Superpower

Strange Animals

The Post-College Arcade

The Other Side

Back to School

The Diabolical Botanical Garden

If you're a fan of horror and/or horticulture, you can order an 11"x17" print of this drawing. Email me at gsnider11@gmail.com or visit http://www.flickr.com/photos/incidentalcomics for details.

Like most of my work, I can't quite pinpoint where the idea for this one came from. I remember taking a trip to Botanica, The Wichita Gardens as a kid, then drawing one of its fountains the moment I got home. But instead of sketching a regular fountain, I turned it into an fountain-shaped alien! Another possibility: my grandfather was a retired landscape architect for the National Park Service, and he had a backyard that was a forest of Ponderosa Pines. He told us that the piles of rocks scattered throughout the forest were old Indian graveyards. The idea fascinated and terrified me. I didn't quite believe him, but I was still afraid to peek out the window into the dark forest at night.

Notes on Poetry

The Pool

This comic is now available as a print at http://www.flickr.com/photos/incidentalcomics for purposes of refreshment and self-improvement. Guaranteed to smell like chlorine and sunscreen!

The New Building

The new building, for non-local readers, is the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts. It's scheduled to open this September. If you're a fan of architect Moshe Safdie or the Kansas City skyline (or if you just like buildings with personality), you can order a print at http://www.flickr.com/photos/incidentalcomics.

Summer Vision

Island

Jazz

This comic is brought to you in part by John Coltrane, Ornette Coleman, McCoy Tyner, Miles Davis, Charles Lloyd, Charles Mingus, and Charlie Haden.

Want a poster of this comic for your smoke-filled jazz listening lounge? Get it here.

The Algorithm

The Shakespearean Heckler

This week marks the beginning of Kansas City's Heart of America Shakespeare Festival, a free professional production held yearly at a park next to the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art. It's always spectacularly done, and you have to marvel at the actors for braving the Missouri heat and humidity in full costume. A couple years ago, my wife and I were kicked out of "Othello". Not for drunken heckling, but for smuggling in a small poodle. We were escorted out of the park during intermission, four-pound dog in hand.

Public Displays of Unselfconsciousness

You can order a print of this drawing (and many other Incidental Comics) here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/incidentalcomics 

Career Path Generator

How to Get Ideas

This is a problem that any self-proclaimed creative person without a daily regimen of psychotropic drugs has experienced. The search for a great idea can be incredibly frustrating, like trying to force two unlike species to breed. 

Further reading:

Elizabeth Gilbert on the concept of "genius." 

Richard Thompson on where he gets his sublime ideas.

The visual inspiration for the third panel.

The Road Taken

Email gsnider11@gmail.com if you'd like to order an 11"x17" poster of this comic (for $15 plus shipping).

Love & Fonts

In combining the best elements of romance novels and typographic criticism, I could have made this comic much, much racier: "She felt the oblique, sinuous curves of his letterform. Their passion was legible. But could it ever be justified?"  At least I didn't stoop to making fun of Comic Sans.

The Memoir