Below are 20 journal entries, after skipping by the 20 most recent ones recorded in Darryl Ayo Brathwaite's LiveJournal:

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Monday, July 9th, 2012
6:39 am	Convergence of problems You explain one problem and people think it has a solution. But our problems are symptoms of the overriding theme of our lives. I hung out with my friends on their rooftop yesterday. My friend shouted an easy suggestion to solve my comics problem earlier this week and elaborated upon the idea on the roof party. The rest of the afternoon consisted of my frantically doodling as I listened to them talk about the fairly terrifying stories of their dating pasts. I don't think my friend has seen me quiet before. I'm a loudmouth. That's all everybody knows me as. But drawing comics is a quiet thing. As a kid in high school I drew lots of doodles in the back of my notebook as the teachers were teaching. Listening to voices while drawing is a deeply ingrained part of how my brain works. Walked to the train afterwards and suddenly felt overcome with sadness. I just spent a few hours hanging out with one of my best friends and her friends. But I was reminded that while they were having terrible adventures and making dangerous mistakes in high school, I was sitting in my bedroom alone, having no friends at all. As an adult, friendship is still a struggle. It turns out that I have very little to say about things. Things like *LIFE*. I can chatter all day about comics but nobody that I know wants to do that. And I only know comics people. I can chatter about politics, but nobody is interested either. Somehow I learned a bunch of STUFF but never learned to talk about human things. So I'm sad all the time. xoxoxoxoxoxo I've been reading The Amazing Spider-Man comic books. They are so good. I can barely express how powerful they are even given the extreme rough looseness of the art. As a storyteller, Steve Ditko is able to hit so many correct beats with so few lines and so few details. Meanwhile, Stan Lee's grasping, curious imagination keeps the stories pushing through twists and turns and corridors of surprise. And every story ends on the last page. Why was "to be continued" invented? The first two issues of The Amazing Spider-Man have two complete stories apiece. Two stories! It brings shame to the modern iteration of this and every other comic book. Those Spider-Man stories. That Parker luck! Things never quite work out for Peter Parker even when he tries really hard to do the best possible thing. It's all about being a teen and feeling as though the world is constantly collapsing upon you. But all the while trying to be responsible and trying to pave a way for yourself in the adult world. xoxoxoxoxoxo Speaking of bummers I haven't dated or been in any kind of relationship for three and a half years. Something must be wrong with me. Long ago, the part of my brain that gets excited about cute girls has atrophied. Even the mildest half-crush fills me with dread and despair. There is no escape. I work all day with old people and all of my friends are married or in serious relationships. I don't even know people who know single people. I don't know. I had to delete my Ok Cupid account because everybody on that website is the most awful scum of the earth. No matter what the algorithm says. Just wish that I had somebody to share my time with. Looking at the Internet all day is lonely and terrible. xoxoxoxoxoxo Well. Off to work again. Going to try to have some kind of nice day. -Ayo. Posted via LiveJournal app for iPhone. (Comment on this)
Friday, June 8th, 2012
7:48 am	Snatches and snippets of thought In an essay on National Review Online titled “No More ‘Mr. Obama is a Nice Guy,’ ” Michelle Malkin, a conservative commentator, worried about what she called “this disastrous, bend-over bipartisanship,” a sentiment she also aired to Fox News’s Sean Hannity. via The New York Times xoxoxoxoxoxo I love it when productions say "by William Shakespeare" like he was shoulder-to-shoulder with the production company and not dead for literally four hundred years. xoxoxoxoxoxo With the disclaimer that I feel a great deal of affinity for some of the writers of serial pulp comic books, I respectfully disagree with how those projects are written. Structure is referred to by writers but to me, structure is everything. Like a building. Here is what I ask for, generally. Note: calculating using the low-end average of economic value: lowest page count and highest cost currently permissible by the market. Therefore: twenty pages for four dollars on a monthly release schedule. What I would like to see: 1. Every issue of the comic book presents a physical problem for the protagonist to solve. The problem is introduced and solved inside of the same issue. 2. Every issue gradually advances the emotional story-arc of the protagonist. This is the through line for the arc, rather than the physical conflicts. 2a. When I began to watch AMC's Mad Men, I was startled and shocked that the cigarette ad story was only contained inside of the first episode. The devastating hook that pulled me into the second episode wasn't the nominal topic but the unanticipated decision that our vantage point character makes at the first episode's conclusion. As a comic book lover who nonetheless cannot seem to read a series for very long, the rapid change in overt conflicts is necessary to hold my interest. After all, it is a month between issues. My current journey into superheroes (I read them as a kid then stopped in late high school) began with Bendis and Romita Jr.'s 2010 The Avengers # 1. It was fine for a novelty. As I went on it became harder to seriously engage with the story because it went on for six issues. That story could have been told by Stan and Jack inside of one, with room to spare for a backup short. xoxoxoxoxoxo Tom Spurgeon said on Twitter that: "I don't get upset by things like Torture Spider-Man b/c for me Spider-Man really is this specific thing that was published 1962-1975" That turned a spotlight on my own emotional reaction to Spider-Man comics being made today. The difference is that the Spider-Man story that I read was the six-part "Name of the Rose" story from Web of Spider-Man in 1990 or 1991. After that I felt completely contented having read all of the Spider-Man that I would ever need to. After that, the few Spider-Man comic books that I purchased in my teenage years were unsatisfying and often I did not fully read them. xoxoxoxoxoxo Finally, via Wikipedia, my favorite among Jesus Christ's teachings, and among the most misinterpreted. "TURN THE OTHER CHEEK." Take it away, Wikipedia: Literal interpretation A literal interpretation of the passages, in which the command refers specifically to a manual strike against the side of a person's face, can be supported by reference to historical and other factors.[2] At the time of Jesus, striking someone deemed to be of a lower class with the back of the hand was used to assert authority and dominance.[3] If the persecuted person "turned the other cheek," the discipliner was faced with a dilemma. The left hand was used for unclean purposes, so a back-hand strike on the opposite cheek would not be performed.[4] The other alternative would be a slap with the open hand as a challenge or to punch the person, but this was seen as a statement of equality. Thus, by turning the other cheek the persecuted was in effect demanding equality. By handing over one's cloak in addition to one's tunic, the debtor has essentially given the shirt off their back, a situation directly forbidden by Hebrew Law as stated in Deuteronomy 24: 10-13: When you make your neighbor a loan of any sort, you shall not enter his house to take his pledge. You shall remain outside, and the man to whom you make the loan shall bring the pledge out to you. If he is a poor man, you shall not sleep with his pledge. When the sun goes down you shall surely return the pledge to him, that he may sleep in his cloak and bless you; and it will be righteousness for you before the LORD your God. By giving the lender the cloak as well the debtor was reduced to nakedness. Public nudity was viewed as bringing shame on the viewer, not the naked, as evidenced in Genesis 9: 20-27: 20 And Noah began to be an husbandman, and he planted a vineyard: 21 And he drank of the wine, and was drunken; and he was uncovered within his tent. 22 And Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father, and told his two brethren without. 23 And Shem and Japheth took a garment, and laid it upon both their shoulders, and went backward, and covered the nakedness of their father; and their faces were backward, and they saw not their father’s nakedness. —Genesis 9:20-23 Authorized Version xoxoxoxoxoxo Fuck the police. Posted via LiveJournal app for iPhone. (Comment on this)
Saturday, June 2nd, 2012
2:33 pm	Step back from the keyboard. By Ayo Some days you wake up filled with the potential of the greatest of mankind and find that you're running on empty. All the tough guys insist that you've got to "power through" but we all know that they're just running their lips. This is one of those days and I've got nothing. Today it is a Saturday with good weather. This isn't a day to be scratching one's head, figuring out layouts, it's a day for stretching out in bed with your naked friend and watching all of the worst movies on your Netflix Instant Queue. This isn't a day for struggling with the hostilities of the comic book industry, it's a day for hitting the expressway north to have a picnic somewhere far, far from Bloomberg's soda size limits. Yesterday was a day for fighting idiots. Yesterday was filled with murderous drivers, anti-Jack Kirby savagery and of course muscle-aching nine-to-five drudgery. Yesterday was a day for being exploited by the constrictions of man, today should be a day for breakfast with someone you love, lunch with people you like and dinner that you can't quite afford but dammit, you earned it. In the real world the only difference between my yesterday and my today is that I don't work my day job on Saturdays. I don't magically get road trips, romance, or exhilarating social engagements just because it seems like a nice thing to have. So I look out into the world that I have available and see that it simply doesn't belong to me. I wish that people understood me better. I try to understand them. If people had any idea how terrifyingly boring my day job is--my days in general--perhaps people would understand my compulsive twitter talking. I have to have an open window to some sort of life beyond the hate-trap in which I work or I would literally fall asleep. Right there, boom: face down on my desk. When I leave the office, I have nothing to go home to. Nothing at all. There is nothing in my life except for the few times when I visit my friends. But they are all very busy. I wish I had additional friends to visit when the friends I presently have are busy with their art. Wishing something, it turns out, doesn't make it happen. People like to tell you that you need to just go out and do things on your own. It doesn't come naturally. When you are truly alone, the ideas of what to do don't necessarily occur to you. It helps, I find, to have a partner who will stimulate your imagination and help you to think of things to do. The ideas don't come to me as vibrantly as they did a few years ago when I was younger and more energetic. I am bored. People who insist that they have no problem taking themselves out have not lived isolated as I have. Being by oneself isn't the same as being alone. I have done my exploring as well. But the near-total solitude that I have lived in for years wears down the imagination and the will. A person needs external influences. A person should not be this alone for this long. People compliment me on my independent thought. Because I seem unafraid to form my own views on things. Try living with almost no friends and you'll find that independence comes naturally. One can't help it. Isolation doesn't kill people, it makes them think a lot. With no interference. Yesterday, a person who probably has friends told me that I need to "step back from the keyboard" because I called his blog an unethical cesspool. Funny because he thinks that people should accept whatever trash is thrown at them. If people don't like reading horrible filth, they shouldn't say "this is filth," because critical thought is indicative of being too deeply invested in ethical concerns. My heart breaks. Piece by piece. Critics are far weaker at taking criticism than any artist, author or corporation. It tears me to pieces. I'm sitting in a cafe as I write this piece. There are couples around me, writers typing on laptops, college students studying, a cheerful barista, and there's me: a horrible monster who can't be happy because I live inside my own head. I knew that the comic book business was awful before I got involved with it. But even then I had no idea of how destructive this artform is. I do not know that I would have wanted anything to do with comics. These cynical, hateful, awful people. I read an independent comic book the other day that bruised my love for the artform at a core level. It was a mediocre comic that somehow failed in its modest goals. But it succeeded in provoking me to rage and despair. For a moment I just wanted nothing to do with the artform. This comic hurt to read. The worst of all is that I couldn't even say anything about it. One cartoonist doesn't say bad things about another cartoonist's work. It "is not done." So to add insult to injury, I have to sit with the anguish of a comic so offensive and I am culturally forbidden to even discuss it. I hate comics. Posted via LiveJournal app for iPhone. (Comment on this)
Wednesday, May 30th, 2012
5:09 am	Last night my wristband broke... You know, I've been wearing this orange wristband continually for maybe three years. It's odd. I haven't dated in about three years. I dated a lot of girls in 2008 and then after the calendar changed, it was like magic, VOOM: no more smooches for me. It was quite difficult at first and I've struggled and tried and joined OKCupid and wrote and wrote and emailed and tried. I had awful anxiety when I met new ladies and then kicked rocks when I never heard from them again. The anxiety had been building for years prior. I had a famously bad living situation in 2007 and an even more famously worse living situation in 2008. My job situation was stable but bitterly hateful. It still is, in many ways. I got walked to the park at gunpoint. It must be some kind of privilege to have the time to select a last thought. If you ever need to select a last thought don't think about anyone who will make you lose your composure. Life decided to go on. Dating goes on. You almost didn't meet me. Anxiety increased to physically damaging levels. Developed shingles. I would absolutely wish shingles on my worst enemy. They would deserve it. Shingles is awesome, it can feel like a terrible ache, pain AND itch that runs internally. It's amazing. If you're my worst enemy, you deserve to get shingles. You'll live. Painfully. My wrist feels strange, unburdened by that orange bracelet. I have permanent scars from the shingles. I have a lump near my eye from an ingrown hair. I have a lot of comic books and can barely move around. Don't worry, I'm unburdening myself of those books too. Inch by sacred inch. Recently, I finally closed my OKCupid account as well. Nothing good has ever come from it. Having a dating site profile just allows me to go through the motions of improving my life without actually doing so. It's a magic bullet. Except the magic doesn't work. "OKCupid worked for me/my married friends met on it," et cetera and whatever. My old girlfriend Alex told me once that I was too weird for internet dating to work. Too unconventional. Too specific. Too unique. The irony didn't escape me: we met via Craig's List. Remember when people actually used Craig's List? Before it was all spambots and prostitutes? Back in the days when Julia Wertz even made an anthology of Craig's List ads? Those were the days. I'm too weird for internet dating to work. I'm too weird for internet dating not to work. I used to say that I have bad luck but now I don't know how I feel about the idea of talking about sex and romance in terms of "luck, victory, victimhood." In terms of my actual statistics, yes, I plainly have bad luck. I wish that there was a way to discuss this without sounding like a creep. Like an angry, entitled creep. I see men complaining about their romantic/sexual fortunes in ways that are awful and dehumanizing. This sort of led a (well justified) backlash against complaining men. But even acknowledging all of that, my life--the only life that I have--isn't any different, any better. I stopped trying. But what people say about "it happens if you just stop trying to make it happen" is of course a lie. My sex drive has dropped to just slightly above freezing. At some point after my last breakup (or dumping, really) my brain started to shut down. Close up shop. My brain wants to protect me and sexual anxiety was messing me up. So my mind surrendered. A girl I was hopelessly infatuated with years and years ago told me offhand "it doesn't happen for everybody." Now that I think of it, I may have completely emotionally regressed after emotionally failing at adulthood. My recent years have seen me return to reading superhero comics with a vengeance. It occurs to me just now that on some level my mind has been in a state of full retreat from maturity or what our culture sees as maturity and my grasping for the culture of my own youth is more than simple nostalgia. Or maybe this is what "nostalgia" is. Perhaps. I haven't lost any intelligence. I'm writing the best critical examinations that I've ever written right now. I've found more to say in recent years, focusing on superhero comics than I had to say about art comics in the years previous. My art output is stagnant. This is probably more a function of my overly cramped apartment and intense anger and anxiety about my job and life than the other factors. I'm sorry. Sometimes I wake up at 2:30 in the morning and all I can do is lay in bed and write about my sad and loathsome life. -Ayo2012xoxo. Posted via LiveJournal app for iPhone. (Comment on this)
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...Collapse ) (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...Collapse ) 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...Collapse ) (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...Collapse ) (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. (5 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...Collapse ) (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)