In case you haven’t been making my ego the focal point of your existence, Tales of the Expected are comics I draw when I get rejection slips from literary magazines. The skinny fellow with the unlikely hair is Jeremy Mishigosh, a cheerful murderer I came up with when I was a dysthymic teen. He has been cheering me up ever since in interior dialogues like this one.

Bonus art! My nephew and I collaborated on a picture of his baby sister, Luna, biting his mother’s chin — a true-life occurrence from my recent visit to their home.