Dozer Manifesto is finally in print. Complete is my grandest, most involved, most demanding comic project ever. This book represents a collective decade of work (dozens of interviews, hundreds of pages drawn over thousands of hours, hundreds of thousands of hours of thoughts and plans and dreams.) It’s one hell of an accomplishment, the biggest of my cartooning career, right? So why am I not happy about it? Why is there part of me that never wants to see this book again?
I harbor such sour feelings for Dozer Manifesto because as it was being completed while my life was rapidly unraveling. Its final pages were created while my life was experiencing so much destruction that it may as well have been done by a homemade, armor-plated tank. It started when my marriage of 13 years collapsed. I experienced significant abuse in the final months of that relationship, and in the end was forced to flee my former home with our my two dogs, one of whom was very sick and just perpetually EXPLODING with diarrhea every day (generally at 4 in the goddamn AM.) The majority of my belongings had to be hastily packed into a storage shed, all shoved into little boxes like little corpses shoved into little coffins. Losing both my home and my most important relationship had just the slightest impact on my mental health, which is likely why I was fired from my job, via text message, with no explanation offered. These rapid-fire upheavals induced in me a seizure disorder, which was quickly accompanied by thousands of dollars of medical debt. Whilst my life was imploding, my grandma died from a lingering illness. Any one of these things is a lot for one person to handle, but they all happened to me in a matter of weeks. Being fired, my grandmother dying, and my first court appearance for my divorce happened in the span of three days.
Finishing Dozer Manifesto should have been the highlight of my cartooning career, but the day I posted the last chapter online I found myself more alone than at any other point in my life. I was squatting in an antiquated, isolated cabin in unincorporated Grand Lake, drowning in heartache, betrayal, solitude, bottomless grief, and limitless rage. I mean, look at this pic I took to accompany the article The Westword did about the book. Does that look like the face of a happy man who just completed the literary feat of his quaint lil career? Or rather, does that look like the face of a man who has given his last shit?
I was pretty out of my mind during this time, but in rare, fleeting lucid moments I realized that my circumstances were uncomfortable similar to what Marv had described. When I started work on this book over a decade ago, my intent had been to understand Marv by walking in his footsteps, but I admit I never really stopped to consider what that might actually feel like. Suddenly, much like Marv, I found myself living by myself in Grand Lake while resenting the livelihood in Granby that had been taken from me. I’d lost my home, my income, and my support system in a manner that was unjust and very public. The community I lived in, and many of the people I called friends, had very much turned their backs on me. My formerly picturesque life had warped into a nightmarish parody of itself. Existence had never been more pointless. Happiness had never been so far removed. In my isolation, my grasp of reality slipped further and further away. Death seemed like a really easy way to get around the insurmountable obstacles that assailed me. When I wasn’t wishing for death to end my pain, I was wishing for the pain I felt to be inflicted on those who had caused it. At no other point have I been more capable of committing violence against others and/or against myself. In these moments I truly understood what Marv had felt, and it was terrifying.
Thankfully, this point is where the similarities between myself and Marv cease. I chose to do all the things that he did not. I got the hell out of Granby. I accepted help from those who offered it. I got on unemployment, which I’m sure really irked my former employer. I went to therapy and began relearning how to take care of myself. I grieved my many loses, and in doing so found gratitude for the things in my life that remained. I worked (and am still working) on not obsessing with the past, and am focusing on the many possibilities that exist in the future.
Today I am in a better place. I still don’t have my own home, but I have a roof over my head. I have a new job that treats me very well (and pays much better). My lil dogs are healthy, including the exploding diarrhea dog. My grandma is still gone, but I’m closer to the rest of my family than I have been in many years. My medical debt is also gone, and good riddance. Returned are my possessions, and though I have mostly learned to live without them, there is comfort to be found in their presence. And though I don’t see myself getting married again anytime soon, I’ve rediscovered found love, which is as unexpected as it is welcome. I’d like to say I’ve forgiven and forgotten the cruelties that I experienced during darker times, but I haven’t. I’m trying though. I have faith that one day I’ll be able to put everything behind me for good.
The storm that swept over my life was excruciating, but it has been weathered and it has passed. Today I am living on the other side of it, watching from a distance as it creeps towards the recesses of that black yesterday. I am lucky, fortunate, blessed in so many ways. My path to recovery still has many miles to go, but I’m nonetheless glad to be walking it. It is a better path than the one I was on before, the one I shared with Marv. In a strange way, I think knowing so much about Marv helped me through. In studying him and his actions, I had a better understanding of where to go and what to do when I was in his place. Lord knows where I’d be today had it not been for that knowledge.
I admit I am confronted with past pains on a daily basis, and the repetition of that trauma is exhausting. At times I’d do anything to be free from it, even if it meant removing pieces associated with my former life, like a snared animal forced to gnaw off a trapped appendage. In that vein, there was a time when it seemed very likely that this project would never see itself in print. This book and its contents are my painful memories made tangible. When I see it in physical form, I feel like I’m looking at an urn containing the still-warm ashes of my former life. It would have been easier for me to erase this comic from existence, or even to walk away from cartooning forever. Despite that temptation, rather than recoil at this sight of this book, I’ve decided to be brave. The work I put into this book means something. The things that I learned about and from Marv are valuable. Making the book helped me through the lowest point of my life. If it could do that for me, maybe it might do a similar thing for someone else.
Dozer Manifesto is now available in the store on this site. It’s also available on Amazon, but it’s SIGNIFICANTLY cheaper if you buy it directly from me. I sketch in everything bought from this website, so if you need a personalization be sure to include that in the purchase comments or by emailing me at arborcides(at)gmail.
I may not be overjoyed that Dozer Manifesto is done, but I am proud of myself for not taking the easy way. If you were waiting on it, I’m sorry it took so long to get to the point where it was printed. Now at least you understand why.
V