Dear Death

DEAR DEATH is about a character confronting death to make a change in his life: to embrace risk instead of playing it safe. Stewball, a bipedal horse, has been clinging to a safe, dull job because he fears the failure that looms in living the life he wants. By writing a letter to Death, he chooses vitality over morbidity, risk over safety.

Stewball expects Death to be someone as self-serious as he is. But Death’s message is that Stewball’s need for things to match his expectations is exactly what’s holding him back from living fully. The little girl who appears as Death goads him into a playground romp and then shows him just how small his life and death are in the scheme of the universe. But it’s her ability to make him laugh at himself that finally allows him to shift into a freer state of mind. It’s the ultimate risk: not taking oneself seriously. Who will if we won’t? And yet it’s the most elegant way to express a grace with all we don’t know, with the beautiful mess of life itself.

Drawn in a simple, line-drawing style that reflects the influences of the children’s book illustrators William Steig and Jules Feiffer, Stewball and DEAR DEATH are childlike in aesthetic. The contrast between the innocence of the visual style and the worldliness of Stewball’s adult worries is on point. In the adult troubles we muddle through is what’s left of childhood wonder: dusty and covered over but still there, winking at our long faces in unexpected moments.

The character of Stewball has always embodied my determination to hold on to that childhood wonder, especially within the daily grind of less than rewarding jobs. I created Stewball’s eponymous comic strip in 1998, for a parody newsletter published by myself and the other lowly interns at a national magazine where we toiled 7 days a week for bus money. At another office job, where I clock-punched for 9 years, I drew a poster-size Stewball for my cubicle, a talisman to ward off the future my present implied. I left that cubicle job, enrolled in film school, and created DEAR DEATH. Like Stewball, I had to move beyond the safety of not going for it, to embrace risk. It’s the only way to live the life we imagine.