The end of my mothers life in 2022 was the most difficult thing that i’ve had to deal with personally. It was complicated and difficult, stressful etc. Not at all what I expected- but I think in the American midwest you aren’t really properly prepared for this kind of thing anymore. It’s just a horrible chute that you march towards unknowingly - and then all of a sudden you’re in it, moving fast towards a natural conclusion. It happens to almost everyone of course, and even under the best circumstances it’s so sad and painful. A really personal pain. Sorry to be a bummer - just setting the scene.
In 2022 and 2023, before my depression and anxiety had gotten so bad that I sought help, my way of managing all of these complex emotions was to drink alcohol, and to make lots and lots of art. Every minute that wasn’t spent at my day job I was laying on our couch drawing. Hundreds of illustrations, artwork for rock bands, t-shirt designs, and of course my main interest, comics.
The Comics
I grew up in a medium sized town in northern Illinois in the 80s and 90s. At this time my parents had their own problems to worry about - so I gravitated towards the few places in society where kids were allowed to enter unattended: the arcade, the video rental store, and the comic book shop. When I was 12, around the time my parents got divorced, a comic book store opened up near my house (Dreamland comics in Libertyville, IL - still open). The owner/manager guy with the big round head was a huge prick, unfortunately but since options were limited I started going in there. It was 1994.
I became obsessed with comics and comic art. I was already working at that age (captured by capitalism), either at my dads small family printing business, and also delivering copies of the local Pennysaver - so that’s what i started spending my money on. My collection and my interest grew to the point to where I decided what I wanted to do with my life was to draw and make comics. I started drawing all of the time. My interest in cartooning and art exploded - through elementary school, junior high and into the early part of high school.
In high school, I began to develop severe depressive moods (genetic) and I fell in with a druggy drinky crowd. The interest in comics began to wane - I got more into weed and drinking to dull the pain from a difficult family life and emotions that I couldn’t control. Got taken out of school briefly, then my mom asked me to move out, I had a nervous breakdown and wound up in getting hospitalized. After I was able to return to high school, I got linked up with a different group of friends (jazz band kids, and punksters) and got into making music and being in rock bands.
After high school I moved to Chicago and found comics again. Mainstream weekly comics at that time were terrible and the art had degraded to a point where it just didn’t interest me anymore. It was around then that a friend took me to Chicago Comics on Clark Street and I began to get into indie and “alternative” comics by the heavy hitters of that era - Ivan Brunetti, Adrian Tomine, Jaime Hernandez, Julie Doucet. In my mind I knew that I would love making comics, but still wasn’t quite up to it. My emotions and depressive tendencies were starting to become a problem again and the artists of these comics actually talked about this kind of thing! An incredible realization at that age that If I was going to be depressed, at least it could have a byproduct. After a while, being an extremely poor Chicagoan, I had to make the hard choice between making sure my second-hand bass had new strings or functioning gear - and my comics habit. I really loved being in bands at that time so comics were out again.
After that I landed in my current profession (title abstractor) and the better pay rate allowed me to get my own apartment, buy used books, go out drinking once or twice a week - things were better. I met and started dating a working artist. We lived together for about a year, I began to doodle a little bit here and there because I was with someone who did the same thing. She had a strong work ethic and it had an effect on me. I started doodling more and the doodling got better and better. It started slow, but over time I began to spend my free time drawing - the results were very obvious to track. If your mind is open, and you actually like drawing, you just build on your knowledge base slowly. It’s beautiful. The relationship with the artist ended, but I walked out of it loving the act of drawing. It was 2012 - enter Instagram.
The Curse of The Algorithm
I had been on Livejournal, Myspace, Friendster, Facebook, and then when I finally got a smartphone, someone told me about IG - it was just pictures. I started an account and used it normally (unfunny jokes, grainy photos, bad filters) - I followed some people on there that were using their camera phone to post pictures of their art, so I decided to start doing the same. You can actually scroll back to the beginning of my IG feed and see this progression yourself. Bit by bit, year by year, it was all I did on there, and bit by bit, year by year, my focus shifted from making music back to art until finally it was all I did.
A few years of doodling and my personal drawing style was really tightening up - I had developed an aesthetic. I was just doing it because it was pleasurable to do. One day, I had watched some sci-fi movie on my gigantic, burning-hot laptop and made the first of my futuristic art pieces. That drawing satisfied me immensely! an enormous squirt of serotonin! I loved sci-fi tropes, and rendering metal/chrome textures with my cheap art supplies - I now had a direction to head in. The path that I am still on, for the time being. I picked up that thread and began following it. Again starting simple, and building on my acquired knowledge I began to develop this new thing.
A couple of years later I met someone wonderful, someone who I would later call my wife - Alexis. A really supportive and caring partner - she was there the whole time that I worked on this futuristic stuff. Not exactly her style, but having someone there urging you to keep going and filling the air with love and happiness was what I needed to dive back into this world. We moved in together and my art career began to pick up. I was happy as hell, and it was reflected in my creative output. You don’t have to be miserable to make good art.
At some point the IG algorithm got ahold of me. I posted something new at least once a day if not multiple new drawings a day (manic energy), and I used the dumb fuckin’ hashtags. I guess I liked the idea of being known as an artist so I played the social media game- my following grew, my art tightened up even more, it all fed into me working harder. Two IG accounts with high follower numbers (thank you Craig Gleason and Paul Rentler) shared my work and it was at that time the algorithm began to take hold. My follower count started going up and up.
I was drawing and posting, drawing and posting. I was working a full time job, and a part-time job at that time as well (working at bars, a whole other story) I decided to quit bars to spend more time with my girlfriend, and more time making art. Opportunities started arriving. I was being paid more and more to make things for people, bigger bands, bigger brands. I considered resigning from my job. Drawing and posting, drawing and posting. I stopped playing music as well. Drawing and posting, drawing and posting.
The Return of The Comics
I was at Myopic Books in Chicago, looking at some used art books - I meandered into the comics section. It was as simple as that. I thought that I was just making art that suggested 1980s movie character designs, but wasn’t really telling any story - as I flipped through graphic novels I made a connection then and there that was I was possibly preparing myself to make comics. I bought a few that day. I began to read comics again, not just from an enjoyment perspective - I was trying to reverse engineer how they were made. How do you do it?
Covid hits, city hall closes, my office shuts down and we move our computers into our homes etc. That went on for a while, until a wonderful human being named Aubrey Sitterson contacted me about an opportunity to work together for a comics anthology. With his enthusiasm and support, he walked me through the process of how to do it. It takes months of work and me second-guessing myself, but eventually we do it - I made a comic story. It was clanky, awkward, overworked, duct-taped together, but I did it. A dream since I was a kid was rekindled, and then with the help of others, realized. I now wanted to make comics. I owe a lot to Aubrey for his help.
I won’t get into the nitty-gritty of the time I had with my mother during Covid, but as I stated earlier it was tough stuff. On top of the pandemic and being so busy at my day job, I was trying to help my mother manage her transition from independent living to assisted living - this combination of three different totally miserable instances filled me stupendous amounts of nervous energy to burn off. Whatever energy I didn’t drown with alcohol, I now spent working on my first story FEND.
To be continued.