In the book, this comic is meant to be a bookend to the comic I did a while ago where I show my life in a pie chart and Rickets says I should go ahead and kill myself. Obviously this one is meant to be a little tongue in cheek because the things on that list aren’t the only reasons I don’t kill myself, but when I was brainstorming things about life that I really like, or things that I look forward too, that’s a pretty good sampling of things that came to mind. Sometimes I wonder if it’s a problem that sometimes it seems like the most important things in life are art and sex, but I don’t really think that that’s a cynical way too look at it at all, because sex is about relationships, and about connecting with other people, and art is about expression, and hopefully about communication, so they’re both really about the ways that we connect with other people, and I think that’s why I like using them as the two main themes of my work. Art is the way you take the things that are in your head and try to put them out into the world, and relationships are the way we try to let other people in. Maybe the fact that I’ve had more success with art than with relationships means that I’m better at expressing than receiving, or maybe it just means I’ve dated a bunch of dickheads.
Either way, I always like to remind myself that I can do better at art, and I think that no matter how good you get at something you should always strive to be better, and I think that, in the marginal success I’ve had with relationships, I just need to keep reminding myself that I can be better about letting people in. In these comics, trying to strike the balance between those things is the journey that most of my characters are hopefully on.


