You're most welcome to my line of, shall we say...funnies.

I'm Jeff Murray, aka JEFF K1NSS.

Yes, K1NSS is my ham radio callsign and my 6SJ7 comics imprint is something of an inside retro-tech radio homage to the late ham/ humorist Jean Shepherd.

But wait, there's more.

Not to fret Shep fans, this fan knows that our Dear Leader's all-purpose alphanumeric was 6SJ7GT, the glass version of a common old radio tube.

Instead, to better represent my kind of comics , I chose the basic black 6SJ7, an ominously metal-shrouded valve, one of a brooding subset of Darth Vader-ish vacuum tubes that haunted electronics from the Great Depression to Postwar.

Hold the nostalgia. This family of metal tubes didn't glow like fat and fuzzy old Christmas lights. Theirs was a heat of darkness, known to me from an early age, when I first began monkeying with radios.

No doubt I was attracted as much by that shape. It reminded me of a still-earlier enigma, manifested as a black obelisque, a toy faux stone building block, part of an antique set in my family since the late 19th century. The shape appears in the cartoon to your right. These spooky black obelisques reminded me of nuns, ravens, all manner of grave, looming presences , and 6SJ7 serves to bottle this penny dreadful gravitas neat as you please.

Buddy System comes from a time when I drew strips and panels for alternative weeklies including the New York Press, San Diego Reader, Baltimore & DC City Papers, Providence Nice Paper and the Boston Free Comix.

It remains reasonably representative of my cartoon style, albeit addressing odd bits of life in general, real and apocryphal, instead of ham radio in particular, as I'm wont to do now at www.dashtoons.com, home of my web comic Dash! The Dog-Faced Ham.

BTW, the imaginary playmate really was imaginary. On the other hand, the dusty German blocks were real, remain tangible as Legos, and their curious architectural shapes are still cast today, just the ticket for building melancholy ruins.

Really. No kidding. Step right up: http://www.ankerstein.de/index.php?lang=engli.sh

Contact jeff@6sj7.com