art, comics and everything else.
i’ve noticed lately that i am growing more and more tired of the people around me who continue to make the same mistakes.
it’s made me think…shit all these fuckers are in my comic strips! fuck!
…in the past few months i’ve realized that i’d have to cut out 8 previously involved members if all the strips ever went to print…
…guess i should either redo old ones or just keep making new ones until they’re forgotten.
back to robot chicken
there’s red on the walls, the dead are at the door.
where are you jimmy? where are you? where did you go?
a creak to my left.
is that you jimmy?
is that you?
hello! fuck! answer me!
son of a bitch jimmy! son of a bitch! why don’t you just…oh.
that’ll be the last thing i ever said to him while he was alive, if he was, who knows? he could have been dead for hours by that point.
he would have yelled the same damn thing at me though, he’d be yelling “jen! don’t do this to me now! not fucking now woman!”
he only said woman when he was really riled up.
i haven’t moved since, it was 6 hours ago, they’ve been trying to knock down that door since i pulled in his half-eaten corpse, i could probably toss it out and take that moment of distraction to get away, but i’m not leaving jimmy.
“i’d rather join you than give those bastards the satisfaction,” he’d say.
oh jimmy…you proud bastard, you glorious 140 pounds of macho fury, it’s like you’d never seen a mirror.
yeah, i don’t know if they’ll die without eating, banging down that door, or just lose interest, either way i’ve lost some blood too, i am probably going to pass out soon and wake up to some sickly green creature that used to be a neighbor…or a friend…biting the flesh off my shoulder…or leg…or…
…well atleast i’ll fall asleep that last time next to him, so funny that just a day ago we were fighting over getting rid of that dirty old brown couch, if there are any golden gates up there…you can have the dirty old brown couch, the pool table and that disgusting old stack of hustler magazines.
one hinge doesn’t have much left.
i love you jimmy.
i want to call people “cool cats”.
i want to be one of those assholes who constantly bigs himself up as the know-it-all when it comes to nerdom. (i also want to be that asshole who uses the phrase “nerdom”)
i want to hate everything new in 2012 just to talk about how everything was better 5 years ago in 2017.
i want to be so talented at one point in my life that i coast on overpricing shitty things for the rest of my life.
i want to go to school just to drop out after a year because it was affecting my muse.
i want to pick apart my supposed favourite writers and artists and speak about how they could improve as if i was better than them.
i want to say that i want to draw and write comics for the rest of my life but as soon as i hit something popular i’m going to be the writer then the plotter then eventually they’ll just put my name as “created by” a.k.a still gets most of the fucking money but does nothing.
i want to be a big editor for a year then quit to “return to what i love most” to simply do 6 covers per year…max.
hopefully i’m well on my way…
…did i mention the asshole part?
we were all young before and old too quickly, the days of youth brought the strongest feelings of joy, but also of pain, the twists and turns didn’t slow anything, they actually just made the ride go faster.
looking back now at broken glass and old wounds that are far healed over but are plain as day to me…scars that no one else can see…i am lost again.
you have to crawl before you learn to walk, walk before you run and climb every second of every day to succeed, but some people ascend faster than others.
i want to keep my head above the water, stay ahead of the pack. is it too late?
my lovely friend tanya coloured this for me.
it features me and my wonderful girlfriend, who…for whatever reason…is actually still with me despite my obsession with large chinned b-movie actors.
today is actually our one year anniversary.
thanks to the wonderful women in my life, you all colour my world.
i’m laying here looking up at the ceiling like it’s going to change.
like it’s got all the answers.
but it doesn’t suddenly transform into the physical equal of ultimate understanding.
it just stares back, maybe expecting the same from me.
will i always feel the same? what if i feel better and my perspective on all those i’ve brought along the trip downhill changes?
scared of getting better.
emotional cancer eating away at me.
but somewhere, far below the surface, lower than this couch, lower than this floor and the basement that lies below it, there is hope somewhere, and i’m digging a hole downward, seemingly a grave, waiting to hit oil, gold, for hope to spurt up out of the ground and lift me skyward…
…and never let me down.
i think i’ve found what i’ve been searching for.
nothing.
i need to enjoy breathing the air and letting my mind go where ever it needs to, i need to enjoy the summer sun from the comfort of the indoors, retiring to my deck when needed, drawing, playing video games or even just sleeping.
this is the stress relief i have been searching for.
complete relaxation.
with the fantastic reward of nothingness always coming up soon, all the “stressful tasks” of life suddenly seem so easy.
i hope you’re all breathing easily and are going to spend tomorrow with your head tilted backward, eyes closed…
…i think it’ll help.
i’m in this weird headspace where i don’t want to be “here” anymore, but here isn’t completely physical.
in this place of nice guys finish last and a house isn’t necessarily a home.
things have fallen apart many times and usually there’s this set of steps, straining ones, to fix everything.
but this time, there’s not.
it’s like being lost, all the time, i wake up with nowhere to go, nothing to do, no one to see, even if there’s technically ones there everything feels so superficial, it’s just…moving with the tide.
but i’m drowning.
i no longer feel safe.
i feel like regular things that you take for granted are just slipping away, doing things the right way isn’t enough, i think i’m exceeding expectations and i’m hitting below par.
there’s no victory.
there’s times when no one is home and i literally wander around my house, and i think about going outside and knocking on doors of those i know, waiting for some show of excitement at my presence.
i look for food, i look at old drawings, i think of making new ones, i blog a lot, games…it all feels like filler…fries on the side with no meat.
there is no flow, there is no end in sight, there is dust floating through a heart not pumping…lifeless veins…
…and no bright ending where things might end up being alright again.
there’s an old house, burned to the ground, the smell stays in my nostrils for days until i blow it out with my little low class, big price habit that comes back around whenever i start feeling too stressed on the job.
a lot of people have jobs but they’re just “jobs”. mine is your life, my life, everyone’s life. without me, there is no life. there is nothing but danger around every corner. scum rules the cities and you either join them or they do with you what they please, either way, you’re fucked.
i’ve been fucked a lot. janie’s taste is just barely left on me, her scent rises to those aching nostrils between sips of coffee in the morning, coffee that elaine made, she deserves better.
our little rebecca is entering a pageant this year, it’s really cute, she’s a real go-getter, she goes after what she wants and she gets it. a philanthropist at age eleven.
our bobby isn’t so little anymore, and he’s no philanthropist, he’s in another old broken down house somewhere that i pray every night isn’t burning.
2 kids and one is an angel from heaven and the other is a big fuck-up who causes me nothing but grief, stress and embarrassment. how does the cookie crumble like that? elaine only lets me eat oatmeal cookies because of my health, i’m glad i cheated on her.
janie gets me, she’s on the job every day just like i am, i’m married to my work, it barely feels like cheating, we both share a spouse. it’s a small bridge to cross.
it’s a tight bridge that i drive down that i’m suddenly jumping off of, atleast almost jumping off of.
there’s cop cars behind me, a guy with a megaphone, i’ve been that guy before, fuck, are we always so annoying? who wouldn’t want to jump just to shut up the annoying fuck with the megaphone?
i swear too much, i keep trying to stop for little rebecca but, that jar is filling up with nickels and even some toonies but it’s all pennies with an expensive habit like mine, fuck, i should have done a baker’s dozen before i decide to come up here.
eleven lines, no wonder i’m not dead, whatever, will be soon.
i have 3 names for you: carl barks, c.c beck and john stanley.
who are these three?
well they’re all dead.
they’re all great.
and they’re all geniuses and i have been too stupid to listen.
i often talk non-stop everyday online about my dreams of creating comics.
i spend this time talking about comics instead of just making comics.
i think of endless excuses of why i can’t make comics, but these men didn’t do that, these were working men.
they broke comics down into simple linework and layouts that could be manufactured quickly and with some sense of ease, they created great stories that were thought-provoking and current but also somehow timeless, they were geniuses of their craft…but i’ve been ignoring them…ignoring the signs that the world keeps giving me…and to be honest, i might continue to because i somehow feel unprepared to follow in their footsteps still…
…let me explain.
their art was of already popular characters (if not created by themselves) who were drawn quite simply in comparison to what you see in comics today and even back then…bold, perfect black outlines, eyes were nothing complicated, little-to-no cross-hatching. simple and it worked.
i get so caught up in having characters with cool eyes and cool noses and complicated attires that i lose sight of my original story and put too much pressure on making my creation better than it needs to be, not that i am belittling my creation but…well…i looked in the mirror tonight.
i looked in the mirror and i saw the flash on my t-shirt among many other heroes and i realized that he was really just an outline, dots for eyes and a slit for a mouth, his costume looked like a red human-shaped blob with some cartoony lightning with a thick, black outline. this was who i needed to create, but with a different look.
i thought of the walking dead, markham tales, invincible, superman, flash, batman, everything…even autobiographical works…and just thought of how much easier my life would be if i made my comics like these men, how much more rewarding it would be if i could just finish a page instead of killing myself over choices about style.
i guess it started with darkwing duck, i just don’t like donald duck or uncle scrooge in the cartoons, like i wanted to…their voices irritate me, even the simpsons, characters i want to love and do for bits of my life but before long their voices or their actions or the joke getting tired gets the best of me and i lose interest…move on…but darkwing duck was like a bit of a kid’s dream come true, the perfect after school cartoon, not too adult, not too serious, but not too kiddy, not too funny or too super hero. it wasn’t the best show of all time, it wasn’t duckman which i liked way more but something i could watch 100 episodes of and not get bored while with duckman, though great, i’d find myself moving on to the maxx or undergrads or back to superman for a while.
anyways…there is a new darkwing duck comic out, it’s been coming out for a while and i have been meaning to pick it up, i’ve been meaning to pick up a lot of things like that and have yet to…usually a print quality issue but that’s a different story…and after looking up the art i saw something i’d missed.
i saw people who draw like me but where it’s going without the push.
i draw with thick black lines over fancy cross-hatching, i have worked so hard on the fancy cross-hatching but as my girlfriend and my family and a select few friends can attest to…it’ll look like olivier coipel’s thor or ben edlund’s tick walking around in a casper comic, every room is a cube with a painting in it. every bush is straight from the pages of asterix. every doorway is from archie.
my comics all take place in riverdale no matter who i draw, and the fantastic part i’ve learned while creating markham tales and dna wrestling and this other silent one i haven’t posted for anyone is, though very early in terms of actually finished stories, is that it takes me ten minutes, five minutes, 20 seconds to create the next story, it’s so quick that i don’t even bother creating them in advance for the most part, i can just draw the first panel and before i’m done inking the second i’ll have the next 3 parts of the story arc finished in my head.
chester gould did it that way. and he’s my hero. dick tracy is my favourite comic strip.
so what do i do?
i guess i try to take my own advice, but to be honest…i need a partner.
i dream of a having a bank holdup studio (chasing amy reference) with facing art tables, one side doing the pencils, one side doing the inks, both sides doing the stories. even someone to (as carl barks’ wife did) fill the solid blacks and do the lettering would be enough for me, a colourist even, writers don’t give me the push i need and i’ve got no money coming in so..
…i’m an idiot, but bear with me, i’ve got some fancy pens beside the bed right next to the false hope.
