Friends of The Pain

Political Cartoonists

Steve Bell (political cartoonist, UK Guardian)
Ruben Bolling (Tom the Dancing Bug)
Ted Rall (Search and Destroy)
Jen Sorensen (Slowpoke Comics)

Cartoonists/Graphic Novelists

Emily Flake (Lulu Eightball)
Sarah Glidden (How to Understand Israel in Sixy Days or Less)
Lisa Hanawalt (I Want You)
Tom Hart (Hutch Owen)
Holy Shit Waffle House
Megan Kelso (The Squirrel Mother, Artichoke Tales)
B. Kliban,
More B. Kliban and
Still more Kliban (Cat, Never Eat Anything Bigger Than Your Head, Whack Your Porcupine)
Jason Little (Bee Comix)
Tony Millionare (Maakies)
Roxy Drew
John Porcellino (King-Cat)
Alex Robinson (Box Office Poison, To Cool to Be Forgotten)
Thomas Rowlandson (O!--a bawdy man.)
Karl Steven (Failure)
Katherine Kreider [no relation] Wirick (No One is Safe)

Other Writers and Artists:

Jenny Boylan, memoirist (She's Not There: A Life in Two Genders)
E.K. Buckley, painter
Myla Goldberg, novelist (Bee Season, The False Friend)
Sam Holden , photographer
Sadie Lune, artist, performer, model, "pleasure activist," and our #1 groupie
Mishka Shubaly, writer, singer/songwriter, disreputable person
Matt Taibbi, writer on politics and economics for Rolling Stone
Sarah Valeri, painter
The Evil Ben Walker, maker of radio and trouble

 

In case any readers are interested in my own inspirations, these are some of my favorite books and stories.

Novels
First Light, Charles Baxter
Heart of Darkness, Lord Jim, The Secret Agent, Joseph Conrad
The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Princess Bride, William Goldman
Everything by Cormac McCarthy but especially Suttree, Blood Meridian, The Crossing, and The Road
Vineland, Thomas Pynchon
Red Mars, Green Mars, and Blue Mars, Kim Stanley Robinson
Hall of Mirrors, A Flag for Sunrise, and Outerbridge Reach, Robert Stone
Rabbit at Rest, John Updike
Infinite Jest, David Foster Wallace

Short Fiction
"Thirteen Phantasms," James Blaylock (Thirteen Phantasms and Other Stories)
"And the Moon Be Still As Bright," Ray Bradbury (The Martian Chronicles)
“Why Don’t You Dance?” Raymond Carver (What We Talk About When We Talk About Love)
“Constant Pain in Tuscaloosa,” Barry Hannah (Airships)
"20th Century Ghosts" Joe Hill (20th Century Ghosts)
“Emergency!” Denis Johnson (Jesus' Son)
“The Pugilist at Rest,” Thom Jones (The Pugilist at Rest)
"Mountain Song," John Porcellino (Diary of a Mosquito Abatement Man)
"Twenty Minutes" James Salter ( Dusk)
"Sea Oak," George Saunders (Pastoralia)

Non-Fiction
The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, Julian Jaynes
Dispatches and Kubrick, Michael Herr
The Vintage Mencken, H.L. Mencken
Boxed In, Mark C. Miller
Everything by Nietzsche but especially Beyond Good and Evil, Twilight of the Idols, and The Antichrist
Cosmos, Broca's Brain, and The Demon-Haunted World, Carl Sagan
Cannibalism: Human Aggression and Cultural Form, Eli Sagan (no relation to Carl)
Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets, David Simon
Voltaire’s Bastards, John Ralston Saul
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and The Great Shark Hunt, Hunter Thompson
A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again and Consider the Lobster, David Foster Wallace