When A Double Flush is Necessary
This month: A Real Life Comic, and Some Toons!
This comic is a true story! It happened to me a few years ago in a local Toronto cafe that I like to hang out in (the folks who run it are kind to journal scribblers like myself, they don’t play deafening music, and they have okay omelettes and cheap wine).
“When A Double Flush is Necessary” was previously published in the wonderful Pulp Literature Magazine (issue 26, Spring 2020).
This experience was both freaky and funny, and it served to remind me how everyday life can often be a warehouse of story ideas. Not a second after it happened, I knew I wanted to tell the story in comic form. And that it would work as a short comic. I used ink pens, and blue/grey watercolour wash.
The weird thing about that day in the cafe is that after I had emerged from the bathroom and joined my friends upstairs, I waited for the woman to come up after me so that I could see what she looked like. She never did emerge. Now hear me on this, I’m not a new-age woo-woo person as you can probably get from the comic, but I tell you that she never came out of the bathroom! I know the place well enough to say that there is only one staircase that leads from the ladies room to the cafe above, and from where I was sitting in the cafe I had an unobstructed view of everyone who happened to come up those stairs. She… never… came… up … the…stairs!
Or maybe she had eaten a bad omelet and needed to sit it out ‘till long after I’d gone home, if you know what I mean. The universe works in mysterious waves. (Insert Twilight Zone music here.) doo-doo doo-doo, doo-doo doo-doo…..
And now for some quick laughs! As you may know, I write and draw the dailies for the syndicated comic Rhymes With Orange alongside its creator Hilary Price. This is a selection of some of my favs. Hope you get a chuckle out of them!
If you enjoyed these, please consider supporting Rhymes With Orange comics by subscribing to Comics Kingdom. It’s super cheap! And there are perks, like early access to cartoons, and the option to have a daily laugh delivered straight to your inbox. All that and more for only $2.99 per month. If you’re Canadian like me, that’s a toonie and a loonie (okay maybe a few nickels more with the US exchange). If you’re American, I promise you won’t be charged a tariff, eh? Because, honestly, who needs that crap?
Thanks for reading my stuff, I really appreciate it. We’re living in interesting times (how I wish we weren’t!) and we need humour to weather the shit storms from the powers that be. Hope this post puts a smile on your face, and if you’re not already a subscriber to this newsletter, please hit that button! It’s FREE!
Great story and great RWO cartoons. I love the 'Party Animal/Party Vet', so clever.
Yes. This was helpful.