What a time to be alive. With all the scary shit happening in the world, I think its more important than ever to have outlets for the residual stress that comes with just being ALIVE in all this nonsense. I do my best to ignore mainstream news which is admittedly hard to do. People are being killed at an alarming rate by governments, the US government has gone to war in several ways, with Iran, with immigrants both legal and not and with whoever they want via trade wars and sanctions. Its exhausting. I don’t have the energy for it.
Especially when these situations indirectly affect my already difficult life circumstances.
But that’s not what this is truly about, this is about my attempt to build the world I would like to see.
Because am I really an agorist if I don’t try to build the solutions?
Introducing Rootless Renagade…
Anyone following my social media has seen this little character, her name is Bloom. She is me, and I am her. She’s the main character of Rootless Renegade, the hyper creative adaptation of my life story I’ve embarked on with my friend and artist Uly.
After many years of people telling me how crazy my life story is, I’ve finally started adapting it to a comic book.
The Birth of Rootless Renegade:
And we’ve started small, the first PDF available on the site is this 10 page or so little intro of sorts. For us a proof of concept, a test to see both how hard would this be to do and the ever important question when producing anything, does anyone care?
We created it, printed it and sold at Anarchapulco this year, primarily during a comic signing we did on the last day, that’s what the photo above is from. And what we found is that people loved the concept, at least enough for us to keep justify the creation.
For me the series is inspired by my favorite band from when I was a teenager, Coheed and Cambria. What I loved about them beyond the music itself is the fact that most of what they’ve done is around a single concept, a single story, based on a comic series which is also based on the life of Claudio Sanchez. He didn’t pick the typical way to tell the story, instead opted for a fantasy space rock opera sort of vibe.
The music of Coheed does not vibe with everyone. In fact there are a lot of people I know who simply hate his voice. It has a very loyal and very niche following. But the people who love Coheed can be identified by the symbols we often sport, in the form of fashion, tattoos, bumper stickers or whatever with the notable keywork symbol. I myself, have a Coheed and Cambria tattoo.
I remember seeing that and thinking, man that would be fun to create but I had no idea what I would make the story about. Turns out I had to just go and live the story and record it along the way. And its these stories that make the basis for Rootless Renegade.
So that in essence is what I want. Do I need it to be the next Marvel movie series? Absolutely not. But having a core group of people who genuinely resonate with the story and the characters within will be enough for me.
Bloom is based off the beloved (by me) Mexican creature known as an axolotl by english speakers and ajolote by Mexicans. Its a uniquely Mexican creature that is from my favorite part of Mexico. Its basically a Salamander that never leaves neoteny even when they reach sexual maturity. So they have this youthful cartoon like vibe to them. Its probably my favorite distinctly Mexican animal and for that, my character resembles one. Bloom the name, is a nod to Lily my chosen name.
For me, Rootless Renegade is more than a creative outlet. Its an experiment and a new project of growth. We have started somewhat small with the small chapters sharing stories some might already know from my days on Steemit. Also as Im sure you will notice, poking around the site, we also have some merch I’ve put up there. Im particularly proud of the dress. And Im working on a crochet version of Bloom which I think I want to sell in a bundle with the remaining print copies of the first chapter and the cup seen on the site. We will see.
What do you think? What do you want to see? What stories should I tell next?
And for now, I did a video with Conversations in Anarchy with Anarchapulco hosted this time by Tom Shaw, here’s the video if you haven’t seen it already: