(This is my professional description. I say that for no one’s benefit more so than my own, lest I wax solipsistic, as is my wont. You’re welcome.)

In mid-2008 the one-man anthology series LICENSE FARM will be virulently uploaded into the minds of the world. Its purpose is two-fold:

* In today’s “buyer’s market” comics industry, an inversion of the traditional model of working in obscurity for years to finally cash in might be necessary, i.e., “selling out” from the get-go so as to build up the capital and reputation for more risky future endeavors; and
* stories therein will serve as “seeds” which, sufficiently nurtured by reader feedback, may “grow” into multiple installments, one-shots or their own series.

The first glimpse of the offerings therein debuted at the 2006 Small Press Expo in ANGSTROM SNEAK PREVIEW. (Free copies are still available upon request.) In January 2008 the first full minicomic installation of LICENSE FARM was released, BOOBY BITER, available for order online or at select comic shops. Aside from Angstrom and Booby Biter, LICENSE FARM #1 will also feature Mr. Bügerschnartz, Ari & Rockne, Luna Tique, Death’s Doorstep, and this series’ Cain & Abel, the Burns & Allen of fame versus labor, Baptiste & Khan (no relation to Ricardo Montalban). Future issues will star almost completely different casts, and eventually some mixing and matching.

Ken Applebaum has been drawing for almost his entire life, and writing only slightly less time, so it was only natural that he should choose comics as a career (after a chaste teens spent in fanaticism for the Disney Company). His first regularly published comic strip was “The Other Booth” for THE CENTIPEDE at Concord Academy in 1991-92. In THE ROUND TABLE at Beloit College from 1994 to 1996 he ran the weekly editorial cartoon “Views Into the Asylum” in conjunction with his column “Ever Vigilant.” He founded the short-lived underground ‘zine TOMORROW’S TOILET PAPER TODAY in 1996, which he resurrected as a blog in 2004. In 1999 he taught a credited college course on the semiotics of the comics and animation mediums, and from 2000 to 2001 he frequently contributed to the seminal comics web “inky” SAVANT. He has worked at Jim Hanley’s Universe, New York City’s preeminent comics retailer; while there, he participated in their first 24 Hour Comics Day event, during which he was interviewed for the documentary 24 HOURS LATER. He interviewed TESTAMENT writer Douglas Rushkoff for the August 2003 issue of LIFESTYLES, the upscale Jewish issues magazine (in his words, "the definite analysis and interview"), and was all-too-briefly an advertising manager for HIGH TIMES magazine from 2002 to 2003. Watch him ramble incoherently about comics in the latter half of this QT movie, which is briefly incorporated into this YouTube video, his audition to be the host of the official podcast of the 2007 New York Comic Con. Buy posters and other schwag sporting his design in fundraising support for the upcoming Troma Film in which he cameos as "Timid Coat Guy," Super Tromette Action Movie GO! (and get free stickers with the art in the process). Additional samples of his art may be viewed in this Flickr gallery. He finds writing about himself in the third person very disorienting.