AUTOBIO AS ART (Patreon)

Hello, Dear Patrons;

Being fairly burnt out with painting. my autobio is my art right now. 

Your Patreon Bonus for April will be in your mailboxes soon!

I Hope You're Enjoying This Will-Be Summer!

Best,

MK

READY OR NOT HERE I BE

I was still inking with a Sharpie when I began looking for cartooning work. It was 1978; I was age 16 when I put together a few inappropriate samples, old school drawings of my characters, useless to clients, and visited a few agencies in Manhattan. I was still in junior high. The first time my mother drove me there and waited in the car. It may have been a show of support or just humoring me. I remember a receptionist being firm, yet well mannered: “I don’t think they can use anything here.” I returned to school the next day. When a teacher asked me how it went, I wrote a big “TY” on the blackboard. I knew that as well as being too young, a had a weak grasp of the art. My ego was wrapped up in my art, but my work simply was not good enough to expect to get work. It wasn’t pro quality. I couldn’t paint or apply color.  I was still inking with Sharpies and drawing Koko the Clowns, hoping they would build an agenda around me.

In the 1970s, drawing in an old cartoon style was completely useless. We’ve got them up the ass today, but at the time, the only market you could still see an unashamed inspiration was underground comics, and very occasionally, advertising that imitated them. “Animation history” wasn’t an industry yet. Modern animation was strictly Scooby Doo or Milt Kahl. Stuff I had no interest in at all.

It’s amusing to have even tried at the time, but I was bull-like. And, out of desperation, delusional. I had to get what I wanted and to become a pro as soon as possible. The inability to do so made me desolate. My depression was bursting into bloom, but I didn’t know what the feeling was. Depression is scariest when you don’t know what to call it. I felt a raw emptiness. I worded it as “I feel like life is passing me by.”  When I said that to my best friend, he asked me if I should think about seeing a psychiatrist; very perceptive for a teenager. His family was able to see the weirdness of my behavior before even I did. My friend’s older brother saw me skulking around in their basement talking to myself, he said very slowly. It seems now like a classic case to be dealt with immediately. At the time it was a behavioral issue to be controlled by force.