I was dismayed to see that HBO is launching an animated program about a guy going to work on Mars — disturbingly close to the theme of the comic strip I’ve been working on.

But the trailer makes it look like yet another modern animation that’s 100% snark, like it hates its characters and hates its subject.

At first I felt like, “Oh well, there’s my thing gazumped,” but when I sit with it… My thing is full of flawed people (my ideal would be something like Commedia dell’Arte, or Twelfth Night, which is pretty much straight-up Commedia), but hopefully still has a heart.

As a kid, I loved space anything, so imagining that setting revives my feelings of hope, wonder, and play.

It’s the same with Apple TV’s “Hello Tomorrow”: I should be its prime audience member, but it’s so cyncial that I stopped watching it. Again, it seemed to have nothing but disdain for its characters and their world.

Hell, if you don’t like this, why should I?

Somewhere along the way we mistook “nasty” for “funny”.

When I finished my morning grocery store doodle-and-noodle session, I bumped into my pal David, a stage technician who said he’s working the follow-spot tonight. He told me that the show is great, and that he’s been loving the kids’ enthusiasm and awe for what they’re doing.

“To be honest,” he said, “they’re better to work with than a lot of professionals.”

Some random line of thinking led me to Moby-Dick a few weeks ago, and I figured, “Okay, I’ll give this a try” — fully expecting it might be one of those impenetrable ‘classics’ I decide to quit. (Life is short: If something entirely optional, like a book, is beyond me or turns out to not be my thing, I now allow myself to leave it unfinished.)

This book is great!

The chapters are short, Dickens-style, making me suspect they were serialized. They’re the perfect length for reading before bed.

And the writing is so evocative, quickly sketching out a very specific, weird, and compelling time and place.

Most surprising, it’s totally gay. One makes allowances for meanings having changed over time, not projecting a postmodern perspective on a different era, blah blah blah. But… no, this is really gay.

Not having studied this book or researched it before this reading, I’m wondering why I’ve never heard this perspective before.

I’m still just at the beginning, but I was inspired to make this drawing of the two main characters we’ve spent the most time with (much of which they’ve spent in bed with each other):

Queequeg is unquestionably a conglomeration of misinformed racial stereotypes, but he’s treated with some sensitivity and admiration, so I like him and am glad he exists in my imagination. I can fully appreciate that I might feel otherwise if I were Black.

Again, not having read the book before, I worry for his fate; I have the feeling that things are going to go badly for all involved.