Manatee Power

My wife Rebecca and I work in the same office, an arrangement that often bewilders people. “How can you work together all day without driving each other crazy?” we’ve been asked too many times to count. About a month ago, a co-worker asked her, “When you get home, do you ever tell him you’re sick of looking at his face?” Now we don’t work in the same department, and our individual work crosses paths only occasionally. But this does not sway people who are convinced they could never work in the same environment as their spouses. People, mind you, who are raising children together, which is the most intimate collaborative work anyone can do. (Is that how they know they can’t work together?)

I can’t share our secret. It is just too incredibly secret. If I told you how we did it, you would know too much about us. Instantly, you would be sick of looking at our faces.

Show and Tell

We’ve recently been working together, outside the office, on comics. It’s a potentially delicate arrangement because we may want to push different things, and we live together and love each other and hurt feelings and all that. But so far it’s been satisfying and we’re hoping to continue experimenting this year, probably on this site. Debuting this weekend, as I write this, at the New England Comics Arts in the Classroom Conference in Providence is a new comics anthology about teaching and learning called Show and Tell. It includes a short comic drawn by me, written by Rebecca (she taught for several years). This is our second collaboration, and like the first, it’s full of talented cartoonists. If you don’t happen to be at the conference this weekend, it will be available at a bunch of comic shows this year, or you can order a copy from the Ninth Art Press website.