Hoka-Hoka Jeff Smith!

Oh man.

In all the excitement of the last few weeks, I've overlooked something very important.
Time to fix that.

I want to thank my ol' pal, Jeff Smith, creator of BONE and RASL, for writing the introduction to "Remember Here When You Are There!"

While we were working on the first hardcovers, I told my editor, Diana Schutz, that it was my dream to have Jeff write the intro to my comeback book.
She agreed. Great idea!

However, I confess I was a bit nervous asking Jeff for this favor.
Even though we have known each other for a very long time, I know how busy he is and how many requests of this sort he gets on an almost daily basis.
So I waited until the very last moment to ask.

How last moment?

Uh...Diana writing and saying that solicitations are due now and and asking if Jeff going to write the intro so it can be solicited properly.

Uh-oh.
That's what I get for being so procrastinatingly shy.

So I wrote and asked Jeff, and asked him if he could find the time to do it, and how I really regretted waiting until the last possible moment to do so.

His answer was brief and to the point.

"Lar, if it wasn’t last minute, it wouldn’t be comics.
Of course I’ll write it. I wouldn’t let anybody else touch it!"

What guy!

I can not begin to tell you how wide my grin was when the piece came in and I read for the first time his words "Beanworld is a mixture of Krazy Kat, Tinker Toys, and Haiku… "

Cracked me up then, cracked me up just now.

So a very big Hoo-Hoo-HA & a Hoka-Hoka HEY to Jeff plus a hearty Wahoolazuma for the great news that The Cartoonist is going to be aired on PBS.

Oh yeah, the above drawing, as you can probably figure out, is from The Bean Book.