I used to make comics. I know that because strangers would look at my work and immediately share their most excruciatingly banal experiences with me:
— that time a motorised wheelchair cut in front of them in the line at the supermarket;
— when the dentist pulled the wrong tooth and they tried to get a discount;
— eating off an apple and finding half a worm in it;
every anecdote rounded of with a triumphant “You should make a comic about that!”
Then I would take my 300 pages graphic novel out of their hands, both of us knowing full well they weren’t going to buy it, and I’d smile politely, “Yeah, sure. Someday.”
“Don’t try to cheat me out of my royalties when you publish it,” they would guffaw and walk away to grant comics creator status onto their next victim.
Nowadays I make work that feels even more truly like comics to me than that almost twenty years old graphic novel. Collage-y, abstract stuff that breaks all the rules just begging to be broken. Linear narrative is ashes settling in my trails, montage stretched thin and warping in new, interesting directions.
I teach comics techniques at a university level based in my current work. I even make an infrequent podcast talking to other avantgarde artists about their work in the same field.
Still, sometimes at night my subconscious whispers the truth in my ear: Nobody ever insists I turn their inane bullshit nonevents into comics these days, and while I am a happier, more balanced person as a result of that, I guess that means I don’t make comics any longer after all.
We have all been sucked in by those videos circulating online of “My $200 Shein Haul” or “Everything I bought for less than $5 from TEMU Review”
Um, no.
But I’m sure the fashion industry is just loving that there are commercial operators with even worse practices, making the constant seasonal churnout of new “fashion” look almost sustainable in comparison.
Sure, an American invented libraries, totally /s
Sometime in the past year or so I started wondering aloud about the amount of paper and plastic packaging that was thrown into bins by the checkout in my local supermarket. Pretty much any outer wrapper or carton that would have an inner sealed bag/box.
I genuinely didn’t understand what was going on, as I never saw other customers unpack and discard all this. A kind mastodon user then told me about a movement to put the burden of excessive packaging back on the shop rather than consumers:
By unpacking double packaged goods and discarding the outer box/wrapper in the supermarket’s bins, these shoppers make visible to the staff and (ideally) owner that this is superfluous and unwanted materials, and BTW you get to throw it out now.
I haven’t managed to track down any other information about this sort of everyday activism, but I think it’s an appealing way to protest the amount of waste going into our homes on a daily basis.
Turiel makes some very strong arguments in the interview. I’ll have to keep an eye out for his book.
As for the quote in the headline, I would say that we should take for granted that we will need to completely replace fossil fueled power sources — Turiel would appear to agree given the reductions of electric power usage he proposes. What is questionable is the systemic willingness to make that transition in a timely fashion.
There are too large financial interests in continuing using fossil fuels to make the change until they are entirely depleted. And the inconvience of the developed world’s middle classes to decrease their energy consumption is too hard a political sell for any populist centrist leader to implement or even propose.
“Sunbeam City (or SBC for short) is a young cooperative of individuals whose mission is to promote what we believe to be the values of the solarpunk movement.”