Blue spends the next five minutes laughing to himself about how fucked up he is. He has come to the realization that he has absolutely no clue why he was even born. His spends most of his time, these days, trying to convince his friends and himself that art is a calling as much as the priesthood or social work is a calling and that there is importance to even the most indefinable of motivations behind an aesthetic. What makes him laugh is that the very next action he is to take is to draw a superhero janitor who is really out to clean up the streets. Some calling.
The longer Blue thinks about the various parts which comprise his life's oeuvre, the more sense it all seems to make and the less chance he has of explaining it to anyone else. A wise friend of his once told him that it wasn't his job to do that. "You can only be responsible for yourself. Create the work that you feel is right for you to create at the time that you are creating it and it will be right for the path that you are on. You cannot control how others view your path any more than you can control the path of others." Blue's friend William always said things that seemed so patently obvious that it made Blue ill but were so brilliantly and appropriately timed that it made Blue's skin tingle.
Blue continued drawing, starting the next page with the punctured skin of a patient, wounded by the beetle plague.
Leer:
"I hate the Beatles", Tonya is a late-night nurse, she is tearing off strips of sheet fabric to fashion a bandage, the hospital ran out, too many beetles, too many bites, not enough bandages,"can't buy me love?! Bullshit!," she flirts with the patient who she clearly thinks is cute, wealthy or both, "You can buy me love anytime! New dress, new shoes, a handbag, diamonds, pearls, a shiny new car, and travel, first-class, any place in the world my precious little heart desires." She pouts, "them stupid Beatles! No wonder I never get what I want!"
"Don't blame the Beatles," Leer says as he enters the room and walks toward Tonya. Leer stops in his tracks, sensing another presence."Oh shit. It's you!" Leer turns, smacking his forehead in amazement and points straight ahead.
"Blue!" Leer shouts,"Keep drawing! No Matter what, keep drawing", Leer asks, demands, expects,"Oh and, sorry about the house, it really won't matter in the end."
Blue continues drawing Leer, unsure if he is hallucinating, has fallen asleep at the drawing board or simply died. He tries to remember how much water he had to drink that day. The studio can get pretty hot. Still, he couldn't get over the fact that a character in his book was just talking to him, so he decides to listen to Leer and continues drawing.
Blue
an illustrated novel
Saturday, August 7, 2010
Friday, August 6, 2010
Chapter 6 Across the Universe
Blue was ecstatic that he had recovered the missing sixteenth page for a couple of reasons. Primarily, he was pleased to have discovered a black and white rendering that was at least similar to the the original colored panels from the initial drawings and perhaps more importantly, he no longer felt like he was about to die. In fact, he felt exhilarated. Blue was pretty certain that Mona was the key to the "Leer" story as John had been writing it which meant that she couldn't be dead. He was so puzzled over the Mona Damino - Catherine Kent relationship that he had been immobilized when it came to drawing for the book. Now, he was certain that Mona was, in fact, Catherine returned. This did two things for Blue. It gave him a place to go back to and a means to move the story forward. Blue felt rejuvenated. He felt strangely healed and supported by the appearance of that sixteenth page, by Mona.
He couldn't seem to get the Beatles out of his head. For days he walked around humming "Help", "A Hard Day's Night" and "Across the Universe" over and over again with occassional meanderings into "Come Together" and countless other great Beatles tunes. Frankly, Blue was stunned that he actually knew so many Beatles tunes by heart. He had nearly forgotten all of the hours he spent as a child running over to the Codwalluper's house to listen to the Beatles, Stones, Beach Boys and the Kinks while dreaming of getting completely naked with Ginny Maplethorpe, Nathan Codwalluper's best friend. Nathan was George's brother. George was Blue's friend. Blue was pretty sure that Nathan was gay even though Blue didn't really understand "gay" very well back then and had no idea what a fag hag was, or how completely Ginny fit the MO.
The point is that Blue really knew an awful lot of Beatles tunes and spent a few days humming them and being an unabashed punster decided that the aural hallucination of the song "Help" during his near-death experience was an indication that he should include beetles in his book. He had been assembling the second half of the book into its proper order ever since the vomiting episode. What Blue affectionately and insularly referred to as his barfmitzvah. It would indeed prove to be a turning point in both the story and his own life. The second half of the book was comprized predominantly of sketches. Some were so loose that he could barely remember what they were meant to depict, and even if he recognized the images, he was often clueless as to their meaning. For now, he had beetles. Blue began drawing where page thirty left off. He hadn't filled in the missing text for half of the book but he was pretty sure that he could double back and fill in the details. The only thing he had to do now was figure out a transition. "When in doubt, turn to the news," Blue jokes to himself as he draws another frame into an already overcrowded page, his usual uncontrollable impulse to decorate the page so the story it tells keeps telling long after the ride into the next scene. This time the story is the bug bites, a sudden plague of bug bites popping up all over the city, causing itching like the poison oak which drove him insane in the days before the "madness".
The "madness" is any time between the current time and some time in the past upon which Blue is willing to look at with esteem. Actually, Blue refers to the madness mostly as that period during which he has been guided or influenced by unseen forces telling, revealing, guiding or indicating to him in some way the proper path for him to follow, like the Mona incident, however, not all of the instances turn out so positively.
Blue begins to talk himself through another difficult moment. "So there's Van, Mona, Arnold, MUTE and the butler, I don't know if I'll ever get what was going on there, some chic who seems a bit uptight, the ominous butler, a horny teenager who might be dead, or was it the ever vigilant "Maintenance Man" who perished in the explosion?" Blue snickers as he tries to make his drawing happen twice as fast as it normally takes. "People want results, masked men better fly!, thanks for that wisdom, Frank, and by the way, How's that lottery retirement plan working out for ya?" Blue sneared to himself." "And forget about writing, never make people read!" "I guess he'd be pretty unhappy with me right now, eh Mr. Leer?! Jackass was probably right though, after all, I'm the one crazy enough to be talking to a 20 year old recycled comic book character!" Blue smiles as he deftly adds another line from his 3B Prismacolor pencil to his awesome new page for "Leer"
He couldn't seem to get the Beatles out of his head. For days he walked around humming "Help", "A Hard Day's Night" and "Across the Universe" over and over again with occassional meanderings into "Come Together" and countless other great Beatles tunes. Frankly, Blue was stunned that he actually knew so many Beatles tunes by heart. He had nearly forgotten all of the hours he spent as a child running over to the Codwalluper's house to listen to the Beatles, Stones, Beach Boys and the Kinks while dreaming of getting completely naked with Ginny Maplethorpe, Nathan Codwalluper's best friend. Nathan was George's brother. George was Blue's friend. Blue was pretty sure that Nathan was gay even though Blue didn't really understand "gay" very well back then and had no idea what a fag hag was, or how completely Ginny fit the MO.
The point is that Blue really knew an awful lot of Beatles tunes and spent a few days humming them and being an unabashed punster decided that the aural hallucination of the song "Help" during his near-death experience was an indication that he should include beetles in his book. He had been assembling the second half of the book into its proper order ever since the vomiting episode. What Blue affectionately and insularly referred to as his barfmitzvah. It would indeed prove to be a turning point in both the story and his own life. The second half of the book was comprized predominantly of sketches. Some were so loose that he could barely remember what they were meant to depict, and even if he recognized the images, he was often clueless as to their meaning. For now, he had beetles. Blue began drawing where page thirty left off. He hadn't filled in the missing text for half of the book but he was pretty sure that he could double back and fill in the details. The only thing he had to do now was figure out a transition. "When in doubt, turn to the news," Blue jokes to himself as he draws another frame into an already overcrowded page, his usual uncontrollable impulse to decorate the page so the story it tells keeps telling long after the ride into the next scene. This time the story is the bug bites, a sudden plague of bug bites popping up all over the city, causing itching like the poison oak which drove him insane in the days before the "madness".
The "madness" is any time between the current time and some time in the past upon which Blue is willing to look at with esteem. Actually, Blue refers to the madness mostly as that period during which he has been guided or influenced by unseen forces telling, revealing, guiding or indicating to him in some way the proper path for him to follow, like the Mona incident, however, not all of the instances turn out so positively.
Blue begins to talk himself through another difficult moment. "So there's Van, Mona, Arnold, MUTE and the butler, I don't know if I'll ever get what was going on there, some chic who seems a bit uptight, the ominous butler, a horny teenager who might be dead, or was it the ever vigilant "Maintenance Man" who perished in the explosion?" Blue snickers as he tries to make his drawing happen twice as fast as it normally takes. "People want results, masked men better fly!, thanks for that wisdom, Frank, and by the way, How's that lottery retirement plan working out for ya?" Blue sneared to himself." "And forget about writing, never make people read!" "I guess he'd be pretty unhappy with me right now, eh Mr. Leer?! Jackass was probably right though, after all, I'm the one crazy enough to be talking to a 20 year old recycled comic book character!" Blue smiles as he deftly adds another line from his 3B Prismacolor pencil to his awesome new page for "Leer"
Thursday, August 5, 2010
Chapter 5 What to Keep Leer What is Written
Blue has been staring for days at the stack of pages for which John left him no text. He prefers to think about it that way, even though, somewhere in the back of Blue's mind, he realizes that he probably lost the text himself. He paces back and forth across his studio repeatedly and then it occurs to him, there is an old box tucked away in the old safe. The safe is a beautiful old metal safe with thick walls of steel and a variety of little compartments for storing little treasures. Nothing is really safe in the safe. There is no door. The landlords left the safe in the studio because it was just to heavy to move, plain and simple. As Blue thinks again to himself about the various ways they could have managed to bring the safe up to the fourth floor studio, he searches all of her compartments for any missing pages any scrap that might fill in the gaps in the story of Leer.
No luck. He did find his autographed picture of Ann Margaret. Blue had been a scenic painter on a movie she was in that was shot in his town many years back. He always thought that she was pretty hot while he was growing up but by the time he actually got to meet her, she was old. The funny thing about this particular moment is that Blue, standing in his studio, eyesight failing, knees creaking slightly, stood staring at the photograph of the actress and thought, "She actually is pretty damn hot!". He carefully placed her photo back into the drawer and continued looking for the missing pages.
Suddenly a wave of nausea overcame Blue. He began to sweat profusely even thought the air in the studio was pleasant and cool. He became dizzy and suddenly went cold. He looked down at his hands which had turned blue. Blue doubled over in pain, his stomach on fire. He began to vomit. As he did, he distinctly heard the Beatles singing "Help". Blue caught a glimpse of himself in a mirror. He had turned blue all over. Blue stumbled backwards and fell into a work table. As he tried to hold himself up, he capsized a large cardboard box, spilling the contents upon himself. Books and papers poured out from the box, hitting Blue in the face. He was losing consciousness. At the precise moment that Blue's head hit the floor, Leer, page sixteen fell upon him.
Blue recognized Mona in the opening panels. He instantly felt better. It was as if none of the nausea or even the complexion change had occurred, Blue was fine.
"Weird!" he said to himself as he carefully placed the drawing at the top of the stack.
No luck. He did find his autographed picture of Ann Margaret. Blue had been a scenic painter on a movie she was in that was shot in his town many years back. He always thought that she was pretty hot while he was growing up but by the time he actually got to meet her, she was old. The funny thing about this particular moment is that Blue, standing in his studio, eyesight failing, knees creaking slightly, stood staring at the photograph of the actress and thought, "She actually is pretty damn hot!". He carefully placed her photo back into the drawer and continued looking for the missing pages.
Suddenly a wave of nausea overcame Blue. He began to sweat profusely even thought the air in the studio was pleasant and cool. He became dizzy and suddenly went cold. He looked down at his hands which had turned blue. Blue doubled over in pain, his stomach on fire. He began to vomit. As he did, he distinctly heard the Beatles singing "Help". Blue caught a glimpse of himself in a mirror. He had turned blue all over. Blue stumbled backwards and fell into a work table. As he tried to hold himself up, he capsized a large cardboard box, spilling the contents upon himself. Books and papers poured out from the box, hitting Blue in the face. He was losing consciousness. At the precise moment that Blue's head hit the floor, Leer, page sixteen fell upon him.
Blue recognized Mona in the opening panels. He instantly felt better. It was as if none of the nausea or even the complexion change had occurred, Blue was fine.
"Weird!" he said to himself as he carefully placed the drawing at the top of the stack.
Wednesday, August 4, 2010
Tuesday, August 3, 2010
Monday, August 2, 2010
Sunday, August 1, 2010
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