Hello Mome 17, Goodbye Mome

In Issue 17 of Fantagraphics' anthology Mome, Life with Mr. Dangerous will conclude in a thirty-one page installment (two pages of which is below). For this issue housing the end of the story (and my tenure at Mome), I drew the cover (above) and the back cover.

A million thanks to editor Eric Reynolds for not murdering me as the installments for this book trickled in over the past few years. It's been great being a part of Mome, and I'll be looking forward to future issues.

Our Lives As Doppelgängers

I, along with probably everyone else, have been approached many times over with: "You know who you look like?" or "You know who you remind me of?" This is followed by anything ranging from the observer's cousin to some actor whose name escapes them. In most cases, I have no idea how to respond this, as I'm sure we all don't. Typically we don't know the person to whom we're being compared so we obviously don't have the liberty of joining in the appraisal. But I seem to always have the honor of "looking just like" people with whom I see no resemblance. Recent example: my friend Brad insists I'm a dead ringer for John Edwards. I think I look more like Hilary, frankly.

But the omniscient promotional guru of Fantagraphics, Mr. Eric Reynolds, mailed me today with one that I had to concede. The subject line of his message: "You look like AC Newman." Alright, I give. This one's sort of weirdly accurate. Look for me on stage at the next New Pornographers show.

The Almost-Ran

This has ended up being too semi-ridiculous to not share. At ComicCon this summer I was asked to be interviewed by the lovely and congenial Ms. Olive Panter (yes, daughter of one Gary Panter) for that social networking juggernaut in Rupert Murdoch's army, myspace. I was told by Olive and company that the video would be up sometime in August. Sure, why not?

I don't recall how long the interview was, but it was quite pleasant, and all involved were extremely nice. When months had passed and I'd yet to run across any video of ComicCon, I assumed it had been scratched for one reason or another (or no reason, as is so often the case with corporations). But then I happened to see a link, when logging into to the time-wasting site last week, to this video. Here we're treated to a douchebag from My Chemical Romance (sorry, maybe he's a nice guy, but they're horrible (though their album artwork was done by James Jean, who can do no aesthetic wrong but isn't enough to save their horrible music... A further note: this guy's too douchesque to take off his sunglasses while both indoors and talking to someone? Two times the douche!). My interview wasn't in the video, but I noticed a couple of seconds of someone flipping through "The Three Paradoxes," which they'd shot right before or after my interview (I can't recall which). Strange. I'd become an establishing shot. Or atmosphere. Two things I couldn't be less appropriate for when it comes to the circus that is ComicCon.

Still, I noticed there was a Part Two to the video. And though the interview's not there either, there's another second or so of flipping through "Let Us Be Perfectly Clear." This is followed by Rosario Dawson and a guy I hung out with for about fifteen minutes in Farel Dalyrmple's apartment while halfheartedly watching "Mystery Men." So my interview was scratched entirely but my books remained. Maybe there's some analogy or metaphor waiting to be found there for me. I'm not sure. Either way, I loved it. Is somehow all seemed like a perfect document of independent comics' place at ComicCon.


Yet this interview wouldn't die! Days later, I was looking through Fantagraphics' Flickr site and came across this picture, photographic evidence that the interview occurred. Let the record reflect I am looking at what Olive is doing with the microphone and I resent Fantagraphics' (I'm assuming it was Eric Reynolds, the rat bastard) implications to the contrary.

But only God knows what I did under the table to Tim Hensley (one of my favorite artists in Mome). I'm ashamed. Ashamed.