To my ardent followers, ye who have forsaken reason, logic and more often than not, proper hygiene, to follow this online chronicle of the factually inaccurate and often preposterous but comically gifted:

For too long I have not provided you with the comedic sustenance you so deeply crave, often forcing you to resort to inferior and some would say “unholy” entertainment. The kind that could get you arrested at the U.S. border. And in some cases some you have even stooped to reading the “funnies” page in the newspaper (an artifact my parents still subscribe to and something that riles my dad to no end when I tell him we don’t read a newspaper). You sicken me.

Well, I plan on putting this situation right by giving you this latest visual hors d’oeuvre, an image that draws (pun intended) on the artistic inspiration provided by the uncommon mix of THE DANCE and an excess of body hair.

Now let me come clean: I made this drawing less to sustain you, and more to defend me. My lovely daughters repeatedly asked for a drawing they could put on a t-shirt so they could show it at school and other important social gatherings. They hounded me as little sea urchin children selling newspapers at street corners would in those films of yore. They kept coming back at me, over and over, pestering me until I finally caved and cried “All right!”

Now I know the majority of you reading this think I did it less to gratify my children and show I’m a decent daddy, but rather I did it more as a feeble and transparent excuse to sit in front of the computer and draw while actively neglecting my fatherly duties and watch sports on the side doodling away in the basement. (You’d only be half-right — I wasn’t watching sports, I was watching cartoons, so there.) You know, it’s so hard to neglect kids these days, it’s not like in my parents day, I’ll tell you.

So I produced something relevant and meaningful to them – the cast of Stanko & Tibor engaging in a moment of ballet frivolity, minus the grace and elegance, despite what the caption says. And to be honest, I like what I produced. It has a certain Degas-like “je ne sais quoi” that mixes with the sledgehammer thematic I tend to produce to get my message of humor across. And this image for YOUR consumption is proof of such.

Let all (3) of you who read the comic know this: I will make the world laugh one viewer at a time, one t-shirt imprint, one eventual e-book at a time.

Keep the motor running through the holidays and I will produce many new episodes in the new year, largely revolving around the oppressed many, organized crime, and sewing. That one will be a gem.

Your humble, yet cynical servant, Lord Jon