KEEP CALM AND CARRY ON
After the Quake- J. Tenney
One Account of the Tōhoku Earthquake, 2011
At that time, we’d been sitting in front of the computer screens and TV’s for so long that it seemed as though our watching had something to do with all the horrible images being shown from up north; the thousands dead and the raging walls of ocean water carrying some nameless, burning wrath that was sure to swallow us all. It had been 3 days since the Tokai earthquake had ripped apart the northeast coast of Honshu, and it was decided that our futures were tied to the rest of the country’s.
“Ok,” I thought, “This is bigger than usual.” It was. I stood in the doorway to my back porch gripping the frame with my eyes closed as objects fell to the floor from my desk, in the kitchen and the top shelves of my closet. “It’s a dream,” I thought. “It’s got to be a dream.” I was afraid. I thought about the great Kobe earthquake of 95, being crushed, suffocation, burning, children screaming and everything else I’d ever paired with the idea of the big one. (more…)
September’s Night End. No Curse of Green today.
Matador’s and KometKind alike! This week I rushed out of town and forgot to bring with me the next installment of the ‘Curse of the Green Matador’ to upload. It comprises of a drawing that I really love and didnt want to recreate, so here is an illustration I did this morning while it was raining. It’s kind of about me, or how I have been feeling kinda rough lately and how The Komet has been my umbrella– my escape. There is much to escape from these days. With much of the things that matter most to you, but you get the least. I will catch up two Curse’s next week.
He tell me of space and his adventures.
So, lets get something going with the comments, and questions. I think I would like to get back to you.
all my sins today
So today.. Christ Im too drunk. So last night a very dear one was over and im happy for that, kinda made this all better. / im eating a cheese bacon sandwich its 8:26usa nc/Im in love and I hate.
I drew this on the swing, and we talked about god.
Await the return of the Spaceman
Sick of Waiting
So it’s the early part of July. We just threw a big party last Sunday, stateside. The girls that live down the hall from me at the Coburn building were all doing their own thing in the street. Dismissive as usual one of them opened a 40oz for me and drank the head of it. I lumbered back into my sweltering two busted fan apartment and continued about work. Im planning to have my first public showing downtown this summer- a large series of illustrations. With that mirth like thought on the brain pan, I am happy to announce that we are planning on printing a new book. Im hurriedly trying to get that in order and ready, I plan on having a few copies out at the reception. This dream of mine is becoming my adult Christmas, Im starting to think this showing art in galleries is a good thing.
Oh and that’s not all Ive been up too, Ive had much on my plate. More to report about that when I got it in my king-fu grip of passion. Something has managed to slip out of that grip recently. The Komet! I see his form streaking in strange dessert patterns across my dream scape skies. As he glances closer he smirks and grins like a madman. I feel like he knows I could reach him if I knew how to follow him, HIM like some kind of Peter Pan of the galactic infinite. My soul wafts like the grand old flag, a golden eagle clutching its tiny milky way block, the eagle rends its giant precious wings in screaming sounds of glory every time I think of The Komet crashing to earth. How many times has he crashed here? In my dreams TheKomet bends time like a straw, jamming his slender fingers into its openings and flexing the neck, preparing to slurp heavenly from the creative goop of life! Oh but the summer is burning on, and the good magneto sphere is still capriciously deflecting Sol’s deadly radiation. And the good earth waters are refreshing and cooling our crust and core. We still have the night sky. We have this immortal coil, we have our lives.
Listening to: Oasis, Wonderwall. Mission: Recycle something into art. Reading: Warhol the biography Eating: El Chapala’s Admiring: David Flores “don’t give up, we got the dreamers disease.”New Radicals
A resounding call to all the lamp light angles. Demons!
Lyrics:Sublime
Ive been off to the side for a while now, about 6 weeks ago I did a little painting to post with a blog, I scrapped the blog and the painting is somewhere with my table I guess. I ran away in the night drunk on cheap Irish Rose and malted beer. I ran as far as I could and I keep going for as long as I could too. I crossed comet trails with Kris in Shelby where the House Hartrum raised their glasses to Jameson, the future is in his eyes and the present is under his adept weight. We were starling and darling and nothing was missed as all the eyes were dotted with pride and passion. The T’s were V-necked. Tunic in the sun and pollen spore afternoons. It was good to take a break from our subtle jihads and make merry. And from that ebbing storm a wave made off with me and found myself under dueling rainbows setting across from the Matador spirit himself, Jack Grasyon. I witnessed his grace, flashing the blood stained and garish cape of chivalry and charm, tempting the bull. And leading the perils around his loins, a Man with infinite stamina and seed. Nature has not waged justice in Charleston in so long. And into the fray!
I made my way back across the land, and Touched the swirling mass of creative goop once more with the dearest master, Gant. He spoke of a desert people and tanks of water. Pressing his noble brow against the vesper spirit of companionship. The music in him has made towers in his mind. I saw the nothing lands of central Carolina. I … The journey came to a close as I zombie walked into the tiny dirty room I would be sleeping in for the last 11 days. The howling of the youth down the hall, the constant Spanish serenades from across the hall. Shuffling geriatric feet, bound together by a psychiatric age older then the numbers of man. The cadence of broken rap, the blips and wails of the pager. Fire drills and the constant burst of shower stalls, only running in 60second intervals, no shower curtains to protect the wet floor. The call for meds. The Chinese speaking overjoyed I the cafeteria at the sight of all the food. The Spanish vulgarities and chants of ‘punta’ evoking the most basic sense of humor among men. Late at night I would walk the halls with the saintly RN and talk about the soul and the spiritual womb, the virtues of good men. And on the last day I realized that I wasn’t here just to get my meds and make the family happy, No when I stop drinking. The drink to me is the poison mélange, in that time I would make the world happy. My world. I realized that I was there in those dirty crazy halls to learn that I had found my people.
I rode in a cab to the GreyHound station, I rode the bus into Asheville and I was home. I went down town to see the people, and I had noticed that nothing had changed. That all the world was mad, upsetting and depressed. I noticed how it all made my feelings of ‘flee from here’ swim like warm minnow, I remembered missing the spermatic laughter of the schizophrenic the burst of profanity form the terrorized. These things are the flaws labeled by the mad folk that handle our money and food.
The Komet has come again.
With Love, Joseph.
The Slipping day-Clouds overhead: BASTARDS OF THE INFINITE #4
script by K. Hartrumart by J. Tenneyletters by Daniel Herbertson
Heaven last.
The Garden
Sometimes I think there is a Robot.
Not so very long ago, I was still in HighSchool making copy-books featuring my first character, Gene the Robot. The copy-books where not the best and my stories where a far-cry from Alan Moore or Grant Morrison. But they where most definitely a direct window into my ego and id for sure. The last copy book I made was a going away present for my good friend, the Rev. “Pud” Parker, as he had become my comic shop man for the last 8yrs of my teenage life. He guided me though the quarter bins and the indie selections, he showed me the bright torch of the silver age. He really dug my fascination with strange women and robots, large hands and grotesque murder scenes. Later on in college Gene started creeping back into my sketches and journals, and more stories played out in my head. I had taken Gene on a voyage through mental disorders, space and time, the Supernatural and abstract world of cubism- anywhere that tucked away in the dark corners of my mind. Now as we move closer to the end of days, Gene has come back into my mind, as well as Kris’s. It seems strange how our youth grows old with us, Kris had always carried a little love for the robot as well. Here in the near future Kris and I will be sharing with you a new twist and tale about the Infinite’s newest addition, the Komet. Oh heavens, you might never know the whole history there. I spoke to you once about this globular mass of creative goop that Kris and I constantly try to render apart and steal from, this glob of protoplasmic imagination that to our elbows we burry our fist, pulling out what might be the heart of the Infinite or might very well be the very demons we have been trying to suppress. Kris pulled out Gene and showed him to me, and then thrust my drawing hand into the gelatinous snot and pulled out Gene as well. In my own mind Gene has been ever-evolving into something more, growing old with me. Never the same. And now it seems that like all heroes he has grown in Kris’s mind as well. At the risk of of being cryptic as ever, or so I’m told, Gene will live again in two universes, two places the same connected by a simple plot. After you have had time to read pt.IV of the “Bastards” we will then hopefully fill your plate with a few of our other stock stories, such as “The Matador” and some of the “Girl&Dog.” My mind races a million here and there a second. I merely intend for this blog post to initiate the beginning of the newest multiverse within the Infinite. But as of tonight watch the sky for falling stars, and ask your self is there a robot present? How long has it been watching?
Mood:Moody!
Watching: The Phantom starring Billy Zane!
Reading: The End League! DarkHorse
Status: “Digging in the Dirt.”
psst:That’s our boy Gene on his knees there getting blasted by the BullBullet!
Psst: Hey KometKind have you ever really wanted to own a flesh and saddle stitched copy of one of our comics? You can!
Matador Sequential Presents vol.1 debut: http://www.indyplanet.com/index.php?id=2670
Matador Sequential Presents vol.1 #two: http://www.indyplanet.com/index.php?id=2706
Solo, the coverless book: http://www.indyplanet.com/index.php?id=2759
The Brackish Heaves of Friendship!
Dreams of the Void
Four mighty hands have been keeping together what’s been falling apart. Palms quickly cupping the syrupy lumps of creative fetish that try to slump away from our creative goop! Goop piled high in some tantric mixture of two men’s’ brain juice and creativity.
Our imaginations have been hacking up love butter and blood, wincing our faces with tears and grimaces alike, watching each other birthing GODS, and evil women. The Infinite has been beckoning us like some alkaline serene, howling sweet epitaphs-join this loving daemon in the throes of God’s throat, oblivion! And alas, I fear we have listened once or twice to many.
The madness drove us to start fighting our hands against one another, wresting for more of the muculent body of work we hold together, testing the others hands by teasing to drop some of the precious viscous characters into the mire of ‘without you’. Each hand catching more of the love losing from the globules or the Infinite. And then the infinite spoke to us both in a dream, or were we awake? We will never know how it happened but suddenly the mind spires that we had built, standing tall to scrape the beautiful heavens that swarm around the artist. SUDDENLY we were both carrying the creative goop together again, it was as if a finger or two of our own had gotten lost in one of the infinite folds, and couldn’t the finger then feel anything other than the warm slimy pocket it had found in the mass we had made? As if minds would destroy the whole plasmid body for the right of one fold of flesh! Glory to the dream’s end! We now know that all the body of work is our body to finger folds and wrest slim-skuzzy balls. Yes happy bastard we have made friends again in the whole of the infinite. We will continue to break the rules of quadratic drama. And reining unicorns will tear with their horns the fabric of space and let in/out the benefactors of both universes. So sleep you no more, stay awake for this! Bastards of the Infinite IV has been packing its bags and getting ready to leave utero-state. Its fingers are uncurling and its eyes are swimming in birth juice. Its very lungs are drunk with love. It is drunk with love and wants to stagger, crawl, pull itself out of our conflagrating contours and then rest its heavy sweat laden head on our milky thighs. Brutus’s hulking arms reach for the ankles of our gams!
A Jewel in heaven is sparkling more softly tonight, as it needs not catch our eyes. We are set on holding it in our brow and feel the soul speak to us of wisdom and tact. Oh! And there is a small chance I might die tomorrow or be disfigured, so I want everyone to know that I want my comic books to go to Rylee and my SketchBooks and Flat file to go to Cameron, and then he can give with pertains to Kris. You guys are friends, so work that out. Scoot to Rylee for 300 to my brother and uh…my cloths to Cameron. And D-Flo gets all other stuff as he see it fit. Burn the Flag over my bed, I never wanted to see it stand when I couldn’t. I love most of you with most of my heart, and some just enough. But few of you had the best of me. The Infinite is an intimidating tall woman with great hair.
Starlight Spider
Starlight over heavenly repose, sun setting light burns aero plains as they die behind the cold mountains of this Carolina town. A ghost of mine is haunting Shelby town tonight and a doll of every voodoo bone and late night howl is stalking pretty boys there too. I am alone in this gas chamber, radiator apartment. How can I tell you friends, gentle visitors that I haven’t been looking for anything good lately? Yes I’ve been looking for rat food cyanide and yellow electric cords to tie around the garage beams. I’ve been looking for sharp blunt objects to shove up into my stomach. I’ve been reading a ton of 1990’s image comics. I’m skewering homeless folk for weed and cakes and pocket change. I’m burning bridges like matches and losing weight like a log on the fire. Using up all of everything, I’m being suffocated by: myself. I feel horrible because I can’t handle anything; much less the shit life has thrown at me. I want to wake up in the arms of my tunnel light and roam the hill sides and forest and caves of all of eternal Scotland. I want to feel the brittle snap of all the knives in my back, feel the pressure of my enemy’s wrist stop pushing and twisting. The blades will rest with me as I lay and bleed out. I want to feel my mind bleed into the wet and careless earth. Glisten on the black pavement under street lights as the tail lights fade. Some granted van pulling away with all my wants in it. Tonight there will be a bonfire, we are burning all of Colt’s things and then pissing on the embers. What number of things has there ever been? Curse is a stupid word that we say, we say our self.
On the other end of that drizzle and yucky sump, I have been trying to get my feet under me instead of dragging behind me. I have recently gotten myself involved in my local community theatre and that’s well. Work will pick up in the days to come. Consider this my heavy footed pigeon. Tonight though I feel as beet and fucked up as skin head in cell block A, I did do some drawing tonight and I feel like I might be ready to start working again. Though I feel my work will resemble cried on liquorish jelly beans on skeleton tongues. Im having some blood work done that should either help out or make things worse. I’m hoping for the better. God know it, I just want to cry, cry, and cry. This angle, baby blue t-shirt is the only thing keeping.
In this hotel lobby there is a revolving door and the weary dreams that Kris and I share have been coming in from the cold to get a fresh set of cloths and passing back out into the night. Dreams would rather sleep under the stars of heaven then the 49.95 a night rooms of malicious man. Stuffy cramped manila boxes with stiff sheets and funny smelling water. I saw a dream of ours just the other night drinking in a stairwell on the 5th level of some defunct parking garage. Dressed in a tattered red leather one piece, his oily hair swaying in tune he sang, “So where were the Spiders?!”
These comics we make will be my only children. If ever a child doth come, he will be his own man.
J.Tenney
This is the first drawing I’ve done in days; I drew it for you tonight. I miss you.
A Truly Modern Woman
Truly Modern.
I have been playing with this thought grouping for years now. Truly came to me in a day dream, she is a super woman genetically engineered to be perfect. Eyes of a Bagherra, bones of a bird. Claws of Raja! Beautiful blue crown over her temple in contrast to her copper skin. Fresh Henna tone hair. She is a wonder to my mind.
As most men in their mid or early twenties will confess if pressed, yes we fell in love with a imaginary woman, often a two dimensional x-character, for me its been Kitty Pryde and for a while Jim Lee was stroking my lust with his drawings of Psylocke. It’s an admission that we have carried most of our young adult lives. Ive grown out of it now, but still to date I cant pass up certain variant covers. They appeal to my youth and invigorate/assure me of my sexuality. Odd I know.
Yes now, I was flipping thru the pages of JSA at the infamous Ssalefish comics, and suddenly power girl was being thrashed by Truly, clad in a sleek bondage style body sleeve and a bat horror mask, she slashed at the revealing oval on Power Girl’s chest bearing full the cleavage bound beneath the white spandex there. The spandex from that point on has always seemed medical to me. Then Truly came to me again one night at Elliot’s Review, I was sitting there at the bar alone practicing my ‘drunk drawing’ techniques. And beating of woman at the same time. My frustrations with ‘real’ girls grew into drawings of Truly wearing new and exciting leather mask and jackets. Soon I had to make a world for Truly.
I made new characters such as the ‘Lonesome Bitter lover’. Then I was lost for a while, but Truly followed me in my dreams and in my art. I soon discovered some old issues of Lois Lane, and saw my niche for Truly, deciding to redux whole sequences of Lois Lane replacing the DC characters with Truly Modern characters. But then Bastards was being born. Then I decided to make Truly into an explicit content sequential, and the trouble was finding a printer. Truly was writhing in the womb. I could no longer look at comics, Degas, Schiele, pornography or fashion magazines without seeing visions of Truly, snips of Truly. Cloths that Truly might wear. At night I can hear Truly purring on the roof top of some brobdingnagian structure looming in the dark future. *sigh* It is a great relief for me to let Truly finally manifest in sequential form, I have in fact found my printer for this feature. – Jos.Romeo
Truly Modern Composite
In this time of recession.
Greetings Komets! Shinning stars! So much has been going on in our worlds. I know that K has been stalking the great gods of awesome in Japan, Sadie Cakes has been fighting the powers that be with Crunchy Paul in ole NYC. And I’ve been, well being a madman in Western Carolina. Amidst my raves and quarrels and jealous pouting I have been somewhat productive.
I landed another comic gig for a fellow small press doing interior art for a ‘southern horror’ mini-series. I cant wait to see where that goes. I’ve been experimenting with color application as well I have been working on a Top Secret solo comic, featuring as assumed, some people I’ve been living with. Its going to be a what Starburst are to movie theatres. But have no fear I have been rearing to go on the upcoming ‘Komet, Space Adventure.’ And yes I’m still setting on finished pages for BOTI pt.IV. Soon!
Later this week I plan on having committed the time to scan/upload the BOTI pt.1 and some other vignettes from the now classic Matador Sequential Presents Issue One. And following the week after BOTI pt.II (my favorite!) as well I will be picking back up my old stand by ‘Girl & Dog Romance’ with a special Guest artist. I hope to upload this in the manor of with my ‘Stunning Spider-Girl’ was viewed.
So! Last night I went through my stacks of various works and uploaded some of my favorite of those into my galleries sections here in the site. 
Please take a look at that. And low if it isn’t the seed that sprouted I came across the original drawing of ‘The Matador’, it was a cover concept sketch that sparked (Kris’s) idea for the first ‘Matador’ story that was featured in MSP#1. Of course when I drew the story I opted for another cover illustration since this original concept no longer fit the script. However I love this concept and I decided to give it full justice last night, thus enjoy!
I believe this will be a milestone as I think I have come up with yet another logo design. In other news I am doing some conceptual work for a series of large pieces that I intend to FINALLY have shown for material gain at a local coffee shop or salon. Some of the concepts I’m working with are among the new color gallery images. I’m not saying which ones they are yet. So many things running circles in my mind these days. That’s all for now I hope you all continue to race fevered threw the cosmos, spiralling life and creation over ever celestial body you pass!
Far off away on a distant planet.
Greetings lovers, star gazers and forlorn beacons alike! Some silly burning in my stomach bids me to illuminate the night sky of mystery perhaps perplexing you mighty souls. Recently good Hartrum and I have been getting something caught in our eye collectively and we call it nostalgia. Way back in our youth during the famed ‘Din of Sin’ era the two of us got our wishy-wash heads together and created a super team. Some X like thing you know the like. Among the grade A, choice, embodiments of our teenage minds was our golden boy the Comet. We both always dug the look of the guy. So with today being new and wants of coming up with something new and off word, we are taking up our old boy and giving him a screaming debut under the Matadors cape. Ive spoken with Kris a little lately about all this and Im sure he is in his sugar shack hacking away at his keyboard constructing dreams from star dust, and then in the future there will be…there will be!
But yet I want to share a few things with you still! About these lovely scrawling I have done just this last night or so, sat coloring them downtown here in Asheville. I do dream some dreams unlike my dear-hearted collaborator. And in these sweet imaginings my Komet is a god among his race in deep space, his power cosmic and obtuse propels him across the sky in his cleverly shaped one man vessel, which fumes a pleasant inhalant, rendering those bellow his wake…rendering them softly mellow and blithe. And with a thought he tosses his mind out into the atoms in the air and anything that could be there will be there soon! *sigh* Good natured fiends, I know you are watching, and here is a bone! My blood brother will be marching with us too, look and see where I have made his name from nothing there in the smoke! Words are like filthy hunger, and I lust. Jos.Romeo
With a great aside, I want to admit with pleasure, these drawings were done in very good company. Well there are some exceptions. But it is for certain that one persons flame keeps me constantly on the verge of artistic stroke and boy tears. As well, I note that the first illustration here is locked into a collected book belonging to, and on loan from Byron and Maria. Thank you for letting me away with it. I hope it keeps well with you for years to come.
Comic – The Stunning Spider-Girl and Robin
This was part of my first submission package when I was shopping my art around, trying to get a job working for some other comic creators. I think this short really showcases my story telling style. And my favorance for tween age drama and purloined romance. I hope you guys enjoy this homage to comics everywhere and time. J.Tenney
Matador Sequential proudly presents The Stunning Spider-Girl and Robin Part 1.
Read it online
Download the cbz
View in gallery
Art – Bastards of the Infinite
Some original Bastards of the infinite work by J. Tenney, circa 2007
Matador Sequential Presents #3
This work was a one the original ideas we had for Edward and his training. The scene is fleshed out in Bastards #3, set to hit the web and local shops in mid June.
Bastards T-shirt design