In the book's endnotes, Porcellino said that his OCD eased for a while, being in a new environment, and that came through in the freshness of issues #62 and #63, as Porcellino tackled adaptations of Zen stories with relish and wrote a number of stories featuring Misun as a kind of comedic partner. He also drew a number of stories in the vein of comics-as-poetry, also often in the Zen tradition, as a way of expressing his focus on the Now. An example of this is “Trombone No. 1” (with a sub-header telling the reader to “please read slowly”), a silent story of Porcellino going about his day at work, eating lunch, and then picking up a box of paperclips with the title of the story on them. Each panel features Porcellino being entirely in each moment and the story asks the reader to try to do the same, up until and including the little moment of absurdity with the box of paper clips.
In addition to a time of transition in terms of location, the period featured in From Lone Mountain was one of tragedy for Porcellino as well, which only added to the sense of him feeling unsettled in San Francisco. Issue #64 is a beautiful tribute to his father, Chuck, who died before John and Misun could speed west to say good-bye. There are funny prose stories about his dad and more wistful anecdotes about where he was when he learned of his dad’s death, leaving home, and a desperate desire to go home. There’s also a mix of joy and grief to be found here, like in “April 7th—Western Illinois”, where his dad’s favorite song (absurdly, “Renegade” by Styx--although the line "I'm so far from my home" does resonate) came on the radio just as they crossed over into the state on their long journey. Other issues noted the deaths of close friends, acquaintances, and then even his beloved cat, Maisie Kukoc, who had been a staple in King-Cat stories since nearly the beginning.
Issue #66 features “Football Weather” and “Freeman Kame” as exemplars of two entirely different approaches. There’s an almost familial warmth in the former story, which recalls Porcellino cleaning up his yard and playing football with the neighborhood kids as an adult. Not only is there a sense of total belonging (compare to “Punt No Tell” from Map Of My Heart, another story about playing football, only from Porcellino’s adolescent years), there is also a sense of Porcellino as a sort of big brother or even a father figure. It’s hilarious, showcasing an aspect of his work that’s not always mentioned with regard to him. Porcellino’s comic timing is sharp, and his personal interjections (like being horrified at the very thought of his team being named “the Packers”, as a lifelong Chicago Bears fan) add more flavor to the story, making it specific rather than generic. The latter story is a classic “Porcellino in nature” story as he travels to a particularly beautiful mound in wintertime. The use of abstraction here, with the trees becoming sticks and details falling away, perfectly balance what the reader needs to see in order to understand the story and what they need to feel in order to understand what Porcellino felt.
Porcellino’s comics certainly put the lie to the idea that mental illness inspires cartoonist’s creativity and output, because his OCD delayed the publication of his issues by months. While the final product is absolutely beautiful, it came at the terrible price of anxiety that led to redrawing images that were perfectly fine thanks to micro-imperfections that may well have been imaginary by the nth revision. The fact that Porcellino was able to be as productive and creative as he was during this period is a testament to his self-will and Zen practices working in concert, and his career-long belief that King-Cat is always going to be an outlet for him, no matter what.
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sequart.com, Savant, Foxing Quarterly, Studygroup Magazine, as well as for his own blog, High-Low (highlowcomics.blogspot.com).
