This Will All End in Tears

this will all end in tears

"Ilgioco e buono quando e corto." (the game is good when it's short.) - Luciano Maifrini

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fhi§ will all end in fears comics by foe ollmann

INSOMNIAC PRESS

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this will all end in tears Copyright © 2006 Joe Ollmann All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher or, in case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, a licence from CANCOPY (Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency), 1 Yonge Street, Suite 1900, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M5E 1E5

Designed by Joe Olhnann Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Ollmann Joe, 1966This will all end in tears /Joe Ollmann.

ISBN 1-897178-06-9 (pbk.)

I. Title. PS8579.L55T44 2006

ONTARIO ARTS COUNC.L CONSEIL DES ARTS DE L'ONTARIO

741.5'971

*K ^SES SINCE W7

C2006-903483-4

LE CONSEII, DKS Axrs OOC»KAOA BBPUIS J957

Canadsi

The publisher gratefully acknowledges the support of the Canada Council, the Ontario Arts Council and the Department of Heritage through the book Publishing Industry Development Program. The author gratefully acknowledges the support of the Canada Council, without whose support this book might have taken ten years to make instead of five. Printed and bound in Canada.

Insomniac Press 192 Spadina Avenue, Suite 403 Toronto, Ontario, Canada M5T 2C2 www.insomniacpress.com

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Mm "fiveyears, that's all we got..." — David Bowie This book was a long time in the making. I started writing these stories after my first book, Chewing on Tinfoil, was finished in 2001. It feels like the sum of five years' work should add up to more, somehow. Though, in truth, there were some lost weeks (months, years) on the couch watching movies in various degrees of intoxication. In the end, a publishing deadline (thank you, Mike O'Connor) got my ass in gear and necessitated several months of whiskey-fueled working until 3 am every night to complete the artwork. These are longer stories than I have ever previously attempted. I've been living in too close quarters with them, seen them in their saggy underwear too often to know if I like them anymore. Fish, company, and especially your own stories, all tend to stink after three days. And the same is true of five years. -joe ollmann,June, 2006.

fliank§ fo I want to thank the following people and apologize to the others I will inevitably forget. It's not that I don't love ya; it's just that my poor old brain has been worm-riddled by too much debauchery. Thanks to my big old family, the kindest, best and loudest group of people I know. I miss Sunday afternoon coffee and butter tarts, but always love it when I do see you dear old people. I love you all. The good people at ascent magazine and the circle of weirdos and n'er-do-wrongs that go with it. It's a job that has made me sane while it made me crazy at times. Thanks to the swamis at Yasodara Ashram for taking a chance on hiring a wild-eyed shaggy mad man to design their magazine. Dave Collier for his truly brilliant comics work and for his kind words about my work; it means a great deal coming from someone who I respect so much. Brother James Thorton, my high-school mentor, still genuinely holy after all these years. Todd Stewart and Billy Mavreas for the ink-soaked drunkenness of our "weekly man-drawing salons." Andy Brown of conundrun press for publishing The Big Book of Wag! and for being such a grumpy old mensch. Wayne Glass, thanks for striking up a renewed correspondence after 27 years or so. I've missed you. Jonny Kliks, a truly decent fellow of the best sort and a mason. Yvette Poorter and Johannes Spaans for letting me carve puppets in their yard in Rotterdam and for being such dear old chaps. Matthew Forbes, how I miss you. You talked me through some of the craziest periods of my life. Scott Gray, same thing: thanks for talking; thanks for your brilliant music. Don Olteen, my mentor at the box factory I slaved in as a teenage boy, who taught me about integrity, forthrightness and, yes, helped to formulate the cynical prick I am today, it's true. Sarah E. Truman, damn girl, how we miss you and the hijinks we would have after the magazine would go to press. What larks, Sarah, what larks. Alice Hayward, we used to smoke together at parties and I still have your Hibachi. You were a good one and I miss you. The kindly stationer in Burlington who sold me markers and possibly stole my soul. Tom Wilson, a gravelly-voiced, behemoth of a man that strides the streets of Hamilton and the world and has always had a kind word to say about my work. Cathy Jones, without a doubt, one of the funniest, smartest comedians in the world, who gave me the compliment of saying about my work, "That guy? He's fuckin' funny." The City of Hamilton: your steel grit flows in my veins it seems, I can't shake you and I've given up trying. All the good people I know and I have ever known, thanks for being good; it's a rare trait. s

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This book is for the usual suspects. Nell, Joe, Taien, Meaghan, Liz & Sam. I love you all. As usual.

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big boned

notes

I often catch myself smiling patronizingly at a physically deformed person, or gazing with benevolent approval at a gay couple holding hands. Hey guys, I'm on your side! Aren't /great? I hope their inner voice is as foul towards me as the overweight girl's in this story. It contains some of the biggest swears I've ever put in one of my stories. (Sorry, mom and dad.) The talented and handsome cartoonist Sherwin Tjia suggested at a wedding party that this story needed one or two pages more. He may be right, but I can never bring myself to change anything once it is done.

day old

This story is mostly about the people who work in chain restaurants or stores who cannot stray in the slightest from the series of procedures and behaviours prescribed by corporate head office. Try and order an Egg McMuffin with no ham and watch the confusion that will ensue: "but the Egg McMuffin comes with ham..." There is a loss of humanity in all of this, of course, and I'm ever grateful for the store owner who will open the package of six buns and sell you two if that is all you need. When they are gone, there will be nothing but drones and robots left and waitresses like the one in Five Easy Pieces.

oh deer

Driving to a friend's home in the country, this entire story came to me in a flash when I saw some roadkill. I interrupted the conversation and sputtered out the story in shorthand: "A guy, deer in his garage, can't butcher it, legs come off. Huh? Whadda you think?" When I returned home, I sat down one night and in one hour wrote the whole story out exactly as it stands now. Yeah, that's how easy it always is.

they filmed a movie here once

The only thing I had here was the image of someone using a skull ring to crack an egg and someone else falling in love with that. Then it was a story all about different kinds of loss and the egg-cracking ring was a mere incidental detail. hanging over

I stood in line in front of the metro one morning with a hangover, drinking surreptitiously from a flask (it was late morning), when a car drove by with two men in the back seat, an angry one and an incredibly happy, older, mentally handicapped man, joyfully clutching a string of helium balloons. I just combined all the elements, including a sign in the metro, En retarde (delayed), which was the original tide. When the setting changed from Montreal, so did the title, which had a rather different implication in English.

a note on pens

Once, when I had strong opinions about everything, I would only use brushes and pens with nibs (a) to ink my comics. When I was doing a weekly strip in the Hamilton Spectator years ago, I started using an Expresso medium-point felt marker (b) to do the lettering, feeling very much like a fraud. Gradually, I began to ink some of the figures with marker, trading in the varying line thicknesses of the dip pens for the lack of blobbing and spattering of the marker. Eventually, I could ink with nothing but the Expresso marker. I was addicted, and that's when the supply dried up. The company had stopped manufacturing that model, so I would buy up any remaining stock in any stationery shop where I encountered them in dusty bins. Eventually, even these meager supplies dried up. While visiting my father, he suggested trying a. stationer where he had been able to find a notebook that was also no longer being manufactured. I entered the strange, narrow old shop and the kindly, white haired, besmocked clerk assured me he had plenty of the markers. I bought two boxes and he promised me he could get as many more as I wanted. I ordered more and he had them ready for me the next day. Yes, I've sold my soul for several boxes of felt tip markers. All of the stories in this book were inked with the Expresso markers except hanging over, which was done old school with the dip pens and brushes, and in truth it makes very little difference.

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