Coconut Grove Motel, Phoenix. Wonder if the monkey section of the sign is “animated” at night.
There’s a white light shining at the Coconut Grove
Where Satan used to watch the Barney Miller Show
Syndicated Television gets him in the mood
Hoping Abe Vigoda just might get nude
I found some more unfinished E Motel comics, these ones designed to fill a hole that originally I’d filled with a script. Amateur webcomics are like that.
This scene involved several things:
I’m going through old papers and found a box full of original E Motel art, along with these old sketches of what was to follow in 2008. By then, however, sitting down to devote eight hours of brain strain to the comic on top of what was becoming a stressful fulltime job was getting too much. This last comic was saved, but never uploaded.
(For those of you who can’t make the sketches out, it turns out Layla (the woman) also had to go through therapy like Greg (the half-alien guy who lent her his coat). In fact, Greg had brain surgery, where an alien device was removed. Afterwards, there was to be some humour involving Kristo, a sort of half-alien space guru, and three idiot ‘hippies’ who think, assuming they’re capable of such effort, that they’ll have the secrets of the universe divulged to them.)
As I’ve said before, E Motel never really had a proper plot, because I was too impatient to just get something OUT there damnit! In a way, that impatience helped me blast through what would have been crippling anxiety and overthinking. But it also sowed the seeds for its collapse as I lurched from one blind alley to the next.
Subsequently I’ve tried to reboot the concept, but never really had much success. In part, this is thanks to the small voice asking is this really worth it? You want something more grounded in reality, but you don’t know shit about human relationships and that sort of fiction bores you stiff anyway. Don’t waste your time.
Nobody cares what you want to do anyway, the small voice goes on, you’re just a resource to be exploited to them. Do what they want and maybe they’ll leave you a few crumbs and go away.
I hate that voice.
Wolfgang Feierbach
Kunstoffhaus FG 2000
1968
Man, check out this cr-r-r-azy pad!
Cory Doctorow boing’d this crappy “We’re fake Christians, we’re afraid of everything” piece of crap that was apparently being handed out at San Diego Comic-Con, and treated it as a scorecard. He got 20.
I score a 9… maybe 10 if you count the Church of the SubGenius as a ‘New Age Religion’. But it’s also so charmingly retro in a sixties backlash sort of way.
Gurunsi architecture in Burkina Faso and Ghana
Neat as fuck
The phrase ‘wow’ comes to mind.
I went into town on Sunday, and ended up in Hop Garden. While there and browsing their bottled beer list, Kereru For Great Justice Wood Fired Toasted Coconut Porter jumped out at me. And damn if it didn’t taste good! The coconut sanded off the edges I’m used to with porter, making it almost stout-like. Truth be told, it was a nice change from hard-edged hoppy ales.
And it’s from the Hutt Valley! I never knew.
Guess who got an Issuu account? I might redo these for readability on the web, as what’s currently there are the print-ready layouts. Sorry.
Looking back at some of my older stuff, I actually don’t think my art now is as good as it used to be, when I was actively trying to get into Comico and Antarctic Press.
But as Crystal said to me, back then it had all my concentration and time…
…and that’s what happened to E Motel.
When I started, I was on the invalid’s benefit, and didn’t have the obligation to find work. Then the rules changed, I had to seek work - or at least take whatever was offered to me OR ELSE. My time dwindled and my energy diminished. And so E Motel died, thankfully, mid 2008.
I say “thankfully” since I started without any idea where I was going. That damned webcomic started picking up plot cruft to the point it was nearing the Irresolvability Event Horizon.
I used to draw comics - especially the grandiose and doomed E Motel - but in the 2008s it finally died with a whimper.
This is perhaps the first comic I’ve ever drawn since.
Don’t bother encouraging me. Your encouragement is no match for my pessimism.
All aboard the snekbus
dresdencodak