Mosh Pit
I created this comic in 2023, during a short comic-making course I enrolled in that summer. I was 21 at the time, which I now consider the peak of my attending local shows. I still love seeing live music, but at this point, I was going out a lot more (almost always getting sick afterwards), and nearly every time it was to see a band play.
Alternative music and media surrounding it have always been hugely influential for me (Scott Pilgrim VS the World is one of my favourite comics and movies), and it’s especially significant to my art-making. I was big on making fan art in high school, and throughout art school, the music I listened to heavily inspired what I created. With restrictions being lifted and the chance to finally go out to bars, getting involved with my local music scene was inevitably my muse when it came time to start making comics. This instance was the first, and later informed my longer-form comic, Hex Moon VS The Angel Bites, about a local band battling supernatural phenomena, which I started in the fall of that year and hope to share in full soon. Back to this particular piece, though.
This was the first time I’d brought characters from the aforementioned story out of my sketchbook and into a narrative, albeit short and without dialogue. The lack of speech was actually a requirement for the assignment, but I really enjoyed the limitation as a way to focus on snapshots of actions and feelings around going out with people you love and pushing each other around to loud music. This comic is ultimately an abridged collection of moments from the shows I went to that year. Concert photography played a huge role in this as well, referencing snapshots of myself and my friends across the summer into one big, raucous performance.
I use the first page to build the anticipation I often felt leading up to the titular mosh pit: getting to the venue, finding your friends, grabbing a drink, going for a smoke. I mish-mashed highlights of the venues I’d been to to set the scene: the disco ball in the late Bar Orwell, the bar at Supermarket, the stage in the Baby G. Even the band itself, which I named “The Lobotomies,” were directly inspired by the time I saw Shrewd, a fantastic hardcore punk outfit with a charismatic, shrieking vocalist. Subsequently, I attempt to capture the energy and the high of damaging your eardrums and getting all sweaty and beer-stained; pushing, elbowing, and swaying to screaming guitars and ripping drums before a final roar of applause.
Making this comic felt like putting onto the page an important part of my young adult life in an attempt to capture the intangible magic I feel in a setting like this. Though venues close, lineups change, and bands break up, I’m eternally grateful for the year that I had, seeing the same band (CONNIE) almost every time they played and banging my head so hard I woke up with a sore throat and whiplash the next morning. DIY forever <3
