Drawing At The Coffee Shop

This is a link to a video of me penciling a page at a coffee shop. My friend Andrew was bored and so he decided to record me with his (at the time) brand new iphone. I'm working on a page for The Strongman story.

Coffee Shop Drawing

Art Show

Shay and I had our collaborative work up at The Gallery Alexa Rose Thursday December 3. We put up my pencils against his inks to show people a little bit of the process that goes into making a comic. In addition, it was an opportunity to showcase Shay's digital inking. Most people had no idea that he hadn't inked in a more conventional way. Also surprisingly enough, without dialog and the pages being in a non sequential order, a LOT of people were able to figure out what was going on in the comic i.e. FBI tracking a disillusioned former soldier. For more on the movie the comic is attached to, check out personofinterestmovie.com

The Top Knot Barbarian

First page of a story I'm working on with Shay for a zine out of Brooklyn. I went ahead and did the inks on this page for sng's.

A few of my pencils for the Person of Interest project

Inked pages by Shay Plummer over my pencils for a comic project attached to a local feature film called Person of Interest. http://www.personofinterestmovie.com/ For more sketches, check out my flickr

The stars lean down to kiss you,
And I lie awake I miss you.
Pour me a heavy dose of atmosphere.
'Cause I'll doze off safe and soundly,
But I'll miss your arms around me.
I'd send a postcard to you dear,
'Cause I wish you were here.

I watch the night turn light blue.
But it's not the same without you,
Because it takes two to whisper quietly,
The silence isn't so bad,
Till I look at my hands and feel sad,
'Cause the spaces between my fingers
Are right where yours fit perfectly.

I'll find repose in new ways,
Though I haven't slept in two days,
'Cause cold nostalgia chills me to the bone.
But drenched in Vanilla twilight,
I'll sit on the front porch all night,
Waist deep in thought because when I think of you.
I don't feel so alone.
I don't feel so alone.
I don't feel so alone.

As many times as I blink I'll think of you... tonight.
I'll think of you tonight.

When violet eyes get brighter,
And heavy wings grow lighter,
I'll taste the sky and feel alive again.
And I'll forget the world that I knew,
But I swear I won't forget you,
Oh if my voice could reach back through the past,
I'd whisper in your ear,
Oh darling I wish you were here.

Moderately happy alone, for the time that had been leading up,

To the moment when I decided to get creative with the lady.

Previously

While chair sitting stage smoking to the delight of friends and tricks,

I soft shoed around emotions I didn’t want about.

First time we creatively spent our time together though,

I listened to the beat of her heart, and I knew I had lost my own.

Sad for me, but happy for the lady...not sure how to reconcile this contradiction.

100 of 1000

When I started getting serious about comics in 2007, I was told by someone I respect and admire, that I would hate my first 1000 inked drawings, so I decided that not only was I going to set that as my first goal, I would document it on flickr.

As of 1 year and roughly ten months later, I finally hit 100. It took a lot longer than I expected just to get to what I considered my first mile marker. Of course, when I started this little project, I was working about 60 hours a week or more managing a Starbucks and totally exhausted before I even sat down to draw at home. Its now been almost a year since I've worked there and despite still working 40 hours a week, because it is 8-5, I'm not always exhausted and I know when it is that I can draw.

I'm hoping to do the next 100 within a year which I think is reasonable as I get better and faster. The next 12 months are going to be important. Things are getting too serious now to slow down or for me to be afraid. No glory without sacrifice, no beauty without danger.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/lazzyfair/3830323246/in/set-72157600324461148/

...

I loved you; even now I may confess,
Some embers of my love their fire retain,
But do not let it cause you more distress,
I do not want to sadden you again.
Hopeless and tonguetied, yet I loved you dearly
With pangs the jealous and the timid know;
So tenderly I loved you, so sincerely,
I pray God grant another love you so.

Alexander Pushkin

T Paine

"The harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly; it is dearness only that gives everything its value. I love the man that can smile in trouble, that can gather strength from distress and grow brave by reflection. 'Tis the business of little minds to shrink; but he whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves his conduct, will pursue his principles unto death."
Thomas Paine

The Seductive Lure of Socialism

Here I encounter the most popular fallacy of our times. It is not considered sufficient that the law should be just; it must be philanthropic. Nor is it sufficient that the law should guarantee to every citizen the free and inoffensive use of his faculties for physical, intellectual, and moral self-improvement. Instead, it is demanded that the law should directly extend welfare, education, and morality throughout the nation.

This is the seductive lure of socialism. And I repeat again: These two uses of the law are in direct contradiction to each other. We must choose between them. A citizen cannot at the same time be free and not free.

--Frederic Bastiat, French Economist, from The Law, published in 1850

Comic Con

It’s been 4 days since the 2009 San Diego Comic Con ended. 4 days, and I still feel like I’m reeling from shell shock. I’ve had a number of people asking me about it since I got back; what did I do, did I get to meet anyone famous, what was it like? It’s the latter that is hardest to answer. There is no way to describe what it is “like” to attend Comic Con, literally, nothing exists that one can compare it to, except another Comic Con. It is SO big, SO crowded and SO fucking insane that I could write a book about it and you’d still not know what its like. It’s like going to a family reunion and seeing your half retarded third cousins from West Virginia running around like chickens with their heads cut off, only instead of six or seven of them, there are 125,000. And no, I’m not exaggerating, the official count isn’t in yet, but the expected number from the promoter puts the number a little over that. Now imagine that number crammed into four blocks of space, throw some celebrities in there, a dash of stupid and you get a glimpse of what it was like. I was there for four and a half days, that’s including the preview night, and by the end of it I was finding it hard to talk to people. Don’t get me wrong, it is fun and exciting and all of that shit that you imagine it to be BUT, that is only a small portion. I’d say 40% of me was having fun, and the other 60% wanted to punch someone…mainly the manga kids camping out in the lobby with “Free Hug” signs.

What I learned was Comic Con is important for the things that happen because of Comic Con. It’s the only excuse that hundreds of very busy artists, writers, editors, etc can find the time to see each other and hang out. There are no bull pens anymore with dozens of artists working on pages into the night; no Stan Lee’s or Jack Kirby’s strong arming the medium. Through the power of the internet, these people are spread out in their own parts of the world and this is the perfect excuse to leave their caves for a few days and see some fans, and kick back from deadlines.

What is interesting about this is that you essentially have two events going on. I’m reminded of the scene in the Wizard of Oz when the old man is discovered as the wizard and tells the group “Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain.” You have the spectacle for the fans, Comic Con proper, and you then have the parties, the hotel bars and the dinners amongst the pros and the exhibitors. This is where the business is conducted, connections made, and cards passed about. Where the people who are the center of raving fans’ attention, can be amongst friends and free from harassment. And the crazy thing is that they are free. People who are mobbed in the halls at the convention, blend in and kick back at the Hyatt bar a block away, a bar that has a constant stream of fans walking by it, a steady supply of drinking pros in it, yet no overlap between the two at all.

My only explanation is that inside the walls of Comic Con, attendees feel as though they have been given carte blanche to behave like idiots, that this place is the ONE place they can be free to express themselves and their interests or to ask for help, and for some reason, that magic only extends as far as the front door to the convention center. They put the experience and the people on a pedestal so much so that they don’t even seem to see these people as normal humans, but idols to be worshiped and adored, looking on the exhibition hall as their Parthenon, sacrificing their common sense and dignity.

I straddled the fence between both of these worlds. Sitting out on the back terrace of the convention center, my preferred place to smoke, I was constantly inundated with doubt and confidence, sadness and excitement. I swung like a pendulum through the spectrum of emotions as my experiences cut a similar path across the con. I met as many people on the terrace smoking as I did in that Hyatt bar I mentioned. Risks were sometimes rewarded, but just as many were not. It was four and half days of my highest highs and lowest lows.

Based on my attempt to describe what it is “like” you might think that I didn’t have a good time, that I regret having gone. Nothing could be further from the truth. The truth is it might honestly have been one of the most pivotal moments in my life, the point from which the rest of my life stems. I have yet to leave it far enough in my past to truly know all that it meant, but I am left with an overwhelming sense of who I am and where I am going in my life.

I’ve seen the man behind the curtain, and there is no turning back for me. I’m not going back to San Diego until I have a reason other than to just simply go. I feel like the rest of my life is in front of me for the first time since I was a kid. I know what my dreams are and I have found that they are not of my reach.

Its Been A While

I've neglected my blog for almost four months apparently. Doesn't seem like its been that long, but I've also been pretty busy.

Comic Con 09 wrapped up this past Sunday, my first experience with that specatacle. All in all I had a lot of fun...it was mainly for the things happening because of Comic Con that it was fun BUT none the less, fun. I met a lot of cool people, made some contacts, got some critiques along with advice and was able to cut a rug on my birthday at a killer party.

I have the feeling that the next year or so is going to be busy. Already I have an illustration job for a university I did work for last year, only now, instead of one piece, its going to be three. I have to finish up the story I'm working on now which I hope to have published by fall of this year, and I already have 3 or 4 other stories floating about in my head. I'm excited though. Excited to work my ass off and hustle and talk and sell and grow.

So It Begins

I'm leaving for comic con today...there will be updates.

Cartoonist

What a difference a year can make. About this time in 08, I was working through my first story, Guns and Gold and havin’ a hell of a time with it. I had figured out the beats of the story and was writing most of the dialogue as I was drawing the thing and it showed. The story is less than cohesive and the drawing is sub par. It was a painful, tedious process, and by the end of it I wasn’t all that proud of the product, I was only proud of myself for having powered through it and not given up.

I learned several things from it. One, I need to have the script on lock down by the time I start drawing. Figuring this shit out as I go is a horrible idea that leads to frustration and less than superior work. I also realized that when the script is written like a screenplay, with shot descriptions, framing, etc, my penciling time is cut almost in half. It becomes more like telegraphing what I see in my head.

The most important thing that I learned though was that I was a cartoonist. I dabbled with terms and titles borrowed from friends and those I looked up to, but I could never call myself a cartoonist. I felt like it didn’t describe what I was doing and that I was above it somehow. The truth is, I wasn’t cartooning, and that is why I failed. Unconsciously I sought a style that was sharp and messy, when what was natural was smooth and simple. If art really is a selective recreation of reality, I was unable to objectively see how my mind wanted to recreate it. Like a boat fighting against the current, I got nowhere and found myself stagnant and frustrated.

Then I decided I was going to draw a fight scene one day, something I had never done before. I selected my combatants without much deliberation, settling on a giant robot and a circus strongman, the strongman being the most basic archetypal hero I could think of. For days I worked through thumbnails, trying to wrangle the shapes and movements I felt in my mind’s eye, until one night at a coffee shop I stumbled upon it. It was shapes, shapes and three-dimensional space. I started drawing like a mad man, working through poses and movements just nailing them. THIS WAS IT, I thought to myself. This was what I had been looking for. It felt right and looked right. Then I looked at it and I realized what had happened. Everything was stripped down to its bare essentials. My lines showed only the detail that was necessary and I was relying on shape to show movement and girth. They were cartoons. As blatant as they could be, I had drawn cartoons and that was what I was marveling at. 

This story is the result of that night; I am paying my respects to the creation that made believe I could be the creator, or more specifically, the cartoonist. 

Keep It Classy

So I was in bed the other day with a lady friend. We'd spent the evening talking philosophy while we sipped on wine and worked our way through her record collection. It wasn't until I had decided to leave that we ended up in her bed. I had known this girl for several months already, she worked at a coffee shop I frequented downtown. This was the first time we had spent any time together outside of her work, and it had taken a total of four hours to get her into bed, give or take.

Like I was saying though, we were in bed. I hadn't wasted any time dispensing with the clothes and we'd been rolling around for quite a while before she paused suddenly. With all sincerity, she looked me in the eye and said "Chris Hunt, you make it hard for a girl to stay classy".  

Greatest compliment I've ever recieved.

Stars of Stones and Perfect Pebbles

This is a story my friend Joey Connell wrote which I had the oppurtunity to illustrate. Enjoy.

 

            The folks of Silver City slept at a happy early hour. The moon, passing lightly in the sky, serenaded the town, the trees, and the cobblestone streets with white light. Trillions of titanium stars flickered bravely above a cold, bashful breeze. Far off beyond the bubbly-built mountain peaks the sun was rising, threatening to wash these stars away—made forgotten for another day. But there was one stubborn star that wanted not to be washed away. It fell from its perch in Horologium and raced across constellations to hide in the river of Silver City, striking it like an alabaster bullet and settling beneath its shimmering surface, lost amid a million silica-specks.

Then high above the town, some miles away, the town’s reservoir began swirling; then a waterspout, swirling backwards, lifted from the reservoir and drained its waters into the nighttime sky. The length of river beyond the dam waned to a trickle, as though the terrestrial faucet had been turned, and by dawn all water in and around Silver City was gone.

Some have heard of God in darker times flooding our ignoble earth, letting it pour, pour, pour for days and days and days to bury a world of ugly acts. But a spell to whisk our waters away? Who put such a thing to work? Perhaps it was the star, or someone wishing on the star, or perhaps it was someone resentful of the stars trickery. Perhaps it was a man named Judson, who lived in Silver City and frolicked at its reservoir as a boy. Or perhaps it was Judson’s mother Catherine, who was growing old and had never had anything perfect. Or perhaps, at last, it was Catherine’s husband Nicolai, who would give Catherine the world were it more perfect. But it wasn’t. Apricots. Those, if not perfect, were at least pristine. Every morning he fetched for Catherine an apricot. She hated their taste but loved their texture and spent time each morning caressing the delightful fruits.

Nicolai did not know that this day was different, that the waters had withdrawn and recovered things best left lost. The sun rose and Nicolai rose merrily with it; it wandered westward and Nicolai followed, concertina in tow.

He walked beneath eucalyptus trees from his home toward the park where the avenue emptied into a bustling scene: the weekend market. The sun basked the field in warmth. Watery blades of grass tickled Nicolai’s ankles, and he smelled their scent and the scents of marigolds and Easter lilies, and rich coffees, pecan pies, and pigs and chickens hanging sumptuously from wires, all released by the sun’s rays, all blended in a chilly breeze. He made hastily for the fruit stands where he bought his apricots.

There were five that day, firm and puny, and sold bundled. Pleased with their textures, he left the stand to return to the park’s outer edge, to find an open refuge near the riverbank, and practice his instrument. He walked just beyond a table of colored yarns and fake antiques before he was stopped by a puppet and its mistress: the puppet, a proboscis monkey in a suit; its mistress, a young woman in a white dress.

            “Kiss for a quarter,” said the monkey. Nicolai staggered back, abashed by the strange thing’s candor.

“Shame on you, Count Dashby,” rebuked its mistress. “On days like this affection should be free.”

“I’m sorry, my love. But we’re so hungry. I thought I might buy you a pastry.” The Count dropped its head in shame and with its sole operative arm covered its face. The woman nuzzled its neck and whispered something into its ear. “But we’re so hungry.”

“Stop it, you,” said Nicolai, slapping the puppet’s arm-rod from the woman’s hand. “Stop it. If you’re wanting to panhandle, have the sense to do it right.”

“This is not begging,” she said, “it’s theater.” She shook her pockets: a clanging of coins. “Most people play along and think the laugh’s worth a quarter.” She moved in close to Nicolai, whispered, “Sorry to bother, love,” and slid slowly past. But before wandering too far, Count Dashby kissed Nicolai on his wrinkly cheek and said, “I love you.”

“It’s cruel to make him do that,” Nicolai said to the woman. “He must hate you for it.”

But not another word was said by the woman in white.

            Nicolai took time to sort his thoughts—at his age so fragile—then made hastily for the river. Speckled along its shores were bystanders gazing into its depths, some pointing upstream, others to the sky, some climbing into it, others climbing out. The people were quiet; the river, too, was quiet. Nicolai walked on, nearly a quarter mile, past cattails and buddleia bushes, to a clearing. Here he found a wooden footbridge and, from there, gazed out over the river. All he found was the pebbly tract of an emptied riverbed.

He nearly worried. Nearly, but his brains were broken, their wires frayed with age. Instead, he went to survey. He set his concertina on the bridge and walked across to a subtle slope where he could wander into the wasteland.

His shins ached but he trudged along, nibbling one of the apricots. He came across an old soppy pair of denim jeans caught for decades beneath a boulder and rummaged through its pockets. Nothing save collected sediments. He knelt to wash away the dirt in a puddle. It was here he found a molten thing—a golden ring!—set with stones of green and indigo. He snatched it up and examined it close. It sparkled brilliantly: lustrous and divine like the embryonic cluster of stars and dust from which the cosmos was cast. He dropped it in his pocket.

            “To hell with you,” he said to the apricots, taking one last bite of that in his hand and discarding all the rest. He wiped a few meager drops of juice from his mouth and started back for the bridge. Every few yards he traced the ring’s outline with his thumb through the denim fabric. It was, he thought, the most perfect thing found on earth.

*    *     *

            Let’s briefly go back twenty years to Judson’s story. It was late May. The reservoir had been filled near the dam’s brim; daring townsfolk dived into its waters from the surrounding cliffs rising twenty, forty, frightening feet up; high schools were letting out, seniors awaiting only graduation before either fleeing the town or seeking work at the grain mill or coal mine. Judson was eighteen. Graduation was four days away. He started work at the mill the day after. His best friend, Dana, left for school a week later.

            It was late; the night was overcast, the clouds fractured, letting occasional glints of moonlight to seep through their charcoal silhouettes. Judson had been shooting pool in town with Dana and two girls from school. Dana made a joke about the shirt Judson was wearing, one Catherine bought him and hoped he liked, and so Judson left the pool hall saying he was going home to change. Instead he hiked up to the reservoir with a case of beer to be alone. He went to the bridge that spanned the narrowest portion of the reservoir. He climbed its trusses, a hundred feet up, and sat on the beams of the bridge’s substructure, just below the deck. Hidden behind spandrels, he could not see the sky or the docks or the cliffs—just the water and, for a few seconds every few minutes, crystalline reflections of the moon. His space was lit by a sliver of lamplight falling through the expansion joint above.

            Judson did hate his shirt. His mother bought it for him at a mall in Star City where she went for a bookcase. She asked him to wear it just to show he liked it, so he did.

Within two hours he had, he guessed, tossed nine cans of beer into the water below. He tossed a full can and spit after it. He watched it for a while, certain he heard it ping against the water. He leaned forward gleefully.

He saw the grid of trusses whirling below his feet. Then his beer cans, buoying a hundred feet below, lit up—little floating speckles. He laughed. A boat’s headlamp illuminated the water. He heard the boat’s motor and loud laughs and hollers. “Damn kids,” he said. He grabbed an unopened can and stepped out onto another beam, ready to pitch. But that beam, the collector of the night’s ceaseless spitting and spilt beer and condensation, refused to hold tight.

            He slipped and hit his head against the beam. A heavy clanging, like a vesper bell, filled the space beneath the bridge. He heard this and heard it grow distant as he descended. He fell and hit the surface and clutched at the water, desperate for a hold, inhaling it, hacking it up, his yells drowned out by the sputter of fluid—and all the while that awful clanging.

            At once it was dark and quiet. The boat struck Judson from behind; all air withdrew from his lungs, all light from his eyes; the propeller blades sliced his ankle then, farther up, cut through his chest; he sank, in shock, and breathed in water. He descended lightly into the murky depths, past fish suspended like clouds, past the reach of the moon’s beams, past the rocky walls of the reservoir’s tapering bottom. The deep current dragged him across the floor until he came to rest in a field of boulders.

            A fish drifted past. It heard the boat cut its motor. It heard panicked bodies diving into the water. It saw the bleak light of a spotlight searching the depths. Dreary and indifferent, the fish settled into Judson’s shirt and went to sleep.

*    *    *

            Catherine felt no sorrow, no remorse in the days and years after Judson’s death. Resentment she felt the night after his fall, knowing she’d raised him better than to get drunk and cause trouble; pride she felt at his posthumous graduation when she learned that his GPA was higher than she’d believed and warranted a special mention. She even leaned across her husband at the ceremony to tell a man sitting nearby, “That’s my son they’re talking about. I’m his mom.” The man nodded and she smiled sheepishly.

In the weeks following his death, she unpacked Judson’s things (he was to move closer to the mill soon after graduation) and remade his room. Some mornings, before breakfast, she went into Judson’s bathroom and wetted the washcloth near the sink; when she went in to clean after breakfast, she’d find it used and perhaps convince herself that she merely missed him getting up that morning.

            Later that year, on September 29^th—Michaelmas, the day of both Judson’s baptism and confirmation—she brought her priest, Father Reyes, to the reservoir. God, it seemed, was mourning that day. The world was austere, overcast and solemn, with tufts of chilly air moving through the town. The surrounding mountains were visible only a few hundred feet from their bases; above that they were veiled in mist. Timid little raindrops fell on occasion—one was felt maybe every other minute.

The marina was closed for the season. The two boarded the priest’s fishing boat and sailed toward the bridge, stopping where Catherine had stopped months earlier with the coroner who tried to find Judson’s body on radar but explained that her son was lost, that it was too dangerous to retrieve him, and they’d have to wait till he floated up on his own to have a burial.

            “A psalm, father?” she said. Father Reyes smiled and thumbed through his bible. She plunged her hand into the water and brought up a scoop, drank it and grimaced. Grit settled on her teeth and beneath her tongue, and she tasted in the water the diluted slime-coats of fish and a hint of something like rust. Her hand hurt in the icy air. She set it in her dress and clasped it between her legs. Father Reyes, stopping on the page where a raindrop pelted his bible, ran the course of Psalm 51.

            “Against you, you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight, so that you are proved right when you speak and justified when you judge.”

            Catherine glanced at the bridge. She saw the spot where the cooler was found; she traced the line of descent the coroner said Judson had taken and the path his body might have been dragged. Father Reyes continued his psalm without an audience, until he spoke a line that struck Catherine: “Let the bones you have crushed rejoice.”

            Let them rejoice. Let the son you have drowned find solace; let the woman you have battered find peace. There is no word for this: no word for the intrepid embrace of tough love, so horrid and base it seems like punishment but which we celebrate anyway. Catherine mumbled the line several times. Father Reyes finished his psalm. He closed his book and said a silent prayer and hummed the refrain of Allegri’s Miserere. Catherine plunged her hand into the water again and let it sit. She wanted to reach through the sooty depths and, one last time, grace her son’s face with her fingertips.

            “I wonder how far we fall,” said Catherine, “when we choose to fall.”

            “Hm?”

            “Judson, I mean. Would he have fallen further if he fell on purpose. Would his body have stopped here,”—she pulled her hand up and thrust it again into the water—“but his soul have fallen farther?”

            “That is an evil suspicion, Catherine, and it has overthrown your judgment. Nobody can fall that far. It is a divine mystery—aren’t we agreed?—that God is as near to those who keep him close as to those who wander away.”

            “They never did find him, you know. Not on the radar. Not with the divers, neither. There can be only two reasons for that. Perhaps he did not fall too far at all and God has already recovered him, risen him on up to Heaven. Or perhaps he fell deep—too deep even for the Lord’s grace to find him.”

            “I’m sure I don’t know.”

            Father Reyes abruptly ended this exchange and took a plastic bag filled with salt from his pocket. He took a handful, said something in Latin, and tossed it over Catherine, toward the bow. The wind whisked some from its path, pelting Catherine’s face and burning her eyes. She heard the rest fizzle as it dissolved in the water. Father Reyes took another handful, tossed it starboard; then another, port; and the final one behind him, over the motor, as far as he could. He prayed:

            “Preserve this place. God, do this before anything. Bless this woman. Burn her son. Burn his body, his vile body. That is lost. Let it be lost. It is best for lost things to be left lost. Let his soul find you. Her and you. That is good.”

*     *     *

            During this holy ritual Nicolai was forty miles out of town, driving north to Star City. By dusk he was at the lake fishing for moonfish. He thought it best to leave Catherine with Judson alone. He had arranged for Father Reyes to bless the reservoir; he had done enough.

            The lake’s face was black and glassy and a mile across, made apparent by the charming green glow of fireflies at the lakeshore. The fireflies were dwarfed by towering redwoods which in turn were dwarfed by towering mountains. A shack stood at the water’s edge near a dock. At the end of the dock was a hot air balloon, its dark blue envelope wired with little white lights to blend into the nighttime sky. Nicolai walked to the shack to rent the balloon and was soon drifting over the lake.

Moonfish are stubborn and reclusive things, and so moonfishing is a precarious sport. They would hide forever in the muddy depths of their lake were it not for something brilliant and beautiful to lure them to the surface: the moon. When the moon shone bright one could see just beneath the lake’s surface little blurry bursts of silvery light—hundreds of them!—floating all around the lake. A boat would spook these creatures away, so a hot air balloon is used instead.

            There was no wind that night. Nicolai’s pace was glacial. The balloon’s basket creaked beneath his feet and the propane cylinders tilted the vessel slightly, but these aside Nicolai felt safe and secure in his flight. He felt also melancholic—that rare sadness one nearly delights in.

This night was like a night many years earlier when Judson was three and Catherine was making an Easter wreath of forsythia branches and wooden plums and Nicolai was to go moonfishing. Catherine asked him to take Judson along, but he knew Judson was too excitable to be quiet. Nicolai instead left him at home to sulk inside the toybox in his room.

            Moonfishing takes two folks to make a catch, but Nicolai figured a way to make one alone. Making a catch requires a net, a jar of fireflies, and a stick with a glass bulb attached to its end. A firefly is put into the bulb and the bulb is hoisted down to hover lightly over the water. The moonfish gather beneath the glowing bulb, mesmerized by the spectacle. The net is lowered near the bulb. The bulb is then pulled abruptly upward, and one or more intrepid fish shoot up to catch it but are caught instead. Timing must be perfect, the air must be still, the balloon’s lights must blend seamlessly with the stars, and all aboard must be quiet. Judson could never be quiet. Catherine never offered or asked to come; she thought it detestable to entice the lonely creatures with trickery, to offer them an insect when what they wanted above all else was the moon.

            Nicolai lowered his bulb and waited for it to catch the fancy of the fish. As he waited his melancholy ate deeper. It was that night all those years ago when he asked Judson to stay home and Catherine gave him a look that tore into him; it was this night that he remembered the awful sincerity of it. When Nicolai asked Father Reyes to take Catherine alone to the reservoir and bless it, and when Father Reyes begged and cursed Nicolai to go with them, and when he told Nicolai that Catherine would never forgive him if he didn’t, Nicolai recalled Catherine’s awful stare, which explained the profane state that Nicolai’s love for Judson was and always would be in.

            “She made me feel disgusting. She stooped down hugging that boy and peered up at me over his shoulder. I’ve never felt so shameful in my life. I hurt Judson and I hurt Catherine all the same. The only woman I’ve ever wanted to make myself better for, and he made me ugly to her. I couldn’t ever forgive him for that.”

            Father Reyes quickly countered.

            “Know above all else, Nicolai, that your boy is the fruit of yours and Catherine’s love. Without him you’re nothing. If you bury him without reconciliation, you will be ugly to her forever.”

*    *    *

            Let’s return to the present and for now forget the sad notions of Judson’s story. Let’s remember what joyous sentiment swelled in the perfect ring that Nicolai held. So eager was he to get his discovery to Catherine that he’d forgotten his concertina on the bridge. He hurried, quick as he could with hurting shins and frail bones, to their home two miles away.  When he was a half-dozen houses away he heard her whistling. He followed the barrier of dogwoods that lined each yard, dragging his hands across their playful and springy foliage, until her whistling flowed through the bushes, and he stood opposite her.

            There was a hole in one of Catherine’s dogwoods, burrowed by a broken sprinkler that shot water in a stationary jet. Nicolai peered through it and saw Catherine’s plump, vein-laced legs lying in the grass, leading to her torso in the flowerbed.

            “Hullo,” he said, seizing the bush’s broadest branch and shaking it heartily. A shower of dead leaves fell onto Catherine.

            “I am going to shoot you,” she said.

            Nicolai grinned at her legs. Her hand shot up through the bush. She held a handful of rotted bulbs and shook them.

            “Hold these,” she said. “No wonder they weren’t growing. You neglected to water, then I overwatered.”

            Nicolai slapped the bulbs from her hand.

            “Who cares?” he said. “Hold this.” He took the ring from his pocket and pushed it into her palm. She clasped her pudgy fingers around it, dragged it down to eye-level. She then stood up, smiling broadly, dirt smeared across her cheeks, her chin, her flowery apron, and on her hands.

            “I think it’s lovely,” she said. “But it’s too much.”

            “It didn’t cost me a thing.”

            “Not what I meant, dear. Not at all. But that’s good. I meant I’m too old for junk like this.” She put the ring in her apron pocket; Nicolai grimaced, hurt and embarrassed by Catherine’s disinterest. “Where is your squeezebox?” she asked.

            “Ah, damn. Must have left it at the park. I never leave it there.”

            “I would have liked to hear it. Oh well. Have you brought apricots?”

            “I forgot those too. I mean, I bought them but left them elsewhere.”

            She laughed.

            “You’re not getting nothing right today.”

            “Guess not. I thought you’d have liked the ring more.”

            “It’s a lovely thing,” she said. “Lovely for what it is. But what it is is rather silly, don’t you think?”

“I guess so.”

“Wait here. I’m going to put your ring on the mantle right now.”

            “It’s your ring. But wait. It can wait.”

            Silence followed. Several minutes of it. Catherine thought of a better arrangement for hyacinths in the flowerbed, and maybe a fountain in the corner near the mailbox. Nicolai thought of his blunders that day and regretted tossing the apricots.

            “I’ll go buy some more,” he said at last.

            “Where did you get it?” she asked, inattentive to his offer.

“I found it.”

            Catherine considered this with a few sips of tea. She asked question about his story; he clarified what he could about the dried riverbed. She asked how far the damage went. Nicolai said he did not know.

            “I think,” she said listlessly, “I’ll put a gazebo in the yard, and a fountain inside it. On the corners I’ll have bird feeders and maybe daffodils lining the path running ‘round to it.” She turned and walked away and disappeared indoors. She came out again, purse dangling from her elbow. “I think we’ll take a walk.”

*    *    *

            “I think I’d like to” was the response Catherine gave Nicolai several decades ago when both were eight years old. He had asked her to be his square-dancing partner for the final night of the Spring Fair. She was the last choice of all the other boys, but was Nicolai’s first and only.

            He knew who she was before then but only vaguely. She was the girl the other children made fun of because she was pudgy and freckle-faced and bucktoothed. And she was often found alone with her face buried inside a rabbit hole at the far end of the playground.

            The day they met was a pristine day: warm and sunny with weather inviting of circuses. The clouds, clumped like balloons, sailed across the sky. Nicolai was squishing stinkbugs at the far end of the field, evoking squeals of delight from the other kids, when Catherine approached him with a fishing lure, offered it to him, then waddled awkwardly away once he accepted. He waited till the bell rang before chasing after her. He found her at the far end of the schoolyard where there was a clearing in the trees and shrubs. Her face was in the rabbit hole.

            “Who are you talking to?” he asked.

            “I—” she paused a moment. “I don’t know. But he wants to talk to you.” She got up and moved aside for Nicolai.

            “What? You’re lying.”

            “Talk to him.”

            “That’s stupid. Nobody’s down there.”

            Nicolai looked at the strange little girl at his feet. He suspected that whatever make-believe man was in the rabbit hole was Catherine’s only friend. He retrieved a piece of candy from his pocket and tossed it into the hole.

            “Do you go to church?” she asked. He nodded. “Do they talk about the Devil at your church?”

            “No,” he rejoined, “we’re Catholic. We only talk about ourselves.”

            “Oh. We talk of the Devil a lot, and of hell. You don’t meet the Devil in hell. You don’t meet no-one. That’s the point of it. You’re alone.”

            “Is it the Devil in that hole?”

            “Sometimes I hope. It don’t seem so lonely at recess then.”

            Far off at the school their teacher was calling their names. Nicolai took Catherine’s arm, pulled her up, and walked with her back to class. He told her he liked the lure, that it was the nicest he’d ever seen, and then he asked what they’d do if he invited her to the Spring Fair to be his dancing partner.

            “I guess I’d meet you at the dancehall looking real pretty. I ain’t spending the day with you. I got my own things to do, you see.”

            He looked forward smiling and told her he was glad to find a girl can keep her distance. All the other girls, he said, would want to get all nice-looking, then get him all nice-looking, then want spend all day at the fair together. He told her he wouldn’t do that, that he hates people telling him what to do, then asked Catherine if he looked like a good-for-nothing puppet. Catherine assured him he did not.

*    *    *

            They walked, and walked, for a while. Nicolai’s legs hurt awful. Catherine walked briskly, breathing heavy, offering intricate details of her landscaping plans. Once, near the elementary school, Nicolai asked where they were going even though he knew. She offered him a mint and no answer. “Stop here a minute,” she said later, near a fenced-off dirt lot. She tied her shoe; Nicolai clenched the fence links, arms outstretched, feeling crucified, and rested. “Let’s go,” she said, and they went on.

            It was late afternoon when they reached the marina. They departed the main road some miles back and emerged from a dirt path between two small hills. The sun floated behind them, smearing their shadows along the rocky and watery ground. The marina was in ruin. Boats were sunk, capsized, fallen upon each other, their masts interlocked, bent, broken. Floating docks laid scattered across the emptied canyon, splintered. The rest was nature: boulders, pebbles, organic debris, the sad, sad bodies of elk and fish, the black and moldy spires of century-old trees. Nicolai and Catherine walked to a loading ramp—a descending cement slab—and from there ventured into the reservoir.

            They walked through the ghostly landscape, through a familiar world made strange by water and water withdrawn. Neither noticed, but Nicolai was leaning on Catherine, hobbling awkwardly. They passed between the canyon walls, under the orange and purple canopy of heaven littered with white cloudy wisps, feeling forgotten where they stood. They happened upon a series of concrete squares outlined with warped and fractured wood. From some squares little soppy walls stuck out. Faint outlines of flattened earth ran between and along them. This was a lost town, settled once along the banks of the river and wiped out when the dam was built.

            “Some things are best left lost, you know,” Nicolai said. “I’m cold.”

            Catherine fetched some gloves, white and quaint, from her purse and gave them to Nicolai. He put them on his hands and his hands in his pockets. He kicked a stone—one of millions—then put his shoe in a pile of moss, shifting his weight onto it, smiling at the noises and the little insects crawling from it.

He looked up to see Catherine running away. He went after her. She stopped and whirled around, facing Nicolai, who reached her breathless, his face red from the pain in his legs. She was crying. From her lips passed sputtered words, incomprehensible; tones of apology and joy. She fixed Nicolai’s hair, straightened the collar of his flannel shirt, told him to stand, stand up-right, please. “Why?” he asked. “What is it?”

Then Nicolai saw him, like a stranger snuck up, and staggered back. Not a few yards from the grieving woman laid a person. Its skin was white and puffy in places all along its skeletal frame, tinged with hues of blue and spattered with wide pores; and its face—God, its face, vile and monstrous—was sunken, decayed, rotted. Its lips had been nibbled away into a despondent grin. What hair remained fell in colorless wisps across its forehead.

“It’s my baby,” Catherine said, rushing toward him. “It’s Jud!” She fell on him and buried her face in his lithe ribcage. His bones creaked, rejoiced, and the remnants of his organs shifted.

            One thing kept Nicolai from running; he collapsed, weeping, terrified, and crawled to a log to hide behind. He rubbed his legs and prayed for the water to come back, even if it took him, too. He regretted tossing the apricots; regretted letting Catherine know that their son might be waiting; regretted that the thing lying on the ground was once a person, a person he created and perhaps coerced

            Nicolai thought, thought, thought: shrapnel of thoughts everywhere. It was all nonsense. He was weeping when Catherine found him behind the log and sat beside him. She stroked his hair; her hands were shaking.

            “Go to your son. Tell him you love him.”

            Nicolai’s throat burned: sorrow and stomach acid.

            “I won’t,” he said, not more than a tremoring breath. “Don’t make me do that. You never made me feel like a dope. Don’t start now.”

            “But look at him,” she said. He climbed to his knees to peer over the log. Catherine walked back to Judson and sat beside him. “Look,” she said again, severely, “at him. Look how far he fell: not too far at all. He’s here, on earth, and it there aren’t many things it can mean.”

            He shook his head. Catherine stroked Judson’s face, chilly and wet. A spot of algae was forming on his cheek. She rubbed at it with her thumb. A bit of skin came off. She looked at her hand, and at his, and thought of Father Reyes decades earlier, and hummed the Miserere. She placed his skin in her mouth and let it sit on her tongue. A trickle of cold water crept down her throat.

            Some time passed. Catherine talked the entire time to Judson. Of what, Nicolai didn’t know. Her voice was both carried and fractured by the wind. Nicolai’s legs hurt less now. He poked the coarse and grainy ground with a stick. He was only waiting for Catherine to finish so he could say goodbye and leave Judson alone.

Daylight dripped from the sky. The world was losing color and growing dimmer. The stars were peering out from their heavenly veil. At last, when the moon cast more light than the sun, she returned to Nicolai.

“Answer me honest, and speak soft if you don’t want Judson to hear. Did you love him?”

“I don’t know. I could say I did, and I know that’s what you want to hear, but that isn’t what’ll bring peace. It won’t make sense of this.”

“But I need to know!”

She will have to wait. Nicolai does not know the answer tonight, the night it would matter most. In a few years when Catherine and Nicolai are holding hands beneath a shower of shooting stars, Nicolai will say to her how love seems an open-ended riddle yet to be solved and he needs only one more piece for it to make sense. He will say how perfect she is and how he could only ever love what is perfect. And she will laugh and say how silly he speaks. She will say how perfectly imperfect people are and how they grow more perfect the more imperfect they become. This is the final piece; this is what collapses a wall inside Nicolai’s heart; this is what prompts him a few years later to admit at last that he loved Judson, loved every sublime and monstrous emotion Judson ever evoked. And at last—at last!—Catherine’s suspicions will be quelled and she will know how far Judson fell. Not too far at all.

But she will have to wait. Tonight, the most important night, the crushed bones stay silent.

 “I don’t want him out here,” said Catherine, “all exposed like this. I want him in the ground. I think I’ll move him. Will you help me dig? That’s all I need.”

And he did. Catherine went back to the lost little town and found half a wagon wheel. Nicolai broke a spoke from it and used it to pry the largest rocks from the ground. They worked all night, pebble by pebble and stone by stone, until a hole was made big enough to fit Judson’s body. Nicolai started back for the ramp as Catherine said farewell and dragged her son home. Nicolai looked up as he walked, into the starry night, listening to the body sliding across rocks, and wondered what Judson’s eyes eternally peering would see if not a final image of Catherine kissing his forehead. He would see stars, then stones, then stars of stones.

Do you ever look in the mirror and wonder who that person is looking back at you? 

This is one of the pages I'll be putting up at the gallery show next week. I can't help but wonder how the fine art fans are going to respond to comic book pages.

I had to write an artist's statement for the upcoming gallery show I'm apart of, an exercise I wasn't too terribly excited about. Here's what I came up with.

"The harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly; it is dearness only that gives everything its value. I love the man that can smile in trouble, that can gather strength from distress and grow brave by reflection. 'Tis the business of little minds to shrink; but he whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves his conduct, will pursue his principles unto death."

-Thomas Paine

Comics live in a bizarre landscape suspended between art and literature. Since they often have a mass appeal and are mass produced, they are classified as low or popular culture products in America. To many, they are only stories of superheroes, monsters, and adventure; escapist literature that serves no purpose greater than distraction. 

Comics are far more than that though. Outside the US, much of the world carries a high opinion of the medium. In France for instance, they are considered the 9th Art. Comics can be easily disseminated and understood; they have the unique opportunity to address a wide array of topics such as politics, philosophy, or even social interaction, something not unique only to comics admittedly, though comics have the ability to be put in people’s hands. These themes are addressed by thousands of artists around the world, from various backgrounds. What’s amazing about that is that these stories remain relevant outside language or cultural barriers, for these things are transcended by the medium in which they all work. Comics speak a visual language, one based on intuition and experience. A skilled cartoonist is like a magician; both have a unique understanding of people and their habits and seek to exploit that knowledge in an effort to create a seamless, masterful and immersive illusion. The written narrative in many cases is the icing on the cake. The layouts, the panels, even the placement of the word bubbles are more important than the words themselves in some cases.

Comics like any art, is a reflection of its creator, a selective re-creation of reality based on what is important to that person. For my work, the hero is central to my vision. I prefer archetypes, instantly known and accessible characters and concepts that have served as mankind’s moral compass for thousands of years. The kinds of stories and characters that give strength to the viewer, that reinforce the best in us, those are the stories I want to draw, more over, these are the stories I want to share. 

I probably should have just said I draw comics because of a deep rooted oedipus complex, brought on by my Teddy Ruxbin that didn't function properly. 

Gallery

So its official, I'm going to be in the Gallery Alexa Rose come the First Thursday of April. The show's called "Everything". 

280 N. 8th St., Suite 118, Idaho Building, Boise, ID, 83704

The Strongman

I love a happy accident.

I'm working on a portfolio for my comic book work, and in the course of brainstorming character designs for a straight forward fight, I came up with a pretty grand idea for a story. I haven't finished the dialogue yet, but I have most of the main beats worked out for the short story. I think I can squeeze the whole thing into 20 pages or so. VERY excited.

The Destroyer

It was a hard day yesterday for Chris the comic book artist. I wanted to destroy every page, panel and piece I had ever created I was so disappointed and frustrated.

This happens every once in a while. I’ll be cruising a long feelin’ pretty good about the comic when suddenly I hit a bump. It usually comes in the form of a panel that I can’t get right, in fact its usually a very simple panel which makes me even more pissed. I’ll erase and erase and no matter what I do I won’t get it right. Yesterday was just a basic profile of a character. I tried it three different ways, with variations on each; I just couldn’t get it. At this point I think I’m just going to stick with the angle I used for the two previous panels with the same character, just a pretty basic close up from the front.

That’s the thing right there that bothers me. I can’t do anything cool. I try to do a basic profile, and then I end up having to do and even more basic close up. No cool battles, no dynamic poses, just two people talking. Which is what I wrote it to be, but I guess I’m having my doubts. I think the dialogue is funny, but does it come through in the drawings? Is it entertaining but also concise? It’s so muddled and grey, its hard to understand why I’m doing it half of the time. I hate, HATE doing things when I’m not 100% perfect at something, so it is absolute torture to put myself through this growth. Its necessary to get better, but I see why so many people give up. It borders on masochism at times for me; I’ll know how much of a challenge a particular page or panel is going to pose and yet I move on with it anyways, I have to. It’s the only way that my expectations will ever come close to equaling skills.