40 Absurd Comics By Joseph Nowak

Joseph Nowak told Bored Panda he has been drawing since childhood, but his relationship with art has been rocky.

"I was drawing since I can remember, so probably shortly before kindergarten and onwards. My brother, who is six years older, was constantly cartooning, redrawing Donald Duck and Bugs Bunny characters and I was most likely emulating that. My talent was discovered and encouraged by my teachers, which helped develop it. There was also a span of 6-7 years after high school where I didn’t do art of any kind. My post-secondary education involved little creativity, which caused me to focus on other things. I was working a repetitive job in 2011 that didn’t require much thinking or concentration and it was there that I started coming up with single-panel cartoon scenarios. I wrote them in a small book that I kept on my work table and after accumulating a few hundred, I started drawing and submitting them to syndications. That brought me back into the practice of drawing."

Nowak posted his first cartoon in August of 2013 and says it has been a daily exercise ever since.

"I am still very much interested in other forms of visual creation. I also draw in other styles. This cartoon has more or less become a somewhat daily exercise, just to get started in the day."

"My drawing style has changed a bit over the last few years but the content has always remained silly. That’s probably the best word to describe my work: silly. Twisting natural scenarios or exaggerating real-life situations that are already quite absurd is what I like drawing the most."

"Creating and sharing these cartoons has been a way for me to clear my mind," Nowak said when asked what creating comics means to him. "Although I am quite quiet socially, my head is constantly abuzz with thoughts and ideas. My cartoon concepts come about in a non-sequitur kind of way so verbalizing them is often inappropriate or just not suitable. I think I have curated my ideas to appeal at a far more visual level since starting my cartoons so even when I am around others and a cartoon idea comes to me, I will jot the idea in my notebook before trying to explain the joke aloud. Mostly, the practice of drawing these cartoons has given me a nice, fairly quick exercise to keep honing my inking skills and fostering my silly outlook on life!"