Don't trust the bag

Firstly, the collected 5 issues of Toxic Avenger is out! It’s nice to see the whole story arc together. I gave them some of my sketches and designs that were just my doodles in my sketch pad and they printed a few with commentary. Matt Bors, the writer, made some art and added commentary as well. I hope everyone can enjoy some or all of it. I understand it isn’t for everybody. Apparently it was for enough people though because we have another 10 issues planned. I will be doing 6 of them plus a few pages here and there in the ones I’m not really doing the full story. It’s pretty exciting to be on a project that has so much attention plus now new the Toxic Avenger movie will be coming out finally. I had nothing to do with it and they never shared any of it with me, maybe Matt got a glance at something, but I don’t think it had any bearing on what he wanted to do with the character.

A nice blurb from Boing Boing!

I got startled by a bag as I walked down an empty street in Brooklyn the other day. I was walking back from my gym lost in thinking about what kind of stories I wanted to do with the zine. I keep thinking about the weird surreal introduction I had to zines when I was around 15 or so. I am trying to get my head in to that 15 year old’s space. My brain was starting to explore the outer world and my inner thoughts at the same time. I wanted to create something new and unique. Something that no one else had ever conceived. It was frustrating. The first thing you quickly realize when trying to make the greatest art or story ever thought up is, every good idea has already been done and some many times over.

I felt so dumb because I couldn’t come up with a masterpiece that would be in all the art history books for future generations. I already was a C average student academically, and now this cool ability to make art I seemed to have would go to waste because my stupid brain couldn’t think of brilliance! But I tried. I hung out with every weird outcast person I could in high school. Phil Bonner was the guy who was probably the most odd person I knew who seemed to like me well enough was an artist and zine producer. I was in his 6th issue. I was still influenced by seeing Pink Floyd’s “The Wall” and getting in to the lyrics of Pink Floyd, David Bowie, Bob Dylan, and Jim Morrison… Yeah I read “No one here gets out alive”. I also tried to get in to the Beat poets like Allen Ginsberg, and Jack Kerouac primarily. They were all inspirational and I liked most of them but I never felt any more creative.

I was walking along and under the elevated train. It was getting dark and there was no one around. I heard a rustling behind me and to the right as I walked past some large eight foot high dumpsters. Being lost in thought about my zine and for some reason had this image of a guy at a desk wearing a cone hat and sort of a jester costume… CRINKLE! I almost jumped into traffic as the crinkle hit the back of my knee! It was a white plastic bag. Not big, but just blowing around in the wind. I imagined it might be sentient and it was now following me for carrying a saddle bag that I used to traffic other smaller bags that I would then pull out to put my groceries in. It stalked me for almost a block, I was walking the same direction as the wind was blowing. I’m pretty sure I lost it once I walked upwind.

One of the many favorite pages and panels I like from the Toxic Avenger story.

I am happy with this page although I would probably tweak it a little if I made it again. The knife attack was happening as Bonehead was leaping and I wanted to show they were happening simultaneously by putting Bonehead’s leap in between the moment Yvonne was realizing she had attacked a human and not an alien.

Double page spread. This was my “masterpiece” of this issue.

Not all bags are bad.