Banal Hemorrhage

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...

  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...

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!

It is pretty funny how NRA aficionados focus on where shootings are happening or the particular root issues of the shooter . By funny, of course, I mean horrendously deceptive.  There's the direct cause of angry males having access to guns that they somehow always skip over.  The main reason I don’t like Joe Rogan is that he imprinted into his easily convinced audience the simplistic retort “This country has a mental health problem disguised as a gun problem.” That was like a million shootings ago and people still say it! People gloss over the fact that Joe is implying we are crazier than the rest of the world. Or forgetting to imply that we could have both problems.  It's tantamount to looking at traffic accidents around a city and focusing on the locations and motivations of the culprits (valuable variables on themselves), but completely ignoring a total lack of safety systems in the intersections.  We need stronger laws for who gets access to guns. Yes, thi...

I love classic fairy tales. Even as a child, I wanted the straight up gore-filled authentic fairy tales. Children painfully murdered, stepmothers horribly abusing their new kids, incarceration, cannibals, give me that hardcore horror. It's easy to see how these tales might have taught kids not to jump into whatever the 1800's version of a van with tinted windows was. Even Rapunzel was all about human trafficking and follicular torture. The dude that tries to save her falls into a thorny bush and loses his eyes.  And of course, many of these tales introduced the biggest horror of them all: the happily ever after. Typically this occurs when people marry rich and move to a castle. As but a wee child, I felt like this was a terrible thing to push... that you'll only be happy when you marry. Why doesn't Snow White become a renowned novelist? Why can't Rapunzel be an interior decorator? Sleeping Beauty could be a marketing director for Ghostbed. All these ladies could be ...

I love stonks! I'm a boring stock owner though, no options, no meme stocks, no timing the market. I buy companies that I believe will have growth over 10 years and I hold them.  It's literally the watching-glaciers-melt of the stock world, but it's served me well. During the height of our last bull market I got a bit carried away and tested out some new things, like options, meme stocks and a few alt coins. I won some and lost some more last year, but it felt a lot more like gambling than investing.  I met tons of peeps like my version of Cocaine Bear during that time. They all gave me the whole stock-broker-on-copious-amounts-of-blow vibe. Because what could go wrong when you combine financial decisions with a drug that makes you feel unbeatable and overfilled with confidence? I can't wait for the movie Cocaine Bear, but I think my version would be fly AF too.  

  To be completely honest, I didn't read Flowers in The Attic. Somehow a school friend read it or saw the movie and then told me the plot. Just this second hand retelling was enough to traumatize my young head. Incest, death and starvation will do that to you. It's crazy how trauma works, I dont remember what I had for dinner yesterday (Sorry Noom!), but I remember clearly the retelling of this story or the section in IT with the crawling eye or Luke losing his hand. Extra Panel: For some reason, my dad showed me Carrie when I was but a young lad. The image of the pig blood running down her face is burned in my hippocampus even more permanently than looking both ways to cross the street. Crazy stuff, trauma!  Notes: Our friend Tommy constantly tells me I should do one panels. I owe him one so, this is my attempt at that!