Entries by wondermark

I received a lovely email recently from Joanne, a reference librarian in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Joanne had a problem: her library had to get rid of some old books, and she had to find homes for them! Well, as you might imagine, this is hardly a problem for me, as I told her to send them on over.

And send them she did! Look at this delightful packing job. These books arrived in amazing condition and I eagerly flipped through them hunting for jewels.

Comic #648, the latest as of this writing, was created entirely from images taken from the book on the right, 1896′s Kate Carnegie by Ian MacLaren. Here’s a closer view at some of the original images.

Thank you very much, Joanne! And thank you to Toni, who just sent me a CD full of scans from 1882′s Collier’s Cyclopedia of Social and Commercial Information. Thank you to the kind chap whom I met at Comic-Con and who gave me an illustration of a man’s leg being amputated — that is just waiting to find a home in Wondermark somewhere. Thank you to Douglas who alerted me to a particularly great eBay find; thank you to Conch in Portland who brought me a whole stack of books at last year’s Wordstock (from whence came this); and to David in Colorado who sent me a massive box of 1880s Scientific American that I’ve been mining for years.

Guys I get the best mail

I thought this video was tremendous.

(via Boing Boing)

Click for a closer look

Dear Gax,

– Exhausted Parent

Dear Exhausted,

How have you been disciplining the child up till now? You say he is not old enough for time-outs, because he may not be developed enough to understand that ten minutes in a corner is supposed to be a punishment, rather than simply a considerate rest period before the next mischief. Yet even without a capacity for higher reasoning, the child, like any animal, will respond to more primitive stimulus.

Perhaps a more severe variant — a Super Time-Out, if you will — should be considered, where instead of being confronted with an abstract absence of stimulation (difficult to make the cognitive leap into behavior deterrence), the child is instead thrust into a stressful survival situation. For instance, if he teases the cat, submerge him immediately in a box of spiders. He will quickly learn not to tease the cat.

Gax, savagely

Dear Gax,

– Lazy Bones

Dear Lazy,

For what reason do you seek a life of furious industry? Being from a race that gathers into a hive formation each autumn, take it from me — there is no great benefit to working hard. Being even halfway competent at anything means you just end up crowded against a thousand other hand-picked Champions, trying to lift a billion-ton mountain and throw it into the sea, as has been prophesied by the Elders. But no matter how hard you strain and try to lift that mountain, it remains rooted in the soil as firmly as ever. I don’t even know whose dumb idea it is to keep trying every year. It doesn’t even have handholds, you guys. That would be a good place to start, and if the Council would still take my calls I would tell them so myself. I do not know if they read this column — due to their advanced age, their eyes may have tuned out of the visible-light phase by now.

What do you claim your problems are? According to your letter, you are fat and creatively dissatisfied, with a diseased car and a horrible house. Rivers have carved this deep canyon in you over time, and it is not as simple as saying “Go back uphill, river.” This is your river on purpose, and the best you can do is dig a canal or make this downward-flowing river turn a turbine for your benefit. Recast your failings as strengths and attempt to view life with these “undesirable characteristics” as an immutable constant. What new opportunities present themselves that you may have overlooked? Can you be a fetish model for hoarders, or hire yourself out as a “before” specimen for infomercials? These are just a few examples. If you forget your petty ambitions and instead accept yourself as your life has thus far molded you, then technically this counts as a win for me and I get a bonus for this column, without you even having to do anything.

Gax, tolerantly

Dear Gax,

– Aggravated Student

Dear Aggravated,

Political organizing will only put you further behind on your schoolwork. You are committing the typical human mistake of assuming that problems have solutions, and focusing your energy on the perceived injustice rather than on progress toward your goal. Sometimes, problems are simply problems. Let me give you an example.

Earlier I mentioned the mountain on Gax that is prophesied to one day be thrown into the sea. Our Elders have decreed it will happen, so once a year everyone entwines their necks and gets onto a synchronistic hive frequency, and then we pick the strongest thousand adults and duly go try to pick up the mountain. (I was on the varsity squad three years in a row, until I threw out my stomodaeum. Threw it at one of the Elders, actually. Long story and epic poem.) And it’s kind of a stupid ritual because nobody ever lifts the mountain.

But — and it took me quite a long time to realize this — that’s the point. Nobody will ever lift the mountain, no matter how hard we try. So, at the end of the Festival, when we all go back to our warrens and caves and volcanoes and split-level townhomes made of chitin, we know that if nothing else, the mountain is still there. We tried to move it, and we couldn’t. So now we have to just plan our lives around it. You humans have feasts and you toast to old victories over defeated enemies, but that puts it in your head that all situations have enemies that can somehow be defeated. On Gax, the Festival is a reminder that sometimes, when we’re trying to go somewhere, there’s just a mountain in the way, and that’s okay. We can deal with it without going all to pieces shouting and railing at the mountain.

I mean if you want to get all agitated, you could write some angry letters and satisfy your urge for action. Then you can take correspondence courses, or have a bake sale to raise tuition money, or pay a hobo to take one test while you’re taking another so you can use your time more efficiently. After all, what would be cheaper: hiring a hobo to learn the material and then take the test, or paying the extra tuition for yourself? In other words, there are things you can do to manage, but you have to make plans assuming that the world will not change for your sake.

However, you do not mention if your academic curriculum involves cultivating a supervirus. If that is the case, your options widen considerably.

Gax, infectiously

[Gax is an alien from the planet Gax. Have a question for Gax? Leave a comment on this post.]

Seduction of stepson.

A woman falls to her death.

A killer has a foot fetish.

Young murder suspects.

A homeless man is a suspect.

Victim steps off a subway platform.

Subway commuter is mutilated.

A toy collector is accidentally shot.

A video-game player goes missing.

Olympic site selection committee.

Little black book.

An autopsy reveals foul play.

Fontana and Falco in the colorful world of horse racing.

These are all DirecTV synopses of individual episodes of Law & Order. Brandon Bird (creator of the above work and surely the most L&O-obsessed artist since Botticelli) has put together an art show where each contributor takes a synopsis, and creates a piece of art based around it.

Brandon sent me a list of about two hundred of these things and I about went insane.

Then I washed my face, stared hard into the mirror, and made a piece for the show.

The exhibition will be at Gallery Meltdown in L.A. beginning this Saturday, the 24th, and running through the 30th. I and many of the other artists will be at a reception on Wednesday the 28th!

From Brandon’s description of the show:

For twenty years, the heroes of “Law & Order” have navigated literally hundreds grotesque tragedies, moral quandries, and improbable crimes.

Each piece is an artist’s interpretation of a one-line episode summary from the DirecTV program guide. Like the series that inspired them, they are sometimes straightforward and sometimes offer a twist; sometimes they contain no easy answers, and sometimes they are just plain goofy.

“These are Their Stories” will run July 24 to July 30, 2010 at Gallery Meltdown, 7522 W. Sunset Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90046.

Guys I have never even seen an episode of Law & Order but now I am in A GALLERY SHOW ABOUT IT

For the book sale this weekend!

1506 Abbot Kinney Blvd, Venice CA 90291. Sat & Sun, 9-4 LIKE THE SIGN SAYS

I got a new source book this week, and found these great photos in it! They accompany a long article that I didn’t read, but WHY DO I NEED TO because I think the captions tell the whole story.

(Click for bigger.)

ITEM ONE

Meredith Gran’s massive nationwide book tour is touching a tentacle to the slimy form of Los Angeles this week, and I’m pleased to join her this Thursday, the 15th, at the crazy-cool Secret Headquarters in Silverlake! I’ll have books and high-fives and basically anything you might want out of life, ever. Come say hello from 7-9 PM and here is a Facebook thing with maps and everything.

ITEM TWO

You know what I did last night? I looked at my many, overflowing bookshelves and said “It’s time to reintroduce some of these items into the ecosystem so other people can enjoy them too.” I own too many books — and while they’re all great, I always seem to be getting more of them and it’s creating space problems in my life. So this weekend, I am opening up my studio and having a book rummage sale with art books, novels, tons of comics and magazines, and again, free high-fives and loads of joy all around! Come check out my studio — I’ll be here Saturday and Sunday from 9AM-4PM and I promise you will find some pretty great books here. And you will spend like a dollar for them. I am doing this friends-of-the-library-style where a massive novel will cost you about as much as a cucumber. The address is: 1506 Abbot Kinney Blvd, Venice CA 90291. COME ON DOWN

ITEM THREE

NEXT WEEK is the SAN DIEGO COMIC-CON. I am going to be at booth 1231! That is super-easy to remember because it’s just 1-2-3 and then 1 again. You cannot forget a booth number so simple, which is great because everything at the Con conspires to capture your attention. This booth number, however, will be rooted so deep in your brain that even your lizard ancestors could find it, even while being distracted by a Jabba the Hutt made of LEGOs. I’ll be with TopatoCo and the sign will likely be very red. Again, a good color for attracting even lizards. SEE YOU THERE???

BONUS ITEM FOUR!!

As a present for reading this whole thing even if you are nowhere near California, I will give you a little taste of what it is like to be in California. I found the following thumbtacked to a tree.

At first I thought it might have been viral marketing for a beer called “Pliskin’s Light”, but I can’t find any evidence that such a thing exists. I only hope that whoever thumbtacked this to a tree didn’t come back, find the note missing, and go on to totally forget to empty the trash. I would feel bad.

WHAT’S GOING ON HERE? Why in the world was this thumbtacked to a tree? Suggestions in the comments!

My wife Nikki came up with this slogan.

Happy Thanksgiving, Americans! Do all your holiday shopping online this year.