Category: News

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? 

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. 

On the Ceaseless Fables website and on the back of the Lost Book, you can see a badge reading “GENUINE GUARANTEED LABOR OF LOVE”. It’s not too hard to work out what that means, but let me explain it anyway.

1. The Ceaseless Fables of Beyonding strip and my 2008 movie, John’s Arm: Armageddon, were both created under the following philosophy; Do it like you’re being paid top dollar, even if you’re working for free. Worry about making a profit later. It’ll be a million times easier if the product already exists, especially if you’ve put your heart and soul into it. Especially if you went the extra mile.

2. Ceaseless Fables is created with love for the comic strip format, love for its own universe, and love for the audience. Even if only one person ever reads it, it is created with love for that one person. It doesn’t cheat the audience with irony, deceive the audience with an agenda, or manipulate the audience with fetishistic material. It is presented sincerely and as though it is important and loved by its readers. 

3. If you put out love through your work, you will receive love in return. If that sounds corny or cliche to you, you may never understand it. The audience can tell if you’re faking it. If you can’t present your ideas sincerely (meaning, if you write in a “back door” that undermines the seriousness of the work, for example jokey dialogue in something non-comedic, or anything that breaks the narrative), your audience will turn on you. 

4. Compare George Lucas’s Star Wars to what Disney has done with it. No matter what you think, Lucas put real love into his work, and Disney absolutely did not. By contrast, one work was celebrated for generations, and one was forgotten in months. There’s the difference. (Before you argue, Lucas began forming the Star Wars mythos in 1972. Solo, for free.)

5. Because I put real love into CFB, the characters speak and interact with sincerity and authenticity when I write them. I don’t have to force them into plots and situations; they organically arrive at those places. Their motivations are clear to me, and thus to the readers as well. 

6. If you are contracted to create a work, when the money stops (and it will), you stop. The precedent has been established that payment must be rendered for the show to go on. This is fine for corporate IPs, but it also introduces the idea that you are not the only one who can do it. Even though The Simpsons is based on creator Matt Groening’s own family, as the past 20 years have shown, it can be written and drawn by virtually anybody, and so little love is put into it, the voices themselves can be easily replaced. South Park and Family Guy aren’t even that loveless and corporate. (Yet.)

7. Love is the single solitary thing automation and machines can’t replace, simulate or provide. For this reason alone, you must put it into your work. If you hesitate to do so because you fear criticism or rejection, then ignore those fears and double down. The presence of those fears is an indication that you are on the right path, and that what you offer the world is sincere and true. 

8. Speaking of rejection; so what? When you put anything on the internet, the odds are overwhelming that it’ll be rejected. This has nothing to do with the quality of your work or your integrity. It’s because the opportunity exists to criticize you. 80 years ago, the biggest movie stars had minimal interaction with the public, if any. 60 years ago, the highest-grossing bands never communicated one-on-one with even their hardcore fans. Getting your letter printed in MAD magazine was about the best a regular person could hope for. Maybe an anecdote in Readers’ Digest. That was literally it. Instant contact between creator and audience is a purely 21st century privilege. 

9. On that note: if your goal in putting your work online is to get people to like you, expect to be disappointed. Stay true to yourself. Money and fame will come later, once you’ve earned them. Only then will they mean anything to you. 

10. Above all, remember the love.