My Best Friend is Cool

I've been wanting to say this for a few days now, and darn it, I'm going to say it.

My best friend is cool. He's an artist, so that kinda instantly makes him cool in that way that all artists are, but he's cooler than most. Sequential art...comic books and the like...is his art of choice.

Now see, as I've learned, there are two kinds of artists. There are the kind who become completely obsessed with their work, lock themselves in their studios, and then emerge a month or so later, with a month's worth of growth on whatever part of their body that they shave, in dire need of a shower, and cryptically say, "It's finished."

And then there's the kind like my best friend. They work on it for a bit, then go back out in the real world and resume their life, then come back to it, then go outside and play, and so on and such forth. There ain't nothing wrong with being an artist like that. It's just that if they show you a work in progress or something half-finished and you get hooked, you might have to wait a frustratingly long time for them to finish it.

After seven years, my best friend finally finished one of his projects.

This project never really had a name. It's a comic that stars a monkey, so we always just referred to it as The Monkey Comic. A few years back, after some careful thought, he tried to give it the title MNKY, but it never really took. It's still just humbly referred to as The Monkey Comic.

He started it back in Y2K. He posted the work-in-progess at his website. He'd occasionally go back and a few more panels every couple of years. I'd check up on it around once a month, and invariably send him the e-mail, "Are you ever going to finish it?"

And back on Sunday, he finally, cryptically said, "It's finished."

I think it's really cool. But then, I'm biased. he's my best friend. I think that everything he does is cool.

so judge for yourself.

Go read the Monkey Comic!!!