Kickstarter Update #50
I’m lettering Monument for y’all beautiful patient people at Kickstarter. I’m good. I was really derailed from comic book making for awhile there. I’m getting back into a groove now though. Lettering doesn’t make for the sexiest of visual updates.
I walked through my neighborhood early today and saw the hippie/junkie who lives across the street. He’s leathery and old but steady in his own way. On r or twice he was out his mind in the street but mostly he comes and goes quietly. Today he was reorganizing his massive windowless van. I thought he worked as a black market delivery man but I guess he’s just a hoarder. The van exterior is pristine white. The interior is a dank mess.
Man, planet Earth is a fucking mess. So much chaos in my orbit. People trying to get sober via AA Zoom meetings. Agoraphobia pairing with germophobia for a cocktail of shut-in misery. Folks losing jobs. Folks working in morgues. Folks stuck in the bigoted parts of the South. I’m grateful I have my spot. Oh! The San Francisco Chronicle interviewed me a few days (weeks? months? who knows anymore) about being a single dad during the quarantine. Like when I’m the story you use to end on a high note, you know things are fucked.
What is going on? I’m re-reading Joss Whedon and John Cassaday’s Astonishing X-Men run. It’s the right about amount of heroic silliness and it’s definitely escapist. Cassaday is at the peak of his powers and following his run on massive world building in Planetary this assignment seems to be more fun. A lot of character work on existing designs. Whedon definitely plays to his strengths. It’s very straight ahead and slightly too comedic which is about all I can handle lately.
I’m about to finish Bojack Horseman which is some real deal art. I have no idea how they got anyone to pay fo this but good on the team. There’s a lot of sobriety themes in there. Some of them work. My quibble is that Bojack has a “cool drinking origin story”. Something that clearly drives him to be an addict. From what I’ve seen most folks just have general existential sadness that they can’t seem to fix. While the wreckage is often interesting the why? Sometimes it’s abuse or trauma or something awful. A lot of times though it’s just a bad confluence of basic life stuff followed by too much drinking followed by being unable to stop and kinda not wanting to stop so you die and your pain ends. In most fictional addictional stories the protagonist has an REASON to drink. Which works for fiction. And for some sobriety stories. Just not all. They also clearly have some amazing women writers and artists creating authentic characters around Bojack who is a piece of man garbage. He’s a trojan horse (sorry, not sorry) for some great stories about “not typical straight dudes”.
Also (and this is important) I’m eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches on motherfucking Wonder bread. It’s glorious. Earth is nuts and PB&J on basic ass white bread is like pure sugar carb hug from the past. Two thumbs up.
Thanks for sticking with me, fam. Refunds, as always, are still available.