Comics

Samurai Pledge
I first came across a mention of this story in Haruki Murakami's Kafka on the Shore (Vintage, 2006). I was intrigued enough to search out the full story in Tales of Moonlight and Rain: Japanese Gothic Tales (Columbia, 1972). The original story, called "Reunion," continues after the events here, but it isn't as interesting.

I thought that the chrysanthemums and the suicide would make good images for the story. David Beyer did the art for me quite a bit ago. He did a fantastic job.

The Lay of Thrym
I was looking through Edith Hamilton's essential Mythology for story ideas for the PANEL: Myth book when I came across this story. I'm not familiar with any Norse myths that haven't come out of a Marvel comic, so this one was new to me.

I wrote it thinking that there are a lot of fun aspects to it: Thor in a dress, a stupid giant, a sassy daughter. When David Beyer suggested contemporizing it (I believe his exact words were "I keep seeing Thor in a hoodie.") I told him to run with it.

Ark
Matt Kish was looking for submissions to his Spudd 64 comic when I thought of this short piece. I was obsessed with a scientific paper that came out in the mid-90s about a meteorite found in Antarctica that scientist thought had evidence of life. Since the meteorite was thought to be originally from Mars, they thought this was prove of life on another planet.

The study has since had a bunch of holes poked in it, but the thought that maybe our planet was seeded with life from another planet was intriguing to me, especially when played against the backdrop of a biblical myth.

Tim McClurg ended up doing the art for that story for Spudd 64, but here is my original art, probably my first and last time doing that. I do like my attempt at drawing Panagea, the continents before drifting apart.

Marginalia
The framing story happened to me during grad school at Kent State in 96 or 97. McTeague wasn't an assigned reading for my American Naturalism class, but was suggested by the professor. Like many naturalist books (ones by Dreiser, Norris, and Richard Wright come to mind), McTeague is depressing, heavy-handed, full of symbolism, and seems to go on and on. It was my luck to find the final notation at the back of the book. This story will always stick with me because of that. I wish I kept that copy from the library.

It is a good book for a comic story. There are lots of cool images (the canary, the final scene in Death Valley) that Brent Bowman brought to life. It is nice to see this in print. As the PANEL guys can attest, I've had a draft of this story floating around since 2002.

GlenGarry Glen Pottie
I'm a big fan of David Mamet's play and the fantastic movie. I have also had problems toilet training my two girls. It all came together one night.

I originally wrote this and submitted it to McSweeney's. Unlike my other submissions, this wasn't rejected outright. Rather, they let me know they liked it but they had recently accepted a similar piece. That one is pretty funny.