Archive for May, 2009
14 items.
The plot thickens! Well, not really. I guess they’re mostly standing around cracking jokes about Jesus. Still, though. It’s all supposed to go somewhere, I promise.
”Comment
This strip more or less marks the introduction of a new character, but it’s one that’s been on my mind for a long time now. For anybody who’s been reading the comics for a couple of years now, they might remember a storyline I did a couple of years ago featuring a teddy bear sold at a bookstore as a promotional item during Christmas who, after the holiday season, is no longer needed and suffers a crisis of purpose. The storyline ended when the teddy bear, seeking a new vocation and having lived his short, sheltered life in a bookstore watches Spike Lee’s film Bamboozled and, seeing neither the irony nor the tragedy of it, is inspired to embark upon a career as a blackface entertainer. Sadly, there seemed to be no place for his act in our modern world, and the story ended with him being approached by something that looked ominously like a lynch mob.
That wasn’t meant to be the end of the story, though. I had the vague outline of a whole epic adventure for the little bear, and I stopped because I realized that I liked it a little too much to continue with it as I’d started it. The bear was based, none too subtly, on a bear that had been sold at the real-life bookstore where I worked, and I didn’t think that they’d appreciate a version of their possibly copyrighted character becoming a hard-drinking alcoholic, making inappropriate advances toward a small boy, dancing in blackface, and accusing the company of implicit antisemitism for their Christmas-centric winter decorations… among other things that I had the bear doing. Some big corporations are funny about stuff like that. Go figure. So I decided that, if I wanted to continue the storyline, I should come up with my own renamed and redesigned teddy bear character. They can’t copyright the idea of a teddy bear being sold at a bookstore, I’m pretty sure, and that’s all that remains from the original concept. I hope to redo the whole origin story with the elements that I liked from what I did originally, but with this new character, and then I’d like to finally get to the big future plans that I had for the teddy bear. But until I manage to get around to all of that, this second Swine Flu comic is the next in an ongoing storyline, so stick with it and enjoy.
The other night. A dream. I’m drifting off to sleep, and I don’t realize that I’ve fallen there yet, so when I see myself walking down a sidewalk. I think it’s real at first even though it looks a little bit like one of those first person shots in Being John Malkovich where they’re inside Malkovich looking out, as opposed to really being the person that’s walking. I realize it must be a dream when I see what’s on the sidewalk. There’s a horse lying there, a horse definitely and not a pony, in proportion and detail, although it’s only about three feet long, maybe as big as a largish medium-sized dog. The dog comparison is uncomfortable, because half of the horse is ground into the pavement, smashed paper-thin as though it has the consistency of a pile of dog shit and has been stepped in by a giant shoe. The only portion of the horse to retain its original dimensionality is the left front leg and everything above going to the neck and head. These parts are flailing about feebly, like the antenna of a roach that’s been sprayed but hasn’t quite given up yet. The horse’s eyes roll up in their sockets, but I couldn’t claim it was looking at me.
This is when I realize that it’s all a little too weird, I must be dreaming, and I think that I wake up. I’m in my room., although the light is strange and soft and diffused, like how they tried to photograph a woman’s bedroom in the early days of three-strip technicolor. I’m not yet concerned that the aesthetic qualities of my imaginative landscapes so often are easily compared to the techniques employed in old films. There’s somebody next to me, but I don’t quite see him. He’s in my peripheral vision, just barely though, and I’m telling him that I just had the strangest dream, but I never remember my dreams. That part is true, because I really rarely do. So, I insist that he has to help me remember the horse, because it was too interesting to waste. I think he’s nodding a little bit, but he doesn’t say much in the way of an answer. I decide that he’s not trustworthy, and I tell myself that it’s up to me to remember this dream. I insist again and again that I have to record every detail. I think this is why I remember most of what happened afterward. I start to realize that there’s something strange about this as well, and that there might not be another person in my peripheral vision at all, and that’s when I “wake up” again.
I’m lying in my bed now, which seems about right because I’m supposed to have just snapped out of a bad dream. Looking down, I discover that there’s a boy there, going down on me, green t-shirt and brown skin. He’s beautiful, and I recognize him from my escapades, even though I can’t see his face. It seems hazy, though, and I can’t feel his mouth on me like I should, and some part of my brain starts to suspect that I never did wake up, after all.
Now I’m standing up at the foot of my bed, and I think I’ve woken up again. But for some reason the door between my room and my roommate’s is open, which it never should be. I think it’s actually taped shut. There’s something profoundly disturbing to me about it being open. I can’t recall the last time that it was. Then I notice that the light in the room isn’t natural, it’s a deep blue with no conceivable logical origin within the room. I think in the box of crayolas I had when I was little, that blue was called cornflower blue. I start to step toward the door, but I feel like I shouldn’t. The steps I take toward it don’t actually bring me any closer, until I finally notice a shadowy figure in the room. It’s headed toward me, and for some reason I’m afraid of it, even though my suspicion is that it’s the boy from a minute ago, still in his green t-shirt and without pants, just walking at a casual pace. Suddenly, another figure rushes me from my right side and grabs me, which is when I realize it’s all just too improbable, I must be dreaming, and I “wake up” again.
Now I’m lying back in my bed, but I feel paralyzed and I can’t move. There are two figures standing over me.
“It doesn’t really matter. He can’t hear you,” one of them says.
They continue discussing me for a few moments. What’s disturbing me even more than my paralysis is the fact that one of them looks exactly like a drawing I had done, only that drawing wasn’t of anybody in particular. It was as though the guy was from the drawing, rather than the other way around. They keep discussing me for a few more minutes before I snap awake again
This time, I lay with my eyes closed for a few minutes. I think about the sounds in the room and the feeling of my cheek on the pillow. I’m trying to figure out how I can tell that this is any different than being asleep, and zero in on the exact indications that tell me the difference. I feel unsettled, because in the last portion of the dream I had been convinced that I really was awake finally, and that I was in an asylum or something, imagining these walking versions of my drawings looking over me. I had finally snapped.
It took me a few minutes, but I did convince myself that it was a real pillow against my cheek. I opened my eyes.
When people suggest to me that I should try to get my comics syndicated into newspapers, I usually doubt that they’ve actually read my comics.
What’s interesting to me about this particular joke, aside from the obvious, is that it’s really not a very extreme sexual fantasy at all but, somehow, when it’s written down like that it seems like the filthiest thing ever. One thing I’ve always been interested in is picking at the scabs of our social taboos and seeing which ones are actually covering anything worth covering. They almost never are when you get down too it. I’m also pretty interested in writing about sex with guys, so two birds and one stone there.
I did start out thinking this wasn’t really worth writing about, but a storyline started to occur to me and now I think it’ll be running through the strip for a while, so stay tuned. I plan to do a couple of storylines running concurrently, so they might take a while to finish, but hopefully they’ll be worth it.
I do like the idea of telling longer stories in this short strip format, because it’s fun to me to take something so rigid and see how far it can bend. Of course, long storylines in daily strips are nothing new. Dick Tracy in the ’30’s was doing massive stories that today would probably be considered “graphic novels” but at the time were doled out a few panels per installment. Today, though, the strip format seems to have gotten so set that you’re a little bit shocked when anything out of the ordinary is done with it. We’re conditioned to a degree to expect an exact rhythm of setup, beat, punchline. If the joke happens in the penultimate panel, you’ll probably go back and reread it to figure out if you missed something. I think that we’re not too far away from two daily cartoonists doing the exact same joke as one another without even realizing it. There are already Zits strips that do Calvin and Hobbes jokes almost panel-for-panel, but I’m not sure how “accidental” that actually is. The difference between the two is that Zits has lolled in its own refuse for years content to repeat in different fashions the basic concept, “Isn’t it funny how teenagers are lazy and say stupid things?” while Bill Watterson is a genius who could be working with a nub of yellow crayon and a discarded cheeseburger wrapper and would still manage to transcend and say something profound and entertaining. Then again, Get Fuzzy is nearly always a few panels of Bucky saying something mean, Satchel saying something stupid, and Rob expressing exasperation over it, and I love Get Fuzzy, so maybe there’s something enjoyable and useful in repetition. The best comics like that are a little bit like watching different artists cover an old blues song. You can hear a million different people sing Stack A Lee, and it gets more interesting the more it’s done, because you want to find out if there’s anyplace new to take it. And then you can be the Dixie Chicks molesting Landslide. It really all depends on how it’s done.
Anyway. I love Satchel. Buck too. Can’t they just all be happy? Maybe in their own way they are.
Alright, well, I think I’m about to walk right into it with this post, but here I go anyway. The thing of it is, I don’t really write poems, but sometimes a poem or poem-ish thing feels like it needs to come out, so then it’s there but I don’t really know what to make of it. Bits and pieces of this were bouncing around in my head for weeks until it finally gelled into a poem. At the third Papercuts I read it, and it seemed to get a pretty decent reaction. The reason I’m posting it here, or a reason, is that it’s probably going to be part of one of those next issues I keep talking about, “It’s Like Heaven”. It’s meant to follow the first story and some short stuff, and come before Roll With It. The pieces together are meant to say something about how I feel about relationships at the moment. So I guess I’m posting the issue backwards-ish. The guy portraits I’ve been putting up occasionally might go at the end of the whole thing. As for the poem I’m posting here, its position may change. I liked it when I did it, more or less, and with a little bit of distance I’m not quite sure how I feel about it anymore. Oh, and if anybody wants a bit of added intrigue, the guy that it’s (sorta) about is one of the drawings that I’ve posted. I won’t confirm or deny any guesses about which one it might be, but have fun making them :)
“nothing there”
rick worley
a feeling of safety when i smell
your hair
a stab of excitement when i hold
your cock
an abscess in my composition when you’re not there
with me
you make me think of all
these things
and wish that i felt even one of them
there’s nothing wrong with you, not
exactly
you’re sweet and attentive
willing to take the burden of everything that’s fucked up with me
and it’s not small
and hardly ask for anything in
return
you always return my calls, reply to my texts quickly,
too quickly,
to be honest
you’re always there when i want to cum
and you let me do it
all over your chest, so
not saying you don’t have your good points.
you bought me that shirt, the book, the comics
that trip to florence
the yacht
it was thoughtful
but doesn’t change
much of anything
even when it really does make me wish that i could feel something
for you
besides an occasional sense of annoyance when there’s no room to
turn over in bed
i wish that i had some better reason for being
with you
than dregs of the lust that i’ve felt looking at other, prettier boys in the pages
of magazines
and the nagging, recurring thought, “who am i
to be choosy?”
if i could let go, i could just allow myself to enjoy having somebody
to go
to the grocery store with
for a change
to watch movies with, and report back to on the minutia of
the day
i know you would fill those roles, if
i let you
but i don’t think we could ever make it to that room with
summer sun
coming in from the open window,
blue and white
and salty skin
not dry yet
as we fall asleep, naked and lingering in the moment despite
the lack of necessity
because the moment is always there, it’s not leaving and
unchanging.
and i won’t find out, because I’m not going to try
instead i’m crouched, licking spilled milk off
the sidewalk
pigeon feathers in
my teeth
hunched over liquor and a moleskine
a portrait of Hemmingway
in crayola
i could say that “i’m just
not ready”
or that, “i need some time”
i could even say that, “it’s not you,
it’s me”
as much as anybody can say that with a straight face
it would be simple for me to vomit up
the platitudes
because god knows i’ve spent
enough time
drinking them, mixed with cranberry juice and in a
plastic cup
they taste like
unripened lime
but i still know that it’s not a matter of me
not wanting
it’s a matter of me not wanting
what you have
i know it like i know that the sun can burn
my eyes
like i know that tree bark feels rough in my hands,
and good
like i know that there is no god
like i know that w. bush is a
fucking retard
as much as i know
anything
Bonus game with this one for anybody who wants to play: Guess which substance I was on when I drew it, post it in the comment field below, and the first correct guess gets a copy of Waste of Time #1 for free. As I started typing that sentence, I was thinking there wouldn’t be any prize, but I was struck with a sudden burst of generosity combined with a needy desire to see as many feedback comments as possible, so there you have it. Yep. Oh, I was also debating whether to talk a little about the comic, but this seemed easier than that, too. Good luck!
Just a quick sketchbook page for today. I have a billion drawings like this, because this is basically what comes out when I’m standing around with nothing in particular to draw. I bring my sketchbook to bars and public places a lot, for different reasons. One of the obvious reasons for bringing it to a bar, of course, is that I can go there and hang out until something happens without just standing on the wall and staring at people all creeper-status. Although, I’ve been known to do that too. The sketchbook-in-bar thing is also good because if somebody wants to approach me, it gives them an easy excuse for conversation. The problem with that is that it’s sometimes a little too easy, and some pretty gross old men have thought they had an in with me if they’d pretend to care about what I was sketching. I have trouble striking the perfect balance between aloof and available.
Most people don’t seem to think it’s strange to see someone drawing in a bar, and some people even seem to think it’s cool, but occasionally I do get somebody who just thinks it’s freakish to see a fellow patron with something in his hand besides a drink or a crotch. I was standing in a bar, I think the same one where I drew this sketch, and some guy comes up and starts talking to me, mostly about himself. He was cute, though, and offering drinks so I feigned interest. He talked about how much money he made, and how much he liked it in LA, where apparently he was from, but explained that he came to San Francisco about once a month to, “unwind.”
“But it never turns out that way, haha,” he said. ” I always think I’m just gonna relax up here, but next thing I know, I’m doing coke offa some guy’s cock!” Yeah, don’t you hate it when that happens? I wish guys would just keep their coke and their cocks to themselves, for chrissakes. “What are you doing with the book?” he asked.
“Sketching.”
He gave me a look a little bit like I had said I was using it to beat stray dogs. “Dude, that’s weird.”
“Why’s it weird?”
“Cause you’re coming to a social place to be anti-social!” he tells me.
“How am I anti-social when I’m talking to your right now?”
His brow furrows, I can sense the wheels turning a bit behind frustrated, blank, but awfully cute eyes… “Whatever, dude. I’m meeting a friend at Lookout. Wanna come?”
I do go to Lookout, but I meet up with another friend and stop talking to the guy, which seems OK by him because his friend has a couple of other friends, and I think the group of them are deciding to get friendly.
A month or two later, I ran into the guy again and am surprised that he remembers me. “Oh, yeah,” he said. “You’re that guy who reads!”
“Um, well, yeah, I read, but I wasn’t that night. It was a sketchbook.”
“Yeah, right, right, you had a book! In a bar!”
I’m starting to feel a little bit like Belle talking to Gaston as the guy puts his arm around my shoulder and introduces me to his passel of of cute 20-somethings; different 20-somethings than last time, of course. “Hey everybody! This is my friend who reads!”
Some sets of bleary eyes wandered in my direction for a minute, I waved and then excused myself. I was feeling like I didn’t really belong there, somehow. I was the guy who reads! I guess that’s what I get for hanging out with somebody from LA, right?
