By EZEKIEL KINGSBURY

On Monday, September 25, the Wright Museum was graced by visiting cartoonist John Porcellino, of “King Cat” fame. Hailing from Chicago, John began drawing on computer paper from his grandma’s job at a bank. Throughout his childhood, he would cover pages with cartoons and would never show anyone, until he grew fascinated by his dad’s photocopier, through which he would make six copies (five for his friends and one for his dad). 

Puberty came, and lots got ruined. “Bad hormones” led to pathological social anxiety. Punk rock was discovered and devoured; the “negative energy [turned] toward something constant… really stupid and violent, but quite beautiful.” A high school underground newspaper, “Zozo,” was founded, and John found acceptance among his peers as it grew in popularity. “People were actually interested in what I was saying.”

In college, John started an art and poetry journal and he sold personal zines, not knowing that any others were doing the same. When he got invited to visit another zine producer, “a new world” was opened. He longed for a project that was his own, and in the spring of 1989, King Cat was started. 

“From an early age, life felt weird to me. Magical.” This feeling is reflected in the mundane subject of most of his work—these moments in which nothing really happens, but you can sense more. In a life, we can “experience the full extremes of emotions, but most of life is not on those ends. If most of our lives are mundane moments, we should look at them.” Nothing happens in this comic, but he could capture the feeling of walking ten feet down the sidewalk on an autumn afternoon.

Take one of his comics from 1991. John leaves school, walking past the lockers. He wanders home, hopping the fence that was put around the neighborhood, adding 30 minutes to the walk. He moseys inside, his mom calling out to him to take the dog out. So he does, and looks up. The sky is full of stars.

“You can look at the vacant lot where the church used to be and the weeds growing through the asphalt because they’re never going to sell the land, and you can say it is beautiful.”

You can visit John’s website and order some zines at king-cat.net.