Archives

2013-10-10-bm

Erlkoenig

2013-10-10-bm

This can hardly bode well, huh :(

So it’s been a while–this was initially drawn back in October of 2013 (the actual post date, for ARCHIVISTS, is April 1, 2014, like half a year later). I have basically no good excuses other than suddenly having a lot more freelance work with much shorter deadlines than I used to, traveling a lot, getting eye-injured, working on my book, getting sick, etc. etc. excuses excuses that are not sufficient. Whether it’s as a result of this or a cause of this, I’ve been generally feeling down and disconnected from comics, and nervous about drawing to the point that my hand kinda is not steady in a bad way? (This was mostly inked a while ago, before this really started in earnest.) I don’t even really read comics much anymore because it bums me out to do so

I’m hoping this is a phase because I do have a bunch of Bad Mother strips in stages of semi-completion that should not actually take that long to sit down and complete! Many are funny and well drawn I think! It’s just this awful psychological thing that I guess has been responsible for all of my hideous lapses in actually being consistent with comics work–this feeling when sitting down to draw that EVERY LINE IS THE WORST LINE ANYONE HAS EVER DRAWN which I’ve started to get lately even though like objectively I’m better at basic drawing than I ever have been ever.

In the past I didn’t talk about this stuff because I felt it was “unprofessional” to do so, but that is absurd! It’s not like I’m ever going to be a professional at comics. I don’t even think there is such a thing anymore, and it’s certainly not going to be this comic if there is? So it seems silly not to just be honest about “hey this is kind of really, really hard for me to draw lately for no good reason.” I mean why “front” about this? Why pretend that the website isn’t currently a terrible shambles that I feel incapable of figuring out how to fix in the time between working, trying to finish my next book, and trying just not to feel bummed out a lot while still Honoring Professional and Personal Obligations and Commitments? Why project an image of false cheer? An image of resolve against the darkness, sure, but I’d feel stupid trying to seem fun right now, and it feels like literal death to think about how I should try to make sure that my website permits like a good marketing experience for everyone or something in which no dark thoughts are permitted because Professionalism. I am sorry if I have failed to provide a good marketing experience for you

I realize that being capable of projecting an image of false cheer is like essential to the functioning of society sometimes and I’m sorry I can’t do it right now, but I can at least get it together enough to finish some comics instead of just avoiding this task? I can go that far? I WILL BE FINE; I CAN AT LEAST POST COMICS EVERY COUPLE MONTHS Y’ALL.

I don’t know if I even would have been able to get it together to do this had some of you not said VERY NICE THINGS about this book and this comic generally, like actually things that keep me going with this? So I can at least try to like scrape together some basic comix dignity to produce new work for you, when I can? This is not some kind of “line”–I literally find this comic and All Drawing psychically unpleasant to work on right now, and it’s only the knowledge that some people really will get excited if I post new work from time to time that makes that even seem like a good idea rather than the “arts” equivalent of rubbing poisonous plants on my arms. (I think this comic is good and everything and A Valuable Thing and I still super enjoy writing it; that isn’t the issue; it’s just like the actual drawing of this comic makes me think stuff like “all the comics you have ever drawn have failed and you don’t know anything about drawing really so why will this one be any different huh why are you fooling yourself.” None of this is true in any way I ultimately care about, but that is not actually the issue, and it’s not like I can just stop thinking this stuff, only “power through it” or “play music really loud.” The fact that the comic is pretty distinctly second place in terms of Vital Pursuits after my novel means that it gets whatever third helping of willpower is left over after novel writing and work, which is I guess not often enough to fight this darkness, for which I’m sorry, but short of just not having to work anymore, which isn’t going to happen ever, I don’t know what to do about it?)

okay I’m going to stop writing this now–I am generally fine; I am getting lots of work done on my new book which is aces; I am Pursuing Interests and everything–working on this comic just depresses me a lot lately, but I’m gonna brave the darkness for y’all and we will maybe work our way back to a Place of Light, okay? okay :)

2013-10-08-bm

Demi-Robot

2013-10-08-bm

HOW MYSTERIOUS YET REVEALING

Ugh, I’m sorry it took so long to get it together to update this. A combo of eye injury + high volume freelance work + holidays + downer moods. I’ve kept busy with writing them at least. At this point a couple of maybe-unwise holiday strips require some backdating (i.e., this was actually posted January 9, 2014) but stuff will come out. “The book is what matters,” this is what I tell myself.

A new issue of Rocksalt Magazine came out during the interim, and it is a REALLY GOOD ONE! Check it out on Scribd!

2013-09-26-bm

Cis Privilege Pastry

2013-09-26-bm

If you found this comic funny: cool! Next one will be Tuesday! Here’s that Franny Glass cosplay thing I said you wouldn’t get on Tuesday because it’s Christmas for everyone:

(Mona is being Boo Boo)

If you did not find this comic funny, it’s probably because PRIVILEGE IS NOT FUNNY. I thought a lot about whether or not to do this one, and decided that if I did it would require a disclaimer. Thus:

This is funny to me (beyond the fact that coupling any sociological term to pastries and tickle torture is inherently funny) because Cathy and Mona are friends and presumably have been for a while. Presumably they have negotiated, at some point, a way to talk about privilege between them–Mona being cis, Cathy trans, uh if you are new to the strip or something–that works well enough. Cathy trusts & knows Mona to the extent that she can get mad at her about this stuff (rather than like uncomfortably sardonic), Mona trusts & knows Cathy personally to the extent that she can try to bring her out of the Dark Hole that you go into when someone is a jerk to you about something you don’t have control over (a very real Dark Hole) by distracting her through, uh, tickling.

If there were a fourth panel in which Cathy shouted BACK OFF, Mona would do it, and I hope this is clear. And you should too, if you have someone of differing privilege levels than you in your life! But the actual fourth panel (which I hope is implicit in how I’ve shown their relationship before, and here) is that Cathy, in fighting back, like pulls Mona over the counter or something, they fight on the floor (ha ha SUMBIT Cathy SUBMIT / you couldn’t convince a FLY) and like chase each other around the coffee shop, a bus tray is overturned and a bunch of dishes get broken, they have to sweep them up and trade bitter insults the rest of the day at which point Mona gives Cathy a ride home in exchange for printing out a bunch of coupons for the art supply store that she RILLY RILLY NEEDS and Cathy like lectures her about how SHE IS NOT A PRINTING SERVICE  and they pick up Betty and get vegan ribs, which they go dutch on, though Cathy has to figure out the tip (and Mona’s short so Betty has to kick in a buck from allowance again.)

It is this implicit fourth panel (uh it’s a really big panel, like a Hieronymous Bosch painting of a panel, okay) that makes this maybe not a bad thing to publish with me. I super do not want to trivialize privilege! It sucks! But I also don’t want to Not Talk About It In Any Way, either, and it’s some part of the dynamic between these two characters that I think is critical–it’s important to who they are that they can and do talk about it in this way, that they can make it into a thing that they can deal with via making fun of, to some extent. If this were the first Bad Mother strip ever posted, like there was no prior context for these characters, I hella wouldn’t post this, and that is maybe significant. But if these things can’t be funny ever–if like the only attitude one can ever have toward being separate-and-unequal from other humans in terms of social categories is like a terrible moral silence forever–like I don’t even wanna do comics kinda. This comic is a fantasy of being able to trust other people.

Obviously I am kind of worried about posting this and sending like potentially Evil Messages into the world. If you feel like I have done this, we can talk about it in the comments, below, if you want, or probably you know how to get in touch with me anyway? If you haven’t, cool, I worried a lot for nothing! I do that! More folks should!

There’ll be more fun comics about Betty and her teacher on Tuesday! THEY WILL INAUGURATE A SHORT STORYLINE ABOUT A SECRET.

2013-09-24-bm

You Gender People

2013-09-24-bm

Some measure of credit for this one goes to the wonderful trans ladies I hung out with while in NYC this past June, and who made me realize I was not alone in HATING SILENCE OF THE LAMBS A WHOLE LOT. Immediate credit, of course, goes to the jerks who started making Buffalo Bill cracks about me while I was out somewhere trying to enjoy a day not holed up in the dark drawing comics.

I am sorry we can no longer have nice things, like Lily Bart fan art, and that we will never see Cathy cosplay Franny Glass! It’s as if a random jerk can just show up, say something thoughtless and awful, and ruin it for everyone. Bonus points if the jerk is also an “ally!”

The biggest regret, of course, is toward this kinda great song that I think it is every trans woman’s guilty pleasure to listen to. OR AT LEAST EVERY TRANS WOMAN THAT I WANT TO KNOW:

There are more fun comics this week that involve less societal oppression! There is one Thursday for sure that I’m kinda worried about posting, but uh, we’ll see how it goes

2013-09-19-bm

Book Chat: The House of Mirth

2013-09-19-bm

So my girlfriend is going to graduate school, which means there is a whole fun curriculum of books she is reading that I can read and pretend that I am going to graduate school too! Edith Wharton’s The House of Mirth is the first of these books, and it is kind of great.

Essentially The House of Mirth is a book about a dystopia such as one might read about in We, 1984, or Brave New World, a hellish world in which women have no power or agency, in which merely to be accused is to be tried, judged, and convicted in a swift, crippling blow, in which vast amounts of ingenuity must be expended in order to attach oneself to an available bachelor without one having one’s own ability to earn money directly in the profane world of business, in which the simple attempt to like invest money in the stock market in order to earn enough to pay off gambling debts one is kind of forced to accrue must be done through the auspices of men who expect sex as their reward. Basically it is a horrible story about a grim alternate reality in which women have no power, except that it’s just New York in the early 1900s.

Despite being kind of wicked smart, effective, and judicious within her circumstances, Lily Bart does not have either the courage to leave behind her society and class altogether or to like dutifully marry horrible men for the sake of their money, thus she dies in poverty. What bothers me a lot is how Wharton seems to join in condemning Lily, mostly through the alternately adoring and contemptuous eyes of Selden, the cool independent New York dude who does not mind living in a boarding house and having only moderate means, because it is more important to him to be True To Himself than it is to join all those rich jerks in their corrupt, evil social world. And Selden just can’t understand why Lily is such a jerk, why she wants to hang out with those rich jerks so much, when she could be her REAL ACTUAL SELF . . . with him! He is one of the good ones! She could be SO HAPPY!

Yet Lily can’t go off and be happy with Selden because she has to survive in a world where she’s just like definitively not free. Why should she want to be happy with Selden, even? At the end of Part I, Selden is all “I <3 you Lily wait for me to call on you,” but Lily is in the process of getting KINDA ALMOST RAPED by a friend of the family. He sees her coming out of this guy’s house in the dead of night, after being ACTUALLY SEXUALLY ASSAULTED, and is like “How terrible, LILY IS A REAL WHORE,” and storms away. And Edith Wharton kinda sides with him, one gets the impression. Appearances are everything!

I think The House of Mirth is pretty worth reading for a lot of reasons–the “tableaux vivants” scene is great and I want to have a tableaux vivants party at earliest opportunity, for example–but the author’s relationship with her main character is, um, problematic. But the character is great, and the depiction of her Totally Awful World is frankly scary. (The class stuff in the book is kind of odious–everyone is Really Really rich–but it’s interesting to see how much the author takes it as a given that no one actually deserves this wealth, or believes they deserve it. The American Dream is like in no way a part of this plot.) Fortunately I guess my characters are here to provide you all with the only truly correct, definitive interpretation of Lily Bart, through which you can better enjoy not only The House of Mirth, but perhaps all American literature ever.

Next update: MORE LILY BART RELATED FUN, OF COURSE

2013-09-17-bm

Maybe

2013-09-17-bm

Ugh, sorry this is up so late in the day! I finished it last night just as a terrible outage took the internet from us all.

So this one entertains the idea of homeschooling, which Lilana and Anna both brought up in response to the last comic. Honestly I initially thought that Mona would probably try to homeschool Betty but that there’d be some kind of barrier to it that’d require her to send Betty for public education. The reason for this has less to do with what the characters would do and more to do with the fact that I have twelve years worth of memories of public education to draw on and like zero years of memories of homeschooling, and I don’t know that I could do it any kind of justice. But I mean, I’m already writing a comic about having a child when I don’t have one, so I’ll see how it might fit into the story better? It’s definitely something I should know about more generally.

While working on this, I was playing all of Star Trek: The Next Generation in the background, essentially audio-only, as if Patrick Stewart, Brent Spiner, Wil Wheaton, and a bevy of halting guest stars were performing a special podcast just for me. I really enjoy first season Next Generation, despite the kind of not-great quality of the productions, the kind of social unpleasantness of a lot of it (rape gangs! The episode “Code of Honor!” the sex planet with the evil god space station!), and the lame, lacking drama. The reason: it has this weird high-minded quality to it, probably owing more to Gene Roddenberry’s kind of enlightened hedonism New Age beliefs than anything. From what I understand, basically the writers throughout the first season were furious with Roddenberry for just rewriting the hell out of them, banning things like interpersonal conflict between the characters and adding lame whimsical devices (Picard’s French chauvinism, Picard hating children, etc.), and adding long, high-minded speeches about how much cooler 24th-century people are than we are (Riker’s speech in “Lonely Among Us” about how Starfleet serves steaks that are “just as tasty and nutritious as meat, but without the need to enslave animals for food.” Which is cool but it has nothing to do with the scene at hand?) Every episode is also about facing some kind of god-being at the edge of human experience–like, every episode is about this! All of them! The result is something that feels a lot more like a kind of Transcendental Meditation-style cult parable than, say, Star Trek, and I kind of love it. It is such a weird television artifact. Later, of course, it turns into a much more lovable yet less singularly weird, great thing.

There will be some old comics this week, and at least one new one! Hopefully two–it depends on time. The next one is gonna be about Edith Wharton.