The work stands on its own here, except for one proviso:
Need to say upfront that the drawing of my opponent here doesn’t look much like the real person. This is intentional, to protect the identity of Mr. Mark Kalar of St. Anthony, MN. Oh, whoops.
This is one of the first long-form comics I ever drew, back when I was pretty clearly just beginning to learn how to draw. It’s an adaption of an excellent essay / short story by Twin Cities music writer Jim Walsh, who was nice enough to let me take his words out for a spin. Resurrected because Fleetwood Mac seems to be having some kind of goddamned renaissance.
OK.
I’ve been talking on and on all summer about wrapping up Nowhere Band this year. The idea was pretty simple: I’m turning 40 at the end of the year, and on some level it felt weird to me to think about continuing to do a strip about dudes in a band after I’d turned 40. Especially since it’s been a good 3 years since I’ve had an active band going. There was a bunch of burnout involved as well, much of it centered around a bunch of rules I’ve imposed on myself.
But now that I’ve thought things over and life has calmed down a bit, I think I’m going to keep the strip going. Part of what convinced me was the abrupt realization that some of my favorite comics are Jaime Hernandez’ ongoing run; he obviously didn’t feel weird about making comics about aging punks as he whizzed past 40, so why should I? Also, I recognized that lots of the things that were bothering me were completely self-inflicted. Tired of fighting with Photoshop in the coloring stage? You can always go back to black and white for a while. Feeling pressed by self-imposed posting deadlines? Who gives a shit? It’ll come out when it comes out. Don’t want every story to center on the band? Fine, they all have outside lives, tell some stories there.
The truth is that I do love the strip. Somehow, sneakily, it seems to have become my life’s work. I can live with that. I didn’t mean for it to be when I started out… but at least for now it feels like that’s where things are. I guess that gives some shape to my 20s- I wasn’t wasting my time in half-assed bands, I was gathering material. You always wish more people read a strip when you put this much work into it, but I love the readers that I have. people whose tastes and worldviews I respect tell me they like it; that means a ton to me.
So I think I’m going to keep going. I might structure things so that stories or even sections of life have clear starts and ends, but that’s the sort of thing that’s easy to say you’re going to do and then forget. So we’ll see. And I’m sure that there will be breaks and hiatuses at points as I work on prose stuff or other comics. But for the time being, Nowhere Band’s going to chug on. Even if (gasp) the Awesome Boys don’t, necessarily.
Here’s a comic strip I worked up, kind of a prototype for a thing I might pursue after I finish Nowhere Band (which should be some time this year, unless I change my mind). I think this thing would mutate a little more if it actually went into production, but if nothing else I’ve got a pretty big google doc full of script ideas…
And yeah, inspired by Charles Schulz, of course.
Updated: I did indeed change my mind.
The comic project I did back in 2007 immediately before starting Nowhere Band. I think this was a good script, but my art skillz were clearly still a work in progress. Note that I borrowed a couple of character designs for NWB.
Drawn at age 30, right after the cartooning bug bit me. I guess my pencil and ink craft has gotten better, but I’m not sure my writing has.
This strip does accurately portray my feelings about the jerky industry.
Let’s start with the executive summary: After being in creative exile, more or less, for the past 4 months, I started work this morning on bringing back my old rock strip Nowhere Band. The new volume will, somewhat recursively, follow the Awesome Boys as they try to get their band back together after a long hiatus and deal with the fact that they’re now edging into being older than their musical peers. First new strip should go up some time next week. It should be funny and human. I’m stoked.
Continue reading Disasters and Recoveries and Education and the Return of Nowhere Band
Just remembered this one, which I originally drew in 2007 (clicking on them should embiggen):
