Optic Drugs Attack Waffles #13

Have you noticed a pattern, in the last 400 years or so, in the reasons why we're told hard work is virtuous and the world doesn't work unless every single person works full time?

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Optic Drugs Attack Waffles #12

I thought about making one or both of the characters in this illustrated para-haiku men. But it turns out, it was more interesting to make them both women, like basically all characters I write and/or draw. Maybe I'm becoming predictable that way. I'm fine with it. Gives important context to this strange little murder scene. 

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Optic Drugs Attack Waffles #11

All they ever wanted was to be left alone. But now there is almost nowhere left to run in all the worlds.

Cash holds Dolores tightly to her chest while the artillery fire thunders far away. It never stops, and it sounds like it's slowly closing in. They're both so tired. Weary to their fuzzy souls. Dolores tries to relax for a moment, resting her bill on Cash's soft striped fur as Cash rests against the wall. Cash's large eyes scan the horizon without pause, Dolores can feel it in the little movements of Cash's chin resting on top of her head, and she feels so safe with the clawed paw around her back, but she knows the safety is an illusion.

For the ten thousandth time Dolores thinks about what either of their people would do to them if they were found, and the thought is still enough to steal the rest from her. They have no weapons, if somebody should spot them here they'd just be shot, they wouldn't have a chance, but still they keep watch. The tension builds higher and they talk about moving, keep moving. It's how they have survived all these months. But they just don't have any strength left. Cash's claws almost dig through the feathers on Dolores' back, and Dolores pushes Cash tighter against the rough stone wall. It hurts only a tiny bit. It's worth it to be closer, just be closer to each other.

The artillery gets a little closer still. A leaf falls from the large plant and it feels like their cover won't stand for long. If they had the strength, where would they even run next?

Awkward, stumbling, exhausted, out of their minds with fear and lust, both of them still more used to being alone than with other souls, still learning each others' tongue, Dolores and Cash try to talk about having sex. Their anatomies aren't very compatible and they aren't either of them close to turned on, but it just seems like how things are supposed to work. They both want so badly to be even closer, more connected, fulfilled, relieved.

But in the end they don't want to risk making what they have spoiled, awkward. They only talk about it instead, weaving a perfect fairy tale, dreaming together, crying together, laughing together.

Standing together, leaning on a crummy dirty wall in a dark forgotten corner of a planet they can't remember the name of. 

Huddling together in this timeless moment of dread, this moment where the bombs may already be on the way or maybe something even worse, wishing it could go on forever.

Perfect, unfulfilled, tired, defiant, alone, in love.

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Optic Drugs Attack Waffles #10

Before you tell me some of these aren't fish I'll remind you there is no such thing as fish.

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Optic Drugs Attack Waffles #9

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Optic Drugs Attack Waffles #8

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This is probably the dumbest thing I've ever made. But it made me laugh when I pictured it, so now you have to see it too. In glorious original size and all.

Optic Drugs Attack Waffles #7

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Optic Drugs Attack Waffles #6

I'm a big fan of Doctor Queen General Organa, to be sure, but of all the things the Star Wars universe inexplicably shares with ours the Latinized names for achievements in formal education for some reason strikes me as the funniest so far.

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Optic Drugs Attack Waffles #5

(Thanks Alex and Ben from over at LRL for doing the heavy lifting on this.)

Born of a holy union between Rama, seventh avatar of Vishnu, and Ronnie James Dio, god of rock.

A sublime being, an infection, an idea tracing a warm line as she passes through the world.

To preserve through labor, through art. To teach by touch, by matter. To exist in stillness and in motion.

Not a person but a principle, a procedure, a discipline, a science. A god.

A god for which no prayers are said.

Diorama.

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Optic Drugs Attack Waffles #4

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So I just started thinking about how a post-death society would have to think in order to believe itself more "advanced" than its ancestors, and before I knew it I was composing a philosophical little one-tweet fiction, and then I remembered Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality and its beautiful sentiment that I'm paraphrasing in the narration here, and by then I was already composing a comic in my head, and I thought it deserved a little more than stick figures, and here we are.

Optic Drugs Attack Waffles #3

2025 A.D.

When I wake up I'm already running. My t-shirt and bluejeans, stale with yesterday's sweat, slip onto me as if by themselves, and I'm climbing out the window when I hear the door explode and heavy boots stomp into the room. They say they are the FBI. They say to get down on the floor, asshole. Some deep instinct has kicked in just in time. Maybe saved my life.

I don't know where this instinct comes from. I don't know where I am. I don't know how this can be happening to me. I even left my wallet up there.

But I'm tumbling down on a lawn of thick soft grass and finding my feet and jumping a chest-high metal fence and almost choking on a bitter metallic taste in my throat I can only hope is adrenaline and not some gross nerve gas or anything.

There's a man waiting behind the corner of the fence, behind a stone pillar large enough to hide him. He has a large gun and black body armor and a helmet covering his face. The gun is just  a little too large, as I reach him before he can level it on me, falling forward to put all my mass behind a heel kick landing high up on his chest and dropping him before he makes a sound. This is the first time I've ever had any real life application of kickboxing.

The man makes no resistance as I take the gun from him. From the movies I recognize it as a UZI. The safety is off. The thought that they are here to kill me sinks in as two bullets dig into the bricks in front of my face. I can hear the impacts, sharp little cracks, but I can't seem to hear anything else. I don't hear myself screaming as I turn around showering the street in bullets of my own and two men in black fall down.

And I run, without looking back.

Bullets chase me all the way. I think I'm getting what they call shellshock. The unbearable certainty that I can die at any moment and I can't really do anything about it. I just get lucky, so very fucking lucky, so many times I lose count. They're everywhere. They're not a heartbeat away from getting me. I feel them breathe down my neck sometimes. I run until my feet bleed and go numb and then I keep running. I kill so many people it starts to feel like nothing. Like I'm watching from the side. I know that's bad but I'm seeing this knowledge off from the side too and it doesn't bother me.

I tell myself this is how abusers work. When they push you into reacting your reaction justifies their escalation. I tell myself I don't deserve to be killed. I hide for a moment behind some rusted old machine someone left in a concrete tunnel maze beneath an apartment complex where I killed a young CIA officer brandishing a shotgun at me. She looked distracted, frustrated, dragged into a job she didn't want to do in the middle of a very bad hair day. I leave a puddle of blood and tears when I stand up, and I wrap my feet in ripped-off shirtsleeves to keep from leaving a trail as well.

And amazingly no one seems to follow me. It's getting dark when I make my way outside, and there's helicopters pointing searchlights around in the distance. A building a dozen blocks down the street is on fire, but I'm sure that has nothing to do with me.

The gunfire further away might, though.

The first thing I see when I stumble into a laundromat is my face on an Ipad. It's a good picture. Terrifying. Somehow I'm shot from below, close up, lit by muzzle flash, a few drops of blood splattering across my face, wearing a snarl and a pair of murder eyes I can barely recognize.

The lady with the Ipad looks up at me, freezes. I snatch the expensive thing from her hands and heave it onto the stone floor as hard as I can with my left. Now everyone's staring at me. I stalk down the line, taking their phones and any gadgets I see, slapping them out of their hands, getting rid of them any way I can. After eight destroyed devices a teenage boy throws his smartphone down by himself, and steps on it, and raises his hands. I give him a nod and gesture with my weapon in a way I hope is unthreatening.

'We don't want a hostage situation', I say, trying not to scream when I hear my hoarse broken voice. 'So nobody call, nobody shout, nobody move. I'll be out of here in a minute. Leave you alone.'

They play at statues. I blink, look around, try to figure out what I'm even doing here. Freshening up, of course. Using a tap running water that feels strangely cold and hard, I rinse off my face and hair, my gun hand, my belly, as well as I can reach under my shirt with one hand. It takes a while to figure out in what order to do this simple sequence of things, I imagine I'm very confused, but eventually I tear off my clothes, wash the rest of the way and grab some handfuls of clean clothes. My hostages, as I'm forced to admit they are even if the cops don't know about them yet and we may still avoid a “situation”, are civil enough to avert their eyes and give me privacy enough to be able to use both hands to dress.

'You', I say, reclaiming their attention once proper, pointing at the man with the most comfortable-looking shoes. 'Shoes. Please.' He throws them my way without a word.

Lacing up with a speed I hardly recognize, I ask of news of myself. They say I'm a spy, a Daesh sleeper agent, a genetically engineered monster bred to destroy the country. I keep my opinions on the subject of nation-states to myself, and assure them it's all lies. I haven't killed anyone who wasn't trying to kill me.

I don't tell them I'm innocent. It seems many lifetimes ago since I passed that point. Maybe they can tell. They still look at me like I'm not human. I limp away into the night with my stolen gun in my pocket, alone.

A week passes and I begin to realize this is my life now. The news show no end of invention when describing my crimes. I' perform illegal abortions, I cloned Hitler's brain, I cancelled Firefly, I may know more than I'm saying about the Zodiac killer, I got Trump elected. I'm the boogeyman, I'm history's greatest monster. I don't think I've killed even a tenth as many people as they say I have.

I don't think.

I think I have gaps in my memory. Maybe the propaganda is getting to me. How would I know what's true or not? I consider giving myself up, but they've already passed a law just for me. There can be no retreat for me, no surrender, no prison, no justice.

I am to be shot on sight.

And that scares me even more than the idea I may be a mass murderer and not know it. Every military and law enforcement agency in the country and a large number of foreign ones and an army of armed vigilantes are after me and maybe I need to be taken down but I'm not going to make it easy for them. I'm not innocent, no, but this isn't right. If we live under rule of law you can't let a person be shot down in the street. Without even the possibility of accountability, of mercy, of defense, of communication.

And I hear the baying of the crowds. For them it's not about justice. Not even revenge. I'm fucking entertainment.

And I hang on by my fingernails and I live from heartbeat to heartbeat. Killing, running, not eating, not sleeping, never a minute's respite. My luck will run out sometime. Even Gun Kata is just gaming probabilities. I live by luck and by being willing to go further than anyone really thinks they could. Just ask the Interpol guy whose face I ate. (After he was dead.) (I was just so fucking hungry.)

And in time, I become so desperate for human contact I write a letter to Rolling Stone magazine. They publish it, even if they make it clear they don't believe me, and think anyone who does should be whipped.

So I keep running. One step ahead. When the helicopter gunships scour the land I'm on a speedboat to Canada. When they knock on every door in the continent I'm living in the woods. When I go for a week without killing anyone someone bombs a police station in my name. So I'm not ahead. I'm just surviving.

And I'm trying to find my humanity. Somewhere. If I ever had it. Maybe it was just a dream. I never said I was innocent. I know I'm not innocent.

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This is a joke from the pages of Wormwood that's probably not worth the four hours I took writing and drawing it, but it made me laugh. In the comic it's a TV show where the punchline is the twist, but I think it only really works as a joke, with the twist being the punchline.

Also I thought I had a silly story with a twist ending on the level of the story of Nate the Snake and the lever that ends the world in me. Alas.

Optic Drugs Attack Waffles #2

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Me, I only want to go everywhere.

(Thank you to Book of Biff and Exploding Dog for teaching me to draw mouths.)

Optic Drugs Attack Waffles #1

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I'm not counting this as an Of Dragon page, don't worry. (Though that "maybe-a-second-page-this-week" is turning into a pretty definite "nope" with all the family obligations I'm accumulating.) But this is clearly a completely different cartoon, bearing the perfectly reasonable and not just a little descriptive name Optic Drugs Attack Waffles. Because sometimes I get a little silly.