A few of my favorite: Woodcased pencils (with erasers)

Throughout this piece, I link to products on CWPE. This post has been a couple of months in the making, and in the midst of my idleness, CWPE announced that they’re closing down in 2021-11. I’ll try to find other stockists in the future and update the links, but at least two of the recommendations were exclusive to the shop, so… all around disappointing.
I have a Thing I’ve been meaning to start trying to write and draw. And while I keep failing to start trying in a meaningful sense, I have done the most important first step – going through a bunch of my woodcased pencils, buying a couple more to try out, and figuring out what still feels best to me. You get more of a selection, and a better selection if you go for pencils without that nubby little eraser on the end.

Nancy (ca. 2018)

Nancy is an 80-year-old1 syndicated comic strip, both maligned and studied for its simplicity in both artistic style and humor. Originally by Ernie Bushmiller, the strip has been drawn by six different people. The sixth, as of last week is the pseudonymous Olivia Jaimes, the first woman to be in command of Nancy.

That a strip predominantly featuring its eponymous female character hasn’t, in 80 years, been drawn by a woman is… Not terribly notable in this world, and I’m glad that that has changed. Somehow the bigger aspect of the shift seems to be the fact that (so far, at least) the new strip is really good. It’s modern, quirky, and real. It’s hard to take the original Bushmiller strips decades out of context2, but the most recent incarnation by Guy Gilchrist was, to me, awful even by syndicated strip standards. The Jaimes strip, so far, feels like a lightweight web comic almost, far exceeding the quality that I expect out of syndicated strips. I haven’t actually been excited by a newspaper strip in a long time, but this is seriously fresh.