Ceaseless Fables of Beyonding

Hiya friends! I am currently banned from Facebook for the next 24 hours, so I thought I’d give an update here. “Coincidentally”, I’m having Instagram problems, because you know, I was born yesterday and I suspect nothing.

How’s everybody doing? Are you being good and not posting your honest opinions on social media? I hope so. I wouldn’t want you to experience the same BS I go through, where there are people paid to eff up your online presence if you dare to say anything negative about the worst president in the history of America, or about mentally ill self-mutilators who function as puppets for Non-Government Organizations eagerly destroying the country. Since I don’t typically wear a dunce cap, I certainly don’t utter a word of opinion about the antics in the Middle East. I see how that goes. It’s lose/lose.

Sarcasm aside, I’d like to take a moment to sincerely thank my supporters, because I am deep in the throes of financial destitution and quasi-suicidal depression. You are pretty much all I have in my life. Less than a month ago I almost didn’t have a home anymore. I stay positive to keep from totally giving up. Seeing the growth in my Patreon is a big deal for me. A BIG deal.

Okay, so:

1. Today’s Ceaseless Fables strip is late. I am trying to keep this from becoming a habit. Most of the time I am exhausted from construction work so it tends to get the short shrift. I work pretty much every day doing construction odd jobs and it still doesn’t make the nut. Nothing does in 2024. That is lamentably the world we live in. Everything is increasingly unaffordable and as far as I can tell no one cares.

2. As soon as I can wrangle the time I will be producing another What’s The Deal video, about another subject from John’s Arm: Armageddon. If you want a hint, it will be detailing the backstory of my most popular YouTube video. Patron Saints will see it first, reg’lar folks a month later. (I think the last WTD will be public on the 17th of this month.) Eventually exclusive videos and livestreams will be more frequent.

3. I found an archived copy of the Ren & Stimpy reboot and I planned to make a video commenting on it, but it’s so toothless and boring that I lost interest. Billy West, Robin Byrd, Amy Sedaris and about a hundred Korean animators all presumably got paychecks for it, so there’s that. It was produced in my home state and the original music all sounds like cheap/safe tangential Muzak, and it features the words “hell” and “bitch”. That’s about it.

Thanks as always for your time and support. Against all odds I am still alive, at least for now. For that I have you to thank. This is Month Two of my life out of print, after a 33-year uninterrupted streak. This is pretty much all I have.

This is specifically directed at those of you out there who dream of becoming the next big comic book star, the next Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko, et cetera. Those of you who grew up reading comic books from the “Big Two”, Marvel and DC, and who fantasize about seeing your own work published by one or both of those legendary imprints. This is my advice to you.

Give it up.

I say this because I care about you, even though we don’t know each other. Give it up. Forget that Marvel and DC ever existed. If you have made the mistake of honing your skills to favor the style of either company, then admit your mistake and move on. If you really want to make comic art, then put your skills to the test and create something that would never, ever see print at Marvel or DC, and especially not Disney.

I say this not because I’ve seen your work and I don’t think it would pass muster in “the big leagues”. Hey, maybe it would. I say this because there are absolutely no positives for any real artist at this point in time in “professional comic book work”. Not even the money, of which a real artist sees little to none.

Marvel and DC are administrated and staffed by sick, mentally ill people. It isn’t 60 years ago, where bright-eyed youngsters got their “big break” in the comics, inspiring new generations to draw and create their own ideas. Now comic book companies are owned by giant corporations who will eagerly pay their lackeys to cheat you and let you slowly die, anonymously.

You will never fight back. You’ll die alone and unknown. Your family might try to sue, and they’ll lose. Your friends will go on paying to watch movies from Marvel and DC as though you never even existed. You won’t even be a footnote in a reference file.

You will be someone who staked their life on a phony dream and lost it.

Let’s say, for argument’s sake, you get work at Marvel, DC, or Disney. It’s because you were seen as something they could use. If you made the fatal mistake of selling yourself on your alternative sexuality or your race, then you are, without question, being used by a corporation as a token. Not one single soul in any corporation cares if you live or die. (I should amend that, because no one in any corporation has a soul, but like I said this is for argument’s sake.)

Let’s say you’re a cosplayer, or you’re acquainted with one. A “cosplayer” is a person who has yielded their individual rights to dress up like a corporate icon. Cosplayers are almost invariably women, who choose outfits that flatter their bodies, because in reality they hate their lives. So they frequent conventions that play to their specific delusions, and get the attention of the type of lonely, unpopular men who waste their time drawing superheroes.

Bingo. There are now at least two human beings who can be exploited by a corporation to fabricate a lucrative sexual assault scenario.

Argue all you want; a woman who plays dress-up and a man who plays at drawing comic books can be easily manipulated by a corporation, in a matter of minutes. I can guarantee that neither has a strong family base, and that one or both has a substance abuse problem. One or both is a single parent. One or both has a “dark history” affecting other people, who might even be dead and unable to speak for themselves.

Suddenly the means for a major corporation to destroy an individual’s livelihood is available. Hush money is exchanged, and lo and behold, a troublesome man’s life can be crushed, without even a tangible murder weapon. I say “man” because that’s the gender this is inflicted upon. When a company gives a woman a large sum of money to shut up and play along, that’s exactly what that woman will do. I’m respecting your intelligence by telling you this. This is the real world and don’t fucking kid yourself.

Every single celebrity you see is a person who has been manipulated into submission by a corporation, without exception. They incurred legal expenses outside of anything they could ever afford, and people stepped in and made their problems go away, by signing them into legal servitude. They did something evil or disgusting, their fabled career was threatened, and someone stepped in and “fixed it”. Every Disney show exists to pay the legal bills of a serial rapist, or a trafficker of children for the purposes of sexual abuse. The entire entertainment media system is rotted to its core. Your dreams are almost literally being used against you.

This will never change. Ever.

Since Marvel and DC have become the arm of an unstoppable media juggernaut, they will forevermore be artistically compromised and cannot be trusted. Major comic books are pawns of rapists and traffickers of children for the purposes of sexual abuse. They own social media. If you take any part in them whatsoever, they own you.

You want to draw comic books? Fucking draw ’em, dude. You want to make movies? Make ’em.

The means to do these things and more are before you. All I have ever done, for over 25 years, is to create material on my own and offer it to the public for sale (or for free). I had a shot at Marvel back in the mid 1990’s and I blew it, because subconsciously I knew that a contract with Marvel would be a death warrant. It would have destroyed me.

I cannot offer you a single example of a “comic book professional” you can trust. Not one. Create work on your own, and if you bother to go to any convention, regard anyone who’s not a customer as your enemy. Anytime you see a grown woman playing dress-up as some established IP, picture a price tag on her forehead. Imagine what accusations she’d make against you for ten grand. For five grand. For a thousand dollars.

As an individual artist, this is what you are up against.

Knowing all this, do you still want to draw comic books, or make movies?

If so, cool. You might just be cut out for it. Just remember these two things.

1. Stay true to yourself, no matter what the cost.
2. Trust no one. Anyone can be bought to become your enemy. Anyone.

I truly thank you for your patronage and support. Don’t give up on yourself.

I dedicate this post to the memory of Ed Piskor, Bob Beerbohm, Mark D. Bright, and Joe Matt. May they all rest in peace.