Wow.

So Issue five is done. The series is done. All that’s left to do is remaster
the art and put out the trade paperback.

And now I’ve totally got empty nest syndrome.

Seriously — I hardly know what to do with myself! What’s that? Write more comics, you say?

Well, there’ll almost certainly be more Vogelein stories, unless I suddenly get
hit by a bus or something (knock wood) but probably not for a while. For right now
I need about a six month break. I’ve been hard at work at this thing for five years.
Five years. One issue a year. I joke and say that this was like my Master’s Thesis, and
in a lot of ways, it really was. I attended night school in Comics for five years.

Much like any graduating senior, I am feeling the need to par-tay a little. To take
a real Christmas vacation and make cookies and decorate the house, rather than come home
and sit directly at the drawing board for another six hours every day after work. To see friends I’ve been
neglecting for months because I’ve been working on the comic. To finally get out to visit
old college buddies in Syracuse. (Hi, Winklers!) And, most importantly, to finally
get out my instruments and play some music for a while.

Y’see, this time of year is my absolute favorite time of year to play Irish music. I mean,
Mike and Tahm’s traditional Fourth of July Park Lake Pickin’Party is a thing of drunken wonder,
but this is really what I like best.

I first learned Irish music at this time of year, back in 1998. I’d been a fan for
years and years, and had poked at the edges of it, but I’d never actually learned
session culture and etiquette. There’s something about winter sessions, when the pub is dark
and full of soft amber light and the smell of wet wool and malty beer, when the patrons
come in and stamp off cakes of dirty snow and exclaim gladly over the music instead
of cursing us for putting off the football game, when the pub itself is an oasis of
warmth and calm in a frozen, dreary, stressed-out weary town.

And everyone gets cabin fever and gets out the fiddles and heads to the session.
The dark, warm, heady pints fortify the tunes and give the players a kind of
aggressive fire you just don’t see in summer tunes, as though they’re trying to
drive out the winter demons.

And the craic is mighty.

And if you need me, that’s where I’ll be.