Nation of Ulysses

How about that? It’s 2020.

It’s been a long time since a year felt iconic; maybe even 19 years. Before 9/11, the year 2001 was an essential part of a Kubrick masterpiece. 2005 was when The Transformers: The Movie took place, but that’s less widely known. Last November Blade Runner happened. The rest of the 21st century thus far has been a real wash.

~~My favorite dive bar closed today.~~ (Thank heavens, I have learned this was incorrect.) Reports vary, but it looks like the iconic Little 5 Points section of Moreland Avenue will be pulverized into more overpriced stack-n-packs for rich people from out of town. The Masquerade on North collapsed recently during this process, presumably out of anguish. Little by little, the wonderful world I came to know in the city of Atlanta is going extinct.

The Star Community Bar will never die, no matter how much I haunt it.

I guess it’s a good thing then that I’ve been planning a comic book called Little 5 for the past five years, following the killing of two of my best friends there. That’s not what the comic’s about, but it’s clearly influenced by it, and other experiences of my life in L5P. Now it has to be told. I’ll be drawing places that no longer exist.

I know this is the first you’re hearing of this, so just understand that my work pace can often be described as “glacial”, and you shouldn’t expect a finished product for a while. If you’re interested and want updates, maybe you should consider becoming a Patron. I can’t make my paucity of finances any clearer. If there’s a way to make a living doing what I do, I have yet to discover it. I put all my attention and energy into my work and nothing else. There isn’t another method of being a proper artist.

And whatever my problems might be, they don’t really compare to losing a job just as the new year dawns, by surprise.

Here’s that Nation of Ulysses album. I always felt the first track was the winner. The rest is pretty good, it just doesn’t have the same sugar-rush of inspiration that the liner notes do. (There’s a hilarious line in one of the band bios, something like “it is rumored his kiss tastes like a honeydew melon”.)