Enemy of The People: The connoisseurs of a artform are almost always the worst thing that can happen to it. They impose, through tyranny of number, a kind of “best practices” on those products of which they lovingly champion and consume. No reinventions are allowed save those that reinforce the exemplary examples. Resultantly, these followers are not unrefined, but overly refined. They possess enough intelligence and discriminating taste to sabotage innovation, especially innovation that does not seek their approval. This has worked to my detriment on occasion, but it is perhaps against these cheerleaders that I have remained outside “the best practices” of every art form I have taken up as a cause, at least initially. None more so than in the realm of comics.
I received two reviews of Epic Dermis, n1 once I began to send out copies. The first one was given to me privately in a letter by a comicbook publisher; a comicbook critic published the second one. The writer of the letter immediately saw my literary aspirations and compared my work correctly (and favorably) to sources that I counted as inspirations. The critic had seen my work in Zero Zero and had not thought well of it; Epic Dermis did not improve his opinion. I do not remember his specific recommendations for how to better my product. However, it was evident by them that he was not my target audience. I can only suppose, in retrospect, the same applied to his audience of alternative comic readers.
I will not say every view he expressed was wrong, but the shortcomings he listed included some I had already formed by this late stage. The fault lay in my over-ambition for a media that was limited by its architecture.
Epic Dermis (Unpublished): Most alternative comics artists begin their careers young, and what work they create, if it is a large enough body of work to evaluate, may be viewed as lying along a learning curve. The three volumes of Epic Dermis can be plotted along such a curve, although the drawing and writing evolved at different speeds.
Cover for unpublished Epic Dermis n2
Although Epic Dermis n2 contained unpublished pieces, this cover was later sold at La Luz de Jesus Gallery in Los Angeles, prior to my two-man in 2002.
Splash pages from the Epic Dermis project
The Greens and Yellows (Full Comic in linked pages) from Epic Dermis n3
Burnt Effigy project from Epic Dermis n2
Cover for unpublished Epic Dermis n3
My Time as a Graphic Artist (1990-1999): I made my modest living throughout the 1990s as a graphic artist for a t-shirt vendor. My boss and I came of age with Adobe software and Apple computer. I did not own a computer at this time. Still, as I told my former employer, I regarded my experience in this graphic field as my third college degree.
I exploited the opportunity I had on computers where I could at work. This influence applied exclusively to my comics since computer graphics (text, headers, repurposed clip art) could be dropped seamlessly into storyboards. Late edits for Bible Welts included padding boards with computer-generated friezes of visual gags, similar in style to Mad Magazine. Epic Dermis better integrated the computer as a tool: the covers featured on this page, for example.
Putt-Putt Golf Hazards (Full Comic in linked pages) from Epic Dermis n3
A coarseness existed in popular culture in the 1990s. The Jerry Springer Show and shock jocks were the norm. One may forget this context when viewing my strips with a current mindset. My answer to this exploition of baser instinct was to underscore it with a layer of cryptic surrealism. If one comes to a peephole with the mind to be a voyeur, then one leaves with a black eye drawn in magic marker.
An example of a short-lived alternative weekly strip called Scoula Metafisica.
Much of the work I created throughout the mid-to-late 90s was published in two local Bloomington alternative newsweeklies, although I cannot recall anything about these publications. This explains the various incongruous formats that appear in Epic Dermis n1, n2, and n3.
The Farm Accident from Epic Dermis n2
Drawing exotic farm equipment was my justification for making this comic. The machinery, like the embedded circuitry of The Bed Wetter, attempts to portray abstract states of mind.
(Full Comic in linked pages)
Splash page from the Epic Dermis project
Purple Prose of a Cynic: The antisocial aspects of my comics have always limited their appeal. Early in my rekindled interest in making them, I embraced this stance as the only one left me. I later narrowed and sharpened my critique of the human condition while becoming less obvious as to what I intended by it. My Profiles in Confusion comic strips are the pinnacle of what I hoped to achieve in this synthesis.
The pre-art school art books I created in the early 80s showcased the romanticism of my early twenties. (Examples of this art may be seen on my first Sketchbook page.) At the time of making these books, I saw comics only as a past-tense childhood interest, and could not envision any mature use for them. ‘Fine art’ and classical music were my chief interests at this time.
As cynicism emerged post-graduate school, I returned to making comics as an intellectual outlet. However, I never fully outgrew my romanticism. My gushing sentiments were shoehorned into my new comic book style. This created a partition in my work between hard and soft targets, with the soft target being myself and my many failures at romance.
The Muse from Epic Dermis n3
I made several of these confessional comics, where the real women in them were only partially concealed. By my mid-30s, I had given up on romance; and once I became an older man, I lost any ability to relate to these personal disappointments in matters of the heart. I revisit these hours of my life most often and vividly in my dreams; and there re-experienced all that was wonderful and dreadful about them.
Blender Kitty Outliers: A fair number of Blender Kitty strips were not typical for that vehicle. These were the last installments of the Epic Dermis canon. Here are two sample strips that did not fit in well with The Blender Kitty Archive created for this website. I have parked them here with other like-minded materials.
Infinity from Blender Kitty
The outline below belongs to Schopenhauer, but the sentiment is mine.
Nachtwanderlied from Blender Kitty
This one is on the poetic side of things.
Occupiers from Blender Kitty
This is another type of strip that is hard to categorize. In outline it reads like the bombastic preamble of a Sumerian king. This was a fruitful mode of writing I developed during the years of creating comics for Dreams of Bad Milk. (More on this later.)
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