A Return To The Fray and The Shame Of The Closeted Geek

The draftsmanship is weak but I like the mood in this one... Man, I'd love to do more life drawing.

School starts again today. Thank god. (I guess that's the difference between an atheist and an agnostic -- the agnostic might be taking someone's name in vain.) I've got Modern Color today -- this class might be dumped if it cramps my style when I get back into the novel. I signed on because the teacher asked me to -- one of those things where the class is just starting out and he needed some butts in chairs so it wouldn't get canceled.

I might stick it out, though. It's going to be a mix of theory and practice using both digital and traditional media and it sounds interesting, if vague. I can hardly wait to see the syllabus.

My other two classes are going to be Art Marketing and Portfolio Management and Photography. I've barely used a camera -- I don't event take snapshots -- but when I started incorporating photography into my last set of... Jesus, what do I call them, anyway? Prints? Illustrations? Images? Anyway, they changed the way I work and now I need to get some real skills -- half the time I can't even get the damned camera to work.

And as for art marketing, hey. I want some money.

I'm also going to start a club, much against my best judgment. Why start a club? Well, I want to start cartooning. And I can't find any cartooning classes at school. And if I'm left to my own devices I'll never quite get around to doing anything. When I started writing seriously I joined a writer's group; it helped a whole lot. In fact, there's no other single factor that has been more significant in my growth as a writer.

So I want to get something similar going for cartooning.

But you know what that's gonna mean? Hanging out with people who are into comic books and anime.

Shameful confession time here, folks. I don't hang out with people who are, uh. Geeks. I can pass as a non-geek right now -- well, yeah, I'm into comics but they're just part of my whole art thing, and I'm all about mining the seam between pop culture and fine culture and I can talk about politics and history and blah blah blah and in general seem like a fairly convincing adult.

But I feel as if I'm straddling a very fine line and one little shove would push me over and then I'd be spending all my time talking about Bill Mantlo and Rumiko Takahashi and the fucking Skrulls.

And so on to the infinite power. I'm gonna try and class it up a little by calling it a Narrative Art Club but hey. I can call Roxie-the-dog a Miniature Clydesdale but she ain't gonna pull no beer wagon. It is going to be a geekfest. I will be deliberately socializing with people who know who Jack Kirby was -- and who care about who inked him.

Yeah, I'm a pretentious elitist bastard but the whole thing is making me very, very nervous. You ever see that movie Freaks? If you have, you know what I'm talking about.

It's like they're out there, waiting for me in the shadows. I can smell the pulp of their comics; I can hear the rattle of their polyhedral dice. There are science fiction paperbacks. There is Monty Python.

"Gabba-gabba we accept you we accept you one of us!"