August 7th, 2023
It’s no secret that Ashley Maypole, the main character of my comic The Flying Squirrel, is the Weirdo most like me.
He’s an alcoholic comic book writer with Imposter Syndrome and an unhealthy obsession with squirrels.
He has a son and a Boston Terrier and a best friend who looks a lot like one of my best friends.
I did not step too far outside the house for this one.
But did you know that Ash got sober before I did?
There’s a long history of writers and artists who have been affected by the characters they’ve created. Jack Kirby started to go blind in one eye while regularly drawing Nick Fury, who is famous for his eye-patch; Grant Morrison gave a character based on themself a rare illness, and then came down with that rare illness themself.
Subconsciously, I must have wondered if the opposite was true.
I created Ash when I was still drinking, and his story was always one of the alcoholic who ends up in rehab. The delicious irony of this is that I had no plans to sober up myself, because I was not my character. He had a problem that I did not have.
Except I did.
And it wasn’t until I wrote him getting better that I realized I could get better.
There is plenty about Ash that is different, too, and he reflects both the worst and best of who I have been and who I could be. I have his problems, but I also have his potential.
I’ve written a whole essay on him and Imposter Syndrome, and the term “faux poet” is how I describe myself in my head daily; the idea of what is real and what is fake is at the heart of his issue.
It’s also about the sometimes-heavy task of looking at ourselves in the mirror, which can be seen in the use of a handful of words from two songs: Reflections by Atmosphere, and Landslide by Fleetwood Mac.
An important moment in Ash’s story that I point out to people is that he does not get better when he becomes the hero; I got sick of seeing stories that featured that narrative. As often as one person loses it all, another can get everything they ever wanted and still can’t stop their addiction.
I came up with the two four-letter phrases that bookend the story while I was still in it, wondering if my life was one worth living.
Anything can be saved.
Everything can be destroyed.
It has never been less true.
And there is nothing more beautiful than someone who has saved themselves from under the wreckage of their own destruction.
Ashley Maypole showed me the way.
The Den 