Love, Joolz: Vacay Photos

Okay, so this is a good one. Last year I went on a cruise vacation. I took a lot of photos of Puerto Rico and St Thomas, but also some photos of myself on the ship. Very normal things happening here. As I looked at myself in one of the photos, I thought, “why don’t I post one of these? Just for funsies.”

I try to stay more private these days, but one little vacay photo couldn’t hurt, right?

After I posted a photo of myself enjoying a drink on a cruise ship, I got the news the next morning. A very mean and resentful person in my life had put out some interesting news about themselves. It wasn’t the best news for this person. I’ll have to go into the details of that in another story. But wow. I didn’t know my mere vacay photos were enough to send people into an emotional tailspin. Could my vacation photos have spurned this person into losing their marbles or was it just divine timing? Who knows? Who cares? It was a great start to my trip.

I may have to do comics about Puerto Rico, St. Thomas and the odd, little cruise-only Island in the Bahamas. In Puerto Rico, a bird jumped on my head. In St. Thomas, I got an action packed ride up a mountain most stunt drivers would swoon at. In the odd cruise Island, I witnessed their oddly manicured beach. Like they lawn mowed the water. It’s weird. I was mostly delayed on making comics about this stuff because I was exhausted after the trip and needed time to get myself back together.

Nobody is ready for the Love, Joolz travelogues.

-Love, Joolz

Love, Joolz: Hot Cup of Karma

There is a whole story behind this comic. I tried to distill the whole event down to four panels and that was reallly, really hard. Anyway, this was supposed to be a peaceful day in my favorite cafe in La Jolla, one of San Diego’s bougiest neighborhoods. I just wanted my damn iced tea, but this Australian guy was acting like an entire clown. Interrupted me while I’m trying to place my order. Screamed at the poor baristas who had no choice but to handle this idiot. It was jarring behavior. Nobody liked it. So we all as a collective had to shut him down. It's a good thing Lucy was there. He seemed to level everyone out, which is not hard to do as a Prince of Darkness.

I’m gonna have to do a World’s Worst Podcast on the whole story because it was wild. Imagine wilding out over a refund on a cappuccino a block away from happy sea lions. What a miserable human being. So many thoughts. Entirely too many to fit here. Stay tuned, citizens.

Love, Joolz Classic: Angry Pancake

This is still good advice. Hilariously, my mention of the feet shuffling ended up in the popular strip Background Noise. I love making comics friends.

-Love, Joolz

Love, Joolz: Tea Rebellion

America has always been about rich white dudes. Anyone who says America is about freedom, equality and democracy has sadly drank the Rich White Dude Kool-Aid these bastards have been putting out since the birth of this country. (And they probably really like Batman.)

It's not an accident that the only people who could vote in the establishment of this nation were white men who owned land. Bro, you had to be rich to do that. Or an extremely violent squatter.

Anyway, now that America's oligarchy has been laid bare for all of us to see with the new administration. Honestly, I appreciate the honesty for once. America is built for and by rich white colonizers who want to run things over our broken backs. They want us poor, enslaved, pregnant, and quietly compliant making millions for them while the rest of us have to fight over table scraps.

The best way to rebel against these people is to continue to enjoy your life. Continue to be happy. And in my case, delicious tea is the way I wanna do it. I'm sure the oligarchs want to see me miserable and broken now that they have naked control of America. But why would I give them that? If I know nothing else in this world, it's how to piss people off.

Anyway, if you wanna stick it to a rich person, enjoy your life. Be happy. These morons are out here colonizing the world and shaking us all down for money thinking money will make them happy. Prove them wrong. Make them feel stupid for doing all that while you're chilling with your emotional currency. Tea, video games, knitting, do whatever it is you want to do to make yourself happy and rob these attention-swilling overgrown toddlers of the validation they want so badly from the rest of us.

Billionaires are unfunny clowns trying to destroy the world. Take your power back by insisting on being happy anyway.

Happiness is an act of rebellion.

-Love, Joolz

Love, Joolz Classic: Donkey Kong Paddle

I guess on Fridays I’m either running classic strips or surf strips. So let’s start with both!

Look. I’m really passionate about surfing tips. I’m really passionate about helping people surf better because I benefitted from other people who thought the same way. I’ve effectively learned most of my surf game from tips on socials.

But yes, when you’re paddling it’s important to keep your paddling tight. Paddling with wild, flailing arms is not super productive. You’ll tire yourself out quickly. But this Donkey Kong paddle (my own name) is the way to tighten up your game so you two can go where you wanna go: the waves in the back of the line up.

In other words, really really far out there.

That’s all I got for now. Happy Friday!

Love, Joolz: Wicked Lady's Power

Okay, so I grew up on Sailor Moon. Granted I was a teenager and later an adult when I got into the Chibi-Usa storyline of her not having powers like her mom. Chibi-Usa is Sailor Moon's daughter from the future, but her whole thing is not having the same moon powers as her mom so she feels useless. Any capitalistic society is gonna have stories like that: child who can't live up to the parent's (capitalistic) potential.

I just thought it would be funny to riff on the fact that Chibi-Usa could have gotten her powers from her dad who is probably one of the most useless characters in the whole Sailor Moon series. Mamoru/Endymion/Darien generally doesn't do anything useful except kinda help out with bad guys sometimes. He also gets kidnapped a couple times in the series. He's...not a very useful guy. But what a coincidence his own daughter also lacks big abilities. Author Naoko Takeuchi doesn't seem to draw the parallel between Mamoru and Chibi-Usa, but that's exactly what I'm doing here. We all inherit stuff from our parents that don't always benefit us.

Look, my dad was kind of a terrorist. I can relate to inheriting my parents' bad qualities. This is supposed to be funny.

-Love, Joolz