Jesse Bloggs

As promised, Clave’s comic of our first meeting has now been posted to his blog. I’m hoping his depiction of me as a Hobbit stems not from his perception of my silliness but rather from my enthusiasm for comics, but given a conversation he had with his mother this evening it’s probably because of his perception my silliness. When Clave said he was going to call me, his mom said, “8:00 on a Saturday night? Won’t he be out at the clubs?” Clave answered, “Probably not …”

One of the happier results of the Perfect Bound show was becoming the mentor to high school student and cartoonist Clave Fourie (“Clave” rhymes with “cave;” Fourie sounds like “4-e”).  During our meeting tonight we created a blog and posted the first two editions of his web comic online.

Clave already has all the makings of a bitter, angry, creepy cartoonist.  He created a sweet, charming comic asking fellow students to invite him to their Halloween parties and then posted copies of the comic all over school, only to receive … zero invitations.  He’s also created several comics about a female senior at his school and then presented them to her, even though one depicts him staring at her breasts.

Clave also sized me up pretty quickly: in a comic about our first meeting (which will be posted soon) he drew me as a mincing, prancing Hobbit; when I picked him up for our meeting last week he got into my pickup and said, “No offense, but this is more masculine a vehicle than I thought you’d drive.”

Read his first two comics, “An Argument” and “An Assignment,” and check back every week for new installments!