Adventures in Everyday Life #5

Maybe it’s all this Pop Punk I’ve been listening to today. Although I did interject it with a bit of Trash Metal as well. Hmmm. Recipe for good moods? Probably!

Adventures in Everyday Life #4

Bottles are weird to draw. Laptops ain’t much easier.

Episodes 2 & 3 of ADVENTURES IN EVERYDAY LIFE: “Self-Destruction” and “Shaving”. Can trimming off one’s signature feature be a form a self-harm? Probably not.

A long while ago, I posted a comic called “Adventures in Grocery Shopping”. Since then, I’ve wanted to do more “Adventures in _____”, but never gave myself the time. Now that I’m about to move back from the UK to the US, I’ve got a lot going on, a lot that I want to get off my chest and do short autobio comix about. Since my “American (S)Elf” got a good response, I think now’s as good a time as any to start my own diary comic. So consider this the first ADVENTURES IN EVERYDAY LIFE. Today’s episode: Adventures in Loose Ends. It’ll probably be a mostly-weekly thing, depending on how much is going on in my head.

Like anything else I do, the format will likely change as I go along. Episode 5 will look totally different from this, and Episode 15 even more so. Such is life.

Also, I’m really starting to get the hang of Manga Studio, which is a pretty great feeling. I like being able to just bang out a comic, without having to worry about erasing, waiting for ink/process white to dry, scanning, etc. I still prefer paper & pen, but this is a very handy time-saver.

This is my tribute & response to American Elf, a modern classic. Thank you, James Kochalka, for sharing it with the world.

“Baptism”, by me (Jonathan David Lim)

This was meant to be my submission to the Graphic Short Story Prize this year. The deadline is today, however, and although other contests I’ve seen allow submissions with a postmark of the closing date, this one doesn’t allow anything after today. And I don’t have enough cash to pay for a same day delivery (£100, roughly), so I guess I missed this one.

Never mind, I’m still happy with it. I’ll probably print out a few copies and sell it as a standalone pamphlet thing. Or maybe submit it to an anthology and see where it goes.

As for the comic itself, it started with an image—that of a church pastor drowning a member of his congregation. Page One is essentially the sequence of events as I initially saw them in my head. (I was in church during a baptism service at the time.) I think I was going to follow it up with some kind of mystery story that would lead into full-blown urban fantasy, but never made it that far. When I was looking back at old ideas, I noticed it and, for whatever reason, turned it into this thing. And then I changed the characters from humans to animals because they’re more fun to draw than dumb old people. But that’s a rant for another day.

Hope you enjoy.

Here’s a little comic I just made about a guy who used to come into the pub where I work and harass the local patrons with these very phrases. No word of a lie, he’d just walk up to any old stranger and call em his best friend, after having introduced himself as ‘Martin the Clown’. (EDIT: Now with screentone shading!)

I may do more Fucked-Up Follies with other various characters of the pub. We shall see.

My submission to Breakfast Every Day, a forthcoming zine curated by the insanely talented Ripley Hayden. Can’t wait to see the finished product! Buy it when it comes out, will ya?

‘Question Time with Mr Reaper’

Words by Peter Welland
Pictures by Jonathan David Lim 

‘Mr the Bat-Man’

Words by Aaron Simon
Pictures by Jonathan David Lim