Mal Archives

The D.C. Conspiracy's fourth annual Counter Culture Festival will be Sunday, May 24, from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. at the Soundry in Vienna, Va. Comix, zines, alternative art, arts and crafts, workshops, entertainment and more! Admission: FREE!

Apparently we are experiencing some technical issues with the blogging system... good thing we're working on a rapid fire redesign and upgrade.

Instead of writing a column this week I decided to go outside. Hence the reason this is a day late. It was the first proper fall week we've had this year and I'd be darned if I was going to stay inside.

Fall in DC is my favorite time of year. Spring makes me sneeze, summer around here smells like tar and the Potomac River, and winter is just depressing. It's cold but doesn't snow. Liquid ice falls from the sky and all the grumpy DC folks are even grumpier.

Fall is heaven. 60 to 70 degrees, cool breeze, great seasonal beers... you can't ask for much more. I probably get more done creatively during these few weeks then any other time during the year. I just crack open the balcony doors and get to work. And yeah, I said a few weeks. I know fall is supposed to be three months, but tell DC weather patterns that. As I'm typing this I'm sure some secret cold front is about to attack and give my frost bite as I walk home from the Metro. Or tomorrow it will be 90 degrees again.

Fall brings with it the Small Press Expo, Crafty Bastards, the Maryland Renaissance Festival, The Duke Ellington Jazz Fest, Metro Cars that aren't 100 degrees and more. I swear it makes the city calm down for five minutes and breathe. We actually stretch our artistic wings a bit and let people see the non-Tagtown side of DC.

I think I'm going to go find some pumpkin butternut squash soup now.

Being an artist can be a solitary business.

We hole ourselves up for god-awful amounts of time, making messes and playing music at levels that drive our neighbors crazy. We'll sit and stare a works-in-progress, stewing and cranky when some piece or panel isn't flowing, watch movies, play video games, surf the web, do anything... all in hopes for hitting that little spark that makes us push out pages and drawings and make it less like work and more like the fun it is in movies.

And then we all hit that point where we say "Enough!" and we run out of our apartments screaming, craving human interaction.

Sometime on those nights, I hit the Metro and head in to Chinatown. I head off the train, head across 7th street, say hey to my friend Doorman Mike and down in to Rocket Bar. Nestled right between Ruby Tuesday and some other place I don't like, Rocket Bar is a great little bastion of normalcy in the middle of Caps fans and Doctors. The place is owned by the same people that own Bedrock Billards (and about a half dozen other bars according to my exhaustive research).

My buddy Conowingo was born to bartend. He works most nights at Rocket
Bar. Beer orders are coming in left and right making our conversations pause mid sentence. At the next lull he starts right back up again without missing a beat. He looks like he could snap an obnoxiously drunken customer in half, but he's a good guy. Just the type you need to serve angry sports fans and yourself when you need to clear your head. As the night gets on and the bar gets more customers, he slides notes my way about the crowd as its gets busier and busier and yells out "It's never busy until you show up!"

At some point I just stop and listen to bits of pieces of conversation, people watch for hairstyles, clothes, mannerisms. Anything I can poach, steal, pilfer and use in my comics and illustrations. The girl in the corner chewing her hair, the guy to my left talking this deal or that deal with slicked back hair and still tight tie, the couple on their third date but the guy just isn't that interested.

A few hours later, I pay my tab, say by to Wingo and Doorman Mike, stumble out, hit the Metro, and head back home. The next morning I'm powered by a hangover and good stories and start drawing again.

The true moral of this story, is that most comic book artists are fueled by beer, and there's a good chance that your sassy going out outfit or your awesome tattoo or out of context one liner will show up in one of my panels or one of someone elses.

"Tagtown"

Apparently that's another name for Washington DC. I've only heard it once in the nine years I've been around the city. I guess an article came out last year or the year before about the term and Fox 5 picked up on it. I asked a friend about it over some beers and she said "Oh yeah, I've heard that."

It refers to the badges a lot of us wear around the city after work. Or more often the case, we forget to take them off after we leave work. Supposedly they are like badges of status and we're judged by them depending on where we are.

I think it's actually for the graffiti that covers the extensive construction we have in town. Nearly every spare bit of concrete on a construction site around here is covered with colorful graffiti. Just like the bridges are.

Or maybe it's for the tags we get on our hands going in and out of clubs and bars. Rocket Bar, Wonderland, Bedrock Billards, Sign of the Whale, 18th Street Lounge. Places you don't have to pay pointless covers in order to just be smashed up against bar and not got good service.

Or maybe it's the tag that the Masons left on the city? Rumor mills and urban legends abound about various marks and street layouts that mean more than we think they mean. Places you can see from the top of 13th street, right past U.

To me a tag is just a label. Something you put on an object so you know what's it is, what's it is worth, how long it will last, who owns it, whatever. Everyone that lives here has tagged DC in their own way. I know I have. But more importantly, DC tagged me. It shows up in drawings, illustrations, comics, photos... nearly everything I work on or work in. Somehow, and quite by chance I might add, I ended up here both for school and for work. I'm not saying I'll be here forever, but this stupid town obviously got under my skin, so I'm going to share it with you, fine readers.

It's a bit of the DC side of the DC Conspiracy. I'm sure comics will come up now and again, but mainly it's about what I've tagged in DC and what DC has tagged me.

Welcome to Tagtown.