I recently finished a new book entitled Severed Limbs. It's 144 pages of fantastic fantasticized fantasy. The book is about a prophet, or a madman (depending upon your perspective), who suffers a serious injury from a divine Hemingway cat* and sets out for restitution. I won’t spoil the ending, but it’s not really about the ending. It’s about the journey. I would sincerely and profoundly appreciate if you would consider helping me transform Severed Limbs into a beautiful book.

I have set up a KICKSTARTER campaign where you can learn all the lavish details here at this extremely inelegant URL, just click it: 
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1661720183/severed-limbs-a-comic-book?ref=user_menu

I know it feels like we're living through the end times these days. Everyone is confused. Everyone seems to hate everyone else. We're all pretty sure we've descended into chaos, and it's "those people's" fault. Whoever those people are for you. It can easily appear that expending efforts on frivolous things like comic books is a waste of time and energy. But I would argue that the opposite is true. There is no better time than chaotic times to throw your hat into the ring and create something, or study a creation, or support a creative endeavor. What better way to confront chaos than to generate novel ideas and principiate future possibilities? To cultivate the best in humanity?

*A Hemingway cat, if you didn’t know, is a polydactyl. It is said that Ernest Hemingway bred these extra toed guys and now pretty much all polydactyls can be traced back to him. Weird right? Also, probably not true, but he definitely had a hankering for the extra toed.

Evergreen

Was Fred's evergreen roll spiked by Basho?

Maybe.

Basho would deny it. 

A page from the upcoming cosmicomedy Severed Limbs. 

Eye for an… well, actually, an eye for who knows what?

Here is a page of basically finished inks from my upcoming Severed Limbs.
In which, Fred continues his unprecedented, save for Job, so, his precedented streak of being maimed by God and Nature.

Another severed peek

Fred keeps getting nearer and nearer his goal, but somehow farther away.

Every step seems to take him into another distracting and divergent realm he had no intention of entering.

Will he ever catch up to Le Gooch?

Well, he has to survive this first.

Fred gets a painful lift

This page is from my upcoming Severed Limbs. This is a scene near the last fourth of the book.

Fred gets an airlift in his hunt for Le Gooch as Potemkin observes from afar.

the Gordian viper pit

While dancing through the vast and timeless Dominion of the Spirit Fred fell. We all do it.

Fall.

But in the Dominion of the Spirit a misstep can send one hurtling through the time-space continuum centuries or worlds away from where one began. It is for this reason, and untold others, that most of us instinctively shun the Dominion of the Spirit.

And now it will take a master stroke to free himself. Does he have it in him? Who among us can claim the power? Can you?

Imagine the scenes of beauty he has witnessed. The towering acts of sublimity. Perhaps in his fall he witnessed the Great Alexander undo the un-undoable. Or perhaps he saw the prophet Daniel pacify a den of lions. Perhaps he stood by the side of the pharaoh as the Great Sphinx was christened thousands of years before Christ. Perhaps he witnessed worlds give birth to intelligent life and then saw that life destroy itself millennia later. Perhaps he saw Earth and Mars vie for the honor of birthing life in this galaxy and Mars won that time. If he saw these things I hope he learned from them. A swift stroke from Alexander. An inspired word from Daniel. An answer to a great riddle. A communion with the transcendent powers of becoming. I hope he learned these things. He will need them.

Because now it will take a master stroke to free himself.

Does he have it in him?

Who among us can claim the power?

Can you?

Thunderclouded valleys

Braddock, Pennsylvania? What the hell is in Braddock, Pennsylvania you ask? Well, I don’t know in general. I have never been there. But I do know one thing specifically. Are you interested to know? Well, lean closer and I will clue you in on a secret weapon that resides in Braddock, Pennsylvania and nowhere else. There resides a group of radical and enthusiastic artists that go by the collective name Transformazium. Through various and sundry networks of friends and collaborators I happen to know a couple of these Transformaziumites. One in particular, Leslie, invited me a couple months ago to participate in a fundraising event they were planning to take place in New York. I said okay, because Leslie is a stand up kind of lady.

Well, when she came to pick up the pieces I was donating for the big show we, as is our wont, fell into broad conversations about art and future plans. In the course of the conversation Leslie asked if I would ever consider doing a wall piece or mural in Braddock. Hell yes, I would. I explained that the conspicuous lack of large scale public art in my oeuvre had nothing to do with lack of interest or ability and everything to do with lack of legal opportunity. For the kind of work I would want to do I would need ample time and no paranoia. So, we discussed the possibility of a future project together.

Well, two days later I got an invite to do a piece in conjunction with the group show that opened last weekend. The building is Monster Island in Williamsburg, and the gallery that is hosting the show is Secret Project Robot. This building is the same place where Kayrock resides, the printers that printed my wedding invitations (see the blog archives). As a matter of fact Kayrock’s air conditioner was dripping on me 53% of my working time providing me with a delightful obstacle to completing a kind of piece I have never even done before! Joy!

The show closes officially this Saturday 18Oct08, with a dance party at 10pm, so if you live in the tri-state area come on out! My piece is permanent and will be there until the building is destroyed or a hater besmirches it or the residents of Monster Island decide to commission another artist to go over it. The title of the piece is Friedrich Blitzkrieg in the thunderclouded valley of the deathless gods, check it out:

Op-Ed: University backs professor in “civil liberties” case

An excerpt from today’s Thursday City Chronicler:

By now everyone is familiar with the story of the events that took place last week at the Thursday City University philosophy department’s auditorium. But if you aren’t, a quick recap: During the question and answer portion of a panel discussion in Hegel Hall an attendee by the name of Friedrich Blitzkrieg asked the moderator, tenured professor of philosophy Jeremiah Squiggle, what Squiggle deemed an inappropriate question. When he continued his aggressive behavior Squiggle had Mr. Blitzkrieg escorted out of the auditorium by security and subsequently banned from all future University events. When informed of this decision several outraged students, most certainly shadow proxies of Mr. Blitzkrieg, contacted the Thursday City chapter of the radical left-wing ACLU and began a picket of the university.

We have unerringly voiced our opinion on the entire sordid affair, but the university issued a statement today and we think it merits consideration:
“Thursday City University prides itself on playing host to vigorous debate on the most controversial topics. Our myriad institutional curricula and public events aim to pique interaction and inspire critical discourse. That being said the University does not endorse nor tolerate hate speech in its class environment nor its public forums. The University unequivocally supports Professor Squiggle in his decision to eject and ban the offender at last week’s debate ‘The Quandary of the Spirit in Contemporary Pop-Culture,’ and will not be swayed by the aggressive tactics of the Thursday City ACLU.”

Here here! We at the Thursday City Chronicler could not be prouder of the courage our local university has shown in the face of that farcical organization’s frivolous attacks and vicious smear campaign.

And an artist’s rendition of the event based on audio tape from the Philosophy department at TCU:

A poster

Here is a poster I designed to announce the coming of my former masters to visit my current masters.

BIG NEWS!: Re-membered

After I posted the news about not winning the Xeric grant the positive response was overwhelming (if a few people saying “too bad” can be considered overwhelming). Well one of the respondees offered to help fund the printing of the book. She is the president of Southern Belle Communications, Angela Finney. As you all know the Finney’s are a long established and well respected family here in Thursday City. Angela’s support could not be more appreciated. So it looks like Southern Belle Communications will be the co-publisher of “the Moth or the Flame.” It should be available in the Winter of 2008. Hurray!

I am now working on another long(ish) comic book titled “Severed Limbs.” (For those of you that love self-referentiality you will see it mentioned in “the Moth or the Flame,” once that is printed and available.) It follows a day in the rough and tumble life of Friedrich Blitzkrieg (if you will recall he was introduced to the blog a while back), you can call him Fred. This is the opening page of the upcoming book (look for it around 2009ish). (Apparently this post could have been sub-titled “parentheticals abound.”)

A rapture

Fred floats in a liquid sky as a searing pain-induced rapture overtakes him.