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.

  • 3 Posts
  • 43 Comments
Joined 19 days ago
Cake day: November 23rd, 2024
  • haverholm@kbin.earthtoDoctor Who@startrek.website•Christmas Special Trailer | Joy to the World | Doctor Who
    2·
    5 days ago

    On a sidenote, “The rebel flesh”/" The almost people" were directed by Julian Simpson who has been developing a swathe of weird and very good audio dramas with the BBC over the past decade or so.

    The tone of this interconnected “Pleasant Green universe” is very early-oughts Warren Ellis/Grant Morrison, with some fairly mind-boggling concepts that might appeal to Who fans.

    For an easy gateway, look up “The Lovecraft investigations” in your podcast player 🙂

  • haverholm@kbin.earthtoFediverse@lemmy.world•Technology Connections' thoughts on Mastodon
    9·
    6 days ago

    “Ghost town” = Not driven to oversharing by algorithms.

    “getting shit” = nobody wanting to listen to a youtuber’s outrage bait.

    It must be confusing to log into the fediverse straight off of Youtube, though. “Why aren’t people compulsively clicking and subscribing to everything? How am I not being recommended radicalising posts by conspiracy theorists and terror organisations within five clicks?”

    “Honey, this is Mastodon”

    <switches to Blooskie>

    “Ah, much better!”

  • haverholm@kbin.earthtoTechnology@beehaw.org•Eurocops red pill the Matrix 'secure' criminal chat systems • The Register
    43·
    8 days ago

    The Register failed in their due diligence by not clarifying from the beginning that this is a different Matrix chat than the open standard. They amended the mistake with an update to the post (quoted here in OP), but that is placed at the end of an article that not everybody is going to read all the way through.

    IMHO this needs a rewrite to make clear from the outset that the Matrix protocol and matrix.org are not affiliated with the criminal chat service. As it stands, even with the correction, it looks like character assassination of a perfectly legal open source project.