I don’t believe in God. Never did. I’m 44 years old now. By the time I’m 50 I hope to be able to impart some kind of wisdom from my life experiences. I hope I have something more to say than I already have. I don’t believe in God but believing in something; people, art, [...]
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ANATOMY OF AN AMERICAN SPLENDOR COVER
In the summer of 2008, I was hired by a collections editor at DC Comics to draw the cover to Harvey Pekar’s second AMERICAN SPLENDOR collection, originally published by Vertigo as a mini-series, which featured stories drawn by me and various other artists. The first collection was titled “Another Day,” and the second one was [...]
Switch To The Illy-Mode
I was blotto on cheap vodka when I smoked my very first hit of marijuana. Me and my high-school friends were watching David Lynch’s ERASER HEAD when the scene with the radiator lady and her creepy cheeks came on, doing her slow dance while avoiding airborne abortions or falling testicles or whatever the hell those [...]
You Can’t Unsee Me
My gregarious behavior is probably a symptom of my dedicated desire to overcome my shyness. I mean, it’s so painfully obvious it’s almost pathetic but I’d rather hang out with someone who at least attempts to show up to the party rather than spend my precious free time to woo that person in the room [...]
Cursed
Bernard was a monster of a man with a thick mustache who owned a local postal service where he lifted weights in the back room. His face was radish red from high blood pressure and he wore a hand towel like a boa constrictor around his neck to wipe the intermittent sweat from his brow. [...]
Make Mine Me
A friend of mine, a writer, sent me a 14-page pitch for a famous franchise character. He’d even written the entire scripts for all 5-issues. 20-pages of panel breakdowns, description, and dialogue per issue. That’s 100-pages of unsolicited work + development. That’s 100-pages he can bury in a drawer. I used to ONLY want to [...]
Montero Bar & Grill
When Stephen Elliott, author and editor-in-chief of THE RUMPUS, invited me to participate in, “Letters In The Mail,“ I was honored and excited to add my sensibilities to a project that attracted writers like Dave Eggers, Marc Maron, Janet Fitch, Nick Flynn, Margaret Cho, Cheryl Strayed, Wendy MacNaughton, Emily Gould, Tao Lin, and Jonathan Ames, [...]
SCATOLOGICAL
It started when I heard suspicious noises coming from behind my university bedroom door. It was late and I was trying to get some sleep for the next days round of film classes. Something was awry and I wondered which one of my roommates in J51, a house with a roll call made up of [...]
I’d Rather Be Happy Than Right
It started with toothpaste on the toothpaste tube dispenser. I noticed a dried glop of minty white fresh cement, plastered against the side of the toothpaste and thought, “Linda. Not again.” It was a disparaging thought. Then I noticed another petty crime. The bottom portion of the toothpaste dispenser was filled with toothpaste while the [...]
Abduction
In the late 1980s, I co-created and drew a story with a writer who lived in the deep south. It was moderately successful for an independently produced publication and I wanted to draw a sequel. I decided it would be best to knock brain-pans in-person with the writer, whom I had never met. So, I [...]
The Plate
The only thing I had left of her was two plates. They were handcrafted with paintings of flowers glazed into the ceramic by factory kiln fire. Sentimentally obvious but oddly comforting. I even had a favorite one. I can’t remember if she had them when we first started dating or if they were a gift [...]
Body English
When I was five years old, my parents took me to PS 87, an elementary school in the upper west side of Manhattan, to register for Kindergarten. I had to wait outside of the Principal’s office on a bench in the lobby. There were kids in wheelchairs and on crutches (some retarded) roaming around, and [...]
About Room Tone
A literary collection of Dean Haspiel’s prose and essays.
