The Lost and Found Season of The Most Pope Joey - V1 No1
Thanks and Love Letters from Joey Fool

Synopsis: This was an experiment and my actual first work in comic books in 1996, in which I allowed my interior Circus Psyche to run amock in the direction of its "logical absurdities". I have always been fascinated by our curious ability to read entire stories out of single images (S.Holm-ian style). Every image carries its trajectory in a gestalt of clues. In this book of (splash-page stylie) diptychs I present random moments delineating the politics of a single interior persona: Pope Joey as he chats about Death and the-sweetness-of-being-alive. Pope Joey himself is my cheeky personified superego who has accepted the authority to exist and the authority to answer for it.
(Superego: [a refresher] the moral or judicial branch of Self, the ideal rather then the real that strives for perfection and truth rather then pleasure).
I understood that V1.1 would confuse people but it was, for me, a thrilling experiment that I hope I will have time to explore again before I die. I think mostly V1.1 confuses people because so few read poetry and of the ones who have read poetry, fewer still have read any of the accomplishments in the last 50 years. Most people don't even realize that V1 Number 1 is all poems and prose-poems. When I did all those diptych pages back in `96 I thought of each double page as the culminating splash-page, each cut from the heart of a complete story. As if it were the splash page from: The Adventure When PopeJoey Met PapaWolf, or The Adventure In Which PopeJoey Blew Off The Ether, or The Adventure In Which PopeJoey Realized His Existential Nature, or The Adventure In Which PopeJoey Held A Birthday Party For Death. Etcetera. So yes, it might confuse someone expecting to read another alternative slice-of-life story by someone who can't love or be loved bla-bla-bla (and boy if that isn't the most tired and refried mud of beans) but …so what. There is an amazing amount of room for experimentation in comics, and I get drunk on freedom."

"Many people live with strong interior Voices and find life styles to authorize and validate their multiple-soul. When one of those Voices grows in strength and independence, (thru attention practiced and paid, knowing that most Voices eat oppression), eventually you must bargain in good faith for a working peace …or die. Learning to listen carefully, with the smallest crust of identity, to the distinctive Voices of that interior place, "Schizotopia" and then patching together a religion of one . . . self, while living sane in the daylight - is … a life. Does this sound familiar? If so then this book will make you smile." -Doc Taylor

Friends, this first book was edited and published by the grace of my sister Claudia Ome Cline who covered this feast like a king of pals. It's off to dog's heaven with her… Thanks Pal.

Cover - (Pope Joey in the Holy Tradition)