Banal Hemorrhage

You know the secret to having a successful webcomic? Don't make comics about 700 year-old Christo-propaganda work of art.  Last month I started reading this book of poems, The Divine Comedy. Why? No frigging clue. I may just be grasping for any vestiges of meaning on this cosmic toilet that is election year 2024 in the United States. The book acts as a barely disguised philosophical argument for embracing Christianity and yet it's fascinating to this atheist's mind.  It's internally consistent, and you have to commend the workmanship and world-building accomplished here. It's another win for humanity's ability to create art and another nail in the coffin to the belief that books like the Bible or the Quran could only come by divine hands. Human hands are plenty capable.  The nine circles of hell according to Dante are:  lust , gluttony,  greed,  wrath , heresy , violence , fraud, and  treachery.  I'd like to suggest that there's room for more. How...

Listen, making fun of old people isn't right. I'm old people. The best-case scenario for each and every one of us is to become old people.  My comedic wrath is being brought upon the group of people born in the United States at around the same time who are currently old. The people that were Woodstock adjacent, yet aged to show the same prejudices and pearl-clutching that they endured as young people. They lived through Stonewall and are now going to school boards complaining that there's books telling kids that it's ok to be gay.  I will never understand how someone born in the 50s or 60s could be considered the reliable voting block for Donald Trump in the United States. Their parents fought or survived WWII, they witnessed civil rights history and yet here they are, stanning for proto-Hitler. As an immigrant, let me tell you, the fact that Trump is back on the airwaves hasn’t been fun. Direct assaults to the quality of my blood were not on my 2023 bingo card but her...

I only have one-panels in my mind lately. With my free time being a little sparse as I learn a whole new job, my brain is just shrinking my creative focus to a single frame of comedy. They do say that brevity is the soul of wit, and perhaps this will help me focus in my job as well.  Perhaps, there’s an actual benefit from this hobby of mine as it applies to work. Haven’t found it yet, but perhaps it’s out there. I’m fine with them being two separate aspects of me as well. Things don’t always have to make sense.  Hoping you all have a great fall, enjoy your non-brief existence!

Ok guys. Not my best work. But what can I do? I’m in the Caribbean and an easy life creates easy comics.  The apple story with sir Isaac Newton is more of a parable, I know. And it’s likely he didn’t get beaned by one, I know. But this is all my overindulged and overdrunk and over-relaxed brain can muster today. I can’t promise anything good for next week either, because I start my new job.  Still looking for a source of inspiration as my well is drying soon!

You guys won't believe this but this and a separate variation of this (coming soon), came to me in a dream. I didn't dream of the comic, I dreamt that I was in Wonderland and that the Cheshire cat was trolling me. It just happened to make a great comic. How do I get my brain to be more receptive to flashes of insight like this? Is there a way to induce a dreamlike state to be awash with inspiration (ideally without opioids and hallucinogens)? While we are talking about this, I don’t want to hear your armchair analysis about what dreaming about cat buttholes really means. Probably economic anxiety or something. I had a blast trying to recreate John Tenniel's illustration style. He's been dead for a while but I wonder if he would be upset at my creation. I'd like to think he would be cool with it. During the research for this I leaned that this work really burned him out, so perhaps he wouldn't mind me poking a finger at his art, literally. Here's an animated ...

I’m getting tired of market headlines. They are nothing but the conjoining of two separate facts with the illusion of being connected. This index rises as that happened, this went down as that didn’t happen. They are clever to never use “because”, they know that nothing is certain in the market.  If you had a dice and roll it thrice you can make your own headlines! Try it!

Pre-soaking isn't a thing. Every once in a while, maybe, a pot needs a little water before cleanup but I'm entirely convinced it's something that me and people like me made up. As an ex-bachelor I can absolutely admit that there isn't any science behind it. It's just a way for me to put off my duties for a little longer. So I'm sorry roommates, mother, girlfriends, wife. I'm sorry about this abhorrent practice and I will indeed be better. Laundry doesn't need time to rest before being brought up. It certainly doesn't need to slowly make it's way to the laundry room . Socks aren't having a grand affair . I'm just lazy. Again, I'm sorry. The funny thing about drawing Xena, our female dog is that when you grab her, she really looks like that. A stiff uncomfortable mess. It looks like I was making a shortcut but, no, that's what she looks like! In author news, this week has been very momentous. I have a new job! I announced it this ...

  The original idea for this comic was different than how it turned out. I imagined Jean-Paul Sartre and Jean Piaget  having a drink in a bar, both in  their 70s. Piaget goes, "Have I told you about the stages of human development I've discovered?" and Sartre goes "When do they learn that people suck?" I was going to title the comic "Jean Therapy", because I can't pronounce their names in their native tongues. If I was able to, it would be titled something like "Jeanalyze This". I am very aware that I shouldn't be left anywhere close to comedy, but it shows my process of just having these intrusive thoughts that become comics. Over the week, the idea became more about a baby having existentialistic thoughts when their solipsistic brain was left alone. Is it funny? No. Is it clever? No. But is it of significance? Again, no.  And yet I can't stop.

As a young person, I loved evading responsibility. At one point as a child, that's all I wanted to do, avoid any and all responsibilities. I did pretty good there for a while. Somewhere along the way I messed up and got a few degrees, a couple of 9-5s, a wife and a few dogs. In my mind I'm still running, but in reality, I'm in the quicksand with all of you. The thing that stopped me is that I didn't want to be an abandoner. I know a lot of people don't care, but straight up walking out of your job often leaves a few innocents under duress, and they don't deserve that. As my marriage is teaching me, abandoning my responsibilities means hurting my loved one. And I need to be a better man. I guess to really succeed at having no responsibilities, one must have no one else around. I bet that’s why I love sprawling open-world video games. I can fantasize about having a super important, urgent quest, but choosing to collect leaves for the herbologist or clearing a base...

I've always been interested in mythology. It's often I wonder why the myths and legends from Egypt, Greece/Rome and the Norse get relegated to the fictional status of mythology, but the Old Testament, Buddhism and Islam became religions of current relevance. What made people go like ‘yeah that's too out there, I'll stick with my magic trumpets and the guy who turns water to wine and makes zombies.’ If you’re into mythology, I highly recommend Stephen Fry's audiobook, Mythos . He knows the subject incredibly well for a funny man, and he combines a breezy narrative with minute details around etymology and even disentangles competing narratives.  Learning mythology is one of those few things in this Post-Post Modernism that can make you say, 'our reality could be far worse'. Can you imagine, not only dealing with stupid, greedy humans but also with stupid, greedy deities? Not that crazy, come to think of it, as present day billionaires DO have some supernatural...

Buzzkill is one of my favorite kinds of comedy. Whether it's Dana Carvey with his Open Wound Man , or Dracht in Debbie Downer  I can't have enough of these characters. It's where comedy goes to die and I'm all in. Probably explains why my comics are so globally unpopular (womp-womp)! One of my faves of all time: Steve Carrel an Kristen Wiig at an awards show.   Steve Carrel didn't break character!

 Trying out one of my old comic ideas as a one panel.

I blame our base impulses. “Making a Murderer” showed us all how much we wanted to believe in people’s innocence against the police. The little guy was a victim of the shoddy and authoritarian police force! Yes, that may have been true in part but the victim is also an animal-torturing, woman stalking person who extremely likely did the murders when all the evidence is presented.  It started a wave of documentaries casting doubt on totally guilty people. We all want to believe the little guy against the system, like in Serial and others. But honestly, some of these peeps are bad mofos and do not need our defense.  What's next, a 7 season long doc on WW2? "Hitler: Victim of Nuremberg or Authoritarian Genocidal Maniac" Are we not entertained enough?

There's no way that Elon thought his move through. Some people hypothesize that he is playing 4-D chess, but honestly I doubt he's even playing Candyland. The only way I can see this purchase as successful is if his goal was curing people's addiction to Twitter or increasing the amount of dirt in the world.  Any wired person alive the past 20 years would have been able to tell you that his ideal Twitter was done in the past, but it was called 4-Chan. And what a cesspool that was. I won't deny I went there in search for memes when I was younger, but I always needed to wash my hands afterwards. And yes, I'm a bit bitter about the whole thing. I loved twitter for political analysis, art groups and just getting a relative feel about the world. Now, the opinions you see highlighted are just signaling that someone is dumb enough to pay Elon $8 a month. No credentials, no expertise, just money. I even made quite a bit of dough with my Twitter stock and still believe it was...

Version 2: Hustle: Whenever I make the mistake of logging into LinkedIn, all I find are regurgitations of regurgitations of regurgitations. You'll find  posts titled "Don't fire your staff to success", and they get 10,000 likes and a few hundred 'amen's. "Your staff are people, too" 7,000 thinky faces and a few 'interesting take' comments.  Am I callous? Tired? Bored? Apathetic? Yes,  and I still I don't believe that every combination of uplifting words deserves such an enthusiastic response. Part of the problem is that everything in this current world is about churning content. You're incentivized with more followers and more opportunities the more you post stuff. Regardless of the stuff. Requotes, retweets, your opinion on an opinion on an opinion. This system makes even your most interesting contact sound like Stuart Smalley .  One time, I went with a good friend to one of these A-type events, like a Lollapalooza but only for peop...

I don't believe in karma in the spiritual sense of the word (I know, shocking!). I don't think that there's a tally of the good and bad you've done. I definitely don't believe in the more stripped down, colloquial view that if you do good you definitely get good back. There's no definite in this random world of ours.  What I do believe, is quite simple. If you do a good deed, the world has a +1 good deed. If you take a crap on society, the world has a +1 crap. The more crap in the world the more chance of getting crapped on. That should be good enough for people to do good things and avoid bad things, but nooooo. We need to have a set of invisible white-washed beings and multiple lives and heaven and hell and an invisible tally system to keep us in line.   I'm no saint. I've done things that in retrospect make me angry at myself. I've posted bile on the internet, I've taken people for granted, I've listened to and let gossip flourish, all whi...

  Sleeping Beauty, First of Her Name , Thorn of the Briars, Aurora of the Disneys. What a problematic tale this can be.  In the very, very initial telling of this story, the princess is straight up sexually assaulted and gives birth to children. The children suckle her fingers which removes the curse.  Of course, she marries her aggressor, to make it even more traumatic.  There's a pre-Disney version without even a kiss. In this version the prince just falls in love with the sleeping princess in the bed which wakes her, and they have a "meaningful conversation." Obviously this would not cut it in later versions, people wanted the non-consensual smooch.  While it has kind of problematic origins, one of the most important lessons of this story is simple: Make sure you invite crotchety, reclusive ladies to your parties. Can you believe this is all because a fairy, witch, or whatever was irked for not being invited to a party? Jeesh talk about a harsh punishment! On...

These two have been flirting with each other since day one! Sure the Joker technically murders Batman's first protégé in some universes, but that just screams of attention-seeking. Many times they've pondered that they wouldn't live without each other, so why not make it official? Who's your dream fictional 'ship'? For internet beginners, that's just relationshipping, putting characters  romantically together in ways the authors may or may not have intended. Don't google it though, it's a direct line to the internet's darkest corners! You may be wondering if Firefly's Kaylee and Malcom would've made a good pair and you end up with Eeyore getting railed by Tigger within like nanoseconds. Extra Panel:

Some days, I have semi legit ideas. Other days I wake up with like ‘what if dinos evolved, and made all the same mistakes we are doing, before they died out’. It’s not my best work but, as you know, I am awful at throwing away ideas. And I have no ideas about how to make this one better.  So enjoy! I drew this while on a plane going on a necessary vacation. Last week I suffered from a severe depressive episode, a stronger one than I’ve had in a long time. As quick as it came, it left (obligatory ‘that’s what she said’) so everything is peachy again. I do love that slowly but surely discussions about mental health are being destigmatized. One of our senators in the USA committed himself for a severe and lasting episode and I just wonder what did high profile people do in the past? Did they hide, drink, or made terminal bad decisions? Reach out if you ever want to talk, I’m a firm believer in surviving this.  Don’t know when the next comic one will come or even if it will be as ...

In the very original works, the Red Riding Hood character is simply eaten by the wolf.  In future versions, she tortures the wolf by performing a macabre surgery that eventually and painfully kills it. In a second part made by the Grimm's, she even hunts down another wolf! What can I say, I love picturing a Red Riding Hood who, far from a victim, chased down wolves to murder for the rest of her life.  Extra panel:  Rejected ideas. Do you have more? I'll draw them!