THAT IS A) COOL and B) TRUE?
Garfield in Chains, available at Quimby’s, yo.
Archives for August, 2009
Hey, everyone!
So, as you may know, I recently published (with Lulu) the first chapter of a long long story I’m working on, called Birds & Wolves. Well, luckily for you no one but me got a copy, because it was missing a page!!!!
That was my fault, but I’m here to tell you that I’ve now just updated the book so it’s ready again for your consumption! And reading. And all. It’s great, promise. Just wait for the finished deal (in like 4 years ha ha).
Anyways, here’s the old post giving a bit of backstory to it all:
A few years ago over a summer, I started a comic that would end up being called “Youth.” It was originally going to be many chapters, detailing a group of kids going through experiences that would end up with their youth ending. I ended up finishing one chapter of it, a whopping 36 pages of decently drawn set-up, talking, and melodrama. (If you reaaally want to read it, here it is: Youth 1.)
But it was too early to really get into drawing some long, complicated, overwrought story. But a lot of the things I was using from real life as events in Youth were terribly compelling, really worthy of being used in a story somehow (one of these particular events I have used in almost every song I’ve ever written, and many many different art projects).
Two semesters ago, while finishing “Good-Bye, The Pig,” I started drafting this story about a man walking into a forest, searching for love that was symbolized by a third of the French flag. It was loosely based on my romantic experiences at the time. And while I loved the forest itself, the story was too easy, too happy. But, at some point, I ended up drawing the forest aflame (what does this say about how things were going in my life?), and was compelled.
Sketchbook examples:
I storyboarded the forest story to somewhere around 25 pages, but decided I shouldn’t draw it for the class I was in (instead I made It Won’t Be Long). So shelved again it went.
Throughout last semester, I began to try to map out a story based a lot on the experiences I’d just been through, some of which had been harrowing (for instance…). Then it came to me to have the story combine the Forest story with the real life story that inspired it. This was exciting, and I combined it with some older story ideas I’ve had (some offshoots of Youth), then, while sketching a particular poignant night from high school debauchery, realized if I combined a real-life story arc from those days, I’d have a fantastic arc of my own.
The arc deals with those zany things like “death” and “growing up.” Really it’s a man’s (a boy’s?) struggle with coming to terms with death as a reality in the face of his own independence as he nears the end of his school days and his days as an independent man. The romantic situation he’s currently in is wrought with unpleasantness, and his mind often wanders to memories of his last years at high school, where he had to go through a similar change in his life.
Sketchbook test page that mirrors directly the first page:
That’s as good a description as I could ever give. There are ten chapters:
1. Later Never Comes
2. Birds
3. Laughing
4. So Cruel
5. Hourglass
6. Say, Fear
7. Arms Are Warm
8. Blue, Blue Jeans
9. Wolves
10. Water
For my internet-publishing assignment, I have completed, to a space above rough-draft yet not finished level, chapter one, “Later Never Comes.”
One can find it here.
That’s 37 pages down. Now for the remaining 363, approx.
Now available at Quimby’s is Garfield in Chains, a first volume containing 38 strips (out of a countless and ever-growing number) spanning from two years ago until now. Wow! 38 strips! Full color cover! Garfield-book shaped!
Here’s a bit of backstory to it:
During the week of Halloween in 1989, Jim Davis’ popular comic strip Garfield underwent a dramatic change. The strip had long begun its descent into monotony and mediocrity, but this particular week gave the strip a surprising boost in interest. The art changed to a more dark and horror-like style, and the strip gained, for that week, a storyline. Garfield wakes up to find himself alone in the house. Upon further inspection, he finds out that the house is abandoned and no one has lived there for years. The strip gains a narrator, who tells us that Garfield is faced for the first time with his worst fear: being alone. Freaking out and running around the house, the narrator tells us that Garfield can fight back with the only weapon he has: denial. Screaming that he doesn’t want to be alone, Garfield is then back in his normal existence, in what seems like a happy ending.
There is a theory, however, that in fact Garfield did not escape his abandoned house, and that the rest of the strip to this day is a fantasy Garfield invents to keep himself happy as he slowly starves to death in his empty house.
For over two years, I have been using that week of Garfield strips as the basis of a mind-clearing exercise in my sketchbook. Whenever an idea doesn’t come, or I’m getting frustrated with my current situation, I draw a non-sequitur, stream-of-consciousness Garfield strip. Some of the time they end up pertaining to some obscure pop-culture reference that’s on my mind. Sometimes they betray more of my deeper emotions and insecurities, leading to a bizarre and surreal landscape for the ailing Garfield (now a mirror to myself) to inhabit. “Garfield in Chains,” as I’ve named my strips, is a reflection of my psyche, and as such, is very important to me, personally and professionally.
My impetus for undertaking this project is in part because it is something that I have always wanted to do, but is something that always is but on the back-burner in the face of schoolwork or other personal projects. Now is the perfect and possibly only time in the foreseeable future that I will have the opportunity to collect these works, which I feel have merit in their humor, their surrealism, and their sheer growing number.
…when the more you work, the more work you have to do!
This, of course, is not about complaining. It’s just a daunting mountain of paper scraps that pile up and look like I haven’t done anything. That said, as the pile of half-completed books gets larger, it is a pretty sweet accomplishment. Naturally, said accomplishment is not without some aggravators. It would have been great to use a big paper cutter instead of an exacto blade, but since the building with said big paper cutter is filled with hazmat-suit-required POOP, I cannot. So, with my extremely limited xacto knife, I have some fuzzy corners. Which is aggravating, because it’s not so easy to just reprint and recut things! Oof! But, when all is said and done, I am confident the product will go swimmingly.
Anyways, pictures, cha:
A digital memorial is a website that is used to eulogize a deceased person, generally with the idea that the fact that it’s on the internet is enough to have it last forever.
These memorials can take many shapes as more people create them. They can be specialized sites made to collect individual eulogies, or they may take the form of a Facebook page taken over by friends, who turn their lost friends’ old page into a digital ghost, an opportunity to continue the relationship they once had, to keep their friend updated on their lives, and to imagine the responses they get. This particular iteration is how I came into direct contact with the subject, after witnessing a recently-passed friend from High School’s Facebook undergo a similar transformation.
This topic opens new avenues of the discussion of grief: in a world where we don’t need to let go of the ones for which we grieve, how does it change the way we deal with death, and for that matter, how do we then look at life? This article aims to make its readers aware of this growing phenomenon, allowing them to wonder about its potential importance for the future of internet users.
Download the article here.
In a limited edition of 5, I present “Triangle Theology,” pseudo-explorations of the H. Trinity in the form of cut Triangles.
More pictures from the inside:
Each page has a freehand triangle cut in it:
The pages are cut from larger watercolor washes:
Halfway through, the phrase “…and in the H. Ghost” appears:
All writing is handwritten, and all copies hand-numbered:
All done by hand, like the Trinity, made by Man, to understand an understandable concept. My triangles are just as imperfect, and imperfection is a bit perfect in an of itself, of course…
yes, it’s a bit short on it,
but anyways, SHOW TONIGHT!
The Castle, Diversey and Pine Grove
506 W. Diversey Pkwy
Kevin Wilson
Violet Mice!
We Are Vessels
Starts at 8!
I love that my name has an “!” on it.
Anyways, hope to see you!
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