“Each year, I’m asked by editor/designer Monte Beauchamp to create a sequential comic for BLAB, his idiosyncratic paean to the graphically unorthodox. He’s been curating these anthologies more or less every year since 1986, and I’ve had the honor of contributing since 2000. It’s a welcome respite from my usual grind of editorial illustration. I’m given only a general theme and 2–4 pages to write and draw whatever I want. No sketches, no revisions, no committee approvals—just a deadline to deliver finished art.
“This year’s theme is ‘the hereafter.’ I wanted to create a character who is skeptical of the notion of an afterlife, yet amuses himself by imagining he is receiving signs from the dead. The title is Dispatches From Oblivion. This issue of BLAB (newly rechristenedBLAB WORLD and now printing in hardcover) will be published this Fall by Last Gasp/San Francisco.”
Greg Clarke is a Southern California illustrator and recovering graphic designer. We invited him to share a moment of play with us.