Category Archives: Comics

Dragon Comics: Guest Comic 1!

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I'm so tired I can't tell if this looks right.

I’m so tired I can’t tell if this looks right.

A couple months back, the Fox asked if I was interested in fan art of my comic. Oh, my goodness! Who wouldn’t be? He said it was OK to save his drawing for a day when I just couldn’t get a comic out, and this seems to be that day. I have a massive headache, I’ve hardly slept all weekend, and I’m so tired I can barely thing, so here it is: Fox Comics!

The Fox is a rather talented writer and artist. He certainly has the “bizarre realities that can only exist in comics” down to an art. There’s a little joke between us here, as he is of the opinion that if it tastes good, you should eat it, while I have been largely sugar and gluten free for about 5 years. I’m not saying that I never have a piece of cake, but generally I eschew carbs in general, and flour and processed sweeteners most particularly. I just feel better that way. So, although we are very good friends with many things in common, his “Eat all the things!” attitude clashes with my “At least 80% healthy” diet.

I love the drunk-looking cupcakes, the flying pie, and whatever is going on between the tiered cake and the fork. Green Jello kind of freaks me out, though.

If you are on Furaffinity, you can see some more of his drawings here, but you have to register with the website to get at the content.

Most of this afternoon, I was concentrating on my first professional photography gig! The model was a bit shy at first but opened up and was soon enjoying herself. We were shooting for about 3 hours, including some short breaks. Originally, we had planned to use a my friend’s swanky house in the suburbs for half the shoot, and then hike a bit into Saguaro Park West for the second half, but we ended up getting so into it that we never left the house. I think the client is going to be very happy with the results.

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Also, attracting, sweet-smelling, and modest. Modesty is a very attractive quality in someone of my obvious talents.

Also, attracting, sweet-smelling, and modest. Modesty is a very attractive quality in someone of my obvious talents.

Being an artist requires a special degree of selfishness. You have to be willing to put your art first, at least some of the time. You have to want to. It’s like being in love. You have to choose it over other things that people might find more exciting. If you are in a relationship with your art, sometimes you’ll leave a party because you’d rather be with your art. Sometimes you will be mentally checked out of your other (human) relationships, because you want to be with your art.

So the first kind of selfishness is the kind where you say, “I choose the act of creation over other activities.” But I’ve also been mulling over this other kind of selfishness, which is the idea that you have to love your art unconditionally. You have to have faith in it within a bubble where no outside criticism penetrates.

That’s the tricky part, of course. When you’re 9 and you don’t know anything, yeah, maybe you can look objectively at what you’ve done and understand that it’s not as good as something else, but at the same time, if you’re in love with your art, you primarily view it subjectively. You have to be in love with the idea that you have created something that represents a mountain, a dragon, and idea. If you are, then you believe in its righteousness, full stop. Other people’s opinions don’t affect yours. You don’t solicit them, and you don’t really care about them when they’re offered, unless they validate your beliefs in the supremacy of your creation.

Criticism creates doubt and halting timidness in creation. Rather than unleashing ideas, you hold them back, anticipating how other people might cut them down. You can’t generate new realities if you feel that what you have to offer the world isn’t going to measure up to the world’s standards.

The question is, how do you maintain that unwavering, childlike understanding of your own inherent greatness while still improving? Can a person accept feedback, even criticism, and integrate it into their understanding, without losing that perfect faith? Is it possible to selfishly embrace the idea that your art is perfect while remaining open to the possibility that it could be more perfect.

Part of me would return to that vacuum, to the solitary act of creation with no followup. Not needing accolades is refreshing. Another part of me has learned that the act of creation is not complete until others have experienced your creation, though. Unread writing, a film without an audience, a painting in the dark, they don’t yet exist. So we’re still working on this balance. Believe you are worthy of worship at the same time that you believe that you can be even worthier.

Dragon Comics 71

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It's all kind of up in the air.

It’s all kind of up in the air right now. 

My inner child is older and wiser than she used to be.

About a year ago my brother emailed me to ask my opinion of the “accuracy” of some depictions of the writing process in The World According to Garp: “To begin with, is it true that when you write everything seems connected to everything else?” My short answer: “cf: synchronicity.”

When a story is working, when the characters and their motivations are real and defined, it drives itself, and the world is its fuel. It just keeps shoveling ideas in one end, and plot comes out the other. Sometimes all you have to do is pick the words that keep the ideas in order. Yes, everything feeds writing. Some writers may be more focused in terms of which field they let the machine graze in, but whatever you have, that’s what gets in.

He also asked some intelligent questions about how stories are generated, and this is different for every writer, I think, but they don’t tend to spring fully formed like Athena from the brow of Zeus, unless you are very, very lucky. You still have to put the pieces together and keep the mechanism tuned: now it needs a new character, now a change of scenery.

Writing this comic, at this particular time in my life, has grown enlightening. I’m glad so many people are on this journey with me, but I’m writing it for myself. We wouldn’t have set off on this particular path if not for the unfortunate episode of bullying I wrote about a couple weeks back, which in turn led me to ask myself a series of questions, and the questions went deeper and deeper into the past, but kept dovetailing with questions about the present and future. It speaks to me as a tool for understanding, learning, and accepting.

In short, I’m working through some stuff here. Stay tuned. If you dare.

Dragon Comics 68

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Everyone's a superhero. Everyone's a Captain Kirk.

Everyone’s a superhero. Everyone’s a Captain Kirk.

The first step from the dark to the light can be blinding. And intense. You might see things you’re not ready to see. You might be forced to confront ideas that you’ve been trying to ignore. It’s tempting to keep the scary stuff hidden in the shadows, but you can’t go stumbling around in the dark forever, either.

Fortunately I was able to recycle the background from yesterday, because this weekend was a really busy one, and this comic was started shortly before dinner and finished just after midnight. But here it is. We might hang back for a little bit, scope out the situation before committing.

Have courage, Dragon!

Dragon Comics 66

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You can't always get what you want. Sometimes you can't even get what you need.

You can’t always get what you want. Sometimes you can’t even get what you need.

This metaphor lends itself to oversimplification. In real life, you can have both hope and despair at the same time, to a degree, but in my experience one is usually going to be louder. The balance can shift back and forth, adding a fun element of manic depression to all the other mental noise of an imperfect creative life, but you don’t feel equal parts optimistic and pessimistic. Either you’re a superstar who produces an endless tide of flawless gems, or you’re a hack who should give up and go into medical transcription or some other field that doesn’t require imagination. Even some of the most successful people I know seem to bounce back and forth between basking in their success and questioning when it will all come crashing down around their heads when the truth regarding their lack of talent is revealed.

So it really does end up being a series of endless circles, a spiritual wheel of fortune that can rise and fall multiple times in a single day. In an hour. In a minute.

The mandala in which Dragon is tangled today is based on a sacred geometry design. Saturday The Man and I went over to the Bear’s cave for the first time in forever (he said, “That snake just gets me.) and spent a couple hours talking, about art, in theory, practice, and business, as well as the subject of these ancient forms. When you just look at them they seem orderly and easy to understand, but when you try to draw one, the intricacies of symmetry and proportion really pop out at you. I had the same experience drawing and cutting the Man in the Maze, except that one was about 500 times more complicated than this.

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After years of in-depth study, field observation, and careful introspection, I have begun to unravel the mystery of humans.

By coincidence, I just saw this article, which highlights some issues that simply weren’t discussed when I was a kid, regarding the challenges suffered by the gifted child, the isolation and the expectation, ways in which pull-out education can fail them, and the connection with depression. In the typical public school classroom, and even, at times, in GATE classrooms, there is little room for a certain type of eccentricity, or behavior that crosses a particular line.

Of course, these days it seems like schools are much more accepting of students who are different, but in general, there’s still a sense that public school does have a tacit goal of enforcing conformity.

I don’t think that being smart/creative/different necessarily leads to depression. It’s probably more a combination of how it feels to see the world through outsider eyes and how those who can pass as “normal” (seriously, no one is normal; just some of us have fewer weirdnesses to hide and/or do a better job of suppressing our anomalies) respond to and treat those who are different. If our culture celebrated weirdness, this article wouldn’t have been written.

When I was as student at Antioch College, hotbed of radicalism, “You’re weird,” was offered as a compliment and received as such. The response to, “You’re weird,” was, “Thank you.” A lot of people blossomed and became themselves at that time, in that place. But most folks I know, then and now, suffered tremendously at the hand of the majority in the years before college and spent our young adulthood working through it. While discussing last week’s comics with a friend, she revealed a story about how a teacher responded when she complained of being bullied that frankly horrified me; regardless of what I went through, I never had a teacher deliberately compound my suffering, or appear to enjoy it. (Although I certainly felt bullied by certain teachers at certain times, this story was simply cruel, particularly as it occurred in response to a cry for help.)

When I look at the Girl, I see a human with perhaps more humanity than is usual, a child who instantly takes the hand of a developmentally disabled kid and asks them, “Do you want to play?” even if she’s well aware that the other child isn’t capable of speech.

Most of us lack that simple kind of compassion, one that not only tells us immediately how to respond to someone who is different, but allows us to do so without any thought of shame or confusion.

From what I read, and what I see in schools, our educational system is working toward becoming kinder and more compassionate. Maybe in 20 years kids won’t be collecting these kinds of stories, holding within them a casket of pain dulled only by emotional success in adulthood. Maybe we’ll all learn to be like the Girl, there for those who need us, so accepting of our differences that we hardly even see them.

Dragon Comics 64

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Some people say that Hope was the cruelest of the demons that sprung from Pandora's box, but without her we would never know how awful everything else is.

Some people say that Hope was the cruelest of the demons that sprung from Pandora’s box, but without her we would never know how awful everything else is.

This situation really inspired a lot of introspection as well as a lot of retrospection on my part. The bullying I dealt with in middle school was fairly intense. There were kids whose taunting was basically nonstop in any situation where adults were unable to see–the bus, the locker room, the halls during passing periods–and subtler but still extant even in class. The kids who didn’t torment me still made their general dislike known. I mean, I was wildly unpopular. My nickname among all but the small handful of outcasts who would even talk to me like a human being was “Anti,” because they were all against me. The entire grade was anti-Monica.

Literally. Just swallow that for a moment.

People are awful.

But there’s usually hope.

We didn’t have #ItGetsBetter in the ’80s. For all we knew, it didn’t get better. But I had hope that it did. I centered that hope around the idea that one day the world would recognize how awesome I really was, and that hope developed around my writing. That was my escape, not only into the future as I imagined that destined recognition, but my escape from the present, as I plunged into these sublime other worlds I could create to avoid living in the ugly mundane world that hurt me.

The Fox and I sometimes talk about this the vast gulf between past and present. A talented kid enjoys the act of creation, takes pride in what she accomplishes, and sees perfection in everything she does. When you’re 12 years old and writing your way out of an almost intolerable life, you have great faith in the greatness of your work and its ability to float you over the rough times. When you’re 40 years old and have a master’s degree in your craft, you analyze everything. You critique your own work. You anticipate your critics. You take it apart and put it together backwards and agonize over single words and get your heart ripped out with every rejection. You recognize the potential to failure and the human frailty of art. But you never would have gotten there if you weren’t first a 12-year-old with an unquestioning belief in your own righteousness.

First you have a butterfly, but as soon as you start caring how others will respond, you get a snake. The more I ponder this, the more I seek out this childish and optimistic way of existing in the world.

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Don't enjoy the sound of silence.

Don’t enjoy the sound of silence.

A long time ago, a lot of years ago, I visited a Mayan shaman. I had been the victim of a violent crime and sought treatment for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, and my therapist suggested I see this practitioner, who was a colleague of hers, for some more traditional healing.

This shaman presented an intriguing mix of esoteric wisdom and childlike wonder. Before I even opened my mouth upon meeting him, he diagnosed me with an unrelated medical condition, which he then proceeded to fix. I’m not even making this up. I came to him for psychological help and somehow he intuitively knew about this other issue, and after the session, I did not have this problem anymore.

At the same time, his treatment method involved copious quantities of tequila, some of which he ingested himself, and after our session, we fell to to talking, in the process of which he locked himself out of the house. Then he passed out on the porch.

I relate this part of the story to highlight that place where brilliance and innocence overlap, where what can be great and astonishing can, at the same time, be small and ordinary. This guy was a metaphor for everything real in the world.

We also took a spirit journey together, or, more accurately, he took a spirit journey and I sort of followed along. There were 4 main points of interest along the way, 2 of which made immediate sense to me, and 2 of which took many years to resonate into clarity. In fact, 1 of them really only started to take on meaning as I began writing this blog post. But the other one (and yes, here comes the point) regarded the butterfly, a symbol of transformation, but also a symbol of inspiration.

Why does it mean to follow the butterfly, I wondered. It is to pursue that which is beautiful, but also elusive, but also metamorphic, meaning that the butterfly can initiate change. While slow human eyes might see a caterpillar as a separate creature, apart from the dazzling winged creature it will become, they are one and the same. The caterpillar is the butterfly; the butterfly is the caterpillar. The caterpillar may be an ugly little creature chomping all the leaves off your citrus trees one day, but after a brief period of transition, it’s a flying jewel. Everything is transitional, and everything has the potential for great harm, or great good.

The tao of art isn’t some kind of garden party; it’s a trek through the jungle. Your guide is this ephemeral, elusive wisp: a butterfly, a muse, a feeling. An interior faith that an invisible compass points true; that the exterior magnetic compulsion is trustworthy.

For me, this is the way of the butterfly. There’s the belief that the butterfly exists, that it is a real thing even though you can’t capture or contain it, and there’s the belief that the butterfly represents what you feel it should represent. In other words, there are 2 voices: the snake says “stop,” the butterfly says “go.” The snake crushes; the butterfly expands. The snake prevents; the butterfly compels. The artist has to own these creatures, and decide which one to privilege. One most likely yells rude epithets constantly, but most often when it’s likely to trip you up. The other whispers all the truths and secrets you long to hear, but only when you are listening.

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Are you a good Dragon or a chaotic neutral Dragon?

Are you a good Dragon or a chaotic neutral Dragon?

I’m not saying that every successful artist and writer I know suffers from Impostor Syndrome. Obviously, some creatives have massive egos. Then again, some of them evince massive egos to hide from the world the fact that they don’t think they deserve their success. However, I do know quite a few people who have received and continue to receive recognition (positive reviews, regular sales, prestigious awards) and also live in fear that someday the world will figure out that they’re not really that good, and they will lose it all.

One problem is that success can be so fickle. After Robin Williams’s death, most of us probably thought first, “But he was so great, so funny.” But some of us probably thought, a little bit later, and with a little bit of guilt, that The Crazy Ones wasn’t great or funny. I had to Google just to remember the name of his last sitcom, of which, like many people, I watched a single episode before making the choice not to follow. And Robin Williams was great. He was funny. But art doesn’t work like that. The emotions Williams made us feel in Dead Poets Society don’t keep The Crazy Ones from getting cancelled. So there is a sense that no success is real success in the arts. You’re only as good as your last performance, and if you’re hesitant to schedule the next one, you’re a has been resting on your laurels. You have to keep producing, and each production has to be better than the last.

Every little success is a boost to the creative mind, but the next day is a blank slate. If you don’t sell as many books, if your webpage doesn’t get as much traffic, if your critics are a little bit less congratulatory today than they were yesterday, you only feel the negative.

Most of us (the less insane ones, anyway) did not go into the arts for the accolades. Most of us went into the arts because our weird artistic brains literally did not give us any other choice, which makes success, or lack thereof, that much more difficult to process. Even if you’re great, even if you know you’re great, our society doesn’t look kindly on those who go around explaining how great they are. You might feel bad about your success because you want your art to transcend the need for positive feedback, or because there’s something illegitimate about becoming popular. You might feel bad about wanting or enjoying success.

Many of us simply believe we don’t deserve to succeed: because we don’t think we’re good enough, because we think others are better, because we feel that we haven’t suffered sufficiently, because we feel like there could be shame is being successful. And then there are those who are afraid to succeed, because to attempt success is to risk failure, and if we don’t believe we deserve to shine, we inevitably keep ourselves in the dark.

Dragon Comics 61

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Seriously, read M'naghten. It's the only way to successfully plead the insanity defense. And read the DSM-V, so you can discuss antisocial personality disorder without resorting to false binaries.

Seriously, read M’naghten. It’s the only way to successfully plead the insanity defense. And read the DSM-V, so you can discuss antisocial personality disorder without resorting to false binaries.

I really like that butterfly, visually as well as psychologically. It’s based off one in the butterfly house at the Tucson Botanical Gardens, and there will be a more detailed version on a T-shirt, most definitely. The way Dragon creeps after it in panel 4 is pretty adorable as well. In real life, you can’t really follow a butterfly. You’re better off sitting very still and giving it the chance to to come to you. It helps if you wear bright colors.

That always reminds me of a coyote story, which explains why butterflies fly in such unpredictable zig zag patters. It’s because once, the butterflies played the same trick on coyote 3 times in a row without his noticing, and they can’t stop laughing about it to this day.

This butterfly could be on a mission though. It might have a purpose.