Ceaseless Fables of Beyonding

Hey, who’s fifty-two years old, underemployed, flat broke and gazing bald-eyed into an existential abyss? This guy!!!

Holy shit everybody. I know that it’s difficult to explain my inability to distinguish life outside of my own sensorium of perception, but as far as milestone headtrips go, fifty-two is a major one. At 52, every year of your life now corresponds to a week in a year. (Or if you like, a card in a full deck.) We often instinctively understand the number 52 on a subconscious level, because of how early in life we understand seasons. At this age, a new clarity of hindsight automatically installs in the brain’s hard drive.

Here’s where, if I’d been able to keep up the schedule ceaselessly over the last couple of years, I’d be crowing about my whole “do a comic page a week” thing, but let’s be real, I’ve barely even managed a page every two weeks. So I’ve been pretty hard on myself for some time now. I literally lose sleep over not being able to produce enough real work, because my time is consumed by taking odd jobs to get by. Ironically, this is a productive struggle creatively, because it offers a lot of raw material for stuff like, say, One Hundred Percent American. As long as I can get the ideas down in a sketchbook, I can refine them later, but I still need more time to render the finished work. If I get it planned out in advance, then I can take a day and ink my brains out.

This is exactly what I’m doing on my birthday. Even though the only success story I can recall is Chris Ware and his Acme Novelty Library (which I presume is still an ongoing animus, I could be wrong, which might obscure my point here), I decided at the tender age of 18 to become a human publishing imprint, a lifelong creator of comic strips and comic books that inferred the existence of a tangible creative universe, inhabited by characters whom readers carry with them over decades of their lives, or return to after long periods of malaise for a nostalgic refresher. Once I got my hands on the necessary software, I decided to add animation to my roster, a field that is widely known to tear souls and lives asunder and turn regular people into ravenous monsters (myself included). As Evan Dorkin once told me in an email, probably 20 years ago, “a hard road, that [animation].” I don’t know why I flagellate myself for getting by on donations, when there are no examples I’m aware of independent/underground cartoonists doing any better right now. A lot of the cartoonists I revere are now dead. Some didn’t even make it to 52. In most cases I’m still grappling with their passing.

I’m glad and grateful to be alive and for you to be alive reading this twaddle which I have based my life around, much in the satire-art method of Zappa but with comics instead of music. I am especially grateful to those of you who have supported me for years, whether just here on Patreon or independently donating, no matter how small, you’d be surprised how far it goes with me. Even the Bands I Useta Like website is now ten years old, but “2014” doesn’t feel that long ago. That’s how long some of you have been on board. That means a lot.

Hell, some of you have been supporting me since my movie was screened, and that was fifteen years ago folks! That’s a long time! Some of you are POGs from The Before Times of ’91, and that’s thirty-three years! That’s the length of the life of Christ!!! Do you know how humbling that is? Wouldn’t you continue creating work, given that there is precedent of monetary validation that goes back over thirty years? The definition of “vintage” on eBay is twenty-five!

I will probably check in on social media later because my birthday falls on Memorial Day this year, and I expect most folks will be busy with that, plus there will probably be a lot of happy birthday wishes, more than I can read, so I get really ashamed about it and go offline for a brief period. I feel bad that someone thought of me and I might not get to see or know about it. My mind has developed over the past 25 years in ways that are both ascendant and occupationally hazardous, simply due to the compulsory obligation to be a content-producing presence on the internet (initially as a means of promoting and selling my work on a global and digital basis). When you draw even a paltry income from a website or channel, you come to realize that there is always some way to sell your work online. Hell, you could go one farther and say there’s always a way to make money online, which is true, but despite appearances I am more interested in selling and promoting my work than simply “making money”. This is both good and bad. But I always, from day one, established a web presence for the purpose of selling my comics. That is almost always the reason I am talking.

I am fighting a massive internal battle regarding my place in the world, and my artistic compulsion to continue creating work of increasing quality until physically unable to do so, which in truth I consider to be an obligation. Not to get all hoity-toity on everyone, but if you possess God-given talents, you are obligated to use them as you see fit to enlighten the world. Am I wrong? You draw out of aesthetic improvement, at least in some small way, right? It’s a positive obligation.

Thank you sincerely for being there as I cross into the New 52. Let’s get weird.

These projects are in varying stages of production as of 2024:
-issue #6 of Bands I Useta Like magazine
–Made In Georgia, a series of portraits of notable people born in Ga./ATL
–Midnight Special, the first episode of the animation anthology
-more What’s The Deal? segments, not necessarily focused on John’s Arm mythos
–Curse of the Death Stallion, the second current-era Ceaseless Fables volume
-“Ceaseless: The Legend of Matty Boy Anderson” documentary serial
–Five Fingers of Fate

All of the above productions will be viewable or free to Patrons in the future. Also I put stuff on my Patreon that would be unsuitable for sharing on social media (typically boobs).

If you made it this far, and just feel like tossing me a few bucks, I literally can always use it. I frequent food pantries at this point. And hey, it’s my birthday.

The quickest way to get money into the Mike The Pod coffers is via PayPal. It goes directly onto a card I can use.

My Venmo is @Matty-Anderson-1. Please note that Venmo takes longer because it has to go through my bank, but do not let this discourage you from donating if it is convenient. I have had no luck with Zelle or Apple Pay. When I do I’ll just add those links here.

Much obliged for putting up with me all these years and supporting what I do. It means the world to me.

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.