My Latest Period of Hermitry is over. Stay Tooned.

Egad. My High School 30-yr reunion should be coming up this year, and I don't have a single thing to show for my life.

I finally relented and joined facebook so that I could get back in touch with the world, and find out how much longer I have to finish my Graphic Novel before the reunion, if there is one.

I really should get back to drawing the thing. I've only been writing it and re-writing it for over 23 years now. Of course, I didn't know it would be a graphic novel until about twelve years ago.
It started out as just a break-up letter, based on a dream I had after the last night I saw my college Girlfriend. As I look back on our two-year relationship, we never really got out of the friends phase, so it probably came as a surprise to her that we broke up. It seems silly to me that over the years those unrequited urges became this drawn-out revenge fantasy, then morphed into a mini-novella, and now exist as a multi-layered comic psychodrama about an Artist's quest to achieve closure with any woman who had ever been important to him.

And being as the story still isn't finished, it may take on a completely different tone until it actually leaves my drawing table.

That is, if I can dedicate the time and focus to actually working on the book. I don't want to be the guy who always regrets that unfinished novel. I wish I had somebody to kick my ass and make me keep working on it. But anybody who's been privy to the main thread of the tale, either thru conversation or seeing it in any of its prior forms, can easily guess why there's nobody around to kick my ass like that. Somewhere along the line I became the guy who is a fringe member of many different social groups, but never feels a bona fide member of any single group. I became the guy who can be alone in a crowd, and quite possibly prefers it that way.
The loner. It can be nice when you don't really NEED a phone. But it sucks when that phone only rings with telemarketer calls.

I think I should try my hand at stand-up comedy. I really think I have a knack for cheering people up.

stay tooned.

a Fat-Joke is just a Fart-Joke without the R

next is the work-friendly punchline...

if you'd like to see the "dirty" version of the punchline to this strip,

click here

Matronize Me!

I'm seeking a volunteer to be a Matron of The Arts. It's like being a Patron, but you go beyond mere promotion and support.

A Matron of the arts will coddle me and smother me, and stifle me when I want to listen to my naughtier muses. And bake me cookies, do my laundry, clean my room and put my albums away where I can't find them.

And, when I eventually turn this concept into a new comic, you, as my Matron, will put it up on the refrigerator.

any volunteers?

I have to Vote, AND get a filling drilled on Tuesday. I don't know which will be more painful...

Even if it's just a municipal election year for you (like it is here; City Council, Treasurer, some Judges, and County Comissioners) get out and vote! (Unless you're going to vote against the candidates I like. Then, please, stay home and read your comics.)

Can You spot the Al Jaffee influence?

Limited Edition BenT Gocco Print Number 1!

Here's a little (about 4 by 5 ins.) 3-color print I made (only 40 copies in existence) before I packed away the Gocco when I finished the covers to Halloween Stinks!

If you visit my store you can purchase one for yourself while supplies last, and catch up on all my recent mini-comics, too. I accept payments via PayPal.

Guess who took some life-drawing classes?

...and now I am the zen-master of drawing nekkid peoples.



I decided to break out my sketchbook from last year, and share some.


you youngsters, cover your eyes, and you folks reading at work better cover your screens, too
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this is Katherine, who posed for us at the Missoula Art Museum one cold evening last November. this one is the tamer of the two I've selected of her, just incase everybody hadn't covered their eyes yet.


At this museum, they start with a series of short poses (5 or 10 minutes) for the first hour, then after a break, they do an hour of longer poses (15 mins or more). I like those better, because I had time to go over my pencils in ink before the model reset.
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Here's Katherine again. sorry, I realized that I was running out of page before I could fit her right foot in. I hope I haven't permanently lost the right-foot-fetishist audience.

This one was from the first session I attended in Missoula, we had a male model that night. I noticed that the other folks around me were a bit shy about drawing his "equipment", and for whatever reason, they were leaving that area of their pads blank.

I figured, what the hell?

The next pose, he positioned himself so that he was practically spread-eagled facing me in the circle. I decided to force the perspective.

I call it "Thinking with my Little Head"

another quick gag one-sheeter

'nana 'nana 'nana 'nana... BAT JAM!

This little comic was originally published as a quick little one-sheet mini comic in 2005.

I had it layed out on one sheet of paper that folded into a little eight-page mini, I've re-scanned the art for you, and divided the panels to be able to re-assemble them in a readable order.

I figured it was the season.

I'm going to try to do one of these minis each week for a while, and maybe when I do a show, I'll print them up and sell a whole brick of the last six month's worth.

If the art looks rushed, that's the idea. I originally did three of these, and put them together in a little trick-or-treat bag as my Halloween offering. (another will be posted tomorrow. the third comic in the bag evolved into "Halloween Stinks!") I put the whole thing together quickly in one night when scanner woes prevented me from finishing the book I'd been working on in time for a show.

I'm Back!!!! With a new Mini0-Comic, just in time for Halloween

Hot off the presses and available via PayPal now is this new Fluffy The Pet Fart adventure from none other than yours truly!

It's 28 interior Black and white pages, with a two-color silkscreened cover. below is a scan of one of the covers and a couple interior panels.


Have you ever had a fart that lingered?

Well, this is a tale about a boy and a fart that stayed...

...and heeled...
...and begged...
...and fetched.

It's a fart that thinks it's a dog.

Fluffy The Pet Fart.



In this tale, Fuffy and his boy pal go out to Trick-or-Treat, only to encounter some seasonably monstrous farts along the way.

It's a twisted variation on a children's story, (it's probably safe for ages 9 and up)
perfect for the holiday!

If you'd like to get a copy mailed to your door, here is a link to my webstore.

(The Paypal link at my webstore only works for U.S. residents. If you're a non-U.S. resident, please e-mail me to arrange payment and specific shipping costs)

I'm Moving to Montana, Gonna raise some Dental Floss....

...well actually, I'm just going out there to Missoula for the next four weeks* to learn how to sharpen Dental Instruments.

I got a promotion at work, I no longer assemble the dental mirrors. Now I am a repository of knowledge for the company. We're closing down our factory in Missoula, and moving all the operations to our headquarters in Pennsylvania. My job is to learn how our our remaining employee out West puts all the precision edges on the tools we make, and transfer that knowledge back to Pennsylvania. I guess I'll finally get to employ my technical writing skills, as they expect me to write a "manual" on the processes. Right now, outside of a few spec sheets, it's all in that one employee's head. (and partially in mine already)

While I'm holed up in a Motel in Montana, I'll also be working on the pages to my new Graphic Novel, "One Last Ride on the Ghost Truck".

It's going to be a Twilight Zone-ish tale about a man coming to a sense of closure with all the failed romances in his past, and maybe learning about himself in the process. Yeah, It's kinda like "High Fidelity", but with more people being killed, and not so much backtalk from smart-ass record store employees.

This is a story that has been twenty years in the making for me; I first got the idea in a dream I had the night I broke up with my College girlfriend in 1986. If you're one of the lucky folk who picked up a copy of Get BenT! #1, which I published in 1997, and you're the type to read the text pages, then you've seen this tale in its short story form. Well, now I've added scenes, heightened the fear and suspense, and given the ending a better twist, and I'm drawing it, to boot.

There will be a promotional T-shirt. I haven't finished the artwork yet, but it will say:

"GHOST TRUCK YOURSELF!"

Feel free to begin a "Snakes on a Plane" type buzz campaign about this book now.

Consider it your Birthday present to me when you tell all your cool friends about my project. It's my Birthday Monday, you know. I'll be 43. At least I won't be living in Mom and Dad's basement when I turn 43.

...but only because I'm temporarily living in a Hotel in Montana.

*during my absence, my catalog pages are down, since I can't be back here to fill your orders until August.

I hardly ever post here anymore....

if you want to see what I'm wasting all my spare time on now, you should go to my other blog.

It's Convention season, so with deadlines, I'm drawing again.

In fact I leave tomorrow morning to go down to FLUKE in Athens, GA.

I wanted to have a new book to take with me, so I sat down and produced a sequel to 2004's "Peeps Et Beans".

Here it is, PEEPS GO DISCO!. Debuting at Fluke saturday from noon to six PM (Tastyworld, Athens GA)

If I have copies left, they'll be up on my website next week.








This one has a five-color screened cover that I did with the RISO B6 PrintGOCCO.

I made 100 covers today. Here's my dining room table around 2PM today.





Yes, this one is again narrated in French.
The english translation is included in an appendix, but I think it's got more of that cute irony in French for some reason.

Recent Pez Acquisitions

Here are some recent additions to my Pez collection, all relatively recent releases.

The three Disney Princesses are Cinderella, Jasmine, and Belle. The packaging also pictures Sleeping Beauty, Ariel, and Snow White, but i haven't seen these in stores yet. Perhaps these will be added to the line later?

The Hello Kitty dispenser is the 4th figure that was missing from the collection when Pez first released them over a year ago.

The two loose figures are Chicken Little and The Ugly Duckling from the new Disney film. I think the duckling's name is Eudora? I don't know. I really don't have plans to see that film. I don't know if there are any others in this assortment, but it seems unusual that they'd make just two.

This weekend I saw the NASCAR helmet pez dispensers at Wal-Mart. I saw four different designs, an am told there is a fifth design, an orange helmet, that wasn't on Wal-mart's rack.
I didn't pick these up. I really don't want to start bringing anything with NASCAR logos into the house. I'm just not into the whole gear-head culture.

I have to draw the line somewhere. I hardly even eat the candy that comes with these things anymore. (unless it's Cherry!---which I only get with imports)

Where in Hell are the 2005 Christmas collectible tins?

This year's crop of candy tins is pathetic. Not very long ago, at the start of the Holiday Season, I'd be able to come home from just one store with a couple bags full of new Candy and CookieTins. There'd be a new Snickers Norman Rockwell Santa, The latest M&Ms Christmas Village designs, both Plain and Peanut, a new Oreo "Discover The magic" box, sometimes even two of those, a Baby Ruth, A Crackerjack, a Nestle's Toll House Morsel tin, a Milky Way "12 Days of Christmas", a Butterfinger, a Raisinets, a whole slew of Peter Paul/Cadbury and Hershey's/Reese's contraptions, Tootsie Roll, Necco Wafers, Mary Janes, --it seemed like I'd never be able to find them all in a single season. And it would take my family well into Valentine's Day to consume all the candy and cookies found inside all of these tins.

If I were to check out two, or even three, different department stores or supermarkets, I could end up with 20 to 30 new tins each season.

And that was by simply sticking to the tins that were actually packed and shipped by the real candy company. I always made it a rule to avoid the tins that were actually packaged by a licensee, or third-party manufacturer. (usually easily identified because the name of the candy company isn't actually printed on the can. If it's there at all, it's only on an info card or affixed sticker) It seemed to me like the former was a special Holiday Bonus reward to the dedicated consumer from the Candy Company, while the latter was a "Manufactured Collectible"

These, to me, are as desirable as those pre-packed assortments of butter cookies, or the big three-gallon tins full of caramel corn (the ones with pictures of puppies and spider-man on 'em), or those boxes of beefsticks and mustard from Hickory farms, or those children's bath sets with a sticker of the latest animated superstar stuck to the shampoo bottle.

Yuck. This is the kind of thing that you buy for the Aunt or Uncle who you haven't seen since Last Christmas, or so the inevitable "unexpected guest" doesn't feel left out. NO Way. If I'm giving the tin, or if it's going into my collection, I'd better see the Nabisco name and logo prominently lithographed on the bottom of that Oreo tin.

But over the last several years the selection of "Real" tins has been dwindling, pushed off the shelf by a growing trend of third-party manufactured collectibles. I guess it's become too much of a marketing risk for the companies to put out their own collectibles for the short Holiday Season, just as Globilization and Multi-Culturalism has made it more politically risky for a large corporation to market an item with a Holiday Theme. Better to license the company characters and product names out to somebody importing a plastic gew-gaw from China, and to get the additional bonus of selling that company a small portion of your product to put indie the gew-gaw. It's all upside. The third-party buys your name, buys your product, takes all the risk, handles all the logistics, and later, when the gift recipient has developed a taste for the product, he has to come back to the real manufacturer to buy more.

But It spoils my Holiday Spirit as I watch another thing I enjoy collecting fade away.

This Year's Crop of Christmas Candy Tins is Pathetic.

I've looked in eight different stores where I've usually found new tins this time of year. What Have I found?

Pathetic. I had to go to Target to find these. UGh. I had not set foot inside a Target for almost Two Years because of poor treatment by their "guest Services" division over their return policies. I truly loathe having to return to one of their stores. I will quit collecting tins before I go back to Target again.

The M&Ms tin is the latest in their "Christmas Village" series. This Recording Studio is labeled "#20" in the series, but it's really the 21st; a few years back one of the numbers was repeated, and the series numbering has been one off ever since. This is the Peanut M&Ms tin, in the past there has been a second tin each year, filled with Plain M&Ms. so far this year there is no sign of the Plain tin. (2004 was the first year I had to go to two different stores to find one of each of the tins, prior to that, both tins were readily available at most outlets.) I have to say I am not impressed by this tin. It's a plain rectangular box, no unique shape, and all the printing is done on flat surfaces. No embossing. Good grades for attendance. Poor grades for the effort, folks. ...and I might have to change that attendance grade if the Plain M&Ms tin doesn't make it to school on time.

The Snickers tin is a welcome return for M&M/Mars. While I miss the Norman Rockwell tins, it's nice to see them put out a Snickers tin again, after those silly vinyl zippered sports bags they did in 2004. They stick with a sports theme this year, but it's an NFL locker, emblazoned with all the current team logos. Extra Points After for the embossing on the locker vents and combination lock.

At Wal-Mart, i did find a new tin from Werther's Original butterscotch candies, but to tell the truth, I stopped collecting this line of tins because the tin each year looks too much like the previous year's tin, and frankly, in 2000 I realized that I hadn't eaten all the candy yet out of the 1999 tin.

At K-mart i found a NECCO wafers tin, but it looked like the same tin they had out a few years ago, so I didn't pick it up.

So this year, it looks like only M&M/Mars has stepped up to the plate with a meager offering of new tins. No sign yet of any offering from HersheyFoods, Nestle, Nabisco, Tootsie Roll or any of my other regulars. Shame, Shame, Shame.

2005 might be the year I have to quit collecting this stuff.

I have a Post Office Box again

edited 04/24/08: forget it. I closed this P.O. Box due to inactivity. I guess if you really want to get hold of me now, you'll have to work harder.

After a year during which there was no Post office on my end of town, they have finally re-opened a new branch near me, so again I have a PO box. (I cancelled my box last winter because I had to schlep four miles out of my way to get to the branch to which they were diverting my POB mail.)

Luckily, my old Box number hadn't been taken yet, so i was able to get it again. So I don't have to change any of those old business cards, and I can stop putting the correction stickers on the indicia of my back issues.

If you have my old address on file, you don't have to do anything, (and if you only get my info off this blog, I probably don't know you well enough to have given out my home address while the box was down.)

anyway, if you need to send me something, like money, or a trade, or a love letter, send it now to:

Ben T. Steckler
POB 7273
York, PA 17404

...and Criswell told me I'm a descendant of Edgar Cayce.

Mars was really bright in the sky tonight.


It makes me feel Homesick.

WO! Not a MOTEL BIBLE. TOMATO NOW!

Attention all Fans of Palindromes and Wordplay:
My first collection of "The Evil Dr. Palindrome" cartoons is now available at my store (click on the "shop for my comics" link on the right margin.) It's a thick little pocket-sized mini-comic, with 44 pages, chock full of my original palindromes and cartoons.
The cover is screened in Gold Ink with my Gocco Printer.
$2.50 plus a small postage fee via Paypal.
While you're shopping, check out my other minis. If you're only familiar with my work thru the cartoons you see on-line, there's a lot you've yet to discover.

Happy Belated National Lollipop Day!

Sorry for the delay. I had originally wanted to post this back in July in observance of National Lollipop Day, but I got busy with work, and Dental Appointments, and family stuff and just kept putting it off. So tonight as I'm cleaning off the desktop, I thought I'd get it up here for y'all to enjoy. Especially since I haven't posted any new art in a few months.

This was originally drawn as a parody of those little religious tract comics published by Jack Chick. You can read the real things on-line, and order your own copies here: http://www.chick.com/default.asp

I decided to incorporate the old Tootsie Pop commercials into my parody. If you are a young'un, you might not remember the little boy asking Mr. Owl and Mr. Turtle "How many Licks does it take to get to the center of Tootsie Roll Tootsie Pop?" You can watch that old commercial at Tootsie Roll's website:
http://www.tootsie.com/howmany.html

Tootsie Roll even has a place for you to submit your own official count of How many Licks it took you. I sent in my count, and a couple weeks later, a surprise! I got a neat Certificate in the mail authenticating my tally. (158 licks on a Cherry pop)

So anyway... Here is "TAKE YOUR LICKS" in its entirety for your enjoyment. If you really like it, click on the "Shop for My comics" link over there to the right, and order a copy from my paypal store. I also have the original art available (the seven pages you see here) for purchase. Inquire.

What My Dad must put up with...

I pondered for several days whether I should post this here...

...as it's more of a joke that only folks who have been in our house lately would get. But then, I really like the way my style worked on this card, and I figured I should share it, especially since I hadn't posted any art in some time.

Dad, in his retirement, has two passions. Doing jigsaw puzzles, and reading.

Mom, in her retirement, has two passions. Sending cases of Potato Chips and treats to anybody on the face of the planet who may have at sometime mentioned her name in passing, not to mention relatives I don't think I've ever seen. Somehow She remembers all their Birthdays and Special occasions. And tries to make sure some Potato Chips or candy make it to their particular corner of the globe in time.

When Mom is on a package-mailing jag, no horizontal surface in our house is safe. It will quickly be covered with cartons either being packed and addressed, or unpacked. This is why my drawing table, while I could adjust it to lie flat, is always tilted at an angle. My Drawing surface is MY SPACE! She'd better not try to pile boxes of Potato Chips on it, or who knows what I'll draw her doing!

Lately, Mom has been on a binge ever since she learned that Weds July 20th is National Lollipop Day. She has made it her mission to send everybody she knows a bag of Mini Tootsie Pops before that fateful day. You might say that Mom is a real Sucker for this holiday! She should get some kind of medal or even a paycheck from Tootsie Roll Industries for all the pro bono work she's been doing for them.

Poor Dad. He had been working for a couple weeks on a particularly difficult puzzle, only to one morning find his work on the Dining Room table inaccessible for the duration. The cat, Quincy, is puzzled too, because he's usually what ends up on top of Dad's puzzle, not a bunch of boxes.

I've got something special planned for you readers in a few weeks when National Lollipop Day rolls in. Keep your wrappers on until then.