mitch

via Earthbound Central. This is the greatest image. It’s...

Wed, 16 Dec 2009 10:55:27 -0500

via Earthbound Central.

This is the greatest image. It’s now my PERSONAL BRAND!

mashiankrekku: edvanchur tiemmm Unbelievable. I have been...

Tue, 15 Dec 2009 22:53:44 -0500

mashiankrekku:

edvanchur tiemmm

Unbelievable. I have been waiting for this show for years. I’m so happy I could cry manly, manly tears.

Photo

Tue, 15 Dec 2009 21:33:36 -0500

finals time.

Sun, 13 Dec 2009 21:40:26 -0500

finals time.

Today I watched a kitten stalk a chickadee in the snow. Life made sense then.

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 23:29:56 -0500

Today I watched a kitten stalk a chickadee in the snow. Life made sense then.

juliasegal: (via gorkalimotxo)

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 23:02:46 -0500

juliasegal:

(via gorkalimotxo)

Last semester, I was offered an opportunity to realize one of my...

Tue, 08 Dec 2009 22:25:29 -0500

Last semester, I was offered an opportunity to realize one of my life-long dreams – to own, operate, write and draw my very own comic strip. Ever since I was old enough to recognize simple shapes, I’ve been enamored with the format. I’m not even sure I can really say why. Perhaps it’s because I am pathologically drawn to the endearingly unusual, or perhaps I could relate so easily to masking pain with humor.

But, I had a strange attitude towards things – one that I didn’t see reflected in the people around me. Instead of reading the funny pages every Sunday as a way to get a cheap laugh, I saw myself in them. Everybody else saw halftones and misprinted lines; I saw a meticulously designed tapestry of raw, human emotion. Some people saw gags and well-timed, four-panel punchlines; I saw deep seated tragedies and closely-held victories.

I didn’t know what it was. Perhaps it was that, like me, strip cartoonists hid their pain through humor. Perhaps it was that, deep down, every cartoonist felt unaccomplished.

But, as luck would have it, I’d come to understand why I was so attached to the things in the year 2000. I can still remember it, you know. I was sitting in the first pew in my childhood Methodist church, pawing over the Sunday funny pages, as I did every week. A harsh, incandescent glow flooded the church hall that I remember thinking looked remarkably like the helm of an overturned boat.

It was the day that Charles Schulz published his very last strip. I remember feeling a certain dread while reading it, knowing that there was a certain void in the world now. Apparently Sparky himself felt it too, because he died an evening after quitting his life-long passion.

I’d realized then, the reason I loved comics so much was because I, like everybody else in the span of the strip, saw myself as Charlie Brown. More than I would have admitted before. Watching Peanuts (and Charlie Brown) disappear into the ether left a strange impression on me. I grew up venting my frustrations with life through this oblong-shaped, lovable personification of optimistic anxiety - what was I going to do without it? Who was going to understand me?

After a particularly harsh breakup in my Sophomore year of college, I came out of it bitter, heartbroken and disillusioned. I started a comic to serve as a pressure valve for my boiling emotions, titled ‘Left & Leaving,’ after a song by The Weakerthans. I did this as a daily comic, setting it as a routine in my life. At times, it was intensely liberating – at others, it was embarrassing. But in the end, I had several people approach me and say that my comic helped them through their own bout of the blues.

I knew this feeling too well, so these comments filled me up with pride. I was so proud that I’d helped someone, and I was so proud that I did it the way I’d always dreamed of – through my own means.

When I was offered the comic strip spot in my student newspaper last semester, I was pretty excited. It was finally an opportunity to do a more traditional comic, and to work towards achieving my dream of running a successful, meaningful comic strip.

I sat down at my computer, Wacom firmly in hand, and started sketching out ideas. They were all pretty much garbage, to be honest. The only one that meant anything to me was Oh Canada, a strip in the school of Peanuts (read: pretty much, the same thing) about one man in an East Pennsylvania town, struggling daily with his own loneliness and sense of self-worth.

I can say that I was proud of Oh Canada. It wasn’t always really coherent to follow, but I felt like I really put a raw level of myself into this and made it something relatable, but also intensely personal. I aimed to cut to the quick of a universal human feeling of rejection and loneliness… but I couldn’t always find a way to make it into a joke. I knew that was important. That’s how Peanuts did it. It’d punch you in the gut and leave you with a hug.

I felt that, after 25 strips, Oh Canada was starting to hit its stride. It was still rough around the edges, but every character was gaining dimension and the newspaper had a comic that you could actually follow from week to week. It was more than vaudevillian gag-after-gag humor – it was a tale told in jokes.

However, when the fall semester rolled around, I was waiting around for an e-mail to remind me to send them a comic strip. When the first newspaper of the semester was published, I found that I was replaced by another strip. I guess it wasn’t taken too well.

But that’s fine. It must not have been for everyone, but I was honestly glad that I was able to get myself out there and keep my head on straight. I did receive some accolades, with one person even going out of their way to congratulate me on a good strip. One professor approached me and expressed his lament that he didn’t see my strip in the paper this semester.

To be candid, that was the kind of stuff that kept me going. The decision to not ask me back may have been a deliberate one, but it may have just been a laziness factor. Who really knows?

I really wished that I was able to continue the strip further on, but who knows, I may do it on my own someday. Maybe then it can have a better audience and more time to really flower. For now, it’ll stay taped down in the recesses of my sketchbook.

But, y’know, I think that’s OK too.

This was from my old comic, Left & Leaving. It made me...

Sun, 06 Dec 2009 16:10:39 -0500

This was from my old comic, Left & Leaving. It made me laugh.

"No matter what you think of Twitter, it is not the technology itself that will determine its..."

Fri, 04 Dec 2009 09:11:36 -0500

“No matter what you think of Twitter, it is not the technology itself that will determine its usefulness, but what we add to the empty box that is key. One person can find Twitter useless and another essential, and they can both be right.”

- Soren Gordhamer, the Tao of Tweeting

lennyflatley: Do we have any twitter-photographer friends in the Pittsburgh area? Try my buddy...

Mon, 30 Nov 2009 19:35:05 -0500

lennyflatley:

Do we have any twitter-photographer friends in the Pittsburgh area?

Try my buddy Dave Kelly at New End Productions. His twitter is @NewEndPro.

Busy busy busy busy. Busier than busy.

Mon, 30 Nov 2009 17:54:16 -0500

Busy busy busy busy. Busier than busy.

This was my iPod’s background for a while. Jessie thought...

Mon, 30 Nov 2009 11:35:27 -0500

This was my iPod’s background for a while. Jessie thought it was amazing.

Photo

Sat, 21 Nov 2009 13:05:38 -0500

this is that shirtless man from twilight i think!

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 20:44:20 -0500

this is that shirtless man from twilight i think!

A drawing I did tonight featuring old-people versions of my...

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 23:09:28 -0500

A drawing I did tonight featuring old-people versions of my friends over at Fangamer. The fella on the left is Reid Young, and the fella on the right is Steven Campos.

This one’s for my pal Brandon, in response to the previous...

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 18:15:35 -0500

This one’s for my pal Brandon, in response to the previous blurb about Robert Hamburger. He followed me on Twitter, apparently!

snort.

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 23:47:11 -0500

snort.

“Mario… I have cloud cancer. Yes, I’m...

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 23:11:07 -0500

“Mario… I have cloud cancer. Yes, I’m cirrus.”

This is awesome. Congrats, you guys.

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 19:18:14 -0500

This is awesome. Congrats, you guys.

Rescued from my high school LiveJournal: a photo I took of my...

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 21:35:21 -0500

Rescued from my high school LiveJournal: a photo I took of my eye after I had my facial reconstruction surgery. This was actually a couple days AFTER the fact – my eye was much worse before this was taken.