Above is a drawing of a skier lady I drew eons ago while in college. I thought it fit the snowy day outside today, where cross country skiers pass by outside my window as if on a set timer that repeats at eerie intervals — when one appears it gives me a shock: is it an animal? is it a trespasser? is it somebody looking for something? Part of the shock is that the intervals are wide enough, the appearances sparse enough, that I forget about the skiers until another shows up in my periphery as I write in my bedroom and reminds me, a split second of disorientation.
I’ve been disoriented because I’ve been sick lately with a mysterious bug. I don’t think it’s covid. I won’t bore you with the symptomology, suffice it to say I’ve been a little delirious. My last post/newsletter “Mantles” was written in the grip of this delirium rather. I’m happy with it and I want to keep going in that direction. In the meantime I thought I would entertain subscribers and readers with two recent publications that have made me happy: a fragment at Don’t Submit! called “Final Checkpoint” and the official publication of a comic called “PUA” at the online magazine The Gorko Gazette. I thought I would take it upon myself to share screenshots from those places. You’re welcome to visit the websites themselves, and I will add links later (sometimes it doesn’t work right).
PUA by Jesse Hilson
This comic was originally self-published by me in a zine entitled Whirligig 4, published years ago when I thought I’d try to be a comic book artist. It was put together with another comic I’d written called “Visiting Hours,” about a mentally ill woman in a psych hospital named Janet who hallucinates a pair of dancing legs in the city skyline. The linkage between the two comics were to be found in the striped skirt of the dancing women in the two comics. It was originally planned to be part of a series that would have a broader narrative arc involving Janet’s escape from the hospital, but that never was written. Like a lot of my ideas, I never followed through.
Next is the item called “Final Checkpoint.” I’m mainly really happy with one or two paragraphs and some of the rap lyrics at the end. For a minute I had some idea that I was going to die from an accidental drug overdose I’d taken (I messed up my medications but I seem alright now). I wrote this in that state.
