The quest continues

The Egyptians were the first to map the skies through time. It was they with the depth of vision and the clarity of perception to make universe shifting predictions millennia into the future. But they could show me nothing. My quest was one of abysmal proportions. A titan-quaking earth-shattering beast-god would be my guide. Power courses through its veins. Its veins snake through its insides like the hair of Medusa hissing and spitting and steaming bloody power. Let us dance.

The Return

After hurricane Katrina Gracey Kallifracks returned to his ancestral homeland in the Boggy Swamp of Swampy Bogginess, on the outskirts of Thursday City in the Valley of Keene—hopes, ambitions, and bank account annihilated by nature and the powers that be. Gracey can shred his git-fiddle like a rabid feral cat on the arm of a cheap second-hand couch tossed into the dumpster to be reclaimed by mother landfill. Though the critics loved him—they all said he was either way too far ahead of the times or way too far behind—he never caught on with the people of New Orleans and was already on his last dime before Katrina’s landfall. Now that he’s back in the Valley of Keene he is continuing with his family’s rice farm, his main source of subsistence, and he continues to hone his craft on his back porch and in any local dive that will have him. You can catch him for free most nights out in the boggy swamps or on the cheap at bars like Gunther’s, 3 Sisters Pub, or the Devil’s Outhouse.

Imagine the sound of a chorus of bullfrogs, tree frogs, crickets, owls, and cougars all wailing in harmonious lament to the tune of a shared nightmare of mother earth dying then twist that around a crying angel and you might come close to approximating Gracey’s sound. And don’t even get us started on the haunting performances he enacts (words can’t do it justice, but be warned you will not soon forget it). He is a one man force of nature. We here at Thursday City News just hope that one day he finds an audience outside the swamp and the critics.

A poster

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

Entreaty

Abraham’s entreaty to the gods on my behalf finally worked and this week I received a batch of advanced copies of “the Moth or the Flame.” Here is a photographic teaser. The entire shipment will arrive in mid-April and will immediately be purchasable through Paypal online, directly through me, or at a very select number of comics stores. More details to come, but for now the images will have to suffice. I hope more than 3 of you are as excited as me, because I will have a thousand of these precious little objects to disseminate.

Sketchbooks and wizards

Showing off my first three hand bound sketchbooks. Bookmaking is fun, and it gives you a fleeting sense of accomplishment too. You should try it sometime on one of your lunch breaks. My friend, Uncle Big Baby Henry, tells me tin foil is the perfect material for bookmaking, but I tend to stick with good old fashioned paper.

And don't forget the paste!








Uncle Big Baby Henry is a wizard.


(photo courtesy of Darlene Earls)

Catacombs

Jameson Farthing and Conway Fripple are lost deep underneath Thursday City. They have been wandering around down there for years. They have become an urban legend in Thursday City, but they merely want to return to the Boggy Swamp of Swampy Bogginess. While playing with some friends after school one day they climbed into the catacombs on a dare. That was three years ago. Since then they have managed to live on rats, mildew, and sewer gators. Every time a sewage worker, electrical engineer, or graffiti writer comes across them their cries for help are misperceived as threatening growls sending said interloper in the opposite direction as fast as can be. Can monsters be blamed that we humans have long since neglected their culture and forgotten their complex and sublime language? Is it their fault that what is melodious to them is horrifying to us? Monsters have a rich canon of poetry that has been lost to human minds because of our reactionary xenophobia. Jameson and Conway have also been lost because of it. Well, because of that and their youthful impetuosity.

Gravitas

Cyril De Bergeron is one heavy dude, which is why everyone calls him Mr. Gravity, but don’t let his massive weight fool you he is a suave mother... hush yo’ mouth. Stare into his Flower of Enchantment for a bit and you’ll know what I mean. He is an equal opportunity lover; his all encompassing embrace holds us all together in an ever spiraling game of unrequited love. Attempt to escape his universal pull at your own risk.

Unholy Marriage

Thursday City’s patron goddess, Obergin Smythe, doesn’t seem too excited about the situation she finds herself in. In order to save her beloved city (deservedly or not) she has submitted to being wed to Paul Slimey McSlymebøllson the Wizard of the Northern Nations. Paul is the board-elected president of SAMMS Club (Scandinavian Alligator Milk Manufacturers Syndicate... uh, Club).

When the Thursday City producers began exporting so much alligator milk that the world market was flooded SAMMS Club petitioned the United Nations to have America reinforce the production quota on the Thursday City conglomerates. Upon successful petition SAMMS Club drastically lowered the already asphyxiating quotas. After years of being yoked to this production quota the Thursday City producers, except the Kremes, revolted. The revolt was put down by SAMMS Club with the help of the American National Guard. As part of the reconciliation compact the Thursday City producers were allowed to return to slightly more than the pre-conflict quotas, and the organizations’ bond was to be strengthened by marriage. Ergo: Obergin Smythe McSlymebøllson.

The wedding is presided over by Uncle Tim and Padre S.

House Head

Willy B., as we all know, is quite the imaginative man. He can often be found in the throes of a spiritual revery, or waxing poetic on the nature of the soul, or animatedly acting out a fanciful story he has recently concocted. But he also builds memory palaces. They are full of chambers, which are full of symbols, which are full of meaning. Kierkegaard once wrote: “In relation to systems most systematizers are like a man who builds an enormous castle and lives in a shack nearby; they do not live in their own enormous systematic buildings.” Not true of Willy B. Oh no! he is like the turtle of systematizers, he always has his dwelling place on his “back.”

Lost Monuments

Walking around Downtown one can’t help but be overwhelmed by the immensity of the City. But imagine if our culture had energized and archaic values, values worthy of the term.

Of course our cities are huge, and they are testament to our engineering age, but they are NOT monumental in any sense other than their largeness. Imagine if we applied our genius for technique and triviality and banality towards true art and monumentality. We have the technical abilities to make monuments and edifices that could rival any classical Wonder, but instead we have abstract cubes, large-scale visual banality we call art, derivative government buildings, boring bureaucratic behemoths, and ad hoc housing towers that are actually thinly disguised prisons.

But just imagine if we actually valued anything outside the realm of physical pleasure and economic status, i.e. art, spirit, religion, etc. The Babylonians engineered a series of hanging gardens (in a desert!) that were so magnificent as to be wondered at throughout the world, and inspiring to this day, but our cities will be remembered with puzzlement at the amount of energy wasted for such ultimately trivial ends. Our cities are interesting, but never wonderful.

At least this is what Wolfgang Johnny G. tells me. Hear him speak what I have regurgitated:

Forgetting of Being

Epiphanie Erinye is one sad little goddess. Just because she absorbs all the light around her and all of the self-obscurities and repressed feelings and thoughts and emotions and deeds we would rather not admit to ourselves doesn’t mean that she’s satisfied with being alone, or that she enjoys being ignored, forgotten, and despised.

Lamentations

Most certainly it was a rainy day. But even in the rain it was no easy task. Even with millennia of evolutionary steps towards the surface it was a radical move. Even with the necessity of new food sources due to shifting tides and innumerable environmental factors it was an audacious act. Even at the time I was aware of that... aware of the monumental implications. But ultimately it all comes down to an absurd joke, an impetuous youthful dare, a laugh. And of course I found myself quickly gasping for water. My whole body seized up with fear. My organs in shock. My gills were swelling and inflamed. If not for a rising tide I would surely have died that day. After my recovery my friends were able to laugh it off and forget about it. I even laughed myself, but I could not forget. I had tasted of something radically exotic and a longing had been born inside me. I tried to forget. I could not. I had to try again. The ramifications for my kind were profound and irrevocable. I still don’t know if I made the right decision, or if I ever decided anything in the first place. What I do know is that the laughter of the gods haunts me to this day. And to this day it stirs me simultaneously with divine inspiration and righteous indignation. For I do not know if they laugh in empathetic revelry or contemptuous ridicule.

At it again

Good ol’ Herakles! Get a few drinks in this guy and he is a dangerous fellow. Of course as quick as he is to action, he is just as quick to forgiveness. So if you see him in a neighborhood bar buy him a drink and get him on your team. Once friends with Mr. Higginbottom you are friends for life (though that doesn’t foreclose on the possibility of occasional scar tissue).