Another fixture of any respectable off campus neighborhood is at least one really good used bookstore. King Raven on the Moraine Avenue Stroll is huge, taking up the basements of most of a block. It takes its name from STSU’s Raven mascot, and that greatest of all used bookstores, John King Books in Detroit. Its floorplan, a nest of interlocking basement rooms, is based on the lower levels of Hyde Brothers Books in Fort Wayne, Indiana.
Bud’s line about the Tao is the central point of the Tao Te Ching, and if you think about it it’s really funny.
I don’t know who owns King Raven, but he or she is one of the Noakes Library’s big rivals for control of any notably weird texts that come into town. It isn’t surprising that Professor Lykander, as an esoteric librarian, is hanging around.
It’s a truism that when I find a clumsy blank area in a panel I correct the composition by filling it with a spider.
Iowa is quick to pick up on what I’ve always thought was a clear link between European surrealism and the Taoist/Zen thread in Asian philosophy. Of course, the poster behind her may have suggested it. My attempt to imitate Magritte’s lettering in the famous quote is less than successful.
Gideon is well up in his classic quotes, but Bud can one up him in the sudden appearance of an appropriate prop. If the bowler hat is actually there, it’s one of the rare examples of blatant, out and out magical realism in the Kekionga canon. Regardless, Bud looks great in a bowler.
The photographs of these pages are particularly bad and I am probably going to replace them. If you are reading this post in its first iteration, you get extra points for your patience.
Fixed. Or at least improved, with slightly better images.
a cartoonist in Kekionga 
I like the slightly craggier look Bud has in this. I don’t know if it’s a consequence of the chibi design or just an evolution in his design but I dig it. Chibi Gideon is also very cute.
I think it’s a combination of the two. Bud has certainly been evolving in a craggier direction for a while, and the chibification process probably emphasized that. You could also argue that it all started happening when Bud took in Jack as his not-an-apprentice. Maybe it’s the equivalent of grey hair on a guy that doesn’t have any hair.
“Am I stressing you out? Making your hair gray?”
“I don’t have any hair! Too late for that, boy! You’re just making me craggier!”