We are returned from PAX Prime and Seattle. I filled the pages of many notebooks while there, and the contents of those pages will slowly make their way here. Yesterday's comic was one that I drew in the hotel and on the plane ride home. It's about an idea I had that when you are inspired to do something creative after seeing others doing it. It is like spawning unintentional brain babies.
There are a lot of comic artists whose work I love, but Mike & Jerry from Penny Arcade are at the top of that list for both the content and consistency of their work. Seeing them do a live let's draw was incredible as it was their first in years, and I watched their older ones fervently when learning how to navigate my Wacom. PAX itself was fun on the bun and felt like Disneyland for gamers, only instead of rides, they have beer from New Belgium and veritable fucktons of new games and free gaming merch. The state that Seattle was in was not so much fun. I expected it would still be bad, but not that bad.
Immediately upon arriving, we received words of warning from our driver, panelists, and local attendees that meth zombies roam the wastes.
We mostly stayed around the hotels and convention center. Everything around there was safe and great, but it did seem like if you stepped one foot outside of that area, you were walking into the badlands. On the way back to the airport, we had a driver who was new to the city who got lost, and as he was trying to navigate his way, we saw sights downtown that reminded me of footage from Skid Row.
(This next part is incorrect because I am dumb, explanation here —> ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ )
Upon returning, someone told me that Tim Dillon recently did an episode on Seattle. I haven't had a chance to listen to it myself yet, but their summary sounded like an accurate description of what we saw:
That angry guy from Rhode Island had an episode about that place, and how it could be a new kind of tourist hotspot. See the dying city, maybe get in a knife fight, buy a burger at whatever place you can find that is still open, and gawk at the horrible people through the window while you eat.
We did indeed see some interesting horrors out of the window as we ate our meals. There were also tons of businesses that were closed, and one would be crazy to move in at this point. Something I observed that probably played a part in this was the attitude toward the police. While walking into the convention center one day, officers talked to ticket scalpers outside. Nothing happened, and they were just there to talk to them, but as the officers left, I heard people from the crows yelling things like, "We don't want you here!" "You're not doing any good!" and so on.
Scalpers aren't much of a problem, but people in a city viewing their local police force as an enemy is. I'm not saying that this is directed intentionally from up on high through pervasive social media campaigns meant to undermine community policing and divide the country, or that the timing of this strangely coincides with a push toward automated policing. I am saying that the original Deus Ex is my favorite game and that the story feels more like prophecy than fiction lately. I'll elaborate on this later, but I could ramble about the predictions from the first Deus Ex for days. But for now, I'm off to draw things about a wunderkind having his own colorful interactions with police robots in a rapidly evolving world.
Over the next week, there will be more DP/QE strips, and some artwork for Prodigy. I'm working on new pages for Prodigy and the webcomic among other things. Peace! 🤘