Archive for February, 2010
8 items.
God makes a triumphant return, and, true to form he is totally gross and a little surprising.
There are times when I write the strip and I desperately want to come up with something for a particular character, god, or mythology, but it just doesn’t work. Lately, I’ve craved writing more Cat-God strips. The sheer ridiculousness of his replies to K’s philosophical questions are fun and they were the basis for this strip ever starting in the first place. It’s good to have written something new with him in it.
The fun thing about God (both in the strip and in life) is that his (or her or its) very nature stresses the concepts our brains hold dear. Finite reality is not something that can contain him (or her or it) and rules of social niceties do not phase him (or her or it). I think we (as a species) have sort of moved away from the idea of God as the man in the sky with the big white beard and have started to believe in his (or hers or its) existence as more of an abstract. Plenty of people don’t subscribe to that set of beliefs but even they are aware of the concept and I think this applies to them as well.
Personally, I always thought it’d be great if God weren’t subject to our rules but still acted and thought like us but was just a bit more rude and ridiculous. Hence his behavior in every strip he has been in thus far.
It’s like, yeah he could just tell Lil K the answers but that wouldn’t be fun. He’d rather give us some bullshit reply, gross us out, and watch us writhe, laughing the whole time.
You’ve got to be able to laugh at yourself, y’know? If God does exist, that might be his greatest gift to us. Humor in the face of adversity (or just life in general).
You’ll notice I’ve put up some space for Project Wonderful ads. I don’t really like advertising, especially since I feel like it ruins the continuity of my design, but I need some money to start paying for merchandise and PW is a great service. I also put the donation button back in. Hopefully these aren’t too intrusive…
Oh and here is yet another Thursday sketchblog update for your perusal.
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You know, the more things change, the more they stay the same. For thousands of years, I imagine there has been a rich heritage of lay people doing blue collar jobs and occasionally screwing things up only to try some ridiculous solution so they get off easy. I’m looking at you, people who built my mom’s sorry excuse for a foundation to her house!
This is the first Egyptian Mythology comic! Everyone celebrate! Okay, now stop celebrating. Continue reading.
Egyptian Mythology is pretty complicated and not something I feel as well-versed with as say…Norse myths, but they were my introduction into the world of folklore and ancient religions so they hold a special place in my heart. I remember reading about the pharaohs, pyramids, and burial rites of Ancient Egypt (to say nothing of the slavery that drove it all) and feeling pretty bewildered by the strange half-animal deities that peopled their rich mythos. One of the lesser known deities is Khepri, a scarab that rolls the sun across the sky each day, heating the earth (or in our case rolls poor baby Horus across the sky).
Many scarab beetles are also dung beetles (but not all!) and the ancient Egyptians supposedly observed these small creatures’ habits with great interest. Seeing tiny beetles born from dead materials was fascinating to them and they quickly became a widely recognized symbol of rebirth. Khepri was an early deity, worshiped simply as a beetle for a great deal of time though there are some later depictions of him as a man with the head of an entire scarab. It’s kind of weird looking.
Anyway, I posted on the facebook page to let everyone know shirts will probably be ordered tomorrow. They are going to cost 19 dollars which includes free shipping if you’re in the US. They will be on American Apparel t-shirt stock and professionally printed (not that shoddy cafe-press junk!). Orders outside the US, I believe will cost an extra dollar to ship. I’m also working on getting some buttons printed to help cover the cost of our trip to the Small Press Expo this year in September!
That’s right, William and I are going to SPX! Wooo! How exciting!
Captain Jean-Luc Picard didn’t have to put with a lot of things. His crew knew that if they gave him any problems, they would be ejected into space.
Personally, I love First-Mate Owl and Sailor K. It’s hard to judge sometimes, what comics other people will find funny. I tend to just write things that make me laugh and owls always work for me. I’m a bit enamored with doing pretty artwork as well, so these ocean comics are fun.
Here are some fun facts about owls:
1. Owls represents wisdom in many cultures across the globe and throughout history.
2. The patron god of owls (among other things) in Greek Mythology is Athena
3. Owls make terrible sailing companions.
4. Owls will eat the teeth right out of your head and fly away. They don’t even care.
Two of those are true. It’s up to you to figure out which two.
This sort of harks back to the totem animal comic, but I’ve always loved symbols in art and stories. Owls are one of those things that seem to be viewed primarily as beneficial creatures, unlike say…snakes. Snakes in the Christian world are viewed as evil incarnate whereas they are viewed in a wholly different light by Native American tribes. Of course, there are some small pockets of owl hatred in the world, Russia for instance, has culturally viewed owls as bringers of death and disaster. The Apache saw owls as a terrifying beast to be feared above all others. We here in the west grew up with the image of wise old owls and owls that warned us to stop polluting or to eat tootsie pops.
It’s hard to imagine owls as being terrifying when you’ve grown up with that sort of imagery.
Oh and here are some more sketches for you to look through if you so desire. Working on some life drawing, portraiture, and character design still.
This is a ridiculous thing that just came to mind after watching some horrible movie last week. It featured dinosaurs and a warehouse with lots of boxes as well as robots. It was actually pretty funny even though it wasn’t trying to be.
I would write more but I have been terribly ill all weekend and nothing is really coming to mind. I am pleased I at least got the strip ready for you!
Back in the day, you know, them ancient times, the saying went, “Love is blind.” I guess to fall in love with a duck, that statement would have to be true.
In our celebrity-crazed, get-thin-or-die-trying, everyone-has-to-be-impossibly-photoshopped-to-be-beautiful culture this rule doesn’t always apply. There are plenty of people out there that go for looks alone and you can rest assured they will be most unhappy with how that works out.
In ancient Greece, the god of love and son of Aphrodite known as Eros was typically depicted as a young man equipped with arrows, bow, and blindfold. The Greeks took a lot of those interesting folk sayings and made them apply literally to their gods. Eros took part in a great many stories in Greek literature, and in some ways, he is the most powerful deity of the Pantheon though it is never stated directly. Throughout Greek mythology there are hints that not even the Gods can withstand the effect of Eros’s arrows. Zeus gets into quite a bit of trouble in many many stories due to his lustful ways and Eros is often painted as being directly responsible.
It is interesting to note that Eros has his own love story, that of his love for Psyche. In the tale (which is best told by a Roman, Apuleius) Eros nearly loses in his own bid for love but manages to salvage it in the very end.
There’s your Valentine’s Day mythology! Enjoy it!
Thanks to my brother for his help on this one!
Oh and here are some sketches I did the last few days.
There are people in this world that can be incredibly depressing when they want to be. Depressing enough to bring down Death himself.
What are they even doing on that train? I wonder. It can’t be anything good.
It’s been a while since we last saw Death in the strip. He’s being considerably less menacing and he is (I’d like to believe) much better drawn. Being a comic about mythology and monsters (for the most part) we see all sorts of characters coming in and out of the strip. Its hard, sometimes, because a few are personal favourites (damnit, Odin and Satan!) but the jokes don’t always work out. I just have to write them as they come along. Maybe we’ll see some of those guys again soon.
In other news, the site is almost done. We now have a full archive up to browse at your leisure. I’m trying to figure out what to do with the sidebars now. I thought about project wonderful ads, but they’re so ugly. Quite the conundrum.
Maurice Sendak had this idea that everyone (children especially) had a wild side, aching to get out. I’m not saying he’s right or wrong, but every time I watch the Discovery Channel and watch a lion tearing into a gazelle, I feel a hunger.
There was a movie adaptation of Where The Wild Things Are, recently. It came out the day after my birthday and I wanted to see it but I never did. I think I was a bit scared that the movie would be ridiculous as they so often are. When I was a kid, my dad read me the book and I liked it a lot but I never believed those Things (with a capital T) were particularly Wild (with a capital W, no less). Even when I was 3 or 4, I knew when people were trying to pull one over on me.
The truth is, everyone is a bit wild on the inside. There is something clamoring to get out of us that we just can’t let out in modern society. We’re all so bottled up and tightly controlled. I guess that’s okay, but we need to be able to let things out somehow. For myself and for Max, the main character of Sendak’s story, the imagination was a great way to escape anger and frustration, turning that negativity into something beautiful and interesting.
Maybe The Wild Things hit me in some special way when I was a child. Maybe it made an impression I can’t quite shake. As silly as it is, I think Maurice Sendak made a good point about that wild side as well as our need to cope with it, in just a few short pages.
That’s the best part about stories. Even if you don’t know it, they can make an impression, change the way you look at things. Someday maybe I can do that for people too.
Poor Lil K, left with a rather ridiculous looking slug as a spirit guide. What a slug is supposed to teach you about yourself and your spiritual path, I have no idea. Exercise caution around salt? That’s all I’ve got.
The role of the noble shaman, once respected, revered, and necessary in cultures all across the globe, has been relegated to the realm of hocus pocus, witchcraft, and at best, a weird sort of new-age revivalism. Shamanism was once practiced by almost every group of people at some point in their history, albeit in varying forms. Its interesting to consider that common spiritual root we all share. Shaman were storytellers, medicine men (or women), and spiritual protectors. They were responsible for the mental and emotional well being of their people; kind of a big deal. Nowadays, its hard to find an equivalent source of spiritual guidance. Priests don’t really fit the bill, nor do doctors or psychologists. The reality is that the shaman was, typically, all of these things.
I’ve always loved looking into the shamanic traditions of various cultures. That natural, in-tune-with-the-earth vibe that runs through them all has always resonated pretty strongly for me.
I did hourly comics today alongside catching up on schoolwork, going to class, and doing the strip! Its ridiculous and hard to read in places but you can check it out here, if you’d like.
T-Shirt design is here. If you like the look of it and if you’d be interested in purchasing one for 15-16 dollars. Please email me (k@10km.org) so I can get a good estimate of how many shirts to buy. We will be ordering them this week!
If you missed last friday’s replacement strip (leviathan is no more) click here.
And finally, there are going to be some changes to the website. Not major ones, just some subtle retuning to make the site more streamlined and such. You can probably expect some weirdness going on in the middle of the week.