What is it that you look forward to everyday?

I want to know.

Me, I really enjoy walking out of my job at 1:00 pm and coming home to my apartment. It’s nice and shady in there during the day. All the blinds are pulled down, so that only a little bit of light is coming in through the cracks. The ceiling fan is going. I have a few things that I’m working on and I turn the volume down on my phone and see how much drawing I can get done. I have Miles Davis playing for me on the record player. I have a nice stack of finished drawings by my side, and maybe a coffee that I took home from work. 

I love getting mail. 

I love getting e-mail.

Robin and I used to go to a coffee shop near our old apartments last summer. She would type away something for the newspaper and I would draw. We would spend hours there! Before we’d know it, it was dark out.

My Annual birthday.

At the end of another year in my life, I take a look myself in the mirror and say “Well, old man? How about another?”

I always partake of another.

Living for twenty four years and opening that door with the number 25 carved into it. What’s going to happen in this new age? This new chapter of Noah Van Sciver??  I think that it’s high time I got to live like my idol, Scrooge Mcduck. 

I want to fulfill my childhood fantasy of swimming through my mountains of gold coins in misanthropic privacy. A filthy rich curmudgeon. I really hope I can make this happen for myself. 

In this 25th year, I want that guy who lives across the alley from me, Directly parallel to my window, to stop throwing his empty beer cans at my window with his   buddies. It is not a good game. It only causes me stress. And with my years piling up on me, the place I feel the pressure the most is on my heart. 

I’ve been working hard again on trying to get my drawing skill back where it was about 4 years ago. I, believe it or not, could draw anatomically correct, and worked hard to get there. Drawing portraits was my way of bringing in extra money when I was 19 and 20. But, I think I got myself into a different mindset when I started working at my cartoon style. And now, it’s weird to try to draw something in a more correct, straightforward style. Hopefully my 25th year will see me mature as an artist, and become more well-rounded. 

That’s what I’d like for my birthday.  

What else…

I would really love it if my friends could all live the way I think they should, and would if people would support them. I want Kilgore books to thrive and John Porcellino to be recognized as the national treasure that I think he is and be taken care of by the United States. It is hard to know people who give their whole lives to giving others some form of culture and they have to struggle to do it. 

Signing off,

This was, 

Noah Van Sciver at age 24

See you next age.

a light in the attic

So, Apparently some Brian Wood fans hate my guts because of some stuff I said about him somewhere in a joking manner. I was told by the host of Indie Spinner Rack during the Cowtown comix fest. People don’t get my dry humor, i guess….

Here I am looking all gross during that event. Which went very well for me, in case you were wondering. I’m now sold out of Blammo 4, and my little mini comic is soon to be long gone..

The first part of The Hypo is at the printer as we speak. I’m curious and excited to see it all dolled up, and everything. 

I was the guest on a Canadian podcast last week. You can hear me making a fool of myself yet again, only this time for a different country! Far out, man! 

Noah Van Sciver makes some great self publish comics that read like they came from the mind of a crazed hobo. Seriously, they are great. Check out Blammo and his story in the Mome 15.

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The motivation to do something with yourself comes from too many forced early mornings. It’s that dark sky at 4:30 a.m and the itchy, tired eyes. Wandering down the silent city street to a job you never wanted anyway. You have an epiphany, that is so heavy and so scary, that it lights a fire inside of you. 

It’s knowing that every week of your life will be just like this. Up early, 5 days a week, into a low-paying, hateful job. Clock watching and tired. Worn out legs and feet, and back, and brain…Waiting for friday afternoon to come so you can get drunk for two days with your friends. Fellow driftwood on a river to nowhere. Every week, year after year. And that will be your life’s story. An unoriginal book.

It’s that list of names you keep seeing and you just want to be on it. 

That’s all it takes to make you pull an “all nighter”, working your fingers to the bone, using whatever god given talents you have, sending out countless letters through the mail, giving god a smirk.  You want a “get out of jail free” card for good behavior. 

I just hope you don’t know what I’m talking about. 

The motivation to do something with your life is fear. 

a new post.

I don’t really want to write about all of the feelings I had about a tour I took of a historical house in Denver today, but, for your sake I will: I felt very great about the whole experience. 

Hhmm…

I have to go to work tomorrow, on sunday. I do not like to work on sunday. It’s my day of rest after a week of creation ( the creation of my book in progress, and also the creation of many sandwiches). So, when I looked at the schedule on monday and saw with my withering eyes that I had to work on sunday, the fire that is my will to continue interacting with my fellow man in good spirits was doused with cold water. Ice cold water. Now, this completely unwelcome extra day of labor is knocking on my door, work clothes and a 300 dollar check for my two weeks of life lost in hand. But, It’s okay. Whatever. 

  

Lately, I’ve been drawing out what I really want in life in my sketchbooks and it reminds me of when I was literally starving last year and would draw all the food I wanted to eat on the pages of my sketchbook. I envision who I want to become someday, where I want to live and the persian rugs that I’ll sit on while I listen to some records in the comfort of my success. I guess I’m pretty sad.

It’s a sad thing.

It’s really tragic that my computer is almost on it’s death bed, and I have no money for a new one. We had some good times, ol’ Macintosh iBook G4, but alas, they just don’t make miracles like you last. 

Not sure what I’m gonna do. All I really want to do is finish my (award winning?) graphic novel the way it needs to be done. But, we’ll see if perhaps a nice paying job from Westword happens to fall into my lap. Maybe a cover? Maybe a few covers?? Jay  Vollmar if you are reading this, please give Noah Van Sciver illustration work so that maybe he can purchase a refurbished Mac!

I just did a few low paying illustrations for the Museum of contemporary art. That’s a high-class new weekly gig from them I think. So, maybe if I add that little bit of money to whatever else I can scrounge, I can make enough to get a new mac and continue working on my cartoons. All I want to do is be a famous cartoonist! To hob- knob with the New York literatica. To drink champagne and loose touch with the “average joe,” in a high rise, somewhere in Chicago at night! To be invited on the tonight show and turn them down, because they can’t meet my backstage dressing room demands! Is that too much to ask? 

Time will tell. I’m just thinking out loud, y’see?

My buddy Felix had a box of underground comix from the 1960’s at his apartment and I invited myself over to take them from him. They are so beautiful! There’s some really great stuff here! Lot’s of R. Crumb! Comix that a 20 year old Noah would have fainted over! So, thank you so much Felix! I can’t express my gratitude! I mean it. I’m no good at expressing gratitude…

My roommate Matt is on a solo road trip in an attempt to find himself. Meanwhile, I’ve been happy to find myself in a nice clean apartment every night! Here is a video he made of his first couple of days out on the road, that he text messaged me about a little while ago. 

I’m just jealous of him. I’d love to be able to just pick up one day and leave for a couple of weeks. John Porcellino and I are planning a road trip to SPX in september. If he let’s me tag along, It will be very, very great! 

Here is another little preview from my book The Hypo which will be made, Computers be damned! But, hopefully with a computer.

The Hypo

Man, Now I’m in a supercharged way to finish this first part of my book. It’s called The Hypo and I plan on doing 100-200 pages for it. Of course, that remains in the hands of my creativity. I don’t know how long most of these parts will be yet. I know that the first part will be 28 pages and I’ll release it in a little comic book form so I can show it to people and see what they think. I’m guessing I’ll be done with the whole book by next summer. So, it’s a big project for me. 

But, the first part is pretty near to being done. I find myself going back and editing parts of it now, to help it flow better. 

Also, I have taken on the job of doing monthly recaps of Ethan’s Flash Rebirth comic for Wizard Magazine which can be seen here:  http://www.wizarduniverse.com/052809noahsflashrecaps.html

Thanks to Jim Gibbons and Mike Cotton. My two new friends over there!

Below is a random page from The Hypo.

 

Complete summer time FEAR!

I keep hearing this clicking noise in the corner of my bedroom under a bunch of papers. I’ve been hearing it for a few nights now. It could be some kind of a neon colored bug that crawled in through a hole in the screen looking for security and companionship. I picture a praying mantis that spits cancer juice. But, to tell you the truth, I’m too afraid to investigate any further. So, I sit on this futon cushion, that I use as a bed on the opposite corner of the room, lights out, complete blackness (aside from that oppressive blood red moonlight), papers and empty cans strewn about, in complete fear. Fear that perhaps this clicking noise comes from some kind of amazonian insect. An insect that’s fit for National Geographic magazine. An insect that, god forbid, will find it’s way into my urethra. 

But, we’ll see. 

There isn’t much escape for me from these tribulations. Even when I go to my job in the morning, lifting a tray or a baking sheet usually interrupts some kind of cockroach rally that was going on. It’s the city, man. One time I ran to the back of the store in between all of the heart wrenching  labor to get a quick drink out of my coffee cup and a little, prickly cockroach came popping out to tell me that he had taste-tested it for me. I did not thank him. 

Leaving my place of employment, it is important that I shake out all of  my belongings. This sometimes leads to further interruptions to all cockroach rallies and scheming taking place in my coat pockets. Some will fall, resembling a scary ticker day parade near the back door of Denver’s filthiest bakery. Then, I run as fast as my quivering legs will move all the way back to my clicking bedroom. 

Goooooodnight!

I wonder if anybody actually really believes that they are smart. I wish I did. I’d be smart if I knew things. Most things that I know I know only because I set out to learn them. That’s the big difference between myself and a lot of other people. Most people learn things they don’t care to know. They’ll read a book only because they have to and so on, and are content to just drift through life with no real awareness to the world or it’s past cultures. That’s the way they want it. Ignorance is bliss!

And that’s okay. Just don’t talk to your buddies so loud when I’m on the bus with you.

I didn’t go to school, and if I had, I would have devoured everything I could have in those text books. It makes me sick even listening to my voice. I can hear my empty head in my voice.  The words that clumsily stumble out of my mouth. If you talk to me, you should know that every time I open my mouth, inside I’m screaming at myself to shut the hell up. God bless my heart, I’m just not as intelligent as I wish to be. 

Hey,

I sometimes have to resort to threatening letters to editors. 

It’s tough when you are basically a talentless cartoonist, waving your hand in the air waiting for somebody to turn around and take a look at you. I suppose it’s only getting tougher for guys like me. Everybody keeps on telling me that print is dying. I have a hard time believing that. It sounds so stupid. The strong will survive. I love books! I love magazines, I love newspapers. I want to hug them all. Tell them to come home with me, enjoy a nice relaxing evening in the trash dump I call my apartment. Have a cup of joe with me. Let’s film each other to mark our time together. 

But anyway, the people all want to talk about how the internet will be everything in cartoons soon. How, floppy comic pamphlets are going to be old news, that indeed alternative/independent comic books are a thing of the past. I can’t listen to it. It’s insane to me. Why do I have to walk among you all? 

This evening, I was in a sullen mood, wanting to take a walk through my city’s alleyways to think and get away and convince myself that I am a super man.  Not Superman the famous comic book hero, but super man. Somebody special. Somebody better than your friends. I have to walk through Denver’s alleyways to do this. Don’t ask.  I’ll tell you: alleyways are an untouched, dark and mostly silent getaway in a place that is so crazy with people young and old on their way to see Wolverine.  In some of my favorite alleys, you get to see for yourself how things were built a long time ago and adjusted over time as ownerships changed, as a window was smashed, as the concrete needed to be patched up, as a fire escape was removed and some windows and doorways were bricked up. Everything has a real look to it, because its more hidden from people walking by and therefore doesn’t need to be as slick as the front of the building. It’s the part you don’t see unless you want to, or need to. 

I can really  see the beauty of the affects of age in ways that other people can’t. When I see an old building that has been patched up a number of times, with a rusted fire escape, I think of all of the corpses in the ground who had fine memories of  that place. All of these people who had the greatest times of their lives in the rooms of that old apartment. The bricklayers, who worked putting all those bricks in place, not realizing that  one hundred and thirty years later,their labor would be appreciated by a young man who just happened to be passing by. Who was stopped in his tracks to become lost in the details. One hundred and thirty years later one man out of  thousands of people who pass by , was able to really see the work that they did and care. One man out of thousands who sees a lonely old building sitting in a parking lot by itself and feels sad about it.  I am such a Super Man.

Me with Orange county artist Ed Templeton in 2001.