this · used · to · be · *MY* · journal!

early in my career of drawing independent comics, i wrote out a little list of stories i wanted to draw. i suppose i should revisit it now, because they weren't all bad ideas, and i used a few, before the story yanked me off into directions unforseen. one of them implied this episode here, which i finally got around to doing about five months after i wrote the list. it was the last thing, i believe, that i used from that particular fragment of notes.

the story is pretty simple, and the panelling acceptable. god is loosely modelled of one mr. z. (the name he goes by,) who peddles his artwork on the streets of kansas city. the fact that i made god black passed without comment, like everything else i did at the time. i still like the comet, and would use the same principles to draw one today. the only confusing point is perhaps the column of panels at the right of the pages. these are somewhat personal locations to me, places that at the time had very painful meaning. except for the crow, of course, which isn't a personal location, but just about the only clue i gave the uninformed reader that these might not be happy fun-time locations.

a) pyramid pizza (old location)--yeah, i started doing comics for a reason, and that reason used to work here.

b) buzzard beach--i've spent altogether too many hours at buzzard beach with that same reason. lame.

c) the side of pennylane, now streetside records--helped same reason tie her muffler back on there one night. lame.

d) wild oats--made a fool of myself by dropping by to see a cashier there constantly. extra lame.

e) luyben music--a third girl received a guitar pick from there once, courtesy me. go me.

f) the art institute--long my painful, painful nemesis. but i stuck it out.

g) the nelson-atkins--i'm not sure about this. i must have been running out of ideas; or maybe it was guilt by association.

h) a bit of sidewalk that used to be up towards main and 47th.--i thought the guitar pick girl wrote it, but i was probably wrong.

lame, lame, lame. but i knew it was lame! and did it with malice aforethought. i've never shied away from embarassing myself publicly.

i used to put out minicollections of about eight sparrow's falls at a time. this comic gave its collection its name--god's answering machine. for obvious reasons. i liked the whole concept, of christopher's prayers going unheard because they were accidentally erased . . . but this is a little at odds with the basic concept of sparrow's fall, which is that his 'fall' is deliberately encompassed by the universe. no matter. no one noticed anyway.

and of course, finally, my favorite mortimer easter's fun fact, #4--'chip is not one of the nine billion names of god.'

(yes, god is black.)