Monday Morning

As I mentioned briefly here the other day, I'm now dealing with a bad left knee. My right one went kablooey! on me (torn meniscus) earlier this year and on June 24, I had it operated on. It's almost back to normal — still feels wrong but it doesn't hurt much — and now the left one has done gone and betrayed me. I have a torn meniscus there, too — one small tear as opposed to one big and one small I had trimmed in the right knee. And I had a Baker's cyst in the left knee. If you don't know what that is, just trust me: You don't want one even if you're a baker.

Note the use of the past-tense: "Had." The cyst ruptured on me two weeks ago. I even heard it pop as I was walking down some stairs, en route to the doctor who would deal with it. While I've never been shot in the kneecap with a .22 rifle, I have a feeling the sensation is comparable.

At the moment, my fine orthopedist isn't sure to what extent the pain I've been experiencing in the knee is because of the meniscus tear and to what extent, it's the remnants of the cyst and its influence. Even with my second cortisone shot in that joint, it ain't comfy. Of course, I probably didn't help matters any the other night by standing throughout the Beyoncé concert and walking between the parking lot and my seat.

This is all very fixable. I just thought I needed to explain why I had to bow out of my appearance on Dancing With the Stars. We had a helluva mambo prepared.


People keep writing to ask when I'll have new comic books out. Well, most months, I write one or two stories for Boom's Garfield comic book. The ones I don't write are handled by a clever gent named Scott Nickel who works with Jim Davis. The current issue, which features Pet Force, is all written by him but I'll be back in the next.

Other than that, it's all waiting for the proper moment to announce things. I've finished my end of the long-awaited Groo Vs. Conan mini-series for Dark Horse and I hope to soon be able to announce a release date for it. Sergio is back to full fighting/drawing strength and we're working on some other Groo projects which will also soon be announced.

And I've finished the second issue of a new comic I'm doing for yet another publisher who should be announcing it any day now. It's one of those comics I've always wanted to write and someone was nice enough to give me the opportunity. And I have some other things, comics or otherwise, I'll tell you about when they're closer to coming out. That's if I don't forget, as I usually do. The great thing about doing comics is they're easy on the knees.