#journal entry that spawned the idea for the comic

[ribbed-vault-heart]

march 28, 2022 5:22AM

longing for the company of a person who doesnt exist. I dont know if I can explain who. Someone who already knows all about me and loves me for it I guess. I dont know. Im in a state of constant terror and I want safety and security and i cant find it in anything. Im tired of divine missions Im tired of martyrdom and monks and locking myself up in an attic to speak ravings of the gods. I want a quiet meaningless life filled with love and warmth and safety from the endless depths of emptiness. I float tetherless through the vastness of my mind and of life. Im lost. A snail carries its home on its back. Its comfort is only a contortion away. I wish I could do that. I dont know how to console myself. I dont know how to save myself. I dont want to. I want someone else to save me, I want someone else to love me and Ill learn to love myself through the love they have for me. I want to be dependent but I dont have the special other to lean on, grow with and for. But I keep a part of myself carved out for their habitation. I dont think they exist actually. Not to say I dont think people will exist who will love me in parts or know me in parts. I think there will be people like that. But i dont think its possible for someone to know me completely and love me completely. Ive never sat well with the idea of a better half. A soulmate. Its scary in a way. One person who fits into you perfectly? What if you never meet them? What if you meet and dont realize? What if they leave? What if they leave with the parts of you that they love so much? I say I keep a part of myself empty for them but I really do struggle with opening up. Theres the idea that all the openings on your body dont actually count as "inside" you. Stick your hand all the way into my lungs and unless youre a billion little air molecules you havent become me, i havent become you. Pass a quarter through my digestive track and it'll come out unscathed. It can be argued that once the conversion happens, that is when youre inside me. On a molecular level. When your cells mingle with mine. Id say you could get to the point faster. With a stabbing. If you could reach in and feel my blood, that vital fluid, that "divine essence". Id say you got inside me. But the hole Ive burrowed for you is scarred up. You reach in and touch nothing visceral. Its a stupid gesture for an imaginary person. Id grow them if I could but a starving man cannot work a field and Im ready ready to eat. Im getting lost in metaphor again, and the hazy state of my mind. If you've gotten to the end of this and feel understanding and adoration please feel free to find me and stab me. But please dont take your hands from my chest.

#my writing #journal entry that spawned the idea for the comic #i had to look through three journals to figure out where this was #posting mostly for my own benefit #save

[knifeonmars]

Capsule Reviews April 2021

A few of the things that I've been reading over the past couple of months. I surprised myself when I noticed that most of these were indie books, but that's probably because all of my needs for big dumb superhero comics are currently being more or less covered by the material I'm reading for my podcast, Regarding Spawn. Anyway, here's some review.

Grenade by Will Kirkby

Grenade is in many ways an art showcase, a vibrant little volume centered on a world somewhat along the lines of Shadowrun, a cyberpunk setting with fantasy elements. The story focuses on a main character somewhat typical for the cyberpunk genre, a traumatized transhuman war veteran turned cop, haunted by their memories as they are drawn into a web of conspiracy tracing back to their wartime experiences. The story is hardly surprising, but this is a book that you read for the texture, not the plot. Grenade is gorgeous, jam packed with detail in the maximalist tradition of artists like Geoff Darrow but with an angular, punk edge, and the world building and concepts are all fun and have great hooks. There are certain ideas introduced at tossed aside that I wished to see a bit more of, but overall it's a very satisfying cyberpunk flavoured romp that would be well worth it for the art alone.

Home Time Vols. 1-2 by Campbell Whyte

Stand By Me by way of Over the Garden Wall, if put in reductive terms, I picked up the conclusion to Campbell Whyte's stellar first volume of the series and recently had the chance to read them back to back. They're excellent, maybe some of the best comics I've read this year, stellar YA material with a bold, experimental style and great storytelling. Centering on four friends about to graduate from middle school and go their separate way, the characters are suddenly caught up in a strange fantasy world with no way back home and the story focuses on how they cope with this as they gradually learn more about the world. The kids all feel like kids (or at least how I remember being a kid), the worldbuilding is really unique and off-kilter, fleshed out by loads of journal inserts ranging from photos to diary entries, to a handmade encyclopedia right out of Gravity Falls. The art is stellar, sticking to a general cartoon-y aesthetic but jumping back and forth through various styles of coloring and rendering with each viewpoint character, including sections rendered in a pixelated style which evokes a great deal of nostalgia for me as someone who grew up reading sprite-based webcomics. Some of the plot beats might not surprise you, but others probably will, and I can't recommend checking this out enough.

The Grot by Pat Grant

Another Australian book, not that I've been on a kick or anything. The Grot is quite excellent, a sort of "low post-apocalyptic" story set in a world littered with the detritus of our own. The world building is a treat, lived in and recognizably plausible but strange; cars and boats are powered by low wage laborers on pedals, electricity and running water are unheard of, cholera runs rampant, and anyone and everyone is partaking in an algae-based gold rush. The Grot is very much a gold rush story, and indeed about the biggest criticism I could make about it is that it could just as easily be set in any given historical gold rush with little effect on the narrative, the conceit of a post-lapsarian world is hardly taken advantage of, but then perhaps that's the point, "the more things change, the more they stay the same" and all that. The story itself is a classic one of ambition and confidence games, following two young brothers who arrive in a boom town with plans to be the only ones not getting suckered. The artwork and colors are vibrant and distinct, a loose, cartoonist's touch which nevertheless manages to make everything look distinctly real and absolutely filthy. Everyone is ugly and dirty, dressed in distinct clothes, cutting distinct profiles, looking real and alive, even if Grant doesn't pursue a photorealistic style. I'd recommend it for those looking for something different from the standard action oriented fair coming out from most major American publishers, but not sold on art comics. The Grot is a great read packed with story and personality.

Sazan and Comet Girl by Yuriko Akase

Coming out in 2018, right in the meat of Wife Guy culture, and preceding the rise of himbos by two years, Sazan and Comet Girl is a book well suited to the moment. It's about a nice, not entirely bright young man pursuing a Cool Girl across the stars as they fall in love. It's also, in fairness, Sazan and Manic Pixie Dream Girl in some ways, though it holds off the worst of that genre by characterizing Sazan primarily through the lens of sincere enthusiasm and support for his much cooler, more powerful love interest. It's a distinctly fun, peppy book, that's really gorgeously rendered, with full lush water colours on every page and a design sensibility firmly in line with retro-anime. It's not entirely without points to criticize, the titular Comet Girl spends the entire book rarely wearing more than bra and a pair of brave Daisy Dukes, and the trick employed throughout the final sequence of the book, which takes up the entire back half (the pacing is also a touch off) to get the whole universe cheering for the heroes is a little cheap. But overall Sazan and Comet Girl is really charming, it's cute, incredible to look at, just a little horny, and a fun adventure. I heartily recommend it.

PTSD by Guillaume Singelin

I'd had this sitting in my To-Read pile because I wanted to take some time between reading Grenade and this book, since there are quite a few superficial similarities between the two: they're both sci-fi adjacent, they both star traumatized veterans, both are lushly rendered by indie cartoonists, so reading them back to back would have felt like a disservice. For the record, they're ultimately not similar at all. PTSD is the story of Jun, a traumatized war veteran living on the streets of an unidentified city, pushing away all attempts at help or community as she slowly spirals downward, killing drug dealers to fuel her addiction to pain pills. One thing that stands out to me about PTSD tonally and about its main character is that it's willing to let Jun be really unpleasant in a meaningful way. Jun isn't an "asshole" because she's too much of a hard drinkin', hard fuckin' badass, she's an asshole because she's so deeply traumatized that she lashes out verbally and physically at anyone who comes near her. It feels unglamourous and real in a really enjoyable way.The art is also a revelation, it doesn't quite cross the line into Geoff-Darrow-insired visual maximalism, but every panel and ever inch of the pages are packed with lovingly rendered detail. Singelin's drawing style tends more towards cartooning than pseudo-realism, in a way that makes the charming moments utterly charming and the brutal moments appropriately shocking. I have some minor issues with the ending, the story kind of cuts out without really delving into the messy implications and the long tail to Jun's conflict with the drug dealers, and there's a touch of action movie logic in that the main character is alone among the veterans in her trauma having left her as a kind of towering badass rather than one of society's victims, but putting those aside PTSD is a really satisfying story about trauma and community.

#comics #capsule reviews #indie comics