An interview with Aaron Lange about his "outrage porn" collection, HUGE

Leading up to the election, Aaron Lange, a comic writer and illustrator, didn't have a really pressing urge to illustrate his hatred of Donald Trump. Like most "liberal” people, he took cues from his friends, from the media, from common sense -- all of which assured him that he had nothing to fear from this, to use his own words, “narcissistic charlatan and pizza hut pitchman.” 

On November 9, 2016, when the smoke cleared and the dark-side stood victorious, Lange spent most of the day in bed, under a blanket, wishing it all away. The sinister liberal agenda of not being complete dicks to each other had been pussy-grabbed by the supreme dicklord himself. Like the Scottish newspaper so poetically made clear recently, life had turned into a dystopian alternate reality. Lange eventually got out of bed. Life inevitably moved on, and when it did Lange went straight to the drawing board. The putrescent obscenities below are what spewed forth. 

Lange, 35, has been drawing for as long as he can remember, and has been focused on making comics since graduating college. His comics, among them Trim and Romp, can be heavy on obscenity, satire, and Lange's own absurd past experience (they're all available for purchase here). His recent collection of anti-Trump cartoons, entitled HUGE, is something else entirely. The election results made Lange terribly ill. These drawings are infused with the same cynical bile that crawled up the throats of anyone with an ounce of reason and empathy in their heart on November 9th.

I found HUGE in a tiny but dependable comic shop, on the mixed recommendation of the attendant (“The drawings are cool, it’s just… Well, he really hates Trump, you know?”). All but three of the images were made after the election results came in. You can buy a copy here for six bucks, and I hope you do because the proceeds go towards shoring up Planned Parenthood for the fight against orange Hitler. While no one would call these drawings a "mature" reaction to Donald Trump's victory, it's clear how cathartic they might have been for the illustrator. Next time you want to cry about a bully who won't leave you alone, try drawing their face at the tip of the grossest, most decrepit schlong you can draw. It won't stop them, but you might realize that laughter and disdain are much more useful than tears. 

Below are some questions Lange answered about HUGE, and his general response to these trying times. 

Your drawings for this collection are explicit to the point where its both hilarious and disturbing. Looking back now to when you made them, how do you feel that style connects to what was going through your head?

A word being tossed around a lot right now is "normalize". As annoying as that is, it is also appropriate. As I write this it is Jan. 11 and Trump is not yet in office. So the drawings in HUGE were done very recently. But already in that short time Trump kind of has been "normalized". You wake up, make coffee, read the news, and see all manner of outrageous and horrifying business and just kinda nod and go about your day. I'm glad I was able to capture and express my total shock and disgust immediately following the election results. It is important to remember what a gross aberration this whole climate is.  

Would you call these drawings satire or something else?

That's a very good question. Though they serve some of the same purposes as satire they don't exactly fit that bill. I'm not, for example, really doing anything clever, or addressing particular issues and policies. I think they share certain qualities with some of the more politicized works of the Surrealists, but that label is also insufficient. I'm sure my critics would label it "outrage porn" and they just might be correct. 

Some of these drawings include severe derogatory language, like “spic,” and “faggot,” writ large, at one point literally embedded into the president-elect’s hair. These are words Trump has never been confirmed to have used, but which you seem to feel are tied to him in some way. What led you to use such emotionally charged words?

When Trump says "build a wall" he is in effect saying "spic". When he attacks civil rights such as gay marriage, he is in effect saying "faggot". He's too savvy to say these words, in public at least, but his meaning is not lost on anybody.  

Judging by your website and a google search I don’t see much other politically geared work. Is this new territory for you?

I've certainly never done anything this blatantly political before. There's a vague politic to my work in general, but it is a bit oblique. On this issue I didn't want to skirt around, be ironic, tongue in cheek, or whatever; I wanted my stance on the matter crystal clear, and etched in stone, so to speak. 

Is political cartooning territory you plan to continue exploring as Trump begins his reign of terror?

God, I don't know. It's really so boring. It's such a low level discourse. Being opposed to Trump and what he stands for just strikes me as so obvious. It's such a no-brainer, Trump is so transparent. This whole thing is very bad Science Fiction. 

What do you think about left-leaning folks who say we should give Trump a chance?

They need to wake up. Look, I didn't like Bush, didn't agree with him, etc. But at his core I don't think Bush is a bad person. A stupid, spoiled frat boy? Sure. But I don't think he's some destructive monster. Trump is beyond politics. This isn't a WWII guy like Bob Dole, who's got some old fashioned opinions like your grandpa. Trump is most likely mentally ill to some degree.  

Much has been said about golden showers and Trump lately. What do you think of the recent allegation that he hired escorts to decorate a Moscow hotel bed with piss because Barack and Michelle Obama had slept in it? Any plans for an illustration from you on this unconfirmed yet possibly historic event?

I find this to be very dubious. We don't need to make shit up about Trump. Jesus, he does or says something awful every fucking day. This "pee gate" horseshit has the makings of a Leftist birther movement. I just don't believe it's true. Look, I'm sure Trump has done nasty things with prostitutes, and frankly I don't care about that. The red flag, for me, is that this water sports session was conducted on some bed that the Obama's once slept in. It sounds so made up. Also, that would be a symbolic act. I don't think Trump is capable of abstract thought and things like symbolism. He is a brutally literal person, incapable of reflection.

Again, you can check out Aaron Lange's comics and others at The Comix Company's website, or just go directly to the Huge page. Today Donald Trump will be inaugurated. Here's to cathartic immaturity, and four years of political and artistic resistance. 

Violaine Briat - #inktober

It’s been #inktober all month! Get thee to Twitter and check out the greatness, or make some yourself. Featured below are some #inktober efforts by Violaine Briat’s, along a shot and sweet interview.

You can buy originals of each of these drawings (if you're quick about it), along with other works by her at her online shop.

October 12

msry: How long does it take you to finish a drawing? 

Briat: It takes from as little as 1 hour up to as long as 4 hours? It all depends how clear an idea I have and if I’m distracted or not

msry. What's inspiring the style and content of these illustrations?

Briat: Style wise, I just really enjoy deep black and white, like Jeff Smith’s Bone and Mignola's Hellboy . I was a life drawing teacher too, hence the semi "realistic" body shape. I recently got into tarot and symbolism. I try to dig into that for inspiration

October 16

October 17

msry: I read that you work in Japan as a storyboard illustrator for animated series. How long have you been doing that, and what were you doing prior? 

Briat: I was living in Japan but worked freelance for French and American productions. I started working in the animation industry at 21, and have done boards and character designs since. I write and draw comics in my free time.

October 18

msry: What are you going to be for Halloween?

Briat: I m gonna go to a party with my animation friends (woo LA!) 

What's Violaine going to be for Halloween? Drunk, that's what. If you're into it be sure to tumblr stalk her.

Ancestor by Matt Sheean and Malachi Ward

Here’s a drink you can make to best enjoy Ancestor, which was released today in trade paperback by Image Comics. Take one Philip K. Dick and one Alejandro Jodorowsky (circa The Holy Mountain) and throw them in a cocktail glass with two blackberries and a splash of agave nectar. Muddle. Add two shots of blanco tequila, two drops of Dimethyltryptamine or Lysergic Acid, and give it a dash of Black Mirror. Mix, shake, and serve. Now take your drink to a dark corner of your room, far from your computer or any wi-fi enabled devices. Read and drink slowly.  Short as it is, Ancestor is a trip for the mind that’s worth your time.

Ancestor is a loaded slice of psychedelic philosophy, written by Matt Sheean and pictorialized by Malachi Ward. Set in a non-specified time in a non-specified corner of the United States, it’s the story of a well-meaning lunatic genius who upgrades a social media platform / body enhancement service into a hybrid, post-human being that changes the course of entire human race. Its narrative swerves are buttressed by knods to the philosophical anxieties that we, as a society of “enhanced” interconnected technologies, are slowly coming to know.

Surrender your autonomy to the service
and make her the perfect cocktail!

The plot’s lunatic genius, Patrick Whiteside, is an outwardly kind, curly haired tech billionaire who's tendency to turn conversations into one-sided motivational pep talks betrays his maniacal desire to control and reform everyone he comes across. Whiteside was a co-developer of “the service.” The service is what personal computing will be like once we're able to inject the internet into our blood streams and tether it directly to our mental and bodily functions. It’s more or less augmented consciousness, an artificially intelligent Siri for your mind, that goes with you everywhere. The service can float social media and web content in your face on levitating yellow jelly screens, instantly identifying friends and strangers and objects. It can also talk you down from a panic attack if you’re going nuts. When talking doesn’t work, the service can, at your behest, administer a calculated dose of whatever medication you need to to get on the wagon again, then monitor your vital signs until you’re copacetic. On good nights, it can take control of your body (after you grant it permission to access your motor skills), which it can then use to make a perfectly mixed cocktail of your choice for whatever platinum blonde art femme you're hitting on. The service is the ultimate integrated web experience.

Whiteside talks it out

Like us and our hyper-connected devices, people in the world of Ancestor can become so inured to the service that they experience varying degrees of anxiety when disconnected from it. While the service enables superhuman abilities, it's also a nuisance to immediate experience. Whether you want it or not, the service will tell you everything it thinks you need to know.

Ancestor’s main character, Peter, is not sure how he feels about this intense connectivity. Though he relies on the service to get a grip on his anxiety disorder, he’s often a victim of the incessant suggestions of it’s yellow jelly screens. As troubled as he is by all this, it’s apparent that he is a brilliant and pensive man who is simply trying to life his live free of anxiety, and sees the service as a tool to that end. Peter is invited to an impromptu party hosted by Whiteside in his billionaire mansion in the middle of nowhere. There, he’s made to participate in the beta-testing of Whiteside’s magnificent new invention, his Service 2.0. Peter, Whiteside, and the rest of the world are then forcefully thrust into unknown territory, as Whiteside loses control of his new product. From there on out, things get incredibly strange and wonderful.

Whiteside is like a cross between Goethe's Faust and Ozymandias from Watchmen, placed in the body of a creepy child-therapist or hypnotist. In him we see the expression of a utopian ethos prevalent in Silicon Valley. This ethos, “California Ideology,” preaches that a blend of technological innovation and bold individual action will eventually solve all of humanity's problems. But as the story progresses, Peter grows to resist Whiteside's manipulations and psychological games, and resents the implication that he needs either a guru or a some post-human bio-integrated bloatware to give him peace of mind. By the end of their "relationship," it's Peter, not Whiteside or the human race, who finds something resembling inner peace.

We all know by now the mythology of the tech boom. Scientists and ex-hippies, with the help of massive private and public investment, invented the personal computer, the internet, the iPhone, the Google. The digital backbone of information technology was highly influenced by a bourgeois subset of the 1960’s counter culture. This counter culture failed to liberate human consciousness from its societal captors. Having failed, those with the knowledge and the inclination began to look towards technology and capitalism as humanity’s only hope. A large part of the advertising for contemporary technology and software displays a remnant of that failed hope for technological liberation and omnipotence, the hope that “existing social, political and legal power structures will wither away to be replaced by unfettered interactions between autonomous individuals [or businesses] and their software.”

In response to the Silicon Valley messiahs preaching salvation, peace, and money through tech-gnosis, Ancestor offers an almost satirical counter narrative. It expresses a healthy distrust towards anyone who claims to have all the answers, be they human or otherwise. Malachi Ward and Matt Sheean’s story is an expression of the desire to not be told who you are or what you need to do with your life. It also asks whether or not we should sacrifice genuine unmediated experiences (and the commensurate euphoria and excitement that comes of sometimes not-knowing) for the sake of complete control and self-determination.

If Ancestor has one failing it’s that it’s way too short. While readers will get a conclusion that satisfies the arc, there’s 15 billion years worth of plot missing that I wish they had gotten into. By the end, I found myself wanting to hear more about the how and why of it, to see more of Matt and Malachai’s bizarre alternate reality. It’s such a tease. Maybe the comic book gods will see fit to provide mankind with a spin-off? It’s pretty great for what it is though - a self contained thought experiment with poetic conceits and beautiful art.

I would recommend also checking out this short comic by Ancestor's creators regarding "the process" of making Ancestor a reality.

Henrietta Harris

Portraiture used to be about capturing the essence of a person, but that kind of blew up once everyone figured out that each of us is a messy blob of social conditioning and genetics with shiftable "selves". Now we pay homage to the blobs we perceive.

Life as a social construct is so precarious. And sometimes beautiful. When I get to know someone I read them like literature, as a refractive display of stories and motives and fears. I've always been confused by how people behave and what they want. Tone deaf even, and catastrophically so. Sorry.

A portrait makes the construct palpable, and the human in humanity becomes more apparent somehow. Still can't place it. Like an electron, it's everywhere or nowhere all at once depending on when and how you look. But it gives me time to think and consider, and if the artist is really good a portrait will offer something I haven't seen before. Seeing something I haven't seen before means I think of things I haven't thought of before, that I get a perspective I didn't have before. This is one reason I love "art" in general.

Today's unfocused reverie has been brought to you by sleepiness, Arizona Green Tea, and a portrait of someone I don't know by Henrietta Harris (who I also don't know). She's a painter from Middle Earth. She's great.

The Drowned Girl by Jon Hammer: Prophylactic and investigatory uses of formaldehyde and chocolate milk

The Drowned Girl is a short and obscure graphic story by Jon Hammer, put out in 1990 by the proto-Vertigo DC imprint known as Piranha Press. It’s about Dick Shamus, a private eye hired by no one to do nothing. Dick Shamus drinks cocktails of formaldehyde and and chocolate milk to vaccinate against the AIDS virus. He is one of a lucky few who know that formaldehyde is the AIDS vaccine, invented by the CIA and used by many greats prior to him such as Ronald Reagan. 

Shamus learned this by being a highly effective but unfortunately down on his luck (and seemingly homeless) detective. As he puts it: “Most of the time sleuthing is not the most rewarding work. However, being a drug addict has its charms.” Such charms include being able to spot a secret scheme by a Nazi fifth column hiding in New York’s East Village, an insidious plot by fascists disguised as hipsters and yuppies. Among his other junkie superpowers is his ability to nod off, and in the process morph casual English banter into precious German intel. His investigations lead him all through the Lower East Side’s burgeoning art scene in 1990's.

Visually, the world Shamus inhabits is colorful but tangibly dour, filled with people that are drawn flat, with just enough line and paint for shadow. Jon Hammer’s style is like a 1990’s Edvard Munch. He makes the outlines firm, but everything inside is impressionistic smudge, especially Shamus.  With his teeth clenched in drug infused righteous indignation, Shamus is always the most scrambled, impressionistic figure on the scene, a bright red-orange smear of rage and urgency standing out from the pastel surroundings. 

Shamus’ rage at the young professional migrants can best be understood by understanding the East Village, a neighborhood Shamus calls “in trasition.” The East Village was formerly known as the Lower East Side. While stalking a young art curator to her home so he can interrogate her about the ironic Nazi flag hanging in her gallery (obviously an ironically ironic front for secret Nazi headquarters) Shamus explains it: “The difference between the East Village and the Lower East Side was she probably paid $200,000 for the privilege of owning an apartment in this particular shabby dump.”

Let’s start at the beginning for a sec. In the 1970s and 1980, New York City’s Lower East Side suffered a massive housing crisis that left thousands homeless or precariously housed. Thanks to the flight of middle class families out of the city and into the cozy suburbs, landlords were unable to keep up with the cost of building maintenance and property taxes. This left block after block of nearly empty apartment buildings, as property owners began to figure it was more prudent to bail on their tenants than to keep up with the bills. Then came the inevitable -- local business failed for lack of customers, investors turned a cold shoulder, and the Lower East Side came to be known as a neighborhood you don’t walk around at night. Eventually, this vast dystopian wasteland became property of the city, to be done with as it pleases. 

Enter the soothing balm of choice for urban developers the world over: Gentrification. First, the city began to give rent and mortgage discounts to community groups that would start businesses and do some of the grunt work of rehabbing the territory. Then came the artists. Young and armed with degrees in postmodernism, decadence, and money-having, they populated the area and began to turn it into their dystopian playground, an underdeveloped wonderland full of inspiring crazy people, empathetic poors, and wondrously aesthetic dilapidated buildings and infrastructure. Right behind them came the yuppies: the subset of the professional class whose mentality is halfway between being a teenager and being an adult. Contemporaeously, squatter communities popped up in abandoned buildings, attempting to reclaim space for communal purposes. 

The Drowned Girl is about this tension between the trauma of the fall of the Lower East Side versus what came after: that rush of people from vastly privileged backgrounds that, in the minds of many of the original residents, see the neighborhood as either an investment or a sideshow. To an extent, we know exactly how Shamus feels when he encounters well-off strangers paying stupid high prices for “vintage” items or herbal poultices with alligator dung. Who gives a fuck about Nicaraguan mineral water when there are people dying, people without homes, people who need a way out and not a god damn herbal poultice.

Shamus is a ghost of the East Village’s past, a walking shambles without a home and without a mind, the spirit of the fall and the panic and the search for an answer. He walks across the city looking for a solution to a problem that doesn’t exist. He’s too out of it to understand that the hipsters don’t know the past like he does. Where they see opportunity he see’s a playground for murderers. He mistakes the art crowd for the Nazi’s behind it all because the artists and the yuppies are the strangest things in town as far as he’s concerned.  

On the other hand, The Drowned Girl is also about the kind of guy that walks around the city sneering at hipsters for being hip and rich folks for being rich. He stalks the city opining on what the neighborhood used to be, but himself doesn’t have much to offer outside of insane ramblings and trespassing. The thing about gentrification and nearly every other social phenomenon is that the process taking place is incredibly complex, involving  thousands of independent agents, all acting with different motives, backgrounds, and social standings. It’s easy to say “Fuck gentrifiers!” The sentiment is one I’ve uttered once or twice. But neighborhoods with empty lots and abandoned buildings aren’t exactly happy neighborhoods. As hard as it is to put up with some chipper, privileged blowhard trying to sell you Nicaraguan mineral water, it’s much harder to argue in favor of chaos and disorder. Fun as those things can be, it ain’t sustainable living. 

All in all The Drowned Girl is fun to read. I wish I could I tell you where to get it, but it’s the sort of book you’ll have to scrounge around your local comic shop for. It’s also available from vendors on Amazon and Ebay. Do what you can. It’s cheap, and totally worth a read.