 Art / Life / Blog God
posted: April 20, 2009
I don't believe in an anthropormphic God. I think more of an inner-dwelling divinity, something like a vibrational frequency in the strings that make up all molecules. I subscribe to the idea that whenever there's love between people, God's there. Same goes for people gathered to pray, meditate or worship. And God as an empowering presence that heals people's pain and trauma, gives clarity, direction and order to people's lives. Eternal, perfect, always available, certainly not subject to human-like whims or tantrums. Still, it's fun to draw pictures of God as a robed figure on a cloud. Mine has a lightbulb head and is gender neutral. I first drew God this way on the spine of my book (My Brain...). I like this character and might find more uses for it. I think it would make a great vinyl toy. But it might need to star in some adventures first.
I think I first drew a depiction of "God" in the dream comic which ends "Portrait of My Dad." My dad had a dream where he "experienced" God this way, as a beam of light flowing through a church window, filling his chest and vibrating so hard it felt like his heart would burst. He said he went into an ecstatic trance. When he first told me about the dream, I had nothing but skepticism and even contempt for the story. In my smug way, I probably thought he'd had indigestion. By the time I drew this strip in 2004 or so, I'd had my own spiritual re-awakening and was trying my best to illustrate his dream respectfully. I'm proud of the fact that he took a big 11x17 print of this page around with him and showed all his friends and co-workers what I'd done. To this day there's plenty about what my dad believes that is hard to take seriously (guardian angels, prayers affecting the weather, heaven as a resort spa), but I think I'm finally humble enough to just smile and say "you might be right" instead of trying to fight him out of his belief system.
I also recently drew God as a tribal black man with a long white beard in my strip for Kramers Ergot 7 ("The Hated Thing"). That strip is overtly about race and stereotypes and is supposed to be offensive, though hopefully not in an unconscious, unconsidered way. I don't believe that God is beholden to any particular race of people, though if you subscribe to the "made in His image" thing and combine it with life originating in Africa, there's a compelling case for a Christian God being black. Take that, evangelical crackers!
But this is all just fun. If I know anything, it's that God is a big mystery. If I think I even remotely understand God, I'm deluding myself. Maybe God is everything I don't know. It's impossible to wrap something as limited as my human consciousness around an unfathomable force that animates, orders and dynamically responds to the entire world and universe. If you believe in that sort of thing, that is.
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Cartoons and Drawings show tomorrow night!
posted: January 21, 2009
Email the cafe (info@espresso77.com) if you want to reserve something. The opening is tomorrow night. Come by and say hello. 7 pm - 9 pm Espresso 77 is at 35-57 77th St. between 35th ave and 37th ave in Jackson Heights, Queens. Directions are here. Happy MLK Jr. Day / Inauguration Eve!
posted: January 19, 2009
Sketch from last year for NYer... I Like Being the Background Character Sometimes
posted: December 17, 2008
All things
posted: September 29, 2008
Cover art for MBIHUD mini-LP 
Full list of tour dates here. Spotlight at MoCCA
posted: June 3, 2008
My talk follows right after Chip Kidd's discussion of BatManga, his upcoming Pantheon book. So come on down for both! Here's all the pertinent info: SUNDAY, JUNE 8 2:30 PM (Chip's talk is at 1:20) MoCCA Gallery, 594 Broadway (Suite 401), just below Houston. My Brain is Hanging Upside Down
posted: May 19, 2008
"My Brain is Hanging Upside Down," my 128-page full-color graphic memoir is now finished and is off to the printer. It comes out from Pantheon this fall. I'll be posting about upcoming events soon, but wanted to post today about the process of working on it. The book has taken me about 5 and half years to complete.
I started out drawing comic strips about my dreams in a self-published pamphlet called Deadpan in 2002. Once that started reaching stores and I started getting some responses and feedback, I decided I wanted to explore other parts of my story. At film school, I had done "portrait films," which were kind of cubist in nature. I would project 4 quadrants of the same person, shot from different angles, but doing the same activity. I got to thinking about trying to do a "portrait comic strip." Something I hadn't really seen. Ron Rege, Dan Clowes and Chris Ware were starting to do these multiple-strips-on-a-page comics, emulating a newspaper funnies section, but with narratives that connected to one another. I thought I would focus my pages around a single person. The various vignettes would add up to a portrait. I drew "Portrait of my Dad" for McSweeney's #13.
Next I wanted to try a good old fashion autobiographical diary strip, in the tradition of Aline Kominsky, Joe Matt, and Julie Doucet. I liked Jeffrey Brown's first book "Clumsy" a lot and was definitely inspired by his doodly line quality. But I felt like I could probably pack my entire sex history into one comic strip and leave it at that. I didn't want to be a cartoonist who was endlessly telling the same story about longing or heartbreak. I also thought it would be compelling to start at the very beginning and include all my early childhood sexual experiences, since it's all one big continuum. I drew my Sex History in about 6 months. And then I took 6 more months to painstakingly paint every panel with gouache. I think it elevated the strip beyond slapdash diary and closer to something an obsessive outsider artist might do. Sammy Harkham published the strip in Kramer's Ergot 5.
In 2004, I got a Xeric grant to self-publish Deadpan #2, which consisted of "Sex History," "Portrait of My Dad," and some dream comics. Even though most of the work had already appeared elsewhere, I wanted to see how the 3 sections spoke to each other, hoping it would comprise a kind of self-portrait. I think it worked okay, but realized I had a lot more I wanted to say to fully round it out.
I met Michael Homler, an editor from St. Martin's Press at a party in 2005 and he asked if I was working on any book-length comics. I immediately thought that I could expand what I'd done in Deadpan to fill a softcover collection. I pitched him a book called "I'm Open, " suggesting a few supplemental strips to round out the contents of Deadpan 1 and 2. I worked on this book for the next 2 years. But by the end of 2006, I realized that the book had changed completely. It became obvious that the scope of what I now had in mind didn't fit the original vision of the book I'd pitched to Michael. We parted ways amicably in 2006, and I'll always be grateful to him for his initial enthusiasm and support for my work.
I took some time to refocus the book and titled it "My Brain Is Hanging Upside Down," after a lyric from my favorite Ramones song. By 2007, with the book solidly structured and mapped out, I signed a contract with Pantheon. I was able to quit my long-standing day job that June.
The year of work on the book since then has been astounding. I've had every emotional experience possible. Rage so strong I needed to twist towels, scream, punch pillows (while my wife and kids were out for the day). A torrent of tears and grief. Unprecedented joy and a sense of my spiritual purpose on the planet. Most days have been simpler than that. Sitting in my chair and penciling, inking, or coloring. Day after day. Watching the pages slowly fill up with ink, then color. Watching the layout pages grow, then rearrange themselves until they landed in the correct order. Here we are, almost June of 2008 and the book is done. Every last image and piece of text hand-drawn. I'm proud of this thing. It's a tome. It's an illuminated manuscript of my life. It's my statement to the world, broken into 5 chapters: Sex, Race, Mom, Dad, Kin. I've told it all. And now I'm spent. I can't post too many images from the interior for obvious reasons, but I thought I'd post a visual tour through the process of finding my book's cover. That process alone spanned 2 years and generated countless sketches. I was looking at a lot of Tadanori Yokoo posters, trying to get a similar riot of graphic styles, clashing and coalescing. The images are roughly in chronological order and most are embarrassing. But I believe in leaving a trail of breadcrumbs. Hope this is helpful to someone out there. I'm satisfied with what it turned out to be and so grateful to be finished. Thanks for looking. Stay tuned for more! 
The final cover. Holiday card
posted: December 19, 2007
2007 holiday card Here's our holiday card, just finished today. I'll be posting some new things in the next couple of days. But in the mean time I hope everyone has a relaxing, peaceful and joy-filled holiday. Time correction
posted: September 20, 2007
Anyone wanting to listen to the radio show, it's at 5 PM eastern time, not 11 am. My bad.
On the Radio
posted: September 19, 2007
endpapers from my upcoming book Along these lines, I was interviewed about a year ago on another college radio station in Kansas called KJHK. The show was called "The Panel" and the host was a nice guy named Ian Hrabe. Here's that show if you're interested in listening. I don't remember much of what I said, but it was a fun conversation. Who knew there were so many comics-themed college radio shows? (Even if there's only 2?) Original art site
posted: September 11, 2007
Self-portrait done in 3rd grade. BTW - I did this drawing when I was in 3rd grade. Kind of a sad little guy. It was the "author photo" at the back of one of the many "books" I drew throughout my childhood. Amazing how I'm still basically doing the same thing as I did back then–drawing picture books essentially to please myself and find a way to connect with other people. Summer is for sketchbooks
posted: July 3, 2007
My wife and I used to live in California and sometimes get nostalgic about all that free time we had to sit and daydream in cafes. I'd doodle and she'd write poetry. So romantic! Now we have 2 kids and all that that entails. Once in a while we can sneak away to a cafe here in Queens and get a taste of that old freedom. And next month when we're on vacation. Hand-lettering
posted: June 28, 2007
Collection of hand-lettering samples designed as a page for my portfolio book Comics Comics
posted: June 26, 2007
Collaboration with Lauren W. Have you heard of Comics Comics? It's a great little periodical published by my friend Dan Nadel and it's all about... comics! All across the board in terms of genre – superhero and alt. lit comix alike. There's some really passionate writing by Dan and his cohorts. Tim Hodler in particular is terrific. Issue #3 features a conversation between me and fellow cartoonist Lauren Weinsten, who you must have all heard of by now right? She's the bee's knees. It was fun. We drove down to Philly to be part of their 215 Literary festival. The turn out was downright pathetic, but it didn't matter. I was among friends and wound up having a great back-and-forth with good ol' Lauren. We did this "jam" drawing which is published in the CC#3 as well. We emailed it back and forth to each other. I was pretty thrilled with how it came together since I've never really done this sort of thing before. She and I talked about maybe doing some more jams down the road because of how easy and fun it was. Quit My Job
posted: June 18, 2007
MBIHUD gallery diagram Enlarged image is here. I write music too
posted: March 14, 2007
painting I did for my musician friend Jake,, the bald pianist in the center... Have a listen. Some context
posted: February 22, 2007
thumbnail 
line art 
painted color 
final 
I'm here!
posted: February 20, 2007
Panel from "My Sexual History" ©2005. |
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