PTSDecade

I’m just gonna go ahead and say it.

This decade fucking kinda sucked.

I have proof. I’ve been venting my spleen upon this site for over five years and Facebook for ten. The evidence is readily available. I have always been a cynical, misanthropic wretch, but in the preceding ten years I laid it on extra thick.

Let’s put it this way; for the last decade, I gave everyone the Full Dose™.

This is what drove my girlfriend away after almost eight years. It’s taken me this long to recognize it, and I don’t know how to control it. Part of me likes to annoy and provoke people, especially women. I accept it as part of my artistic identity because at root I’m a Wizzywig; a vital and unique yet loveless mutant borne out of cyberspace. But that doesn’t make the alienation any easier to swallow.

Over in the sister property Ceaseless Fables of Beyonding, I created a literally unspeakable evil called a Dread Conundrum. What that is, essentially, is a question that breaks suspension of disbelief. In extreme cases they lead to demoralization and madness. Here’s a basic example:

How could Santa Claus possibly deliver presents to everyone in the world in a single night?

We all know where that leads. For many of us, it was the coda of our childhood innocence. So there you have a Dread Conundrum; a question that shatters the internal logic of our own memories and recollections, and leaves our hearts harder than before. Get it?

I am blessed with the opportunity to look at the last two decades of my life and assess. However, this comes at a price; it is inevitable that I will judge the first decade positively and the second decade negatively, based upon how often I was happy.

This is a Dread Conundrum; a realization that my personal happiness is inverse to the amount of quality work I create. If I’m happy, I don’t strive to create better work. If I’m suffering in poverty, I do.

Okay, so now that I know this about myself, now what? Am I some sort of social masochist? How can I expect to do anything but drive people away?

Well, first of all, what you see here is an extrapolation of the concept established in my comic strip Bands I Useta Like, that is, an umbrella for my openly autobiographical and music-oriented material. Before I started the strip, I preferred using fictionalized characters inspired by my life, instead of the real thing.

Because here’s another Dread Conundrum;

Comics about your life aren’t going to be worthwhile if your life is all about comics.

People read comics because at heart, they want to learn something, especially if it’s useful, while they’re enjoying themselves. Words and pictures were utilized to teach us at school; they informed our earliest memories. There’s always going to be that human desire to drink from the font of the comic medium, just as there will always be young musicians who turn to acoustic guitar, or the drums, or even the violin.

People also read comics because subconsciously they want to feel better about themselves, whether it’s something as picayune as a revenge tale, or as banal as a battle between animals. The Flash Gordon you know is an adaptation of a long-running newspaper strip, as was 1990’s Dick Tracy. Serial comic strips were once a staple of everyday life.

Well, I still believe that the comic strip medium has that power. It’s my job to maintain that into futurity. I am the boss. I sub-contract to pay the bills. My client and fan bases are both small, affording me the ability to be face-to-face and publicly transparent. I bring you almost 30 years of experience as a published cartoonist, and 20 years of experience as a webmaster.

That’s how I can state the following with the utmost confidence: I know what I’m doing. I know what I’m talking about even when it seems like I’m ranting and raving. I possess the passion required to keep a dream alive over decades. I know that there are people out there who love what I do and they deserve special recognition for being the only ones who kept the fires burning. But I’ve wasted a lot of energy and time doing what I thought would make other people happy. I need to make the most of life by creating material that I know will make you happy.

In order to do that, I have to let go of the trauma of the last ten years. I may continue to write about it, but I’m laying it all out here so that I can wrap it up with a bow. I’m leaving out all the friends that gave up on me, or whose mothers told me off on social media, over politics. I don’t want to be here all day and neither do you.

2010: My dad and biggest supporter dies in the hospital after a botched spinal surgery; I caved into my post-9/11 fear of air travel and didn’t go see him in time, when I had the option

2011: A man on bath salts pushes his way into my apartment and beats the living shit out of me while I was wearing glasses, causing destruction to my work environment, well-being, and face

2012: Following a period of being physically unable to work, I am evicted by my apartment complex, taken in by and subsequently kicked out by friend on hard drugs, then taken in by best friend who lets me sleep on his floor while I try to retrieve my belongings

2013: Move into room in best friend’s house, then go to jail for 48 days for beating an interloper with a baseball bat

2014: Get on food stamps and community-assistance programs to survive (while starting up this site proper)

2015: Two of my closest friends (and half my household) are murdered a three-minute walk from our house; a friend-girl, upon hearing the news, told me “welcome to PTSD”

2016: I nearly die from an abscess tooth, necessitating charity-sponsored dental work; someone I thought was a friend who’d moved in after the horrific events of March 2015 began to verbally and emotionally abuse me for almost the entire year

2017: Friends rescue me and I move into a more stable living situation, putting my belongings into a storage unit I can’t really afford

2018: I start to figure out how to operate fundraisers, and my spirits are lifted and sustained by generous donations

2019: That’s this year and it’s been grim, which is why I’m making preparations so that 2020 will be much less so (and selling my old toys from childhood to get by in the meantime)

If one were to be blunt, I tend to create comics in the mindset of a 13-year-old. I don’t believe that this means my work is made for 13-year-olds; it reveals that 13 was the age that I fell in puppy-love with popular culture. It’s an innocent experience that I long to share with other people, not out of any fetish, but because I know of the thrills inherent. Thrills you carry in your heart for a lifetime. That’s the business I’m in.

The time is coming for me to grow in my role here and on the Internet in general. This doesn’t mean I’m quitting anything; quite the opposite. I have the clearest idea yet of how to bring my fans the most content possible, without overtaxing myself, or wearing out my welcome with constant mediocre updates. If you want to get on board, please consider supporting me on Patreon. Donations are always appreciated (and necessary) at GoFundMe. I need them just as badly as ever, I just fear that I’ve overshared and look like a beggar.

Don’t let my incessant financial paucity fool you, though. I know what I’m doing. We find ourselves in an upside-down “Clown World”, wherein merit is devalued or ignored, and artists devoid of integrity can ply a lucrative trade. If you’re here and you like my work, you need only know that I strive every waking hour to make it better for you. Your voice is heard and in many cases you have literally saved me from death with your support. I am an astronomically mercurial and belligerent nincompoop who wakes every day craving the bracing flavor of a gun muzzle. Any landing I can walk away from is a good one.

What I mean is, the people who want to make entertainment “safe” always forget one thing. Comedy is the only true remedy for trauma. It doesn’t matter the content, or whether it’s considered “offensive” by anyone.

When you’re alone, and you’re hurting from trauma, and something makes you laugh; that something is more precious than platinum. And guess what- everyone’s hurting in some way, and everyone has traumas in their life equal to or worse than what I’ve described experiencing. I would bet cash money that you’ve got something in your life that you don’t even want to think about. You just want a good laugh.

I would go so far as to presume that covers oh, about 99.999999987% of all Internet users.

I must repeat- I bring you 20+ years of experience as a webmaster, humorist, and polemicist. You can trust me as a consistent producer and proper artist. If I seem silent at times, it’s only because I’m giving an idea the necessary time and space to germinate. I often use pressure as a means to meet deadlines, and sometimes I misjudge how much time is required. No one person can compete with the information flow of the Internet, and trying to do so will only weaken your output. It’s taken me this long, to figure this much out. If I’m not constantly updating about what I’m doing, I feel like people think I’m goofing off.

That’s lunacy. None of us spares a thought about what anyone else is doing unless they tell us. Otherwise we’re all just trying to get by, maybe make a little extra cheddar now and then.

But as far as the brand goes; the best is yet to come. (I don’t mean to diminish anything I’ve been a part of by saying that. Why do I feel the need to add that?! Do you see how sensitive I am??)

I am Matty Boy Anderson, American cartoonist and irascible anecdotist, and I make funnybooks you might not have heard of, but you’ll love. Together, you and I will smite the Dread Conundrums, and keep the big sadness at bay.

Because that’s what it’s all about, folks. I offer the Full Dose™ because I know that not only can you take it, you need it.