Master Jesus visits the astral plane - art by Steve Bialik

This week my partner, cartoonist Steve Bialik, and I launched Master Jesus, our collaborative heresy that takes the form of a webcomic.  We update every Sunday (get it? Sunday?) with a new 3-to-4-ish page episode.

Here in episode 1, the Master Jesus fasts in the desert and visits the astral plane.  But watch your back, MJ!  Danger lurks around every hyper-dimensional corner.

The Master Jesus webcomic is hosted at the Nerd City podcast website.  It was so cool of Max and Ben to lend me some bandwidth and the eyeballs of their audience for this goofy little cartoon blasphemy.  But I knew when I approached them with the idea that if there were two cats crazy enough to receive and relay the strange signals I was transmitting, Max and Ben are it.  They do one of the funnest, wildest, most spontaneous and entertaining comics and pop culture podcasts on old mother Interent; Nerd City broadcasts out of a local pizzeria/brewery on the North Side of Chicago.  And it’s always a blast whenever they let me come on.

the mysterious biker beats some ass in Chicago: 1968 - art by Antonio Maldonado

Also this week, my other webcomic, Chicago: 1968 (HERE to read it or HERE for your mobile device) continues to be updated with new content.  Our Lincoln Park biker beat down action sequence concludes.

My partner on Chicago: 1968 is cartoonist Antonio Maldonado.  Tony’s really good at choreographing fight scenes.  So click on over and enjoy.

But the violence in the Chicago: 1968 webcoomic isn’t there for cheap thrills and entertainment… well, not ONLY cheap thrills and entertainment.  The “Festival of Life,” as it was called, held in Lincoln Park as a counter-convention to the official gathering of Democrats in the International Amphitheater on the South Side of the city – a “convention of death,” some said – was an unnerving juxtaposition of celebration and battle royal.

Here’s some footage of a Yippie concert by the proto-punk band MC5 taken by the U.S. Dept. of Defense!  Were these G-men grooving to the music or gathering intelligence for some sinister conspiracy against the power of Rock n’ Roll? –

– Pretty neat, huh?

That popped into my inbox one day from my “chicago 1968″ google alert.  Most of the stuff that comes in is junk, but there’s some gems to be had.  Like this flickr pic of a young lady modeling at the 1968 Chicago Auto Show; I’m a sucker for groovy 60′s gals –
Chicago Auto Show 1968

– Yep. Wish I was captain of a starship with a bunch just like her.  “Mad Men” does its Emmy-worthy job of recreating the fashions of the early 60′s, when men were men and women were women, but when things loosened up in the late 60′s, well, that was pretty cool, too.