I’m sure Brad and I do have ideas on how to market Popeye to college kids who like Wimpy ironically, that’s about it. But there are a lot of people out there who are facing oblivion and we’re here to help.

I know you don’t think you need this, but you do. Have you ever heard of the Dunning-Kruger effect? Wikipedia it. That’s what you have. A couple of our colleagues, Meredith Gran and Aaron Diaz, once called themselves “Dunning-Kruger Solutions.” We might pay them a licensing fee so Brad and I can use that name. Cause that’s what we’re offering. You don’t even know that you don’t know this stuff. Electronic-book publishing contract? You guys have Dunning-Kruger. Bad.

Okay, I hear you. You pay a whole Online Department a lot of money to pretend that they know the score. And if you were to hire us, it might be a sign of weakness. I got you covered. Here’s what you do. Have the NCS hire us to be consultants for them (you). You’re already funding it, and you attend all their functions. Just tell them to hire us as consultants and then — since them is you anyway — you get all this stored knowledge and you don’t lose any face.

Before you decide, consider this: What if a cartoonist hires us first? Or a group of cartoonists? Or another syndicate? We’ll consult for the highest bidder. Maybe that’s Jim Davis or Lynn Johnston. They both have pretty nice houses and could afford us. Then they get to keep all our knowledge for themselves and don’t have to share it with the syndicate. Maybe Mort Walker hires us and just shelves us so that nobody else can have us and he can die with the most money. What if a bunch of middle-tier cartoonists chip-in and hire us to help them set up a life AFTER you guys? You need them more than they need you. They make the comics and you make a distribution model that’s dying.

All I’m saying is that Brad Guigar and Scott Kurtz are available. We know how to generate income with daily comic strips online and we’re willing to work directly with someone to set up new revenue streams before this whole thing goes tits up.

What do you have to lose? You’re all out of work in five years anyway. Pull the pin and count to three. We can’t put you in a position that’s worse than you’re in now. And if you don’t hire us, what if Creators does? Creators… can you afford to give Universal that advantage?

You think I’m joking and you might feel insulted right now. But in about ten minutes you’re going to be reviewing a memo about layoffs or some newspaper circulation chart that’s pointing down (still) and it’s going to sink in. You got nothing to lose and everything to gain. And we are deadly serious about this offer.

“Electronic-book publishing contract”. Creators executives, that’s what your competition thinks the future is. We can do WAY better than that. Hire us and we’ll have you guys so ready for the future you’ll sound like a Philip K. Dick novella. Everyone else… same offer.

Let the bidding begin.