I used to make comics. I know that because strangers would look at my work and immediately share their most excruciatingly banal experiences with me:

— that time a motorised wheelchair cut in front of them in the line at the supermarket;
— when the dentist pulled the wrong tooth and they tried to get a discount;
— eating off an apple and finding half a worm in it;

every anecdote rounded of with a triumphant “You should make a comic about that!”

Then I would take my 300 pages graphic novel out of their hands, both of us knowing full well they weren’t going to buy it, and I’d smile politely, “Yeah, sure. Someday.”

“Don’t try to cheat me out of my royalties when you publish it,” they would guffaw and walk away to grant comics creator status onto their next victim.

Nowadays I make work that feels even more truly like comics to me than that almost twenty years old graphic novel. Collage-y, abstract stuff that breaks all the rules just begging to be broken. Linear narrative is ashes settling in my trails, montage stretched thin and warping in new, interesting directions.

I teach comics techniques at a university level based in my current work. I even make an infrequent podcast talking to other avantgarde artists about their work in the same field.

Still, sometimes at night my subconscious whispers the truth in my ear: Nobody ever insists I turn their inane bullshit nonevents into comics these days, and while I am a happier, more balanced person as a result of that, I guess that means I don’t make comics any longer after all.

  • 1 Post
  • 85 Comments
Joined 1 month ago
Cake day: November 23rd, 2024
  • haverholm@kbin.earthtoWork Reform@lemmy.world•Proud to be a blockhead: Why Pluralistic has no metrics, and what that says about the arts, monopolies, and creative labor markets
    5·
    3 days ago

    Writing begets writing

    That’s certainly true of Doctorow — I’ve had to mute him on several platforms because he types out so damn much.

    I mean that as a backhanded compliment, of course! There is always a good point to his writings, I just personally have other things to do than keep up with every post he publishes…

    Sometimes though, you have to sit up in your chair. Like when he coined the phrase “enshittification”, and here again.

    Rejecting metrics and self quantification resonates deep with me. Blog stats, clicks and upvotes and likes and reposts… those aren’t valuable parameters for me to gauge my online life (such as it is).

    Glad to see this so thoroughly and well put, and to a rapt audience that will hopefully follow suit and adopt the same notion.

  • haverholm@kbin.earthtoFuck Cars@lemmy.world•London Bridge
    32·
    3 days ago

    It’s fairly dire to assume that people in this community will read this comic and go “Oh snap! Why didn’t I think about this before?”

    As I just posted in another comment, my read on the comic is that the person we see in the last panel is intentionally depicted as psychotic, and not an aspirational figure… but yeah. Don’t blow up people to prove a point about infrastructure.

  • haverholm@kbin.earthtoFuck Cars@lemmy.world•London Bridge
    43·
    3 days ago

    I think you’re the only one taking the comic this literally?

    The top two panels do have some !fuckcars energy, but the lower half about the bombing is about a delusional and/or haunted guy who is spurred on by a ghostly woman. Not exactly a call to action against private motorists.