Theophanes Avery is a hapless wanderer, avid writer, artist, adventurer, joyfully androgynous being, and all around lover of life. They are the author of their debut book Honoring Echo as well as the writer of numerous blogs on many subjects.
Glen returns from a brief hiatus with a three panel comic on a new day! Hump Day! Which is when I will be posting all the new Glen comics from here on out in the hopes of gathering more love for this strange little caterpillar.
As for the Tinder? Well, he really pulled it out to show Boris from the last comic but alas, as usual he got carried away… as did I writing terrible puns into bug profiles which is WAY more entertaining than writing human profiles!
It’s my favorite month of the year – October! And since Halloween is just around the corner I thought this week’s comic should be about something spooky – and that’s how I came up with spiders. Keeping to my musical theme the only song I could think of was The Who’s Boris the Spider and for some reason that combined in my head with Charlotte’s Web and before I knew it there was a torrid break up scene wheeling its way through my strange mind.
So there you have it. How spider break ups work. An answer to a question no one asked.
This week’s comic was an absolute joy to draw. This was the first time since I started this website that Glen decided to take me for a ride. This was not at all what I was trying to draw when I started but I must say I am super happy with the results! I feel like I finally reclaimed Glen’s disturbingly cute spirit.
And this is the first comic I have drawn that’s more than one panel! I think I will do that more often now. I am having so much fun working with layers and adding details that now my mind is on fire with the idea of perhaps doing an animation someday.
This comic was supposed to be another joke on a popular song but with the addition of a Kraken that went out the window and I am at a loss as to any songs that do in fact describe such a wonderful beast. So if you happen to know some kick ass death metal song about a giant killer squid, or perhaps some sort of acapella punk ballad about sunken ships, please leave them in the comments! All genres welcome!
Oh and since I was working with layers I was able to quickly jot up this bonus panel which looks like it’d make an awesome meme…
So this week’s comic has really thrown me into the surreal. It plays on an old folktale about Baba Yaga – the witch who lives in a house on chicken legs and eats small children unless you trade their lives for a blue rose. It’s a bizarre Russian fairy tale that I have loved since I was young enough to still believe in such things. But there was always several questions I never got answered… why did the house have chicken legs? And where did they come from? So I sent Glen to find out….
And the results are in! They come from a giant chicken on wheels. Makes sense. Now what happens after this little show down? I have no idea.
Although this comic wasn’t inspired by music I am however going to add some anyway because I now have two songs on my roster about Baba Yaga – this delightful heavy metal cover sent to me on Twitter last night and of course this steamcrunk favorite. So now you get to see the mixing of three medias – old fashioned story telling, comics, and music. Got to love it! And also love these comics. They are getting seriously complicated to draw… and I almost feel like I am wasting my new illustrating skills on something so frivolous but nah. Glen’s fucking amazing and that’s all there is to that.
Do you have another Baba Yaga song or inspiration? Feel free to tell me about it in the comments!
Alright. I know you’re all probably staring at this in somewhat shocked horror. Just HOW did I come up with this one?! And the answer is quite simple. Vermont. Vermont should take 100% of the blame for this intensely disquieting image.
Vermont is a crazy place full of artists, recluses, hippies, and people with a weird sense of humor so I guess I shouldn’t have been all that surprised to learn that there isn’t one Popples Dungeon Road but rather two a hundred miles apart and smack dab in the middle of nowhere. Clearly this got the gears in my head turning. Who named their road Popples Dungeon and what the hell does that mean?! Are these iconic 1980’s plush toys being tortured there?? In the middle of the woods?!
Not exactly. The original Popples Dungeon Road has been named that since before living memory which makes it a bit of a mystery. The second Popples Dungeon came about when a bored teenager stole the road sign to the original road and brought it home, displaying it at the end of his unnamed private road for decades, periodically replacing it until in 1993 it was finally registered as the road’s official name… by someone… no one really knows who.
So there we are with a hilarious story, likely a great deal of confused delivery men, and a terrible picture ripped from my warped imagination. Hope you enjoyed it!
I remember when the Deadpool movie was coming out. I had no idea who or what Deadpool was and only could imagine one of those fish tanks full of deceased guppies at Walmart… you know, a dead pool.
I did however watch with some glee and intrigue as others argued among themselves about it. Would this movie do the original Deadpool justice? Would he be a psychopathic killer who shags anyone and everyone he sees? And then the obvious… nope… he’s been mainstreamed and cuteyfied, like the Ninja Turtles!
But my issue with Deadpool wasn’t any of the above. I’m not enough of a nerd to care that much about him buuuuut I could wonder how the fuck he was breathing without a mouth hole. My issue was with the artist and his general design. WHY ARE YOU TRYING TO SMOTHER HIM?!
Welcome to my mind. It goes off a lot.
PS Glen’s hapless children will always be more subtly disturbing to me than any pansexual serial killer…
Inspiration strikes in the strangest places sometimes. Today it came from a single line in Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency. The words in question were, “homicidal dirt muppet.” Hilarious without explanation but what the hell is a homicidal dirt muppet?! Clearly it’s a zombie Elmo clawing his way out of the grave with a giant hunting knife clenched in his teeth like the final scene of Freaks. Right? Apparently that’s what my deranged mind thinks… Glen as usual is not really happy with me putting him in this scene as you can tell. He has a thing with Elmo. I don’t know what but the two seem to have some sort of blood feud going. It’s like every time I turn my back he’s picking a fight with some other random character.
I debated whether or not I wanted to post this for Halloween but I decided against it as homicidal dirt muppets can appear at any time of year.
Today’s comic is brought to you by the word Muppet:
Muppet (plural muppets) (Britain, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, slang, derogatory) An incompetent or foolish person.
Muppet (plural muppets) (American) A fuzzy puppet with big boggly eyes.
This song came to me one day when I decided to let YouTube play whatever it wanted to. After about four hours it fell face first into a pocket of modern British music that was completely and utterly new to me- a hapless American just trying to mess with the algorithms. This led to four more hours of nervous laughter and confusion as I went about my daily chores, occasionally looking up to see what was playing. At one point the Arctic Monkey’s Cornerstone came up and I couldn’t turn away. This wasn’t the raucous happy music that was playing before it. It was just…. face-peelingly awkward. Of course this endeared me to it because I fucking love English awkwardness. Peep Show level awkwardness.
So this lodged itself in my brain as I listened. The only problem is I found this particular accent to be a smidge hard to understand at times so it’s not really that surprising I got it wrong and heard, “I kept my chocolates to myself” instead of, “I kept my shortcuts to myself” but at that point I couldn’t change it. The image was already planted in my head. WITH CHOCOLATES. Because chocolate makes everything better. So do itchy red sweaters. An homage to the original video. And you know what? Now that I know what the lyrics actually are I’m still hearing chocolates.
So now you know what happens when you mix awkward lyrics, bad ears, and a rubbery caterpillar. Stuff. Lots of stuff.
This week’s comic was inspired by another random YouTube suggestion that I found myself smiling at. I had no idea Dimie Cat’s Everybody Wants to be a Cat was a cover of a song from Aristocats. Forgive me but I was too busy watching Tim Burton movies in my childhood. Disney flicks were kinda neglected… with that being said I love this cover! It’s goddamn adorable! It’s got 20’s flair and I can’t help but adore that.
And Glen agrees. He’s decided to sing along after giving his swarm of children dollar store cat ears. I am loving Rogaine and Placebo looking on with confusion, Placebo’s paw held delicately in the air in a mild state of disgust. I think this suits the sphynx breed perfectly. And Rogaine, who I have decided is a Ragdoll, looks on friendly and numb, also absolutely perfect capture of a breed personality.
This catcentric comic isn’t an obvious offering to the internet cat gods to bless our fresh website with more views… unless they like it.
You have no idea how happy I am to reveal this comic because it has been ricocheting off my skull for at least twenty years. You see when I was just knee high to a grasshopper I loved 1950’s music, which was weird for a kid born in the 80’s but anyway… One of my all time favs was Bill Haley and the Comet’s Shake, Rattle, and Roll but one line made no sense to me at the time and continued to confuse me until Google became a thing…
“I’m like a one-eyed cat peeping in a seafood store.”
I could tell you what it really means or I could just illustrate way too literally with Glen and a naked pussycat. I chose to do the latter as it’s way more amusing. I could not be happier with this comic. In the past there was only so much I could do with Classic Microsoft Paint but this little beauty was born to a Wacom tablet and associated software. It has details I could have never accomplished before. Note the realistic coloration on the cat and the tiny bit of drool slipping out of his hungry little mouth. It’s pure perfection. And Glen! He was hungry too so he grabbed a snack. What can I say?