Author: Matty Boy

During The Worst Year Of Our Lives Thus Far©, I did my level best to prepare for when things got worse, and truthfully, I didn’t fare too badly. My stimulus checks and tax refund all went towards rent, food and new equipment, including a setup with which I can animate or live-stream. I have (including my phone and laptop) four cameras to use now, one of which can shoot in 4K. I have a new Wacom tablet and two stylus pens for it. I have the materials necessary to sculpt sets, props and figures. 

I still have to beg for money, because my regular paycheck hasn’t come in for over a month, and most of my time is spent putting up eBay auctions to make ends meet. On a good day, I can finish about 6 auctions. Each item has to be set up and photographed, researched, and listed. There are ways to expedite the process but they don’t work very well. Regardless, I could put up ten auctions in one day and the chances are that none will sell for weeks. It’s eBay. And it goes without saying, this is all time spent not creating content. You know, the stated purpose of my mission. So asking people for money again sends me into a very deep depression spiral that is extremely difficult to pull out of. 

Look folks; no one is going to hire a manic-depressive 49-year-old for any kind of “regular job”, especially one who can barely handle reality as it is. Okay? I can’t live with this guilt-trip anymore, where I feel inferior because I “can’t handle a regular job”. You know this already; I wrote material for over 20 years about a job I couldn’t handle. A job I had for five years (in the 1990’s!), that still angers me today. I left that job to draw cartoons full-time. (And to prevent literally murdering the next person who asked me where the “Macarena” is.)

Patron donations right now cover my monthly Adobe Animate subscription, which is great. Instead of using $250 of my stimulus check on a year’s subscription, I bought the new Wacom tablet. The lion’s share of my stimulus went to rent and food, which is normal, right? That’s what it was for. However:

1. I still reside in the same noisy, violent craphole and obviously have no chance of moving someplace better, like an actual studio and not a tiny bedroom with all my earthly possessions crammed into it.
2. There is no funding available to produce the Ceaseless Fables Omnibus, and in fact I’m considering making the website Patron-only. Sad to say, but if only my Patrons visited the CFB site, it would have 4 or 5 more visitors. Viewership is that low. The lowest it has ever been since I started the site.
3. I have lost my nerve and confidence regarding fundraising/crowdfunding. I feel like I’ve asked too much already, but there’s literally no other way. Unless you have some suggestions.
4. I watch streams with relatively well-known comedians who get maybe 10 more viewers than I do. I enjoy websites that are under litigation from insane persons, and have to burn money to stay online, even though they are innocent of any wrongdoing. These things are not great for my professional morale. As I stated in my “Chagrin” cartoon, I’m fearful of being unfairly punished for my cartoons or ideas. Nowadays you don’t even get forced into an apology (I don’t apologize, folks); you just get smeared and annihilated. Sometimes by your own friends!
5. Even simple animation takes a long time to produce. I have a hard drive full of half-finished cartoons. People to whom you owe rent or bills do not care if you spent 24 hours on an animation you didn’t have time to finish. 

I’m open to suggestions. I would love to hear that I’m not asking too much of my audience, and that this is the way it goes; you have to ask for donations. I see people donating money on live-streams like it’s no big deal. I offer a very unique, very niche form of entertainment and I understand that I’m a hard sell. But I’m at the point where this is the only way to go. I’m trying to produce animation solo that would cost a grand or more from a studio. The funds have to come from somewhere. I understand now why PBS had pledge drives all the damn time. Where else would the money come from?

Thank you for your time, support, and for reading this. The wheels are in motion, but I have to keep them greased. Grease is the word. It’s got groove, it’s got meaning. It’s the time, it’s the place, it’s the motion. Grease is the way we are feeling. This is a life of illusion; wrapped up in trouble, laced with confusion. 

What are we doing here? 

I’m making this update public, because this is a big deal. Okay, so, for almost a month I’ve been having problems drawing. Inking, specifically. I’m sure I alluded to it somewhere, probably in the Patron-only entries. Anyway:

For weeks now I’ve been fighting extreme depression brought on by the suspicion that I am either losing my sight, or losing my ability to draw. Every time I set my pen to the paper, the lines don’t ink properly. I thought it might have been too much humidity in my workspace, but that turned out not to be the case (I put the page back in the container where I store my Bristol, which I’ve filled with desiccant packets to eliminate moisture, and it didn’t help). 

Once cooler heads prevailed, I realized that my fancy new India ink had turned into goop, which refused to flow through the pen nib. I consulted the internet and found that I have to add distilled water. Having done this, the ink flows again. (More or less.) 

This is why I thought I lost the ability to ink. As simple as that. Even though I thought it was the end of the world. 

Just thought I’d pass this along. I gotta get back to work. 

Yes, this update is “late”. Everything I do is late. Everything everybody does is late now. I suppose this is the new perfect “Clown World” we were forced into at the end of last year. Speaking of which:

1. I’ve pretty much quit with the mental health confessionals on my sites and on social media. For one thing, everyone is mentally ill now, and another, it’s just a quick way to let your opposition destroy you, by figuring you out. Either your family cares about your mental health or no one does. Believe it or not, millions of people succeeded before we did without giving a damn about their mental state. Once the paying crowd works out your secret, you’re finished.

2. Oh by the way, going for over a year without touching anyone or being touched makes you go completely insane. Just a heads-up. Even if your spouse or kids hate you, count your goddamn blessings. I’m not directing this at any one person. I’m trying to communicate the level of alienation I’m experiencing. 

3. I am learning to exist without trusting anyone, and learning to accept the reality that no one can be trusted, especially in business. The world I knew, wherein an artist could thrive under the aegis of a crusading editor or publisher, is dead. No one wants the ethical liability of a free-speaking creator. Those who say they do are liars. 

4. I have moments nowadays wherein I can’t draw. It just doesn’t work. No point in assigning blame, but the overwhelming realization that literally no one gives a shit about anything sure doesn’t help. The general zeitgeist of the human race right now is garbage. You have to be a sadomasochist to put out creative work now. You are actively inviting humiliation and shame upon yourself. 

5. Seriously, you try it. Be uncompromising and true to yourself while the entire world gives in to compromise and fear. Entertain the fantasy of finding a loving spouse while the entire female gender is turned against you. Make comics, cartoons and movies for a people that only lives to tear those things down and laugh at you. Watch as your every idol succumbs to political fellatio and eagerly yields to creative dependence and real slavery. See how long you can stand it. 

6. The better your output is, the harder you’ll be obscured by people who envy your skills but either can’t or won’t earn them. You could make an animated short that would’ve won an “Oscar” sixty years ago, and you’ll be stalled and placated by talentless garbage whose mega-rich family fast-tracked them through a college full of other trust-fund Marxists. A live-stream of a farting imbecile who plays along with an accepted political agenda will easily eclipse the hardest work you’ve ever done in your life. Oh; and if you dare to call a spade a spade, prepare to be witch-hunted by “social-justice” snitches who’ll drag you into the public eye just so they can erroneously label you every -ist their washed brains can think of. 

You think you can open up your creative soul to all that? 

I admit I was spoiled by existing in a better time with better people. 20 years ago I was making animated shorts in my bedroom that were so popular my site couldn’t take the bandwidth, and cable TV networks were emailing me offers. For just shy of 20 years I drew a comic strip that was read by tens of thousands of people. 

I did not do these things in a vacuum. I had supportive editors, friends, family, and a multitude of fans around the world. You know who gets respect in the creative world today? Those who pander, and those who just pay for it. Hey, it could be worse; I could be a talented Caucasian female comedian. I would blow my brains out if that were the case. With all of my issues and neuroses, at least I’m not a white lady stand-up who’s actually funny. I would see the endless contingent of unfunny women who parlayed their looks, their sexuality or their race into Hollywood superstardom, and drive my SUV off a cliff. 

If you think you can handle all that BS and still do good work, do it. You won’t be alone, because I’ll be there too; I don’t know how to do anything else. It’s no revelation that the world sucks and people are shitheads with the worst taste in everything. Think about it; nothing worthwhile becomes an overnight sensation. Everything the world embraces now will be in the trash next week. There were people in April of 2020 who thought it was cute that there were videos of masked nurses dancing in hospital corridors with coffins. You think mendicants like that have any sense of cultural appreciation? These are the kind of people who think reading a “Harry Potter” book constitutes literacy. Hey, everybody! I finished reading a big fat book with lots of pages and words! Isn’t that amazing and valid?

Frank Zappa was the greatest guitar player who ever lived, and was so fluent in Standard Musical Notation that he hand-wrote scores with pen and ink in hotel rooms. During the 1970’s he was releasing up to four albums a year. Also in the ’70’s:

-Zappa’s concert movie, 200 Motels, was hamstrung by MGM producers, an alcoholic and tardy London Symphony Orchestra, and a lead actor who decided the whole thing was stupid well into filming and walked off the set. The MPAA didn’t even bother to sign the rating certificate.
-Zappa was flung from the stage into an orchestra pit by an insane limey, resulting in a broken neck and leg.
-Flo & Eddie of the Turtles, whom he invited into his touring band, turned against him while he was confined to a wheelchair.
-Zappa’s leg wasn’t set properly after the break (y’know, British hospitals), and since he refused the offer to have it re-broken, he experienced chronic back pain for the rest of his life, now that one of his legs was slightly shorter than the other.
-People were so convinced that Zappa ate shit on stage, and with Alice Cooper (whom he discovered), ate shit and stepped on baby chickens on stage, that he had to definitively rebuke these accusations in his autobiography, in 1988.

One could argue that these are the seeds that grew into Zappa’s 1980’s output, wherein he moved away from the “human element” and went digital, primarily using the Synclavier. One could also note that Zappa was lamentably obsessed with Richard Nixon and Jimmy Swaggart in the ’70’s and ’80’s, rewriting several of his classic songs to mock them. 

All of this illustrates my (belabored) point. This is how Frank Zappa fought the world for as long as he was able. You can see the extent to which it embittered him, especially when he had to appear before Congress as the voice of reason in 1985. The greatest composer of the 20th century had to sit in front of these besuited bureaucrats and say hey, maybe putting warning labels on record albums is a terrible and stupid idea. Maybe it’s censorship. Maybe it’ll make it impossible for independent music to succeed without expensive legal representation. Maybe it’ll support the lie that music can be harmful to you. 

Maybe generations will grow up believing that lie, and destroy the country as a result. 

Maybe you don’t know Zappa, like most of the Philistines who opine ceaselessly on-line. You know Paul Simon, right? Simon & Garfunkel? “Bridge Over Troubled Water”? Okay, let me put it this way.

Both Simon and Garfunkel are alive. So where’s the new music? They haven’t made any in decades. Where’s Paul Simon’s podcast, or livestream, where people can prank him until he has a fit and walks out? Where’s Garfunkel’s NFT, that he can announce to the jeers of ten thousand Instagram users who scream at him for “destroying the environment”? 

I don’t know where any of that is, and if it doesn’t exist, that means the accomplishments of Simon & Garfunkel are worthless, right? We can forget all about them. Unless ol’ Paul is crazy enough to pop up on Twitter, in which case he’ll be attacked, blamed and banned for things having absolutely nothing to do with his body of work. He’ll be brutally attacked simply because it’s possible to brutally attack Paul Simon. 

This is the prevalent attitude in this foul YOOL 2021. If something isn’t immediately shiny and dangling before our faces, like car keys to an infant, it’s worthless. If it can’t be deconstructed and compromised to fit and aggrandize the YouTube/streamer lifestyle, it’s worthless. Everything in 2021 is about LARPing as oppressed, or capable. Jobs are filled by incompetents who are hired to make their employer look “progressive”, not because they can, y’know, do the job. 

Thus, anyone who can clearly do the job well is regarded as “suspicious” and “privileged”. Whether they’re living or dead.

Can you see the problem?

My comics have been slow in coming this year because just doing them for myself isn’t enough. It never was. I do this shit not just because it’s what I want to do, but because I want to be liked. So yeah, coming from entertaining a quarter million people in one month down to 5 or 6 people a week takes a lethal toll, especially now that the only reason anyone reads comics is to dump on them. And the mainstream comic books are so abominably terrible, even compared to the idiotic pulp excreta of the early 20th century, I’d be mortified if I was even seen looking at them. Never mind working for them. Marvel and DC comics are now all about who’s gay, Muslim, or raped for dramatic tension. Mainstream comics are like Star Wars; the people who make them don’t have the slightest idea what they’re doing, or what people want. It’s LARPers, all the way down. They can’t sell a single issue without some purple-haired twerp with a septum piercing crying about “cishet bullies” on Twitter. Those oppression bucks are clearly worth more than hard work, passion and integrity combined. 

So yeah. Oftentimes I don’t want to get out of bed in the morning. I don’t see a light at the end of the tunnel, like I once did. All I see is a tunnel that never ends, and never leads anywhere. 

So there’s your update. If you’re delusional enough to believe that in Current Year, artists don’t get work because they’re not white, or not heterosexual, or not Christian, by all means continue your LARP as an intelligent person. If it’s any consolation, I never thought my professional life would be arguing with people who not only aren’t in my field, but who openly hold contempt for it. I have no illusions about my career path and its insignificance, but imagine you were a qualified brain surgeon, and your patient’s Uber driver barges into the surgical theater to tell you all about how stupid and pointless brain surgery really is. Oh; and when you finally break down and argue back, a popular podcast tells a thousand viewers that your skills are invalid because of your race and gender. And the viewers agree.

If you can handle all that and not kill yourself, hey, maybe you can be a cartoonist. What do I know.