Briel Comics

@brielcomics.bsky.social

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comics and stuff... entitycradle.tumblr.com brielcomics on ig, etc. any pronouns

A plot depicting the length of copper wire required to provide enough resistance to not exceed its current capacity given a 1.5 volt supply and no load on the circuit. The plot starts at the largest gauge, 0000, then 000, 00, 0, 1, 2, and then proceeds counting up. The length, in feet, starts at a little less than 160 for 0000, followed by less than 150 for 000, and continues decreasing steadily. At gauge 1 it's about 110 feet, at gauge 10 it's about 50 feet, and it continues down until gauge 18, about 25 feet, after which gauge 20 actually shows an increase in the length required because of the decreased current capacity, to about 30 feet. The length actually stays at around 30 feet up until gauge 34, after which there is no data.
A black and white ink drawing rendered with thin, harsh lines which are layered for the thicker outlines. A caption in Comic Sans reads "Makima and Reigen Arataka compete to see who can get the most use out of Bunny and Doggy". Makima is the antagonist of Chainsaw Man and Reigen is the deuteragonist of Mob Psycho 100 and both are manipulative anime mentor figures, while Bunny and Doggy are the protagonists of the comic Bunny and Doggy and they're in a complex, grounded, raw, sometimes mutually harmful relationship. They are utterly unprepared for the anime silliness, while Reigen is utterly unprepared for how intense Bunny and Doggy are (Makima is totally prepared). Here, Makima, drawn in her slacks and white button-up with realistic proportions, leans toward Bunny, and tilts Bunny's chin up with a finger, smiling in a calmly sinister way. But Bunny, drawn in her cartoony style with long rabbit ears and a big lashed eye peaking out from her bangs, leans away and looks, annoyed and resentful, back at Doggy and Reigen, who are walking in the opposite direction. Doggy is drawn in the same cartoony style as Bunny, in her black tee over her striped long sleeve and wide pants atop big sneakers, and looks up at Reigen, fucking bewildered. Reigen, drawn in the moderately cartoony Mob Psycho 100 style, gestures wildly as he walks, not even looking at Doggy. He's probably talking about how it's wrong to take advantage of vulnerable teenagers. Makima literally calls the main character in Chainsaw Man "puppy" but I have a case for why Bunny would be more likely to be taken under Makima's wing than Reigen's. Makima manipulates people by providing for basic needs, and while neither Bunny nor Doggy are in great places in their teens, their needs are more complex than just food and a place to stay... but clearly Bunny does sometimes need a place to stay. Makima would find out about Bunny's occasional violence and start salivating. (continued...)
A four-panel hand-drawn comic in black, white, and orange. The first panel is a title card reads, "Local and Foreigner Talk to an ¿Enby?" In the second panel, an enby in a black tank smiles and shoots dual finger guns as they exit the scene. Foreigner, a short young man with pointy ears and a bad mustache, and Local, a large young woman with straight black hair and a hoodie, also fire finger guns back at them, smiling. Foreigner thinks, "Fuuuuuck," while Local thinks, "Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!" After the enby has gotten far enough away, Local sinks her head down, lets her eyes unfocus, and blushes, saying, "Shit fuck fucking god damn shit." Foreigner is nearly crying, his blood-filled ears dumping heat into the air. He waves his hands about Local's shoulder in a calm down gesture as he says, "Shut it just shut it. It's fine it's fine it's fine." Local replies, "What's even happening." They both stare off into the middle distance. Foreigner laments, "Oh lord you made the gun gesture, why," though when he says "you" he thinks "I". Local, ignoring him, says, "If ze ever touched me I'd liquify." Foreigner, ears still steaming, asks, "You have this class for how much longer?" Long clouds streak the orange sky above the parking lot where they stand. Local replies, "If I had another breakdown in front of my academic advisor he'd probably let me drop."
A four-panel comic in black, white, and magenta. The first panel is a title card, "Local and Foreigner Talk to a Boy???" In the second panel, a young man with good cartoon hair and a button-up with the top two buttons undone waves goodbye over his shoulder at Foreigner, a short young man with pointy ears and a bad mustache, and Local, a large young woman with straight black hair and a hoodie. Local waves back, cringing, and says, "...Okay. I think that went poorly." Local, also cringing, replies, "Yeah." They stand behind a table with a big book and a laptop on it in front of a brick wall. Foreigner's cringe grows angry as he says, "It was going so well...I didn't say anything untrue! I think? I didn't say anything wrong?" Local, also looking frustrated, says, "Sometimes the way I am is enough to make someone not want to spend time with me. It's impossible to control." Foreigner leans forward and looks up at Local accusingly, asserting, "No, no, that's absolving yourself of responsibility. You can always change your behavior." Local turns away and rolls her eyes, smiling resentfully, and replies, "I can't. That's hyperindividualism."
A four-panel comic in black, white, and red. The first panel is a title card, "Local and Foreigner Talk to a Girl??" In the second panel you see a young woman smiling and waving goodbye to two other young people in front of a classroom door. Foreigner, the short one with pointy ears and an awful mustache, asks, grinning, "Do you think she likes me?" Local, the tall one with long, straight black hair that covers her ears, replies, "What?" as she waves back. Foreigner responds, shoulders now up, his grin morphing into a cringe, "Oh, god, you're right, she hates me." Local says, still smiling but looking away, "No, she hates me." "But, we had such a good conversation..." "It was not a good conversation. I was weird and overshared." Foreigner looks up and puts his hand to his chin. "If she hates me so much, why did she seem so happy when she was talking to me?" Local rolls her eyes and says, "She was talking to me, and she was faking it. I'm a stranger, it's easier to pretend to be happy than disappoint me." She finishes, accusingly, "That's what you do."
A black and white comic panel. There is a shallow stream coming out of a drainpipe, surrounded by long grass and trash. Local has decided to "float away" in this two inch deep trickle. She lies face down in the water, hair drifting around her head, blood pouring from her wounds and slowly staining the water. She says, "This sucks." Foreigner, sitting with his back against a tree and his half head lolling limply on his shoulder, responds, "I dunno." Local admits, "Yeah."
A four panel page of a black and white comic. Panel 1 is a title card: "Local and Foreigner Commit Suicide (non canon)", with a crying emoji and a poop emoji around the word "suicide". In Panel 2 is Local, a woman with straight black hair. She is deeply hunched, with a hand in front of her mouth gripping her face, hard. A caption reads, "CSC 131 Lecture. Usually pretty tolerable." Other students seem to be watching the lecturer or typing on their computers. She thinks, "fuck fuck fuck" over and over again. In panel 3 she thinks, "fuck fuck fuck. welp. fuck fuck" as she leans over to rummage through her backpack. In panel 4 she holds a craft knife, specifically an "X Acto Craft Knife (stored loose in bag)" according to a caption. Local thinks, "fuck you fuck you fuck you."
An ink drawing of a toilet with muscled human arms laughing as it flushes itself.
A four panel, black and white comic. Panel 1: In white text on a black background are rendered the sounds of someone choking on fear. Finally, they get out, "Help--" when Jian, a skinny young man with shaggy hair in a big t-shirt, slams the door open, letting light into the dark. He says, "Leo, come on, this is the fourth time and I have work in the morning." Panel 2: Jian's eyes are puffy from lack of sleep as he shouts, "Mom and Dad aren't here! I looked under the bed! I looked in the closet! Do I have to look again?!" Leo, a boy with big ears in polka dot pajamas, cowers in his bed with fear on his face. He interrupts, "No!" He continues, stuttering, "No, sorry, sorry, Jian. You're right. I'll be brave." Panel 3: Five white shapes float in the darkness above the open doorway, where Jian's whole affect changes. He is no longer angry, just tired, grabbing the door frame for support, and if anything taken aback by Leo's compliance. He says, "...okay. Great." He pauses. "Sorry." He continues, "Just... I'm right down the hall. But we both need to sleep, okay? Okay, Leo?" Leo stutters once more, "Okay. Good night." Panel 4: the five white shapes are revealed to be the ragged nails on an enormous hand, palm easily larger than Jian's whole torso, menacing Jian from over the door. The wrist and arm extend out of sight into the darkness. Jian says, "Good night," turning away and beginning to close the door. Just on the other side, inside the room, is a horrific face. Two eyes, feet wide, glow in the dark. It smiles too wide and has warped teeth, its upper lip curled up to reveal its gums. Using another enormous hand, it holds a finger up in front of its face. It is telling Leo to be quiet.
A black and white comic, the last page of Ghost Town. Al, a squat, cartoony person with a skull mask on, thinks, "I remember the day we buried her." Rickety, protuberant spires of ghost houses tower over them as they walk through the graveyard. A tear rolls down their mask. "The service was packed. There weren't enough pews." Between spires, one ghost stands alone, behind a headstone that says "Sara Pacheco. 1951 to 2017." The house is two and a half stories and asymmetric, with a front porch that wraps around one side. Al thinks, "People in the back were willing to stand, two layers deep." The lone house lights up the whole graveyard. Al thinks, "Huh." On the front porch are a few deck chairs neatly arranged around a table. On the side porch is a hanging bench, which can swing when pushed. Al thinks, slowly, "This was her house." Al ascends the staircase onto the porch, weeping. They reach for the doorknob. This time, they are able to grab it and open the door. They step into their grandmother's dead house. The door closes.
A six panel, black and white comic. A caption reads, "I'm visiting my grandmother's hometown in Kansas." Al, a squat, cartoony, agender person with light gray skin and black hair, gets some snacks at a gas station. They wear a black mask with a white skull pattern. A tear is drawn below the left eye. The gas station attendant, a balding white man, also wears a black mask with a face pattern. As he counts Al's cash he says, "Watch out for the night lights." Al says, "Huh?" The man replies, "Some houses glow at night. I don't know why." Al thinks, "Weird. Who knows? Maybe he's on something. I'm not sure why I came. She died in 2017." Al walks by an abandoned storefront with boarded up windows. Al thinks, "The rest of the Pacheco family live over in Parsons. The elementary school closed in 2021." Al walks by a house with a front yard covered with scattered, broken furniture and personal belongings. Al thinks, "She would've hated that." Al walks by a house that's missing part of its roof, beams visible. The porch and yard are a mess of plywood. Al thinks, "I want to stay for the evening, anyway. I'm going to sit by the railroad and watch the stars come out, so much easier to see." So Al leans against a concrete wall right by the tracks. They notice something strange: in the distance, between two prefabricated houses, something is glowing brightly.
A photo of a section of an ink drawing. What it depicts is intentionally ambiguous.
A black and white comic, page 2 of Ghost Town. Between two prefabricated houses, something glows. Al, a squat, cartoony person with a skull mask on, approaches to find that sitting between the two prefabs is what looks like a shed, so bright as to be indistinct. In the dusk it casts light on the grass and trees around it. Al thinks to themself, "Okay. Right. 'Night lights.'" They look left and right, then approach. They think, "Okay. Actually, I might have heard of this. If it..." They reach toward the handle of the shed door, which casts a harsh glow on their hand and sleeve. They attempt to close their hand on the handle. But the handle shifts away from their fist, multiplying, evading, and the light twists, and the whole shed bends as if recoiling. Al themself is shocked, leaning back, as the shed slides away from them across the grass.
A six panel, black and white comic. A caption reads, "I'm visiting my grandmother's hometown in Kansas." Al, a squat, cartoony, agender person with light gray skin and black hair, gets some snacks at a gas station. They wear a black mask with a white skull pattern. A tear is drawn below the left eye. The gas station attendant, a balding white man, also wears a black mask with a face pattern. As he counts Al's cash he says, "Watch out for the night lights." Al says, "Huh?" The man replies, "Some houses glow at night. I don't know why." Al thinks, "Weird. Who knows? Maybe he's on something. I'm not sure why I came. She died in 2017." Al walks by an abandoned storefront with boarded up windows. Al thinks, "The rest of the Pacheco family live over in Parsons. The elementary school closed in 2021." Al walks by a house with a front yard covered with scattered, broken furniture and personal belongings. Al thinks, "She would've hated that." Al walks by a house that's missing part of its roof, beams visible. The porch and yard are a mess of plywood. Al thinks, "I want to stay for the evening, anyway. I'm going to sit by the railroad and watch the stars come out, so much easier to see." So Al leans against a concrete wall right by the tracks. They notice something strange: in the distance, between two prefabricated houses, something is glowing brightly.
The fifth page of "Local and Foreigner climb a tree". Foreigner slips off the branch as it tilts toward the ground. Local suddenly bends down to grip the branch with her arms as well as her legs. There is a loud "thump" as Foreigner's body hits the ground. Local thinks, staring, as the branch continues to tip down, "I deserve to see the consequences of my actions." Local is essentially upside-down when the branch she's on collides with the ground, gently placing her face on the dirt. Foreigner's arm is horribly broken, exposing bone. He huffs and grunts. Local lets go of the branch with her legs so she can tilt backwards and land on her back on the ground. Frustrated, she says to Foreigner as he grunts in pain, "Ugh. Get up, you enormous baby."
A black-and-white comic. In the first panel there is text saying "Local and Foreigner climb a tree." In the second panel, Local, a young latina woman with straight black hair and a wide build, is rendered in a very cartoony style. She wears a hoodie and has a tall face with a bumpy nose. She walks her bike across a yard, morose. She turns to look blankly at a tall tree behind her and thinks, "I wonder how high I could get in that tree before I fell and died." In the last panel she discards her bike and stands on top a fence to get high enough to start climbing the tree.
A black-and-white comic. A young woman sits in the back of an ambulance in the dark, attended by figures. She hunches in her thermal blanket, harried. Distantly, she says, "Which one am I?" The blackness follows her to another time where she makes herself small, leaning against her mother. She says, with a little concerned smile, "I know I'm the one that threw up in the lemonade on our fourteenth birthday." Her mother smiles, her eyes crinkling, her arm around her daughter. The young woman continues, the smile fading, "But down there, as we got hungrier, she got bigger. Like, taller." Concern rises on her mother's face. The young woman's affect flattens, eyelids low, and says, "She started biting chunks out of my back, accidentally." "Oh, mija," says her mother, who, despite holding her daughter in the same way, now looks up at the viewer, afraid. The young woman drones, "She got big enough that she would put my whole head between her teeth. And then one... day, I guess, she clenched her jaw tighter and tighter, and my skull, I could feel, I..." Her mother, shortly, states, "Magdalena." Tears well up in the corner of her eyes while anger tickles her brow. Magdalena now curls up, finally breaking from her helpless mother, her head almost to her knees where her trembling hands clutch each other as she says, "But now I'm alive, and she's, she's, she's--" A large black coffin in a church interrupts the scene. One end of a tape measure is hooked on a corner while Magdalena holds the other end at the opposite corner, shouting, angry, "It's enormous!" Her father, scared, hands out and down, gets in, "Shh, Magita, take a breath." Magdalena's mother curls up her fist, holding something in. Magita commands, "Just look! Just tell me what that number is. Right there."
A drawing woman with gray hair staring upwards out of her car windshield, horrified.
A black and white image of a trolley on a track. There is a lever next to an oncoming fork in the track. Nobody is tied to either track. A caption reads, "Nobody is in any danger. You are a professor for moral philosophy. Do you tie people to the rails to save your job?"
A photo of a sketchy pencil and ink drawing. The shapes are (intentionally) unclear. There is a handwritten note on it that says, "Gore should climb up here in these dark areas."
The original Dark Knight Returns cover, where Batman, dynamically posed in silhouette, leaps through the air in front of a lightning bolt. Otherwise the cover is almost empty except for the text "Batman: The Dark Knight Returns" in the upper right and some credits in the lower right. Do you think Frank Miller knew that he was drawing the hardest cover ever? He had to have known, right?
A colored image of Baman from Baman Piderman doing the Dark Knight Returns pose in front of a lightning bolt. His limbs are mixed up, in the tradition of Baman. The lightning bolt is all squiggly, in the tradition of Baman Piderman weather. The caption at the top reads, "Baman: The Dark Knight Comes Ober". Piderman's house is in the lower right corner in exaggerated perspective, with Tuba and Piderman sitting on the roof. Tuba says "Honk!" Pider man says "Hi Baman!"
A black-and-white comic, page 3 of "Twin". Magdalena's dad proceeds with lowering himself into the enormous mouth, while Magdalena sprints towards him. She gets out, "Oh god--Dad, stop--Oh god--" The panel borders become teeth, which close as her dad disappears into the pit. Magdalena screams, "Dad!" Magdalena shouts again. Her hands reach. Finally, the panel opens up and Magdalena finds her dad clinging onto the gums. He shouts, terrified, "Help--" Magdalena shouts back, "Dad! God!" She pulls him up and is scared and angry as she implores, "Why--" Her dad, crawling, sweating, says, "I don't--I'm--" He gets up and stumbles away from Magdalena, who watches, confused, alarmed, as he says, "I don't know--I'm sorry--I don't know--" His hand trembles as it covers his face. Time passes. Magdalena stares, bored, at a laptop screen. Tired, she confronts her parents. Her mom lectures while her dad looks away, silent. A moving van is full of boxes and a mattress. Finally, Magdalena drives the moving van away from the shadowy tarmac, accompanied by marching powerlines, into the flat, empty horizon. Someone says, "Goodbye, Isabel." More time passes. Five panels are superimposed over a graph of global average temperature. In 2025, Magdalena sits on a bare mattress, thinking. The temperature is just under 1.5 Celsius above the preindustrial average (this is real). In 2035, Magdalena sits in a conference room with some coworkers. The temperature is about 1.7 degrees above preindustrial average. In 2045, Magdalena's roots are gray. She kisses someone, her hand on their cheek. The other person's hand is on Magdalena's collarbone and their back is bare. The temperature is +2.1 degrees. In 2055, Magdalena looks in the mirror. Her chin has softened and she has more wrinkles. She's let her hair gray. +2.7 degrees. In 2065, Magdalena sits on the edge of her bed while her partner sleeps. +3.5 degrees. A dotted line noted as "Today" sits at around 2070.
A black-and-white comic, page 2 of "Twin". Magdalena and her parents look closely at the tape measure which indicates how long the coffin is. Her dad says, "Honey, I'm not sure it matters. I know you're upset--" Magdalena's mom interjects, "It says 85 inches, Magdalena. You're right, it's pretty big." The tape measure reads just over 228 inches. Magdalena says, "...Dad?" Her dad says, "...Maybe 85 and a half, with the trim." The coffin imposes, dividing, dark, enormous. Later, Magdalena walks past a construction site and spots a toe rising from the ground, covered in lines and dark spots, its nail peeling. She says, "Oh." Four other toes, pocked, scarred, disproportionately thin and several feet long, poke out of the earth. As she walks by, Magdalena says, "Coffin must have burst." A part of a news article reads, "I-435 Corridor Sinkholes: Latest Updates. Interstate highway 435 between Cunningham Ridge and Air Line Junction will remain closed until mid-November, Missouri transport officials report. Patrick McKenna, Missouri Director of Transportation, had this to say: 'We are working to understand the extent of the cavities in the Earth causing these sinkholes. We plan to reopen the..." The article leads to a large graveyard ringed by trees, where Magdalena shouts, horrified, "Dad! What..." Her word falls into the darkness of an enormous mouth. The top palette sticks thirty feet up out of the ground, creating a broken mound of dirt behind it, the gravestones tilted and fallen. The teeth are perfectly aligned. The mouth is horribly wide. There is another thirty feet where dirt falls into the dark orifice before the lower jaw begins. There the teeth are crowded, pushing each other around on the wet, misshapen gums. Each is almost as tall as Magdalena. There is a large gap between the front teeth where her father is lowering himself into the mouth. Magdalena screams, "Dad!"
A photo of a half-inked comics page. A character regards what appears to be a finger sticking out of the ground. They say something. Teeth poke up from the bottom.
A photo of the comic in the above post. Magdalena's lock of hair was not present in panel 5 of the above, but I've added it in this one.
A black-and-white comic. A young woman sits in the back of an ambulance in the dark, attended by figures. She hunches in her thermal blanket, harried. Distantly, she says, "Which one am I?" The blackness follows her to another time where she makes herself small, leaning against her mother. She says, with a little concerned smile, "I know I'm the one that threw up in the lemonade on our fourteenth birthday." Her mother smiles, her eyes crinkling, her arm around her daughter. The young woman continues, the smile fading, "But down there, as we got hungrier, she got bigger. Like, taller." Concern rises on her mother's face. The young woman's affect flattens, eyelids low, and says, "She started biting chunks out of my back, accidentally." "Oh, mija," says her mother, who, despite holding her daughter in the same way, now looks up at the viewer, afraid. The young woman drones, "She got big enough that she would put my whole head between her teeth. And then one... day, I guess, she clenched her jaw tighter and tighter, and my skull, I could feel, I..." Her mother, shortly, states, "Magdalena." Tears well up in the corner of her eyes while anger tickles her brow. Magdalena now curls up, finally breaking from her helpless mother, her head almost to her knees where her trembling hands clutch each other as she says, "But now I'm alive, and she's, she's, she's--" A large black coffin in a church interrupts the scene. One end of a tape measure is hooked on a corner while Magdalena holds the other end at the opposite corner, shouting, angry, "It's enormous!" Her father, scared, hands out and down, gets in, "Shh, Magita, take a breath." Magdalena's mother curls up her fist, holding something in. Magita commands, "Just look! Just tell me what that number is. Right there."
A black-and-white fancomic for the webcomic 3rd Voice. Zelitte, a woman with big shiny eyes and a cat nose, who's looking old in this light, says, "I loved this place." The enormous gate of the Last Capital towers over her through her window. "But I don't know what's left for me here." She turns her head and suddenly looks young, a little hopeful. "Could I come with you?" Spondule, a guy with torn clothes and an articulated snout, and Navichet, a tiny lady whose head is mostly two big eyes and wrinkly eyelids, both stand opposite Zelitte. Navichet stares ahead blankly while Spondule looks sideways at Navichet. Then Spondule puts a hand on his hip and, half-smiling but concerned, says, "I just don't know how you'd fit on the bike." Navichet has a little vision of Spondule angrily pedaling their bike while Zelitte sits uncomfortably on the handlebars. IRL Zelitte says, "Oh, your vehicle. Ah..." She walks over to a curtain in front of a dark, closet-sized space. "Well, here, come see." A black silhouette resembling an off-road tire looms in the closet. Spondule and Navichet peek their heads around the curtain. Navichet asks, "What is it?" Zelitte answers, "Refurbished old Engine thing. Vadhas received it as a gift, years ago now." She stands proud, arms crossed, hips cocked. "I... have some practice."
A six-panel comic. The first three panels are drawn with black lines and flat pastel colors. A cartoony lady with thick lashes and big hair says, "Agh! Ice Cream Cake, not on my keyboard! I needed to do stuff today!" A cat--Ice Cream Cake probably--is asleep on a keyboard in front of a computer monitor. Another cat looks up at the lady, curious. The lady looks down at her lap, aghast, to say, "Peanut Butter, not you, too! Too... cute! I can't get up!" Peanut Butter has curled up in her lap, purring (Peanut Butter is a cat). The lady looks into the middle distance and sighs. Both cats doze. Starting in panel 4 there is a rough black border around the art. A caption in the upper left reads, "I just couldn't bear disturbing them." The art style has shifted radically: rather than flat, pastel colors, all the shades are done with messy black lines. The room is dark. The lady's excellent hair has become long and matted. Her eyes have sunken and she's grown a scraggly beard. The cats' ears have fallen and their tails have gone limp. The fifth panel is smaller. A caption reads, "They died weeks ago." Ice Cream Cake is in the same pose on the keyboard, but is stiff. Its fur is messy. Its eyes are blank and its ribs are visible. The final panel is even smaller. A caption reads, "But a dead cat on your lap is still a cat on your lap..." The lady, caring, pets the corpse on her lap. There is another caption. It reads, "...right?" The corpse purrs.
A black-and-white comic. A stippled, realistically-proportioned hand hangs from the top of the image. A caption reads, "About nine years ago I started college." One hand clenches, angular, while another contorts itself to grip the first hand's wrist. The next caption reads, "Eight and a half years ago I dropped out because of my increasingly disabling anxiety disorder." A hand grips the caption, "Then a lot of stuff happened." A hand gently reaches up. "Yesterday I opened a website," a hand clutches. "And saw that I passed all my classes this semester, Spring 2025." A hand grips a pen. "After a decade of part-time, and isolation," a closed, warped fist, "and panic attacks, and failures," two hands grip one another desperately and unevenly like a root system or a dead octopus. "I now have a B.A. in Applied Math." A hand hangs loosely, relaxed. "I did it." Then, in blank space, "Now all that's left is the rest."
A page from the comic Mob Psycho 100. Reigen asks, "Mob, is something wrong?" Mob replies, neutrally, "No, it's just that... there's no punchline for this page..." Reigen and Mob both stand in an empty field. Reigen looks up and says to Mob, "Look at it. Look at the sky." Mob replies, expressionless, "Yes..." He stands, silent, watching the clouds.
The fifth page of Look At It, a black-and-white Mob Psycho 100 fancomic. Tome holds her skipping rock up to the sun. "Uh, it's not really that I forget, it's more like..." The brightness flares and flashes as she passes the edge of the rock back and forth. "I pick them up for a second, but then there's something else. I guess. I dunno." Tome shrugs it off and asserts, "I'm just very busy with all the exciting stuff going on in my life." Then there is white text over a black background, just like Mob's percentage meter, except it says "Tome's hours in Dragon Quest 7: 304" in really big text. Mob replies, "Exciting stuff like throwing rocks." Tome deadfaces, "Bruh you're literally staring into space." Beyond the towering clouds beyond the far side of the bridge, the sky is clear. Mob stands on those arches and, regarding the emptiness, says, "I like looking at the sky."
A black and white comic. Look At It page 1. The view of the first panel looks out over a slow-moving urban river--it flows with perfect width through a high-walled, V-shaped concrete channel. The channel straightens and curves with geometric regularity. At their tops the concrete slopes give way to unmaintained brush. Further out from the river there are poorly-maintained sidewalks, and to link them a long walking bridge has been constructed. A thin, guard-railed walkway stretches maybe 100 feet across the river, supported by cables from a pair of strikingly high metal arches. These arches are anchored to the ground by large concrete plugs, and they cross in the middle, forming an X when viewed from above. Yet further out from the river there is more scrub, some copses of trees, and eventually some low, unassuming buildings. The second panel looks toward one end of the bridge, beyond which is a hill with a willow tree and the greebled back of a long, squat building. Two kids are hanging out on the bridge in various unadvised positions: the one with the rolled-up sleeves has climbed up on one of the arches, standing straight and looking up at the sky; the one with the skirt is hanging off the bottom of the bridge above the brush, dangling her legs.
A page of black-and-white comics based on the anime Mob Psycho 100. Panel 1: a leg and an arm extend from out of Panel so that the hand on the arm can tie the shoe on the leg. Lying on the ground is the other shoe, a cell phone, a keyring, and a polka dot carrying case. On the carrying case rests a sphere with a strange pattern on it. In the top right it says “January.” Panel 2: a figure (it's Tome) pulls on a jacket. Visible in front of her are a cabinet and a wall-mounted rack, all messy. Panel 3: with a door in the background, a closeup of Tome's hand on her flip phone. The screen says “dialing.” Panel 4: Tome shrugs on her jacket and, holding her phone against her ear with her shoulder, smiles and says, “Oy, Mob! It’s Saturday! Let’s go telepath-hunting!” Panel 5: Ritsu and Mob sit on a blanket on the floor in front of a bookshelf. A little “pause” label extends from off-Panel. Both of them are holding controllers. Ritsu leans against his hand, looking bored, as Mob holds his cellphone to say “Hi Tome. Didn’t we already find a telepath?” Tome responds, “Oh, right.”
A return to the comic. Mob leans over the table, looking at the screen, and remarks, pleasantly, "I guess if there are so many then a few of them have to be true." Tome, elated, replies, "That's what I think too!" Saruta looks on, highly skeptical, and thinks, "Exopolitics?" Inukawa has fallen asleep with the book on his face. Mob points at the screen and asks, "Hey can you send me a link to that one? I think my boss might like to see it." Tome smiles and says, "I'll just send you my research doc, it's somewhere on there. I guess you'll have to look through the whole thing." She winks. Smooth.
A screenshot of a webpage. It's a forum called "above top secret". There's a post reading, "That is CGI. And blatant, at that. They couldn't keep the "UFO's" steady with the horrible camera movement. This is one of the worst CGI's I've seen. Horrible." In reply, there is a post reading, "So that's your proof? Because you feel they couldn't keep the camera straight... I'm sorry but... Laughs. I watched this video once of a person videoing their dog running in a field. The operator of the camera couldn't keep the camera straight either. So, does that mean the dog was fake? A hoax of little spot running threw a field??" It keeps going like that.
A page of a black-and-white comic based on the anime Mob Psycho 100. A caption reads, "Late november." Outside of the Body Improvement Club room a guy (probably Musashi) shouts, "Good work team!" Mob, sweating, walks into the room where the Telepathy Club is hanging out. Inukawa, leaning back on a chair with an open book on his face, says, "Sup Kageyama." Mob replies, "Hey Inukawa. Tome, you have a laptop." Tome is lightning-focused on her computer. Nobody has said anything about it. So when Mob mentions it she leans back casually and beams, relating, "Yah technically I'm not allowed to bring my computer to school but I'm doing research for the club." Kijibayashi ducks in to ask, "Oh, you look up a consistent strat for The Fury?"
A four panel black-and-white comic about some Greatures by KC Green. Cigarette (a headless chicken) eyes Doppelganger (a fragment of outer space) and says, "So you're copying us, huh?" Doppelganger, loosely shaped like Cigarette, responds, "Copy-ing yus." Cigarette crosses her arms and looks away to say "That's pretty sick TBH" but Doppelganger ends up saying "It's pretty sick TBH" at the exact same time. They lock eyes and point at each other, thrilled. Then Cigarette leans forward and says, "Now we have to kiss..."
A three-panel black and white comic. Panel 1: an older man cries, his mouth wide and eyelids pinched together. He says, "What I did--h-how I treated you... It wasn't right... it just wasn't right." Panel 2: the man stands on a porch in front of a house, where a younger person, leaning away from him, looks on, expressionless. The man says, "And I'm sorry." Panel 3: The man says, "I want--to be better. And make it up to you." The young person's head tilts forward and a wrinkle forms above their left nostril as their mouth widens. They stare.
A full-colored piece of fanart! At the top, words in a variety of fonts and colors read, "Zethia: Space Witch in... The Hoverboard Race of Zhen-5". In particular, "Zethia: Space Witch" is cut out from another piece of paper, and "Hoverboard Race of Zhen-5" is drawn like the 70s NASA logo. In the picture, Zethia, a little cartoon lady in a scifi-looking uniform and a silly hat, rides a hoverboard. She bears an intense expression and is drawn in exaggerated perspective so her right hand extending toward the viewer is huge, while her left hand and back leg shrink with distance. Her cape, colored in with a photo of a flower pattern, flows behind her. Hank, her three-headed crystalline dog, holds onto the front of her board for dear life. Several exotic aliens hoverboard nearby. They're racing over the clouds of a gas giant with towering cloud columns and deep canyons that spit out lightning. In the background a planetary ring partially obscures a red crescent moon.
5PM - 7:56PM. Made myself sad making that last comic. I've heard journaling can negatively impact your mental health if you're already depressed. Feeling an urge to do stuff for the "content." Actually, fuck hourly comic day.
A black-and-white comic strip titled "4 - 5PM." It reads, "Some old neighbors visited the cul de sac today. I was sort of a weird uncle to the kids here." A family car is depicted from behind. "They're all growing up. Time passes and suddenly they're tall. The dad in that visiting family is a doctor who reassured me in one of the lowest ties of my life." The window, blinds down, shines light into the room. "I missed them. I was asleep."
A black-and-white comics strip. It reads, "A standard I hold myself to is a comic needs to have at least 2 juxtaposed images in view at once. If it doesn't satisfy this then it may still be sequential art, but in the sense that animated movies or slideshows are sequential art." A hand is illuminated by the flame of the lighter it's holding. Then the silhouette of a phone is depicted on a distantly-placed series of rectangles. "I'm not interested in playing some 'authenticity' game and of course art defies categorization. But this is a useful distinction for me because I like spatial sequentiality and I want to see people keep using it. It has deep and strange narrative effects that I plan to figure out over the next few decades." I sit in the darkness beneath a tree branch, smoking. "Maybe there's vocabulary for this that I'm unaware of? Anyway: I'm doing at least 2 panels per hourly."
Three comic strips. In the top one, a man says, "Sometimes I feel like I've lost all my ability to act like a person." A cashier looks at him blankly. The man has crashed his car into the restaurant and is looking at the cashier from his driver side window. In the middle one, there is a bulging oven, with a man next to it saying to some onlookers, "This oven will soon explode, killing us all." The oven explodes and all the people are flung apart like lego guys. In the bottom strip the man from the first strip looks blankly down at the man from the middle strip, who stares back. Turns out the middle strip guy is in an oven. The man from the first strip is flung apart like a lego guy. Listen this one's kinda visual I'm sorry for the not very funny description.
A purple and red marker sketch of a real weird goblin. They have a giant, sharp-toothed smile and elated eyes. They have big floppy ears. Their head transitions, no-neck, into two hairy legs with boils. They have a single arm on their head, with a hand with two thumbs. Every digit has a claw. They're posed jauntily, one leg bent back behind them and the other extended out in front on its heel. They're very happy to be here.
A white, black, and magenta comic panel. A smiling whale swims, magenta and black tendrils reaching up from the bottom of the image.
A 4 panel black and white comic featuring images of lamps in the darkness. Transcript: Panel 1: The other day the power went out in my apartment but some of the lights stayed on. Panel 2: They were much dimmer than usual but obviously still on, a warm orange. I suspect the material inside the bulbs was undergoing some self-sustaining reaction. But does that really make sense? I have no clue. Panel 3: No text. Panel 4: Actually we were powered by thousands of tiny ghosts. Every time you turn out the lights you murder the ethereal beings within each bulb.
A six-panel black-and-white ink and paper comic. Some fucker is sitting on the toilet. They say, "Oh boy! I love using my new phone in the bathroom! Nothing bad happens, ever!" Then they drop their phone! They desperately reach after it as its sparkles follow it down, down towards the toilet bowl! They shout, "No!" But the phone just bounces off the edge of the toilet and away, unharmed. Relieved, the toilet sitter opines, "Phew! We're so back." But it turns out the phone bounced all the way out the window and is now streaking toward a baby in a stroller outside! Right for their head! The toilet sitter shouts, "Wait not the baby!!" Luckily once again, the phone ends up bouncing off the top of the carriage. The baby looks on, curious. The sitter, relieved and exhausted, lets out, "Oh, good! Hitting a baby in the face would be the worst thing my phone could do." But once again misfortune strikes. The toilet sitter fucker shouts, "NOOOOO" as the phone, sparkles streaking after it, flies into an open plane door. The sign on the plane reads, "Jeffrey Epstein's plane."
A black and white comic/illustration. The top left corner has a bunch of abstract shapes and lines and the text, with the phrase "It's so different it's literally making me dizzy." The top right corner is a tree with a bunch of creatures and structures on it; above it is a sign that reads, "BURGH OF GNOMES." The bottom left corner is a building in twisted perspective, so it shrinks as it approaches the ground, with the phrase "I'm made up of people. Like organs." The bottom right corner is a dark figure breathing out black smoke that says "DUO COLLISION PHOBIC POINT," with fading black and white rings radiating from the corner of the page.
A four-panel black and white comic. Some tough guy (you can tell because he's wearing a tank top) shouts, "You want me to fix you a knuckle sandwich??" Some other guy yells back "Oh I would love to see you try!!" The tough guy turns around and does something with his hands. He faces the other guy again and, somber-faced, reveals a sandwich on a plate with what looks like a fist between the two pieces of bread. Both of his hands are visible.
A four panel black-and-white comic. Panel 1: in a field of three-foot-tall, leafy plants, a hand carefully pulls on a stalk. On the end of the stalk is what looks like a large human eyeball, complete with thin veins and a slightly protruding lens. Panel 2: it is a young man, squatting, who is pulling on the stalk so he can stare into the "eye". His expression is invisible because he is turned away. The "eye" is visible, looking up at him. From off-panel someone says, "It's a seed pod." Panel 3: a woman in a baseball cap walks by, making notes on a clipboard. She looks down at the man with a look that's not disdain but not kind or curious either, and says, "Just pareidolia. It'll dehisce in a few weeks like all the others." The man continues staring down at the eye, expressionless. Panel 4: The eye, enormous, stares back.
Six black-and-white comic panels. Over panel 1 is the word, "Digestion". In panel one there is the caption, "I was doing some work on the basement sink." A slimey black loop of lumpy material bursts out of the end of a pipe. Off-screen, someone says "The fuck--" In panel 2, the pipe continues expelling more of the loop. The loop is several feet long now and has started to tangle with itself. A man is on his phone, saying "...is pouring out some solid, uh, material. It's all coming out in one, uh, rope, and uh, there's a lot of it..." In panel 3, the man leads a plumber down the basement stairs. The plumber has their arm against the wall and seems off-balance. The first man says, "...so I'm thinking it must be microbial, but I got no idea--" The plumber interrupts, "Jesus. It smells like blood." The loop has continued to lengthen, crawling further along the floor. In panel 4, the plumber pulls the man aside, a paper in their hand. The plumber says, concerned, "...something I don't know what is getting into your water conduit. I won't charge you--please, call one of these guys, they'd help better than me. And call the city. I bet you're not the only one with this problem." In panel 5, a pile of the black intestines spill out of an open washing machine, creeping unseen into a living room where two people watch TV. The caption reads, "Once I read, 'The human gastrointestinal tract is more than 20 feet long.'" In panel 6, there is no text. Everything is at an angle. One house's front door is open, and the intestines spill out into the front yard and onto the street. The neighboring house is worse. Windows, including one on the second floor, have broken, expelling ropes upon ropes of the intestines. An enormous, tangled mess piles up in front of the building. At the bottom of the panel, a loop of intestine creeps out from under a manhole cover.
A section of a black and white comics page. A little squat cartoony person introduces another medium-sized cartoony person to a city. Most prominent is the introductory two panels. The first has the folks emerging from a dark tunnel with the medium one looking out in awe as the squat one says, "Welcome..." The second panel is a large view of a city whose buildings are made out of cut-up fragments of books. The cartoon folks are tiny in the foreground. In the top of the panel are the words, "...to the City of Words."