August 30th, 2023
I didn’t finish college (obvs) and I don’t believe in God (sorry, fam), and The Weirdos is what it is because of it.
I quit college three quarters in. I frequently tell people that making this graphic novel was my education; most art students have to do a final project, and it’s rarely a 128-page full-color book. It’s usually, like, a zine.
But to write and draw and ink and scan and edit and letter and color and format and fundraise and publish and promote a graphic novel showed me that there are so many things I can do, and that I was going to do these things regardless of whether I had a degree or permission from anyone to do so.
Having the revelation that the fictional world in these pages existed solely because of me reminded me of my god complex; the thing I had to wash away, grain by grain, to reveal who I really am and fix that broken boy.
The idea of God is important in the way I choose to recover; since The Weirdos is about recovery, I had to address the creator in the ether. I had a thought that continues to excite me to this day: if I am the god of my literary worlds, and there is all this infinite space around me, then there is this logical truth:
The universe is bigger than God.
The phrase has several interpretations and meanings; my current spirituality relies on the concept of “As above, so below,” which are, for me, the most loaded four words in the English language.
The way that God is presented in The Weirdos — not as an answer, but as a different question depending on who’s asking — is one of my favorite aspects of the series, because faith is one of the most interesting aspects of the world.
I’m an agnostic who isn’t against religion or afraid of learning about what other people believe; in fact, in my effort to try to understand as many people as possible, I’ve come to have a deep respect for so many different kinds of faith.
The universe is bigger than God, which means it has room for all gods, and for all of us.
Which, from above, to down, down below in the world of The Weirdos, is what the story is all about.
There is room for you, and room for me; and if you put us in a room together, and we talked honestly to each other, about our failures and flaws, about our fears and dreams, about what brings us joy and gives us hope — well, we would find that we are so different, but we are also so very much the same.
The Den 