Today I find myself, once again, writing from the mechanic’s shop. This time, it’s for a flat tire. It is the fourth flat tire I’ve had to replace on my car, leading me to believe that (a) the alley where we park must be paved with samurai swords, or (b) bees practice stinging on my wheels. Either way, I can do little more than react to this puckish turn of events, and so here I am, seeking comfort in my Secret Diary.
I have been keeping diaries for a looooong time. Technically, they’re sketchbooks, but I rarely use them in the traditional artistic sense—doing studies, planning layouts, etc. The majority of my sketchbooks are filled with comics, and the majority of my comics are just me vomiting back up the bizarre meals that life serves.
I’m not quite sure how long it takes a professional to replace a tire. I can say that, from my own experience, replacing a flat takes approximately four to five hours. That includes a lot—taking all the tools out of the trunk, lining the jack up with the car frame, panicking, crying, and waiting for AAA. So I’ve prepared for the long wait. See, I brought a past diary with me to help eat up some time—Sketchbook Nineteen.
In this sketchbook, myself and my frequent creative collaborator, Matt Sutter (pictured above), primed each other’s sketchbooks. By which I mean, we each bought a sketchbook, the other person wrote a title for a comic at the top of the page, and then we switched back and drew comics based on the title the other person wrote. Observe:
Okay, well… I didn’t have an idea for that one. But here’s one I actually finished:
Now keep in mind, I haven’t read this in a good… what year is this… 2024? What’s 2024 minus 2007? Seventeen years! I can’t quite recall where I was when I made it, but I get the fleeting sense of beach… maybe Ocean City, Maryland? It’s funny—going back through a sketchbook is like opening a time capsule. Pick one at random, and I can get hazy visions of where I was, and what was happening in my life when I drew such and such a drawing. Indeed, someday I’ll look back at this very entry and think — oh yeah, I remember that mechanic’s shop… the smell of rubber and grease in the lobby… sipping coffee from a styrofoam cup… watching koi slurp slime from aquarium rocks. And even after all these years, this comic has stayed relevant—the koi in this tank look miserable.
Okay, here’s another:
Very happy with that one. After all these years, I’d forgotten the punchline. It’s nice when you can’t predict the outcome of a joke—I get to experience the comic like someone else wrote it. Some things are worth a seventeen-year wait. Sister Therese was right!
Okay, one more. This one I had to redraw because the original sketch was so full of crossed-out words and unintelligible scribbles it would have been impossible to decipher:
Again, pretty happy with the result. And I love what it says about the human condition. After all, we are just bags of carbon and water, filled with gases and minerals. Not that different from a tire actually. Except we don’t just roll—we run, we shout, we jump and laugh! Our passenger is Life itself, and an open road stretches before us, until the day a swarm of bees, or an alley full of samurai swords, renders us beyond repair. And on that fateful day, when life calls AAA and rides off without us, we will be returned to the vast cosmic tire pile to be melted down and recycled into wondrous things with beautiful purpose: swings for children, toothbrush bristles, and low-grade aggregate for drainage ditches.
Well, on that, I think it’s time to close this entry to my secret diary. I hope you’ve enjoyed waiting with me. I know I was glad you came along. And I can only assume I’ll be here again in another week or two, so perhaps we can wait together once more. Until then, this is Kevin Cornell signing off.
If you replace all the parts in your car, is it the same car? Or your mechanic has amazing salesmanship skills?