Allergies

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(C)Copyright 2024, C. Burke. "AnthroNumerics" is a trademark of Christopher J. Burke and (x, why?).

Based on a true story.

I've actually worked on a few comic for use in my classroom over the past few months, and I'll rework them for use on this page. I've been teaching a Graphic Novel course that is an Art credit even though I'm neither Art nor English teacher. We're learning about them and their history, and trying to create some of our own, without worrying to much about the actual artwork. It's more about the effort and design we're putting into them. For anyone really interested, developing art skills (some already have them) will come later. Or they can tell their story by partnering with an artist, and they'll be able to explain exactly what they envision.

Much of what follows appears on the page from the last comic I published -- except that I published it quite a while after the date on the comic.

The slightly longer story: every time I looked at the blog after that, the old "imposter syndrome" reared its ugly head. And then there's the joke asking if you could still be paranoid if people really are out to get you, and I wondered if that applied to with this syndrome as well. It's not like I ever achieved major success with this blog, and for the time that I did, I really didn't know how to capitalize on that to take it to another level (like, for example, Math with Bad Drawings).

And now blogs are past their heyday. Even now, my Regents pages, which always got more hits than my comics, are down in views, as search engine AI spit out answers before they even point to my pages. Fewer of today's high schoolers would even know I exist.

So that's what's been going on. I've been in a decline pretty much since I knew I was closing in on my 2,000th strip and I would need to do something for it. I think I'm past the point of doing something BIG, not because no one is expecting much, but because few seem to be out there at all. And I did MS Paint myself into a corner with a breakup story that was supposed to be resolved fairly quickly -- but I had to write it and then edit down what I was thinking, and then draw it. I hope I will get to that because I don't want to leave those characters hanging. (They could eventually reconcile off-screen.)

If you are out there, I will remind you of the many times that I've said, "I thrive on feedback." And then I might point out that I get so little of it.

MY NEWEST BOOK IS OUT Burke's Lore Briefs: Yesterday's Villains, the following to Tomorrow's Heroes is now available on Amazon and Kindle Unlimited. If Heroes who don't die live long enough to become the villain, what happens to Villains who live long enough? When do schemes of global conquest become dreams of a quiet place away from all those annoying people you once wanted to subjugate? And does anyone really want to rule over the world's ashes if it means we can't have nice things?
My older books include three more books in my Burke's Lore Briefs series, and the anthologies A Bucket Full of Moonlight and In A Flash 2020. Vampires, werewolves, angels, demons, used-car salesmen, fairies, superheroes, space and time travel, and little gray aliens talking to rock creatures and living plants. Plus pirates, spies, horror, and kindergarten noir! If you enjoy my books, please consider leaving a rating or review on Amazon or on Good Reads. Thank you!

18 Years!

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(C)Copyright 2024, C. Burke. "AnthroNumerics" is a trademark of Christopher J. Burke and (x, why?).

Some things never change. Some things change drastically. And some things change out of necessity or just basic improvement.

Moira's grown from a child. Michele was pregnant for two years. Everyone was masked for more than a year.

And Ken, for once, knew enough to keep his thoughts to himself!

HAPPY 18 Years of (x, why?)!

Yes, I'm the first one to admit that there has not been a lot of updates in the past two years. I didn't mean to bail. I didn't mean to panic.

There even came a time recently where I had to say "I used to have a webcomic..." Thankfully, I haven't gone a full year without an update. Yes, that's a low bar to set.

Why the hiatus?

There wasn't one particular reason, but a bunch of factors. There are always factors. After all, it's a Math comic, first and foremost!

Demands on my time

There are two parts to this. This comic really flourished during the years I was substituting rather than teaching full-time. And then came the lockdown, which had me home a lot more. There was no travel time. Plus, when this started, I was teaching 15 minutes from my house. Now it's more like an hour and fifteen minutes.

Also, I'm doing more with the time that I do have. I have tried to get my writing career going again, which started in 2016 and kicked up a notch in 2020. I haven't found the success I'd like, but it's amusing to think that I'd start being a writer and started by a webcomic writer. And for a while, I was okay with that. But the bug bit me again.

And before the shutdown, I really got into walking around Brooklyn. During the shutdown and immediately after, it kicked into high gear, and I was walking everywhere. I walked enough places that I started another blog dedicated to that, Walkin' in Brooklyn. (No "g" in Walkin'.)

This left little time for me to spend on creating the comics. Even with better tools, it takes longer because I've tried to raise the bar on what's acceptable. So unless I just want to publish "Minis" and "School Life" comics (and maybe not those), I couldn't churn them out as quickly.

Story Lines and Other Things

While I didn't exactly write myself into a corner, I did leave a bit of a cliffhanger with that Total Eclipse of the Sun and the Heart in 2024. I did intend to resolve that, even if it had to wait until the summer was over. But it was going to take time to write that because it was going to be too wordy. It needed edits and then I had to figure who was going to be in the intervention comic, as it were.

Slightly sillier is that the above comic is number 1989. I'm closing in on 2000. I've been thinking about 2000 comics for years now. I wanted to do them right.

I didn't want that to happen during October Math Horror Movies or December Christmas Math Carols. The comics would fit the seasons. I still want to do them, and there's only a few more left, so I need to plan them.

Personal Life

We all have things going on. But I spent too many days in the past few years visiting hospitals and cleaning up someone else's place. Mike's family is modeled somewhat after my own. To differentiate, I only gave him one sister and didn't plan on making One-to-One relationships between the families. No one was to be anyone's avatar ... even if they did occasionally take on some personality traits.

But Art imitates Life no matter how you slice it. There's only one sister but I know which one she is because the older of the two passed away many years ago. Longtime readers might remember Mike's mother, particularly on Mothers Day. However, I stopped including her when my mother passed away. (It could be the Dad in me, or maybe it's just that I appreciate the Dad and Uncle characters enough to keep them around for a while.) And then in the past few years, I lost two of my brothers. Both had had their share of health issues, and I did a lot of visiting.

By the way, ever since I was child, I've hated hospitals, and that feeling hasn't changed. But I will go to them.

Moving Forward

Okay, now that I've brought the room down, let me look to the future. Yes, I would like to get back into the habit of creating comics. Yes, I want to make it to 2000 comics and beyond. However, as you can tell from the ads below, I'd like to keep writing as well.

We'll see how this all plays out.

MY NEWEST BOOK IS OUT Burke's Lore Briefs: Yesterday's Villains, the following to Tomorrow's Heroes is now available on Amazon and Kindle Unlimited. If Heroes who don't die live long enough to become the villain, what happens to Villains who live long enough? When do schemes of global conquest become dreams of a quiet place away from all those annoying people you once wanted to subjugate? And does anyone really want to rule over the world's ashes if it means we can't have nice things?
My older books include three more books in my Burke's Lore Briefs series, and the anthologies A Bucket Full of Moonlight and In A Flash 2020. Vampires, werewolves, angels, demons, used-car salesmen, fairies, superheroes, space and time travel, and little gray aliens talking to rock creatures and living plants. Plus pirates, spies, horror, and kindergarten noir! If you enjoy my books, please consider leaving a rating or review on Amazon or on Good Reads. Thank you!

You're Back!

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(C)Copyright 2024, C. Burke. "AnthroNumerics" is a trademark of Christopher J. Burke and (x, why?).

"For how long, Mr. Spock? ... For how long?"

I've made promises, and I've broken them. But since I don't know how many people are still reading blogs these days, I can't tell how many people, if any, that I've disappointed. Few have inquired about my extended absences, so it leaves me wondering.

Two things spurred me on: I really want to make it to 2,000 comics, which I should have surpassed a long time ago, and I got an email from Fables dot pro about hosting my comic. Fables got my name from the old TopWebComics site, which still exists, actually, even if I haven't visited it in over a decade. (By contrast, I still check out the Comic Genesis site a few times per year, even if I haven't updated it. And I'm not even sure I remember how to update it. I might need my old PC where there's a saved password.)

More to come. For real this time.

I also write Fiction! The NEW COLLECTION IS AVIALABLE! A Bucket Full of Moonlight, written by Christopher J. Burke, contains 30+ pieces of short stories and flash fiction. It's available from eSpec Books! Order the softcover or ebook at Amazon. Vampires, werewolves, angels, demons, used-car salesmen, fairies, superheroes, space and time travel, and little gray aliens talking to rock creatures and living plants.
My older books include my Burke's Lore Briefs series and In A Flash 2020.
If you enjoy my books, please consider leaving a rating or review on Amazon or on Good Reads. Thank you!

Come back often for more funny math and geeky comics.

Aight, Part 2

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(C)Copyright 2023, C. Burke. "AnthroNumerics" is a trademark of Christopher J. Burke and (x, why?).

Artificial Imaginary FTW!

FTW, or "For the Win", was common Internet parlance for years, but I realize that I haven't heard it so much recently. Maybe it's a generational thing, and new phrases have replaced it. To my knowledge, the phrase comes from "The Hollywood Squares", which was popular in the late-90s with Tom Bergeron. It had made a comeback a decade earlier with John Davidson, but that was before the sudden rise of the Internet in the average home.

As with the first image from yesterday, which was already posted before I even begun work on this image, I will unlikely ever be able to reuse these characters except as a stock image. I could manipulate it in small ways. If you look at Michele's left ear (viewer's left), you'll notice that the hair around the earring is a little off. That's because she only had one earring, so I duplicated the other and colored in the hair around it.

These characters are definitely easier on the eyes. Speaking of eyes, Ken still came up with glasses. I was going to make a circumference joke but nothing good came to mind.

Giving Michele the math-y punchline about the square root of -1 amused me, so I went with that.

I also write Fiction! You can now order Devilish And Divine, edited by John L. French and Danielle Ackley-McPhail, which contains (among many, many others) three stories by me, Christopher J. Burke about those above us and from down below. Order the softcover or ebook at Amazon. Also, check out In A Flash 2020, by Christopher J. Burke for 20 great flash fiction stories, perfectly sized for your train rides. Available in softcover or ebook at Amazon. If you enjoy it, please consider leaving a rating or review on Amazon or on Good Reads.

Come back often for more funny math and geeky comics.

Aight

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(C)Copyright 2023, C. Burke. "AnthroNumerics" is a trademark of Christopher J. Burke and (x, why?).

I can't count the number of things wrong with this, especially with those fingers.

I got to play around with "Text to Image" in Adobe back on Election Day during school professional development. And I'd already played around with the Bing AI image creator. I got the idea to do Mike and Ken in a classroom. The results were horrible even before I decided to add Michele into the mix. There was one somewhat decent image of her but the two guys were terrible, and then I lost it because I got logged out or something.

I'm starting to believe that these image creators don't like negatives, such as "no glasses". Mike has glasses, so everyone has glasses. Similarly, I tried an illustration with someone having angel wings but "no halo", and the angel always had a halo. And sometimes the non-angel had wings.

It'll get better in the coming years, and it'll be all over the place. The mosre generic an image, the easier it'll be to create. If I wanted planets circling a black hole, I could probably get some cool images. And if I needed random people, no problem. But describing my characters? That didn't go well.

I might do this again from time to time, making the AI a part of the joke. If I can't actually draw something, I can stick to stick figures or charts and graphs or simple shapes.

So what do you think of these characters? Yea or Nay? Use them again?

Actually, I probably couldn't use them again even if I wanted to. The odds of recreating anything similar are pretty long, so I'd be stuck with this single image as a Greek chorus commenting on other things.

I also write Fiction! You can now order Devilish And Divine, edited by John L. French and Danielle Ackley-McPhail, which contains (among many, many others) three stories by me, Christopher J. Burke about those above us and from down below. Order the softcover or ebook at Amazon. Also, check out In A Flash 2020, by Christopher J. Burke for 20 great flash fiction stories, perfectly sized for your train rides. Available in softcover or ebook at Amazon. If you enjoy it, please consider leaving a rating or review on Amazon or on Good Reads.

Come back often for more funny math and geeky comics.

Happy 10000 Years!

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(C)Copyright 2023, C. Burke. "AnthroNumerics" is a trademark of Christopher J. Burke and (x, why?).

Happy anniversary! Bonzai!

Ten thousand years (base two) to (x, why?)!!

My initial thought was to do some kind of Sweet Sixteen comic, until it occurred to me that 16 in 10000 in binary, which meant it was ten-thousand years, which is "Binary Banzai", basically.

Also, eagle-eyed readers might've noticed that this was the second update for today. Don't ask me why, but I had it in my mind that the anniversary was a couple days away. Thankfully, I did realize my error, and I already had the comic planned (though not created) so I was able to fix this. I've pushed back the next two comics. That's right -- TWO comics.

I also write Fiction! You can now order Devilish And Divine, edited by John L. French and Danielle Ackley-McPhail, which contains (among many, many others) three stories by me, Christopher J. Burke about those above us and from down below. Order the softcover or ebook at Amazon. Also, check out In A Flash 2020, by Christopher J. Burke for 20 great flash fiction stories, perfectly sized for your train rides. Available in softcover or ebook at Amazon. If you enjoy it, please consider leaving a rating or review on Amazon or on Good Reads.

Come back often for more funny math and geeky comics.

Looking Back

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(C)Copyright 2022, C. Burke. "AnthroNumerics" is a trademark of Christopher J. Burke and (x, why?).

I've had a lot of students over the years. In the comic, I mean.

The Island Boys were a couple of foils for Mike Keegan during the time that he was away from his old school. Mike's placement "in excess" mirrored my own. And like Mike, I, too, returned to my former school. Unlike Mike, I was placed in excess a second time, and only returned to substitute during a colleague's maternity leave. But I brought Mike home where he belonged.

The funny thing about my stay on "the Island" was that I taught Algebra, Financial Algebra, and Geometry. The latter of those seemed to spark a bunch of ideas that were logic-based. This could be because I taught some much Algebra in the past, that this was a new lode to mine. Whatever the reason, I was contacted about the use of some of my comics for a Logic textbook in the University of Stockholm. I gave permission immediately. Ironically, for all the comics I'd done with other students, these two popped in several of the nine comics selected for the text.

The inspiration for this look was that there were several young men in my classes that had that haircut. In particular, there were two who weren't quite Patti Duke identical cousins, but they were close enough alike that if only one was present, I wasn't also sure which one he was. (When both were there, I could tell from their complexion.)

Oddly enough, I keep in contact with a few students I taught there through social media. (Not any with that haircut.) Two became teachers, and one of those is also a nightclub singer and a member of the Friar's Club. (I kid you not.)

As for Ms. Moira (last name pending, I think), five years ago she was introduced as one of the original batch of students grown up and working as a student teacher. Now, she's part of the staff after covering Michele's maternity leave.

I also write Fiction! You can now order Devilish And Divine, edited by John L. French and Danielle Ackley-McPhail, which contains (among many, many others) three stories by me, Christopher J. Burke about those above us and from down below. Order the softcover or ebook at Amazon. Also, check out In A Flash 2020, by Christopher J. Burke for 20 great flash fiction stories, perfectly sized for your train rides. Available in softcover or ebook at Amazon. If you enjoy it, please consider leaving a rating or review on Amazon or on Good Reads.

Come back often for more funny math and geeky comics.

Happy 15 Years!

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(C)Copyright 2022, C. Burke. "AnthroNumerics" is a trademark of Christopher J. Burke and (x, why?).

Still Crazy after 15 years!

No, the original classroom didn't have a door. In fact, the back wall was white for a while as well. I think the first classroom with detail was for the Eggoids. (I don't use those much any more.)

Of the students appearing here, Hal appeared first, but in a comic with Mike as a student. An identical character appeared again with Shawn, who quickly became the de facto leader of the students, for no reason in particular. Sven came next, and Daisy was the last one (of these four) added. And, yes, they all came from the same model for a student, unlike Missy or Vanessa, or Bibi, Freedom and Serenity.

So another year come and gone. And I'm still doing it, even if the updates aren't as often. (I really wanted to have some Halloween movies this year, as I always do.) But as time permits, I'll be here.

Edit: and you'd think after 15 years, I'd get the timers correct! sigh...

I also write Fiction! You can now order Devilish And Divine, edited by John L. French and Danielle Ackley-McPhail, which contains (among many, many others) three stories by me, Christopher J. Burke about those above us and from down below. Order the softcover or ebook at Amazon. Also, check out In A Flash 2020, by Christopher J. Burke for 20 great flash fiction stories, perfectly sized for your train rides. Available in softcover or ebook at Amazon. If you enjoy it, please consider leaving a rating or review on Amazon or on Good Reads.

Come back often for more funny math and geeky comics.

School Life #21: School's Out 2021

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(C)Copyright 2021, C. Burke. "AnthroNumerics" is a trademark of Christopher J. Burke and (x, why?).

You can't just go breaking a fourth wall like that!

The more things change, the more they'll stay the same. It's a weird cosmic, temporal vortexual balancing act. With generic building blocks.

I also write Fiction! Check out In A Flash 2020, by Christopher J. Burke for 20 great flash fiction stories, perfectly sized for your train rides. Available in softcover or ebook at Amazon. If you enjoy it, please consider leaving a rating or review on Amazon or on Good Reads. Thank you.

Come back often for more funny math and geeky comics.

Happy Mother's Day 2021!

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(C)Copyright 2021, C. Burke. "AnthroNumerics" is a trademark of Christopher J. Burke and (x, why?).

It almost defies the laws of science, but neither of them are science teachers!

Yes, it's been awhile, and that actually had been the plan, even before the pandemic. Most of the characters are stuck in Temporal Status, which will make the references and relationships in this strip as outdated as early Simpsons episodes if I keep doing this comic. Unless I have a Crisis in Finite Panels.

Side note: there was a couple on Will & Grace in their earlier run who would appear on game nights where the wife was always pregnant, and this went on for a couple of seasons. No mention was ever made to her ever had any actual babies. It was just a running gag that was never mentioned. It would have been a "brick joke" if she'd delivered in the final season.

Happy Mother's Day to everyone, whether you're a Mom, thinking about becoming a Mom, or just thinking about your Mom at all.

I also write Fiction! Check out In A Flash 2020, by Christopher J. Burke for 20 great flash fiction stories, perfectly sized for your train rides. Available in softcover or ebook at Amazon. If you enjoy it, please consider leaving a rating or review on Amazon or on Good Reads. Thank you.

Come back often for more funny math and geeky comics.