Sometimes the things we’re looking for are right under our noses. Or on the sound crew for the popular monster hunting show we happen to host. I’m sure you know how that goes.

Oh look, I drew Josh Gates of Destination Truth fame! If you follow me on Twitter you’ve probably figured out that I’m a fan of the show. Despite the fact that they rarely find anything definitive, Josh Gates and company are extremely entertaining. If you like monster/ghost shows, it’s definitely the best one out there. I’m going to tell him I drew him. Maybe he’ll like it and we’ll become friends.

I bet he’s best buds with Sasquatch and just isn’t telling anyone.

Enough of my gushing.

It’s been a while since we saw Sasquatch in a strip! Jeez! Sometimes I just want to draw nothing but Lil K and Sass but I like mixing it up and sometimes ideas for them just don’t pan out. Ah well.

Sasquatch is one of those crazy folk tales that just won’t seem to go away no matter how hard biologists seem to plead. The idea that a gigantic 8 foot monster ape-man would be traipsing about North American forests (and just about everywhere there’s wilderness these days) seems to set most of them foaming at the mouth. As for me, I’m not sure you can discredit the stories entirely, but it seems much more likely that what people are seeing are misidentified bears. They’re the right shape, inhabit all the right areas, and often stand up on their hind legs for whatever reason. Does it account for every sighting and foot print? Probably not, but it’s much more likely.

Whenever I hear about Bigfoots (Bigfeet?) or Yetis or any of their kin, I wonder what else it might be that drives people toward their interest in these creatures. Is it some kind of cultural memory that has persisted for tens of thousands of years? Did we once share space with creatures similar to these beasts or is it something more complicated? Do they, like most of folklore and mythology, represent something we are afraid to confront about ourselves? It’s an interesting question and a valid one, I think.

Whatever the explanation behind the noble Sasquatch, it will always remain a fascinating concept. The stories of ape men have been around for a long time from the forests of North America to the mountains of Nepal. No other cryptid enjoys as much popularity as the Bigfoot and even if you don’t believe in its existence, you have to respect the staying power of the myth.

Ah, the incubus, a delightful monstrosity from simpler times responsible for all sorts of sexy night time mischief. The demon, it was said, would visit a sleeping woman and conduct sexual activities with them in an effort to father a child, as in some of the legends of Merlin. The female version of this creature, the succubus, would do the same with men so as to bear a demonic child. There are some versions of these entities that would have us believe that they are actually gender neutral and can assume the shape of a woman to accept the seed of man, and then become a man to deliver the now tainted child to a woman. Weirdly complicated, I know.

Incubi and Succubi have a long history in mythology and demonic lore, only later being co opted by the Catholic Church. The incubi of Mesopotamia were originally storm demons with a penchant for attempting sexual acts with people that slept near their place of residence. The demons would attempt to mate with humans, creating strange ghostly children that they would raise. Why? I’m not entirely sure, it’s difficult to find information about this particular bit of their history. Later, in ancient Greece, many individuals practiced what is known as incubation. Descending into pits or holes, people wishing to receive prophecy through their dreams, with the guidance of a priest, would sleep in hopes of receiving the spirit of prophecy. The spirit, or incubus, would hopefully visit and impart wisdom onto the dreamer.

It wasn’t until early in Christian history when the debate over night demons began and our demonic pals took the shape we know today. St. Augustine discussed them, mentioning the frequency and number of purported attacks as evidence that something was going on. Thomas Aquinas, many hundreds of years later, was responsible for the idea of the shape shifting gender-neutral demon. The whole point of the process, in his mind, was to spread chaos through the children that would surely be touched by evil. These children, though born by women, were thought to possess strange powers and witchcraft.

The strange part of all of this is that there are hundreds, maybe thousands, of similar monsters in various cultures. Monsters that sit atop the sleeper and harass them or that sexually assault individuals in the night. We’re talking about cultures that had very little contact with one another all coming up with the same exact idea or something close to it. So what’s the deal? It would appear that the people being attacked by demons in the night were most likely suffering from sleep paralysis, a rather unusual condition that is more prevalent than most people think. You see, when you dream, your body goes into a mild state of paralysis so that you won’t hurt yourself thrashing about in the night while you see all those amazing things in your head. Occasionally, someone wakes up a bit while they’re in a deep sleep and dreaming. They’ll open their eyes and see something terrifying, maybe something they were dreaming about, and they can’t move! Terror sets in and when you panic it only gets worse. Eventually you fall back asleep or you wake up completely and, while some people brush it off and look for the logical explanation, others…take it in a different direction.

Personally, I’ve never suffered from sleep paralysis but I know a bunch of people that have and they’ve said it feels incredibly real. Nine times out of ten they suffer from nightmares, particularly nightmares where they see and feel someone next to them or on top of them, holding them down. Pretty scary.

Meanwhile, the demons that inhabited our imaginations that were responsible for these problems are out of work, I’d imagine. It must be hard to find a good woman so what’s an incubus to do? Why not try your luck on a dating show?

After all, women love a bad boy.

I don’t know if there’s just something incredibly spooky about an all knowing, all powerful, always present force that doesn’t do much except hold reality together, or if it’s just the campfire setting. Either way, I am terrified.

Brahman is…complicated. Sometimes misunderstood as a God much like the ever watchful Christian God, Brahman is really something else entirely. As in other religions, there is a more technical and theoretical concept behind this strange force that pervades all of existence that I’m not sure the average believer is acquainted with (I’ve never had the chance to speak to native believers, regretably). I’ve heard it referenced in different books as a kind of god akin to the many others that are recognized in Hinduism and I’ve also heard it described as Lil K describes it in the strip: a kind of force that is both being and non-being, that gives structure and form to the universe around us, and that is a part of everything we see and experience. That’s a pretty complicated idea in a religion full of complicated ideas.

Really, it only takes that single concept of Brahman to really get your head spinning. How does one recognize a force that is and, simultaneously, is not? What does a force with no real direction of its own somehow maintain reality from without while concurrently holding it up from within? There are a host of seemingly implausible and inexplicable ideas surrounding just this one concept, never mind the sizable population of Gods and spirits that abound in Hinduism. Did I mention all of those Gods are meant to simply represent different paths to the same goal? That each of them are all facets of the same force?

And just what is the goal of all this?

Life is an attempt to recognize that one is not actually separate from one’s surroundings or that one’s surroundings are even necessarily real. If you can recognize that you are, in fact, Brahman (and this would only happen after many lives and reincarnations) then you can be free from the suffering of eternal reincarnation.

As I said above, I’m not sure how much the native believers of Hinduism adhere to these concepts. One of my dreams would be to continue doing this comic while I travel and talk to people about their beliefs and folklore so I could remedy that problem. Maybe someday that will happen. I know that Christianity, Judaism, and other religions more prevalent in my area are more complicated than most people give them credit for but it’s hard to see that when the average Joe boils it down to black and white.

I guess we’re all guilty of that sometimes. When you live a busy life and just want to hold on to your beliefs, it can be tough to parse out concepts like Brahman or a God that isn’t like us at all.

But if we could give these things a bit more thought, maybe we could make the effort to give other things some more thought as well. Maybe Hinduism has it more right than we know. Maybe we’re all just treading different paths toward the same goal.

After all, it can be hard to tell if other people are walking beside you when you’ve got blinders on.

People always say you should follow your heart when they talk about relationships. President Bush taught me that I should follow my gut. I guess following your liver is another option.

The heart as the seat of the soul or an organ of power has long persisted throughout humanity. While other organs (the liver for instance) were considered important in Ancient Egypt, the heart took a place of prominence. The Ancient Egyptians discovered, pretty early on in their culture, that the heart was responsible for the pulse. No pulse meant someone was dead and it was a short leap to deciding that when the heart failed, the soul failed and all knowledge fled the corpse. The liver, intestines, and other giblets were placed reverently inside of canopic jars for the deceased, but the heart stayed with the corpse, to be weighed by Anubis (later replaced by Osiris) against the feather of Ma’at. Having a sin free heart in Ancient Egypt meant passage to the afterlife, but a heart weighing more than the feather was fed to a ravenous beast, destroying the deceased’s soul entirely. Needless to say, the importance of the afterlife in Egyptian culture weighed heavy on the living and pushed them to lead a proper life lest they be consumed.

The thought of being spiritually devoured is terrifying. The thought of devouring spirits, on the other hand…is making me kind of hungry.

The Egyptian concept of the afterlife was a strange one, for sure. Living on the Nile was about the sweetest thing you could ask for in North Africa and it’s clear from the mythology that many Egyptians didn’t want to part with it. Their afterlife reflects the lives they held dear. With precious treasures, and sometimes even living animals and humans (though this was done away with later in favor of clay representations) being buried with important members of society, the reflection of the living world in the afterlife is clearly a key concept. While it wasn’t an amazing life for everyone (there were slaves and lower class citizens) the afterlife seems to have been important to everyone.

Complicated mythology surrounds the afterlife of the Ancient Egyptians. Gods came and went as protectors of the dead and techniques for embalming and mummifying the dead improved and changed. The importance of the afterlife, however, never really changed throughout the long reign of the Ancient Egyptian people. Consider that because of their meticulous cultural methods and emphasis on the afterlife, they’ve become one of the best understood cultures of the Ancient world. One could argue that they’ve attained a kind of cultural afterlife, living for, I’m sure, ages to come in human memory.

Let’s take this one step at a time. Am I implying that the Judeo-Christian God is frivolous? Yes. Am I implying that he is so frivolous that he would sacrifice his only son just so he could get his hands on some prime holiday real estate? You can bet your ass I am.

Ever noticed that with the New Testament comes a more loving and peaceful God? It’s because he finally had some vacation time.

I wonder if God has ever been on a Caribbean Cruise…

People always be talkin’ about how Christian holidays really aren’t Christian holidays. Looking at the historical record, that is pretty apparent. We have no real information on when Jesus was born though some scholars think it was probably in the Spring or in September. Nearly all of them agree that it was not December 25th. There was a long history of celebrations on the 25th before Christianity arrived on the scene. The Babylonians were known to party hardy, the Romans celebrated Saturnalia, and the Pagans of Northern Europe celebrated Yule. To get non-believers to convert to Christianity, the Christian leadership decided to adopt these times to celebrate various holidays with a more Christian spin. Some of them came about pretty early (the celebration of Jesus’s birth in December started around 350 with Pope Julius I) and others were added later.

This is pretty common knowledge at this point.

One of the interesting things to note about this is that the Christian God would almost certainly not have been cool with all this. One of the primary traits this God possesses is Jealousy (with a capital J). He states, “You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God…” and later continues, “Thou shalt have no other gods before Me.” Celebrating the holidays (for all intents and purposes) of Pagan deities seems a bit contradictory to that message. While you may not be explicitly worshiping those particular deities, it is, at the very least, a bit strange to be celebrating their holidays. This is especially true seeing as the Jewish people (the roots of Christianity) had their own holidays specifically for their deity that Christians could have observed as well.

Regardless, the celebrations and rituals many people observe today are rooted in more history than they realize. That’s pretty cool when you think about it.

Let’s not worry about the weird contradictions that can sometimes bring up.

In other news, I saw Scott Pilgrim VS the World and found it strangely entertaining. It’s cool to see a comic artist with an interesting idea finally see some main stream success. I recommend going to check it out before it leaves theaters, it’s definitely one of those films you want to see on a big screen. And if you haven’t already, read the comic.

Also, I’m going to be at the Small Press Expo with William on September 11th and 12th! It will be taking place at the Bethesday North Marriot Hotel & Conference Center in Maryland. If you’re going to be in the area, stop by our table and say hello and I will give you a high five!

This comic is a true story, though an abbreviated one. When I was a wee lad I jumped in a puddle during a rain storm and fell into an aquatic world of magic and mystery. The mer-people that inhabited the strange underworld I found myself in needed my assistance in slaying a particularly ornery sludge monster that threatened their homes and livelihoods. I wondered what a nine year old boy could do that fully grown merfolk couldn’t, but, wrapped up in the majesty of it all I resolved to try my best. It was about this time that I drowned, having forgotten that I was under the water.

After drowning, I woke up from the fever dream I was having. A few days later, the rather nasty disease boiling my brain away abated and I went on to live a healthy and semi-productive life into my 20′s.

True story.

Imagination is a strange and powerful thing. When you actively utilize your imagination, everything has significance in some fashion or other. Every tree could have a life of its own, every toy has a history, and every star harbors incredible alien life the likes of which have never been seen on this planet. Writing comics has forced me to engage my imagination, to grapple with it in a difficult way. When non-artists see comics or art, they are often impressed with the imagination that it takes to create the things they see and read. There is a mystique associated with creativity that most people fall prey to (I do at times, when I see artists I’m impressed by) that makes us think, “Wow, how did they do that?”. We often consider ourselves inferior in those moments, thinking it impossible that we could ever match what these individuals have accomplished. This is, in a way, our own imaginations at work.

The reality is that imagination and creativity are tools. Creativity is as much work as any other, though often more mental work than it is physical. We all have the capacity to create and conceptualize but it requires time and effort as adults. As children, our minds are free from the limitations of the physical and social world allowing us to come up with the most outrageous concepts. Part of being an artist (professional or otherwise) is getting in touch with that side of your mind again and it can be a struggle.

As for me, I find solace in imagination. Stories and concepts allow me to explore other worlds and people while I sit bored in class or at work. That’s a powerful thing. Having the ability to conceptualize the unknown is what has set humanity apart from animals and given us everything we’ve got. Admittedly, some of that has run out of our control to some degree, but it has, for the most part, been positive for us as a species. With a more responsible long term approach to our imaginations, life on this planet could be pretty swell.

At least we don’t have to worry about drowning on the sidewalk.

The heroic figure in myth has long been lauded as an example of what humanity can achieve. Strong, moral, and courageous, these individuals have set the bar for pushing ourselves beyond our limitations.

There is, however, a darker side to the heroic characters that we have long held dear. That’s right, I’m talking about criminal negligence.

One of the things I’ve wondered about for some time while reading and studying myths is what the long term effects a hero would have on a country. You’ve got these amazing things happening: beating up lions, killing off monsters, and, in the case of Heracles (Hercules), diverting a river in order to clean some truly disgusting stables. What about the people that rely on that river for their livelihoods? What about the havoc a new body of water running through a city would wreak upon the people living there? It seems heroes are just tragically short sighted.

That’s kind of an allegory for our politicians. Think about it.

Heracles remains one of the most recognizable heroes in the history of humankind. The stories of his deeds continue to be retold in both good and bad (Kevin Sorbo, I’m looking at you) ways, but the essential character remains the same. What we don’t hear about so much nowadays is the rather tragic tale that sets in motion his twelve great deeds. Poor Heracles, son of Zeus and a mortal woman, was stricken with madness by the jealous Hera. In his insanity, Heracles brutally murdered his wife and children. Upon snapping out of his rampage, he found his family dead and their blood on his hands. Heracles felt he did not deserve to live but was given the opportunity to purify himself by the Oracle of Apollo. The Oracle tasked him with performing ten deeds that would redeem him. Heracles spent years wandering and completing these tasks and was given two more when it was decided that he’d technically cheated at two of them (the cleaning of the stables of Augeus was one of those two). The Twelve Labors of Heracles lead him to become one of Greece’s greatest heroes despite the horrific crimes he’d committed against his family. The stories surrounding those labors are all fun, exciting, or interesting, but the story as a whole, a story of redemption, is hopeful and one that I don’t know most people today would entirely identify with.

If Heracles lived today he’d have been thrown in a jail cell to rot and never given the opportunity to redeem himself or atone for his crimes. The story of Heracles is a story of hope and goodness despite the insanity that can happen in a moment. It is also about forgiveness, that is, forgiving someone of their crimes so they might become a better person and a productive member of society. None can say that Heracles did not make up for what he had done.

This is what I like most about this particular tale. It shows us that the “eye for an eye” mentality can rob us of valuable people, that everyone makes mistakes and that we should forgive those mistakes whenever possible. We’ve been taught that crimes must be punished, and they should be, but they should be useful punishments that attempt to teach rather than to beat down.

Heracles shows us that the world is not always black and white, that people can redeem themselves, and most importantly, that criminals should be put to use cleaning stables.

I think that was the lesson, anyway.

Weird new art! Cool? Cool.

At some point, I’m sure, many people face questions about their existence and the existence of the universe. What are we here for? What is our purpose? Are jelly donuts really jelly donuts? I’m here to answer your questions:

Maybe.

I hope that helped.

Ah, science, bane of my youth. It’s no wonder some people are terrified of it when you really think about it. While it is true that I am a big fan of science (I wanted to get involved in every scientific field when I was a kid, still kind of do) it is also true that science nearly destroyed me as a person. Listening to ideas about the Big Bang in seventh grade was a huge mind fuck in a serious way and gave rise to a lot of weird thinking.

You see, people that have to be funny are generally very negative people. Comedy is how some people interface and cope with a world that doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense. If you’re into comedy and also into writing (as I am) then odds are good that you’re pretty messed up. When I learned about the Big Bang, I started to have existential crises. I hadn’t believed in God for a while at that point but this one theory lead to a whole slew of thoughts that I couldn’t really cope with. I began to think about how a universe (clearly a something) could come from nothing. That made me reconsider a deity of some variety but that just gave me the same problem. Where would that deity come from? Then I began to question reality itself, question my existence, and question my questioning.

Eventually I decided to say screw it and start drawing comics. Life is pretty sweet, whatever the purpose of it may be and there’s not enough time in the day to wonder, without real purpose, what it’s all about. Examining our relationships, interactions, and ourselves is complicated enough without the metaphysical implications of existential crises added to the mix. It’s awfully difficult to enjoy what we have when we try to wrap our heads around what amounts to unsolvable problems.

That’s not to say we should never consider them, but being consumed by them makes you a pretty miserable person.

I say this because I know first hand.

Fortunately, it seems a bit more difficult to think yourself out of existence than I’ve made it out to be in this comic.

Times are tough for families nowadays. It seems like you can’t turn around without bill collectors harassing you or repo men taking that totally banging 72 inch flat screen TV you just bought. What are the best ways to reduce expenditures and start saving money? Use energy more efficiently? Purchase only the food you need? How about feeding your children to creatures that inhabit the space under their beds?

That’s the one.

The boogeyman and monsters under the bed have enjoyed popularity in the nightmarish world of kids’ minds for ages. How a creature would have adapted to living in such conditions is beyond me. I mean, there isn’t a great deal of food available in that rather limited ecosystem, and if your predations are thwarted by your meal simply hiding under a blanket…well, let’s just say you’re not a very effective organism. One would hope that a monster would not be deterred by a cloth shield. These are the issues affecting today’s monsters, I suppose.

I imagine a paneled room with a rather large table surrounded by hideous beasts. They sip their coffee and look over the day’s memos. Bob presents his latest model on how to bypass the incredible defenses used by their prey. The room is silent. Jeremy thinks about the laundry he has to do and the children he has yet to eat.

That’s some potent imagery.

It’s interesting to see the out-right dismissal of childhood monsters by those of us that have left that part of life behind us. I’ve talked about cognitive dissonance before when it comes to the supernatural. There are many among us that truly believe in Sasquatches and Popabawas and all kinds of ridiculous things but when confronted with the concept of a boogeyman, we snicker. Personally, I’m not sure what, exactly, gives credence to a sasquatch and denies the existence of boogeymen. If there’s evidence there, I’d love to hear it.

I guess what I’m saying is that if people want to believe in the supernatural you can’t really believe in one specific thing. It’s fun to think about, but the reality is that belief in the kraken but denial of ghosts or belief in Sasquatches but derision toward psychics seems disingenuous at best. There’s no hard evidence for any of it and while cherry-picking our beliefs is what the majority of us do, it doesn’t make it rational.

I prefer to let these concepts come alive in the world of imagination and metaphor. The natural world is a magnificent place without the existence of the supernatural. Besides, if these things were real they’d become boring after a while anyway.

You’d look under the bed, find yet another boogeyman. You’d let out a long belabored sigh, grab your phone, and call the boogeyman exterminator. He’d take care of the issue and you’d be out a hundred bucks.

Imagination is infinitely more exciting.

It is also a lot cheaper.

He REALLY should have seen that coming given the nature of Ilmarinen’s previous attempts. Farewell Ilmarinen’s nameless friend. You have served us well.

Thus we come to the end of our comic meandering through a small section of the Kalevala. Though this is the end of the series of strips, it is not the end of the story. After forging the mystic Sampo (a device that is minimally described and rarely depicted as a result) Ilmarinen brings it to the hag/mistress/witch of the North and asks for her beautiful daughter’s hand in marriage. The young woman essentially just says, “No.” and poor Ilmarinen wanders off back home, dejected, alone, and Sampo-less.

What an upbeat tale!

It’s a weird bit of story that mirrors some of the things I talked about with Japanese myth. In the Kalevala are distinct sections with their own endings that come together to form a larger tapestry of tales surrounding mythic figures. However, unlike more modern western stories, the tales in the Kalevala are often confusing in their lack of a message in their endings. The point of these stories is not always to impart some moral truth with their ending, but rather, to bring the reader on an entertaining journey where truths and ideals are imparted in other fashions. For example, in this story, whilst the wise Vainamoinen is on his journey home from the North, he stumbles across the Mistress’s daughter and debates with her the finer points of marriage and love. This is one of those instances where truth and morals are imparted rather directly in a way many of us growing up with Christian or Western storytelling are not entirely used to.

There is also a great deal in the big picture when it comes to myths like this; where looking at the whole imparts ideals to us rather than a single story. It reflects, more than anything else, a unique and different way of looking at the world. It is a way of seeing that can still be helpful to us today.

Because nowadays we are much too ready to shout that a story “sucks” or is “awful” based on whether or not it fits into our perceptions of what a story should be, rather than on the merits of what it is. That’s sort of sad but it doesn’t have to be that way. Many stories are valuable and even bad or poorly structured ones can help us learn something about ourselves or at least our preferences.

That said, the Kalevala is neither of those things and deserves a read and a place in history and in fiction. It is an important work and one that I love dearly.

Regular comics resume on Friday! No more of this continuity nonsense!