No comic this week, as I’ve decided it’s time to handle a serious situation.
My desk.
Before we sold our house, this desk was part of a permanent standing desk my father and I built about ten years ago. When we moved, I took it apart, but saved the tabletop. When we moved into this apartment, I didn’t have anywhere to work, which was fine, because I didn’t have a job. Things have changed since then. Still, at the time I just wanted a place to write and work on comics without being hunched over the coffee table. To remedy my back pain, I pulled the desktop out of storage, and then went to IKEA and purchased six adjustable table legs.
Unfortunately, there is no storage in it. I have comic making supplies scattered across my living room, on my wife’s desk, under on the television stand, next to the printer, in the filing cabinet. It is chaos.
It was controlled chaos at first, but I started a new job a few months ago, which allows me to work from home every other week. Working around art supplies isn’t ideal. I always have to find a safe place for my works, and put them away for a week, and they tend to get forgotten about, misplaced or damaged.
One step in the right direction was purchasing, and assembling, the Alex drawer unit (which might also be the reason for the noise complaint the landlord pinned to our door this afternoon.)

I was able to free up a lot of space with this drawer unit.
I have six drawers to store my paper, art supplies and finished work. As I phase my traditional process into more of a digital work flow, I’m hoping I can dedicate more of those drawers to finished art, instead of just the one.
Here is what I have in there right now:






The first drawer contains my smaller sketchbooks and various works in progress.
The second drawer is for finished art. There isn’t much. For the last 15 years, the majority of my work has been digital only.
Drawer three contains tape, pens, markers and brushes.
Drawer number four contains my paints, watercolour pencils, stencils, rulers, inks, stapler, light box and various other tools and supplies.
The fifth drawer holds my specialty papers.
The very bottom drawer is specifically for my comic making paper. I have comic strip, comic page and manga page and comic cover paper. I also have a few thumb nailing books in there for good measure.
Now, that took care of the art supplies, but I still have a mess of wires all over my desk.
I took a white gel pen, and wrote on the ends of each USB and HDMI cable to describe what is at the other end.
Then, I installed a powered USB 3.0 hub and mounted it under my laptop stand.



Then I mounted two switches under my desk. The first switch is only connected to my keyboard and mouse. This way I can use them on my MacBook or my work computer (on the weeks I’m working from home.) Because I don't use the Samsung monitor for my MacBook anymore, I connected the line to another switch. When I’m working from home, I use the Samsung monitor for the majority of my work. When work is over, I push the button, and then my Xbox Series X takes over (it’s hidden under my MacBook Air in the picture.)


Now I just need to do something about all the dangling cables underneath the desk. I also need to relocate that deep freeze so I can bring in my old drafting table.
Once I get that freezer moved elsewhere, I’m hoping I can put my printer on top of the drawer unit so it’s handy when pages need to be scanned and then put away.
I’m reluctant to put too much effort into this, because we just got pre-approved mortgage not long ago, and we fully intend on moving within the next twelve months. I just have a feeling that I’ll have perfected my set up and then we’ll find our ideal house, so I think I’m going to hold off on anymore work on this. Right now, it’s comfortable to work at from two different computers, as well as an Xbox (and I don’t have to worry about ruining a comic or spilling ink on a company computer!)
One. More. Thing.
I have some news about Comics from the Kitchen!
The target goal dropped from $6000 to $4000 and the campaign got extended an additional two weeks. It was looking grim there for a little while, but as soon as the target goal dropped, a lot more people pre-ordered the book, so there is a very good chance that this book will reach it’s goal, and I could not be happier. I may just buy another five copies myself if that helps us get there.
If you think I talk about this one a lot, just wait until I start crowdfunding my own book.
Anyway, that’s enough of that for this week.
Next week I’ll be back with a comic to accompany the newsletter. I’m finished assembling IKEA furniture for now, so I should have the time to get it done.
Until then, be safe, and I’ll write to you again next week.
Mark
Love a good desk tidy. It’s like a superpower after its been done.