Old News II

Another bit of old news that many of you may not know about. Last year I had some work in an Austrian magazine named Rosebud. The theme of the issue was “ideals.” I created an 8 page series of Loguments (monuments made of logos—I have that word copyrighted). The Loguments read “An ideal must comprehend its opposite or collapse.”

You can order the book here: www.rosebudmagazine.com

And here are some images:

Giving thanks

The last two weeks have been psychologically and technologically disturbing here in Thursday City. A city wide computer problem caused a series of collapses, which destroyed many vaulted files. This series of computer problems triggered a series of psychological disturbances which shook Thursday City to the core. But I am back in the saddle (as it were) and excited about the future again. Yes, the rumors of my demise have been greatly exaggerated. To catch you up on news: “the Moth or the Flame” is nearly ready to be sent to the printers. It will hopefully be available in mid-winter. “Severed Limbs” is coming along swimmingly. I should have images soon of the show in Michigan, from October. They will be posted as soon as I have received them. Le Gooch still has extra toes and is yet to show any hint of embarrassment about this fact. I have advanced another year in living chronology. Mayor Trumbull is still in his grave, and the interim Mayor Wilson should be replaced after the upcoming elections. The legal struggles involving the city of Thursday City and Kreme King’s illegal dumping of mass amounts of petro-chemical waste into Thursday River are still mired in seemingly interminable legal gridlock. The sun came up and went down again today. And all seems to be otherwise enduring in the world. Thanks for that.

Willy B weighs in on the notion of Fate

I have been frustrated with technological problems of late, but in these troubled times I often turn to Willy B for heartening wisdom.

Ries, Mr. Okkelnootje, and the Holy Scarab

A year or two ago I was commissioned to draw a story for an Italian motorcycle company named Aprilia. They were releasing a new scooter called the Scarabeo. Well, I basically just used it as an opportunity to tell a Ries and Mr. Okkelnootje story. Ries lives in Old Town in Thursday City and Mr. Okkelnootje may or may not be imaginary. I drew the story and they took it with no edits! Ha! I got ‘em.

I am going to post the story in its entirety, because, though they paid me, I never saw the book (those bastards), and this story may never see print in America.

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.”)

The sleep of reason

According to Goya the sleep of reason produces monsters. I would like to suggest that waking reason often produces monsters as well. Perhaps the more encompassing and pithy axiom would be: People produce monsters.

I have a feeling Jonathon Bean would agree with me. I have encountered him while reason slept and while reason woke, and in both cases he seemed to be surrounded by monsters. Perhaps he is just an unfortunate soul that the gods have chosen for a black cloud to follow. Though he bears the mark of the villain, in actuality he merely had a tricycle accident as a youth, which left a deep gash across his left jowl. Jonathon is a perfectly agreeable fellow really, mostly. He simply has some demons, outer and inner.

Here Jonathon Bean’s bean hovers between realms, tormented by monsters real and imaginary.

Battling the pirates

Pirates are not extinct. Although we like to imagine that swashbucklers on the high seas are a glamorous thing of the past in actuality they are more dangerous than ever.

According to the international study “the Practical Guide to Piratical Practices Worldwide,” conducted by the World Foundation for the Study and Termination of Malicious Marauding, 1 in 2,357 tourists are captured by pirates and sold into slavery, 12,038 cargo ships are hijacked, and over $373,000,000.00 worth of cargo is stolen and subsequently sold on the black market every year.

In light of this newly published study we are offering a wonderfully functional and stylish solution to a select crowd. You know who you are. The old saying applies: “If you have to ask, you can’t afford it.”

Ladies and gentleman, behold! The ultimate in self-protective gunboatery. The USS Shirley:

A question to ponder

Speaking of cats, look what the cat dragged in

If one were to travel northeast from Thursday City into the surrounding Valley of Keene, across the river, deep into the heart of the Back Woods one would eventually arrive at the Dark Prefecture. A magical place filled with wonder and made all the more intriguing by the decades of accumulated folk tales surrounding the area. One would most certainly get there eventually; if one were so inclined. Once there one may or may not encounter Le Gooch the prince of the Dark Prefecture.

Le Gooch is a divine creature, a deviant perversion of divinity perhaps, but divine nonetheless. We do not know whether he protects or terrorizes his territory, possibly both, but regardless he is there. There is no documented evidence of his existence in this realm, but trust me he is there. It is rumored that he has been responsible for devouring men, sacrificing women, and (inexplicably) de-limbing philosophers and heroes. Believe what you will.

Below is a rendering by our resident sketch-artist:

Seriousity killed the cat?

A rebuke I generally level at myself, first and foremost.

But seriously, what is so wonderful about being serious? Unless you are seriously filled with wonder.

The puppet ghoul (on a rhetorical string)

The fuller and more profound my comprehension of divine/transcendental principles such as soul, spirit, character, fate, and infinity becomes the more iridescent, manifold, wondrous, magnificent my cosmos becomes. The more magnificent my understanding of the ineffable and infinite mysteries becomes the more concrete and whole my cosmos becomes. What used to be an every day feeling for me I now recognize as being intolerably depressing. What used to be intolerably dark and depressing I now comprehend as ultimately sobering and revitalizing. I now understand pain and anguish in a way that has become invaluable. I now realize the grey numbness that used to pervade the “everyday” was a vicious noxious disease of nihilism and apathy spreading through my mind, body, and soul like a plague, and eating away at my infinity—gnawing through my metaphysical umbilical connection to the divine. This disease wasn’t killing me, no, death would be a welcome release from its clutches. Nihilism is a disease that is turning the human race into the walking undead. The zombification of an entire species is taking place, literally we are (have been) devolving ourselves into another species altogether. A soulless, spiritless, valueless mass of ghouls. And just like ghouls we serve whatever master happens to be enchanting us at the moment.

Prelude to Asterion

This is a page from my sketchbook. It is a rambling rumination on the origins and implications of the Greek myth of the Minotaur. At this point I have to make recourse to Chief O’Doole from “Miller’s Crossing”: “Jesus, Tom! I was just speculating about a hypothesis; I know I don’t know nothing.”

A rapture

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