Today we'd like to introduce you to Joey Alison Sayers, who describes herself as a "lady cartoonist, library worker, and a potato chip aficionado" to her 15k followers on Instagram.
Sayers is a cartoonist living in Oakland, CA. Her comics have appeared in The Nib, Mad Magazine, several alternate weeklies, and the Best American Comics anthology. Recently, Joey Alison was named the new writer for the long-running comic strip Alley Oop.
Bored Panda reached out to Sayers to find out a little bit more about her.
"I've been reading comic strips all my life and started drawing my own around age 7. I take inspiration from everywhere. I have 2 young kids and I work with the public so that helps. But mostly I just have a brain that's wired to find funny connections between things and a compulsive need to make jokes about everything!"
More info: Instagram | joeyalison.threadless.com
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I love it when public restroom doors have foot pulls so you don’t have to touch a handle
The best design has no outer door but a strategically placed wall so that people outside can't see into the hand washing area. I can't find a picture but think of a type of maze. You find these a lot in China.
I guess the real problems come when the doors open inward. I mostly just push the door and whatever is needed with my elbow too
Load More Replies...As far as science & technology have come ffs why haven't they either made perpetually disinfecting door handles or just put automatic opening doors on the john entrance.
I remember when you didn't have to be a Jedi (or Sith) to use a bathroom. Pre-pandemic I would freak out if there was a hand dryer because I KNEW nobody was washing their hands. Keep this in mind next time you use the bathroom, the last person to flush the toilet was just touching their junk. WASH YOUR HANDS!
I use paper towels on bathroom door handles and toilet paper for flushing handle
Right! I had hoped to see some door handle innovation during the pandemic, but alas.
Seen a fair number of bathroom doors either automated or with foot openers added
Load More Replies...When I worked at a hospital we were taught to use a paper towel.
At work I use the paper towels to open. The door and hit the sanitizer going around the corner
You would think after the pandemic every door wouls be automatic so you wouldn't have to pull or push it
I saw one with a hand wave sensor to automatically open the door. The sensor was outside. The door swung inward. Yeah, as sharp as a bag of wet mice is management since this has been in place for going on to 5 years.
Omg this is one of my pet peeves, when there's no paper towel to hold the door I use the bottom of my shirt to wrap around the door to open it
First, we asked the artist if she had any life-changing influences that might have helped her with her art and art style in general when it comes to her comics.
"My earliest influence is the daily comic strips in the newspaper when I was a kid. I'd read them all. Garfield, Peanuts, Ziggy, even the serials I didn't understand, like Mary Worth. As I got a little older I started reading the alternative newsweeklies that had great independent comics in the back pages. I was really into the work of Lynda Barry, Tom Tomorrow, and Ruben Bolling, just to name a few. Having my strip, Thingpart, picked up by those weekly papers years later and appear alongside some of those strips, was a huge honor!"
Art, in any kind of form, takes a lot of time not only to practice but also to produce, therefore we asked Joey Alison how long it takes her to fully finish her comics.
"It really varies quite a bit! Sometimes I'll get an idea in a flash in the middle of the night. If I'm lucky enough to remember it when I wake up, sometimes I'll sit down and draw it out then post it online twenty minutes later. More often I'll come up with a germ of an idea, then mull over the script for days. Then I'll sit down and labor over the visuals for hours because something just won't look right. In the end, I'm not sure anyone but me can tell which process led to the final strip, so I should probably just work on having more midnight ideas!"
Being an artist is not easy, one can easily encounter a lack of inspiration, burnout, etc, so we wanted to ask the artist about her ideas for the comics.
"Mostly I just have a brain that's wired to make strange connections between different things, and an almost compulsive need to make jokes. I've always been shy and anxious and my way to wedge myself into conversations and social situations is to try to say something funny. Since I also like to draw, the natural medium was comic strips. I guess if I was more outgoing I would have ended up as a stand-up comic, or if I didn't like making jokes I would have ended up doing fine art. Hmm. Now I'm starting to question my career choices."
I had this type of dream once- dreaming inside a dream, had to make sure three times that I woke up real-time before using the toilet
As we mentioned before, sometimes creative work can cause quite a burnout, therefore we asked the artist how she dealt with that as well.
"Sometimes I do. I write and draw a biweekly comic for thenib.com and I write the syndicated daily strip Alley Oop (drawn by the amazing Jonathan Lemon) and those two projects take up a lot of my creative energy. Not that I'm complaining! I spent many years with a surplus of creative time and I'd still get burned out from time to time. The trick for me is to just vary the things I do in a day and also to have a magical watch that lets me pause time and get everything done while the rest of the world is frozen like statues."
awwww so cute! little billy learned road rage before going on a road.
We also asked the artist about how people reacted to her work.
"I'm lucky that for the most part the reaction spectrum runs from apathy to enjoyment. Some of my comics are really personal, so it's stressful to see how people react, but it's usually pretty positive. Sometimes my more political work gets the attention of mean weirdos who post nasty comments, but I know deep down at the end of the day they have to crawl back into their stinky caves and eat rotten fish, which is the fate of their miserable little lives."
The creative process is not easy, but there are many enjoyable parts to it as shared by the artist.
"I really enjoy the writing part. It feels like magic. Sometimes a whole script will just pop into my head, fully formed. And sometimes it's like sculpting a huge block of marble - I'll know that somewhere inside there's a joke and I just have to chip away at it tiny bit by tiny bit until it comes out. It's fun, even when it makes my brain hurt from bashing it against that block of marble for too long."
'And then God parted the heavens and proclaimed 'The End' (any similarities to any person, living or dead, are purely coincidental)
Digital art and art, in general, is not easy and requires a lot of patience, time, resources, and in most cases even money, therefore we wanted to know how the talented comic artist started her own career in digital art.
"I started drawing comics long before the internet existed, so I've always enjoyed creating with pencil and paper. I still sketch out my ideas in an analog format first. But I've happily embraced technology as it's come out - it makes the process so much easier.
Back in the day I'd coded my own website with HTML and posted stuff there. I had a LiveJournal for a few years and just keep moving to new platforms as they come out.
I've always been someone who works in lots of media. I paint, I do paper sculpture, and I play music. But my one true love is comics."
Artists tend to get motivated by a lot of things such as curiosity, the search for beauty, or even meaning. Therefore, we asked Sayers about that too.
"It's the search for the perfect joke. It's out there, and I think I've come close a few times. It's like the Grand Unified Theory of physics. Once I crack the code, and solve the equation for the quintessential punchline, we can all retire and live in a humor utopia!"
If you don't like rats, and don't know what a 'rat king' is, don't google it. (I know, now you really want to....)
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOH
That group of homeowners is gonna be landlords...all landlords...it'll be a tiny group, but they'll all have huge portfolios and rent lists...
Too real except she didn't include, why aren't I that skinny? And why did he pick her over me?
...robin laid an eeeeegg. Batmobile lost a wheel and joker got awaaaay
"So we agree! Homophobia is perfectly acceptable?" "OH UH-"
For non-Americans...Play on the word s'more -- melted marshmallow and chocolate on a graham-cracker (a graham cracker is a kind of simple sweet cookie or biscuit). A treat often made over an open fire while camping.
Why are the comments that say these aren't funny hidden? Are people not allowed to have an opinion anymore?
I'm assuming that when a comment gets 'downvoted' enough, it automatically hides itself from anyone who doesn't want to see it.
Load More Replies...Why are the comments that say these aren't funny hidden? Are people not allowed to have an opinion anymore?
I'm assuming that when a comment gets 'downvoted' enough, it automatically hides itself from anyone who doesn't want to see it.
Load More Replies...