Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in Darryl Ayo Brathwaite's LiveJournal:

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Wednesday, May 23rd, 2012
8:20 am	Beautiful Been thinking about beauty. When a girl once was trying to passively aggressively break up with me (by convincing me to dump her--stupidly, I didn't get the hint and she dumped me), she lamented "why do you even want to go out with me, you're an artist. You should want a good looking girl." Not an exact quote obviously, but you get the idea. I don't get it. To date she was one of the most attractive women I have dated. Anyway, I thought she was cool. Like as a personality. She was interesting to talk to. I'm not that shallow! But what does that even mean?! I'm no male model myself, although I guess I'm alright?! But geez! xoxoxoxoxoxo Anyway, there's a lady in this cafe who wears see-through blouses every day. She is a legit "model type." She's very friendly and I am not interested in her, even to pretend. Maybe I know who I think is attractive, do you think? Ayo Posted via LiveJournal app for iPhone. (Comment on this)
Tuesday, May 15th, 2012
10:49 am	For some strange reason... Whether it is timing or happenstance, Tuesdays crank it up a few notches. I woke up thinking about Miranda July in her 2011 feature film The Future and got annoyed when I looked up the Amazon customer reviews. It is supposed to be frustrating, you're not supposed to think Sophie and Jason are great, mature people. Anyway, Miranda July's work has a bold throughline of frank and awkward and difficult sexuality that I find appealing. Unsexy sex is more sexy because it's realer. Stupid, broken people bumping into each other, flailing, grasping, each hoping that the other is a life raft. It's very human. Anyway: xoxoxoxoxoxo Anyway, that got me thinking about some of the strange women that I've met and the primal way in which we as humans still sort of flail around, our higher and lower brains in constant conflict. Societal needs on top of instinctual needs and we all just look at each other, wanting the same thing but unable to make it happen. Unable to cross the line of social boundary, trespass the contextual relationship and say honestly "___." ( Read more... ) (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Monday, May 14th, 2012
6:01 am	Ice in my glass By Ayo They call me Ayo and I make comics, y'hear? At the moment I am trying to figure out how to make comics pleasing to read on mobile phones. Right now, comics on mobile phones suck. Completely. We should expect and accept the crappiness of mobile comic reading when it comes to existing comics. That is to say, comics created prior to the creation of mobile phones. Now that mobile phones exist, it makes sense to me that somebody would want to make comics that are supposed to be read in that fashion. ( Read more... ) Posted via LiveJournal app for iPhone. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
12:12 am	Ice in my glass By Ayo They call me Ayo and I make comics, y'hear? At the moment I am trying to figure out how to make comics pleasing to read on mobile phones. Right now, comics on mobile phones suck. Completely. We should expect and accept the crappiness of mobile comic reading when it comes to existing comics. That is to say, comics created prior to the creation of mobile phones. Now that mobile phones exist, it makes sense to me that somebody would want to make comics that are supposed to be read in that fashion. ( Read more... ) (Comment on this)
Sunday, May 13th, 2012
2:24 pm	Things That I'm Into By Ayo Behold, a screenshot of Capy Bara's new game "Super T.I.M.E. Force" which I am in love with. Well, let's just say that I have a crush on this game. I haven't played it and I doubt that I will. I don't have a modern video game machine. But I watched their video and looked up all of the screenshots that I could. This game is pure eye candy and adrenaline-rush inspiration for me. Just wow. Bang, bang, shoot 'em up. Capy Bara is somehow affiliated with Superbrothers who made the game that I love/lust/linger over, "Sword & Sworcery." Goodness, I'm sweating! Yesterday, I re-read Superbrothers' powerful essay/manifesto "Less Talk, More Rock" which was published by the website Boing Boing. Read it immediately, if not sooner. I have read the essay several times before and that's kind of how manifestos work: one reads them as many times as one needs in order to get pumped up. Go Look at some of the beautiful art that they created to go with this essay: Uhhh I'm not sure if the format of those images worked out or translated to this post. They looked okay when I "save image"'d them. Aw :T xoxoxoxoxoxo Currently reading George Perez and Kurt Busiek's Avengers comics from 1998. The first issue was brutally boring with Thor giving recap speeches for pages. The subsequent issues were better, smoother. Less talk, more rock. Hawkeye is more interesting here than in the Avengers movie. He is the direct foil to Captain America and they but heads more than once--with SEXY RESULTS: Last panel was a letdown. They didn't make out or anything, even though Busiek clearly wrote that for a prelude to passionate buddysex. It's clear as day! xoxoxoxoxoxo Avengers, in the hands of Perez and Busiek is bursting at the seams with latent sexuality. It is hard to believe that these characters, as depicted in this run, have the time to save the world with all of the flailing post-adolescent sex they are most assuredly having off-panel. xoxoxoxoxoxo Avengers ASSEMBLE. Whew! xoxoxoxoxoxo X-Factor, by Leonard Kirk and Peter David. Mr David's second tenure as writer of X-Factor is mostly about sex. Sexual adults navigating their desires and relationships in between navigating the hilarious made-up politics of superhero-land. Many of Peter David's scripts are littered with puns, innuendo, bad jokes and other bits and bites of humanity. Even when this comic becomes tiresome. It remains interesting from time to time because its immaturity is a form of maturity. Treating sex and sexuality as a solemn, sordid necessity or a sacred house of cards adds to the societal air of fear and apprehension about sexuality. Peter David treats sex like the joke that it is. The cast of X-Factor are old friends and it shows. They are constantly oversharing with one another, teasing one another, and occasionally, dropping their guard with one another. I'm not going to say that it is emotionally effecting to me personally, but it is fun. xoxoxoxoxoxo This is my favorite page from Batgirl # 1 by Ardian Sysf and Gail Simone. Let me tell you a thing. This page is why I read superhero comics. I read superhero comics because of stuff like a woman riding her motorcycle onto an elevator and then politely asking for the floor. That is silly. That is the perfect thing to put in a superhero comic and that is what I like to see when I read them. See, it's perfectly straight. The joke is the absurdity and the joke isn't leaned on too heavily. It is the intersection between reality and fantasy and the gulf between the two. Gosh, I laughed so hard at this gag. xoxoxoxoxoxo Action Comics # 9 by Gene Ha and Grant Morrison. Grant Morrison throws his beloved employer DC Comics under the bus in this charming allegorical tale of Superman being stolen from his creators and turned into a monster. It is a love letter to Siegel and Shuster and an acknowledgement of Morrison's own complicity in the exploitation of this famous character. Works very well as a stand-alone story and by the way the pseudo-Barack Obama Superman is a fun character in his own right. xoxoxoxoxoxo Ultimate Captain America by Ron Garney and Jason Aaron. No secret at all, I take a potshot at Jason Aaron every time his name comes up. He has earned it. His manifesto "Fuck Alan Moore" is my first experience with his "writing" and that is no way to introduce yourself to me. I make fun of the dorky way he writes Wolverine comics as well. That said, I did like his four-issue Ultimate Captain America series. World War II Captain America versus Vietnam Captain America. It contains some beautiful moments, particularly when "our" Captain America (WWII) is praying. It is a very natural, real-seeming element to the character and it works. There is also savage punching. And there's also some romance Whew! :fans self: xoxoxoxoxoxo Finally, this is just a beautiful picture. It is pretty old I guess and it is "from the internet," but I love it very much. Posted via LiveJournal app for iPhone. (Comment on this)
Saturday, May 12th, 2012
5:57 pm	In the game. By Ayo In February of 2002, I published my first minicomic. It was forty pages long and titled /Rabbithole/, optimistically numbered "1." Rabbithole # 2 was a class assignment for my book illustration class. Only one copy of the second issue was ever made. In May of 2003 my second published comic book /80Gun/ was released but it was not a minicomic. I self-published it as a standard comic book using the then-famous Small Publisher's Co-Op in Florida. As I write this, a box of hundreds of these publications is under my desk, at my feet. Every year, I published at the very least, one minicomic. I have been doing this for ten years. I am tired and my home looks like a junkyard. xoxoxoxoxoxo In 2008, I suppose, I purchased the domain for my first website. A webcomic site called littlegardencomics.com which my cousin Branson Belchie and my friend L. Nichols helped me to sey up. Thanks guys. As it turns out, I wasn't any good at webcomics, but I tried. It was too much. I had been working at my square job for too long. I became broken and tired and the comics just left me. It was okay because I never had a large audience anyway. Not a major loss. Just another webcomic that died before it lived. xoxoxoxoxoxo People say that I don't make comics anymore and that's sort of true. I try every day, but I am just not wired properly. Forty minutes here, forty minutes there. Can't seem to be in one place long enough to get in touch with the part of myself that comics come from. Basically I'm a failure by any measure. I'm a guy with a low-paying day job who can't even get the moonlighting thing to work. But this isn't supposed to be a plea for pity. It's a plea for sanity. Many people are able to get their art going in the hours in which they aren't at their day jobs. Good for them. You can all congratulate yourselves and call me lazy and say you're better than me. Personally, I used to do that before my physician put me on drugs. Now when I come home from work I just sleep. I eat some dinner and then I collapse so fast that if you saw it you would swear that I was drugged. Well, I am drugged. When I say to people that I'm tired, I really mean it. I used to sleep four hours per night. Now I couldn't stay awake if you paid me. I'm old. I'm thirty. I'm knocked out. I don't always take my medicine. The doctor doesn't like that. When I take my medicine, I'm hopeless. Directly to bed, sometimes without eating. What little physical energy I have is spent at my desk job, filing papers, moving boxes and confidential, confidential, confidential. I still really like making comics. I only feel alive when I'm making comics. But there's so little time, as the saying goes. xoxoxoxoxoxo You would be hard pressed to find a person who loves comics more than me. The evidence is staggering. I own many. So many that you cannot set foot on the floor of my room. Literally, you walk upon a covering of comic books. I have a friend named Tea Fougner who works for the funny papers. When talking about one thing, she reminded me about the dang old newspaper strips. Then it all shifted into place for me. They have been under my nose all along. The dang syndicated comics. That's about the point where I started getting thoughts. Comic thoughts in a little cloud above my head. These comics in the papers are cool but what if my favorite comic dudes from indie comics (minicomics and webcomics) were in the paper? What would it be like if all I had to do was go to the corner to read my favorite sequential art? What if. What if soon turned to "why not?" What is stopping the people of the minicomic world and webcomic world from working in the land of newspaper pages? Perception, I find. Newspaper comics have earned a reputation as the washed up, irrelevant forebearer of what we do here in alternative comics. They are beneath notice for many of our practitioners and beneath contempt as well. Personally, I'm not the biggest fan of most of the strips out there. But I see potential. And at my most hostile, I see an opportunity to supplant many of the existing strips. But what I did not expect is the strength of resistance--the aggressive vehemence of the opposition to me from the indie comic sector. I didn't anticipate that by my pushing for more of my peers to consider a job outlet for their work, that I would be open to being yelled at as though I were advocating for the abolition of the comics medium. xoxoxoxoxoxo I am tired. Look at my home. I am a bum. I don't want to own many more comics. Right now, I'm trying to get rid of comics. Webcomics are cool, but I do not want to place all faith in computers to make new generations of comic readers. I want more. By all means, make webcomics. But please understand that I am tired of looking at websites. That's another post. I'll look at a random comic online but for deep, lengthy reading, I lack the will. I lack the will. I begrudge nobody their webcomics but it's just not in my range of ability. Also, I worry about growth. Comics have traditionally shied away from the judgement of the proverbial town square. Retreating from rejection. I don't know if it's my cultural nature (I'm a black man) because I like the public. I like strangers. I like to share things with outsiders. I even like teaching people what I know. One thing that I have been tortured by since I was maybe fifteen years old (I'm thirty now) is that I cannot share my love of comics with people who are outside of the narrowly defined "comics enthusiast scene." As I grow older I feel as though being black has influence my view of the world more than I had previously assumed. Many of us are pretty public. When you travel through "The Community," you'll see people sitting on chairs outside, talking with their neighbors on building stoops. When you go to get a haircut, you'll find that the inside of a barber shop is a lot like being on the Internet: people talk openly and freely. About a lot of things. When I think about how comics culture has unfolded in these last fifteen years of my involvement as a kid, as a fan and as a creator, I think about reflexive shyness. I think about people who asked me what I was doing there when I was new to NYC. In short, when I think about comics, I think about a conservative, secluded culture. Comics was once bitten and twice shy. The shape of this artform is curled around its past wounds like an ugly scar. The rest of society thinks it odd that comics culture hunches over so. More than anything, I want more of the comics that I have grown to love to be published in the most public way possible because I feel that these artists deserve it and I think that society deserves their art. Minicomics are wonderful, webcomics and blogs are wonderful. But also wonderful is the idea that the common train commuter might know who someone like Margo Dabaie is. Or the idea that the newspaper in the breakroom at work might contain the work of Tom Hart. Or Emi Gennis, Box Brown, Melissa Mendes, Michael DeForge. This isn't about "ME" as an artist. This is about /US/ this is about outreach and inroads. This is about me as a reader. This is about people who don't read blogs like this but who enjoy jokes and art and stories just the same. This is about my desire for this culture to be more open and public. xoxoxoxoxoxo Back in the days, comics gained a foothold in American society largely due to the passionate patronage of Hearst. The newspaper baron. If Hearst hadn't loved comics or if he hadn't been so influential in the field of publication, we may never have had the comic strip and thus, not the comic book, graphic novel, etc. When Hearst died, comics began to slide off the map. Slowly...then all at once. Large external threats like the newsprint shortage also had lasting devastating effects on the outlet. But through it all, newspaper comics survived, though weakened from their early twentieth century highs. Small loss, I guess. Just some jobs, just some careers, just the sole point of contact with our artform for just a few million people. Just the most widely available outlet for the comics medium. No big deal. Keep thinking like that, everyone. We're almost there. Almost choked the last bit of life out of the dailies. Posted via LiveJournal app for iPhone. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Friday, May 11th, 2012
8:10 pm	Spartan Went into my roommate's room to fiddle with the Internet router plug. Held it together emotionally to not burst into tears. I'm a monster. That guy owns like nothing. My room is filled with so many comics that they literally form a carpeting. My feet touch paper, not floor. I enjoy comics. I enjoy comic books. This is a horrific way to live. I hate this life, burn my (half of the) apartment. Having things is no problem. Perhaps I need to just throw this all in the garbage, rare stuff, signed books, beloved books and all. -Ayo2012xoxo. Posted via LiveJournal app for iPhone. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
12:35 pm	Ox Out the Cage By Ayo Hit the ground running. If the first track on your album is titled "Intro," you'll be first against the wall. Literally shoot these people. Except DMX because his "Intro" tracks were complete three-verse songs. Hit the ground running. It's so unusual for the first track to be a song and more unusual still for the song to be topical, rather than introductory. Nas "Get Down" from /God's Son/ Slick Rick "Treat Her Like a Prostitute" from /The Great Adventures of Slick Rick/ Dead Kennedys "Kill the Poor" from /Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables/ LL Cool J "I Can't Live Without My Radio" from /Radio/ Dead Kennedys "Soup Is Good Food" from /Frankenchrist/ There are some...but it isn't universal. Personally I would like to cut the crap and the "hello, my name is" stuff and dive right into the difficult material. Plus starting off deep with a song about a specific subject suggests a strength and confidence that is rare and compelling. Hit the ground running. "Ox Out the Cage" is actually the second song on Cannibal Ox's /The Cold Vein/ but "Iron Galaxy" is a beautiful opening, serving the dual purpose of introduction and catalogue of inner-city decay, which is the specific topic. However, "Iron Galaxy" still feels quite "overview"-like and lacks the specificity of "Get Down," the first track on Nas /God's Son/. Hit the ground running. Ox Out the Cage. All killer, no filler. Leave the chatter for the interviews. Open with a bang and leave people begging for more. Don't rap about how generally cool you are, don't sing about the general excitement of life. Go in. Hit the ground running. I read a lot of comic books. Most of them are terrible. Even a bad comic book can be good if its author isn't worried about how serious the story is or isn't. If the author isn't concerned with making sure that I knew a whole lot of specific things. /Just rhyme, homie/ Superhero comics are the worst. Why are you drawing my attention to characters who aren't even properly in the story? Waste of time. Why pages and pages of exposition? That is terrible, make it stop. Nobody cares. Scenes of superheroes making speeches for pages to inspire other superheroes (or more exactly, to clumsily introduce plot points) this is boring and I'm not reading the rest of your comic. Hit the ground running. Don't ever write a panel with one character speaking in four word bubbles. I will never know what those bubbles say. I'm a busy man. Kill that shit or don't even turn your mic on. Go hard or go home. Hit the ground running or tell your story walking. Posted via LiveJournal app for iPhone. (Comment on this)
Thursday, May 10th, 2012
8:13 am	Evolution Barack Obama has finally stopped pretending that he doesn't know who his base is. Well. Done. Finally. xoxoxoxoxoxo Meanwhile, the singer of Against Me! has come out as transgender, so goodbye Tom Gabel and let's welcome Laura Jane Grace to the stage. xoxoxoxoxoxo One of Fox News' twitter accounts claims that Obama has declared war on marriage. ProTip: when a famous person or business institution says something hateful, don't just tell people--take a screenshot. xoxoxoxoxoxo Also, North Carolina passed a voter's referendum banning gay marriage. No problem, bigots. We will undo you from the top down. -Ayo2012xoxo. Posted via LiveJournal app for iPhone. (Comment on this)
Wednesday, May 9th, 2012
11:03 am	Joss Whedon directs The Avengers Casual spoilers for The Avengers motion picture directed by Joss Whedon. ( Read more... ) (Comment on this)
8:17 am	D-: How you gonna do that to me? I walk in the place and there's another of the regular customers, who I see all the time. We say hi to each other. And there she is, looking like her regular self but also so very pretty. Enhanced attractiveness. I almost claw my face off. What's wrong with me, am I doing puberty again? xoxoxoxoxoxo Comics are murdering me. I want comics to be one way in my heart but they must be another way in reality. I am bitter and angry. I have a bookbag filled with minicomics and all I want is for all of those cartoonists to be in the newspaper's funny pages. I hate searching, collecting and accumulating. I want all comics to pass in and out of my hands and to have a clean, spotless apartment. But that isn't reality. So I curse the skies and the jelly-spines of the cartoonists of decades past who allowed newspapers to shrink to their current miserable state. I curse them all and start thumbnailing my next minicomic. You bastards. xoxoxoxoxoxo I talked with Matt Wiegel last Thursday. He was in town for Katie Skelly's Nurse Nurse release party. It was grand to see that he was as excited about newspaper strips as I am. Insurrection! xoxoxoxoxoxo Roxie Vizcarra, an artist for Rockstar Games is a pal of mine. I read her zine Fully Vol. 6 this morning. She's a cool dude. The zine is all dudes getting punched and dogs with rifles and naked guys lounging around. Live the dream, Roxie. -Ayo2012xoxo. Posted via LiveJournal app for iPhone. (Comment on this)
Tuesday, May 8th, 2012
1:02 pm	Just deleted ok Cupid Could not even meet a friend on that turd expressway, let alone a romantic partner. I've had the account for years, mostly collecting dust, but occasionally trying to talk with strangers and meet new people, make friends or anything. To no avail. My old girlfriend said that I was too weird for online dating to work. Though we met via Craig's List, I had to fundamentally agree. A lot of people think they are so unique but I don't really think they are. It's going to be a long walk from here, but my mother always said that life isn't fair. BORN ALONE, DIE ALONE. -Ayo2012xoxo. Posted via LiveJournal app for iPhone. (Comment on this)
Friday, May 4th, 2012
12:46 pm	Ultimate sexual fantasy: Angelina Jolie and Rooney Mara using computers ...that is how computers work, right? I need a book. xoxoxoxoxoxo Today I have been thinking about sex. Mostly because I went to look at something on OKCupid as a joke and naturally wound up reading a bunch of horrible people's desperate, angry pleas to not die lonely. But I looked down and whispered "no." Internet technology has put the average person's sexual desires in public view. When I say "sexual desires" I mean like "romantic desires, but let's be honest and admit that we all know that if this online dating thing works out, we'll have sex so we'd better be sexually compatible also." That's a mouthful. That's what she said. Except she didn't because that's a mouthful. So I'm reading OKCupid and thinking about "this woman seems cool...she seems..." and then the bottom of the page helpfully indicates that I contacted her three years ago. THREE YEARS AGO! Three years and counting! Three years and you still haven't found anyone and neither have I. Three years bumbling around this terrible city, filled with trash and neither of us have figured this out. So I says to myself, "fuck this website and fuck these people. I hope they all die lonely and slowly." Anyway, who wants to date somebody that has a favorite movie? Or who can answer the question "six things that I can't live without," who wants to even be friends with a person like that? It's the most ridiculous thing that could be imagined. Two humans sitting alone in apartments, writing lists of favorite recording artists in the hopes that they find their future spouse? Or that somebody will want to fuck them? "Wow you like Cannibal Corpse, oh darling, you're perfect, utterly perfect!" Romance is a diseased idea. Then, at long last, I realized that somebody who I know had a crush on me. I say "realized," but I'm only guessing. But it's all there, laid out on the table and in retrospect I can see it clear as day. And we'd probably be friends today if I hadn't disregarded her then. Ironically, all I wanted back then was a friend. Whatever?! Who even has sex with the people they have crushes on? What a silly idea. When I like someone, I express it by smiling at her and then writing her name in my notebook. I am twelve years old. -Ayo2012xoxo. Posted via LiveJournal app for iPhone. (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, May 3rd, 2012
10:35 am	He don't know me very well, do he Just tweeted at a stranger about superhero comics and he responded all earnest-like that I should be sure to read indie comics as well! I almost died laughing. Without being insulting (i hope)-- I read superhero comics as an escape from indie comics. Then to go further, I read YA novels and science fiction and fantasy novels as an escape from all comics. And then I read indie comics as an escape from whatever else happens to be going on in my life. It's a never-ending cycle! -Ayo2012xoxo. Posted via LiveJournal app for iPhone. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
8:30 am	Romance At the coffeehouse, a couple that I usually only see on weekends came in. I love how relaxed they always look. Reading the paper, casually showing each other things, sipping their coffee. They're so cute. And I'm the creepy fellow off to the side stealing glances time to time, thinking "oh wow." xoxoxoxoxoxo If I am to be actually honest, I'm surrounded by heartwrenchingly adorable people most of the time. Except at work but we don't need to discuss that. It messes with my hardened, world-weary demeanor. All the adorable cute people being so filled with light and air and not hollow like the cold caverns of my chest where my heart used to live. You like that? It's called "high school poetry." What up, LiveJournal. xoxoxoxoxoxo Can you have a crush on people who you don't know? xoxoxoxoxoxo ( Read more... ) (Comment on this)
Wednesday, May 2nd, 2012
5:45 pm	Most of the time What I miss most about being in a romantic relationship is having a willing audience for all of the silly things that I want to send text messages about. So I text dumbness to the wide open space of Twitter and somehow it isn't as fulfilling. I read a headline that some scientists had determined that people have similar brainwaves of affinity for their smartphones as they have in romantic love. I failed to read the actual article but I propose an explanation: our phones are totemic of our relationships with those people that we love. We send and receive loving messages through these devices. It stands to reason that some base lizard-level of our brain sees the communicative device itself as the medium of our love. Stands to reason. -Ayo2012xoxo. Posted via LiveJournal app for iPhone. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Thursday, April 26th, 2012
8:20 pm	Three Panel Strip Fever I am experiencing frustration because I can no longer read webcomics. Sure, my laptop is fried and my smartphone is my only computer these days. Unfortunately that wasn't the problem; I had fallen away from webcomics months prior. To consider the truth, my webcomic reading had been rapidly deteriorating for the last few years. I can't do it. It was exciting for a while! But I have just lost my ability to handle them. Google Reader was helping me to manage webcomic reading for a while until I realized that it was deleting stuff that I hadn't read. Seriously, what the...! So I didn't quit reading webcomics so much as they just got away from me. /Funky Winkerbean: Tom Batiuk/ Webcomics aren't for me, that's obvious. In the long run it feels as though I'm just not made to read comics in this way. The constant barrage of peripheral information, the keeping track of comics that invariably experience delays and the frequent reminders that this is FREE, so don't complain about things. I am a cartoonist and these people are my peers. More, they represent the only business model of a modern cartooning career that I could see. More still, some of these people are my friends. Being a cartoonist feels like being in a cage. Beholden to everyone except yourself. I genuinely care for my friends' work. But I still feel trapped. Like I was existing on somebody else's terms. I didn't have friends growing up. I am not fiercely independent, I never had to compromise or second guess myself unless my second-self felt like it. The independent, self-driven world of minicomics and then webcomics appealed to me but then later repulsed me. These were independent people by choice. Throughout my younger life I had always been independent because I simply was alone. I'm probably insane. In a literal sense. I didn't have the normal tools of socialization while growing up. In my amateur guess, I probably shut off the part of my brain that gets along with people a very long time ago. It wasn't until I was fifteen or sixteen until I finally realized that I had no friends. I knew what a friendship was, I watched TV. But I never really made the connection between the concept in abstract and its absence from my life in a real and practical way. It hit me hard and I started falling apart. Then I went to college and became an insufferable monster. Of all the personal pain, if I could take anything back it would be the period where I was awful to other people. I gradually developed into a rough approximation of a good person but I'm honestly never sure. I think I'm a good person. Maybe I just hope I am. I grew up lacking the basic notion of how to communicate with people and make friends. I'm thirty now and people that I know are married and have children. It's distressing. All I have is a tiny bedroom and a pile of books that takes up clearly too much space. That and deep anxieties about trying to fit in among groups of people. /Ultimate Comics Spider-Man: Sara Pichelli with Brian Bendis/ I am standing in my tiny room right now. If I had any intelligence at all, I would throw all of my books into the trash. New, old, out of print, signed, handmade, garbage. But realistically how can you do that? Even as an adult, these things are the primary constant in my life. Why did it have to be books? If only I was into something neat and tidy. Video games don't take up much space. I picked the wrong medium to rely on for support. /Sword & Sworcery: Superbrothers and Capy/ Webcomics don't take up any space but they are difficult for me to handle mentally. Digital comics work better but wow, the equipment is not as good as these marketers want you to believe. At the end of the day, I find solace in the idea of newspaper comics: something tangible but at the same time transient. Here today, gone tomorrow. I want to be lightweight one day. I want to be unburdened by things--both in object and in obligation. No webcomic calendar to obsess over, no cartoonists to chase around, no piles of books either. I want to live in the moment. /Uncanny X-Force: Jerome Opeña with Rick Remender/ -Ayo2012xoxo. Posted via LiveJournal app for iPhone. (Comment on this)
5:12 pm	Slow and horribly. I'm crammed in a train but I'm writing. Some old lady didn't want me to get on the train so she's currently leaning against me. Luckily, the lord saw fit that her kind will die off eventually. My city is filled with people. Physically crushing on top of each other with no sense of an endgame. My city is filled with people. /Daredevil #11, Marco Checchetto with Mark Waid/ -Ayo2012xoxo. Posted via LiveJournal app for iPhone. (Comment on this)
Wednesday, April 25th, 2012
12:21 pm	You're a customer. MoCCA 2012 is this weekend. It's four in the morning and I have to be at work in a few hours. But first a quick nap. But first I have to excavate my bed. Listen to me, this time I mean it: no more "stuff." Comics are the absolute worst thing for a person like me. I see it, I like it, I buy it. It's like a mental disease. I want to read comics but comics take over a reader's life physically. A physical example: right now I'm surrounded by so much junk--books--that I cannot find a simple thing that I know is in this room. I like comics so much but all they are doing is holding me down. Cannot move freely. xoxoxoxoxoxo A day has passed since section one above. Last night I watched my friend fold and staple her zines in preparation for MoCCA. Those zines are so nicely made. I want one. I want to own nothing. xoxoxoxoxoxo There isn't a doubt in my mind that I am a prisoner. Unable to separate myself from these little bundles of paper. Insignificant individually but enormous in scale when taken together. How I hate you, comics. xoxoxoxoxoxo It's okay to like what you like but I like so many things. xoxoxoxoxoxo Another day has passed. Comics bind me into a community but very small differences of opinion leave me feeling completely alone. For years and years I have tried to ask the most of comics as an artform and for all of those years I have seen myself retreat gradually. Like a failed offensive warfront that becomes more and more a desperate retreat with every defeat. I lower my standards continually and the advance against my hopes only increases in its intensity. Comics get worse for my health and I keep asking for smaller and less. xoxoxoxoxoxo Look at a American newspaper. I live in New York City, so you can't tell me that people don't read newspapers anymore. They do. Why is it so difficult to put a comic strip together that is just solid, engaging entertainment? It makes me so angry and sad and angry and despondent... I've been applying my comic book skills to comic strip writing and I found it fundamentally pretty darn easy. Cartoonists as a class of people have the talent, the know-how to make comics that would entertain me but they choose to expend their energies on markets and venues that are shrinking and just...not...good. I've read comic books for about twenty-two years. Comic strips for longer. I do understand why people who love comic books as a specific form and who earn their livelihoods from comic books aren't interested in what I am saying. I understand, I get that. What I cannot understand is why people who stand to gain absolutely nothing from working in comic books resist. Lie. I recognize these people as products of habit and culturally ingrained tradition. Comic books and book-form comics are what comics "are" in their minds. I ask some about comic strips and: People say "but comic strips rarely get picked up these days!" I say "hey, you weren't making money anyway, nothing ventured, nothing gained." xoxoxoxoxoxo You have no idea how much my head hurts right now. -Ayo2012xoxo. Posted via LiveJournal app for iPhone. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, April 4th, 2012
2:53 pm	An ger. I'm not going to try and pretend that I'm some kind of angel and that I'm a good person but I'm still a human being with independent feelings, a mind that belongs to me and a sense of personal autonomy. xoxoxoxoxoxo Recently I have been thinking about the various people throughout my life that have come close to that ambiguous zone of improper socialization. I couldn't tell when it started. I have no idea. But I've always been a shy, standoffish child, if that makes sense. At some point, I became a very angry, standoffish child. There's that one teacher who was too concerned, the shop keeper who offered a ride, the teacher who offered to meet to provide study materials, the guy from the dorm floor who put his arm behind where i was sitting any time I was there and of course how could I forget the prankster who practically put his dick on my shoulder when I was in the studio. This stuff all happened no more recently than a decade ago. xoxoxoxoxoxo Over the last couple of months I have been experiencing something that I haven't experienced in ten years. I have been touched. I have a coworker who touches me. On the arm, the upper arm, forearm, elbow. Whatever happens to be closer. Shoulder. Repeated touches or emphatic taps as she stresses her syllables. I couldn't help notice because she will decide to say things, (quietly: to speak closer and a cold hand lights on my shoulder and my stomach lurches). My neck chills my arms tense, prepared to swing. But I am at the office, at my job and this will happen every day. My teeth clench. I begin to be more aware of the space around me. Every time people walk past, behind me, my muscles tense up. She went on medical leave and I just hoped that she would die. You see, if she just died, I never have to confront her and tell a fifty-year-old adult to keep her hands to herself. Because that is embarrassing. Maddening. But she got better. Congratulations. I have to restrain myself when she staggers into my perimeter. Practically dig my nails in to stop from punching her when she touches my arm. Luckily, a piece of computer hardware took the punch instead. A barely restrained wild swing softened because I remembered where I was in mid-swing. Took a little piece of skin off the knuckle and took the computer hardware offline. Don't keep your anger bottled up because it might explode at an inopportune moment. xoxoxoxoxoxo Not feeling hungry. My nerves are jumpy, I keep dreading the sound of approaching persons. I am back at my old desk. I sent an email this morning telling (note: not asking) my manager that I will not work with that person any more. And why. Waiting and waiting for something to happen because sooner or sooner, my manager is going to have to address a very volatile situation that I have dropped into her lap. Everybody wins. By losing. xoxoxoxoxoxo Somewhere at my parents' house there is probably a hat that I received from my 8th grade homeroom teacher. I was the only student who was given a hat or any gift. It wasn't hidden in any way, just bam: a hat for me. I'm not a mystical person but that hat is home to evil forces. Ill intent and bad ideas. I'm no dummy either, I did not wear that hat. Well, I wore it once or twice in the beginning but it fit me like nausea. People knew. They didn't get a hat. That hat is something strange for a kid to have. Often I wonder what happened to a classmate of mine. She was caught passing a dirty note in class and was made to stay after school. With him, alone. And people giggled, but I was pretty sure that I knew. I didn't say anything and when I ran into her a couple of years later, she was already an angry, cynical girl. Maybe she just was. I don't know anything. There's also a good chance that I eventually threw the hat away. -Ayo2012. Posted via LiveJournal.app. (Comment on this)