Dec. 6 – Jessica Farm and Crusher Loves Bleeder Bleeder Loves Crusher release party with Josh Simmons and Patrick Keck

Hey Portland, don’t miss Josh Simmons (Jessica Farm) and Patrick Keck (Crusher Loves Bleeder Bleeder Loves Crusher) at Floating World!

Jessica Farm: Like a Lynchian take on Alice in Wonderland, Jessica Farm opens with an exterior of what could be any Midwestern farmhouse. Once inside, we track our titular heroine (she is a person, not a place) as she bounds out of bed on Christmas morning and goes about her routine, eventually breakfasting with her grandparents. The banality of the situation is subverted by a ratcheting sense of dread, as we discover that Jessica’s increasingly nightmarish house — where the inside seems bigger than the outside, like Snoopy’s doghouse — is filled with creatures around every corner: some whimsical, some sexual, some despairing, and some malevolent. Most terrifying of all is Jessica’s father. Will she even get to open the presents under the Christmas tree?

Taking place over a single Christmas Day, Jessica Farm is a career-spanning comics project in which Simmons has been drawing one page every month for the past 24 years, starting in January 2000. This is a horror-fantasy-psychodrama that will appeal to fans of Charles Burns, David Cronenberg, and Dario Argento.

Crusher Loves Bleeder Bleeder Loves Crusher: A boy loves a bug and a bug loves a boy, but can a bug love a boy for more than his blood? The old-timers in Texas’s Erzsébet county say that nature don’t ask permission, it feeds when it needs. But the bloodsucking bug in this here yarn got to thinking that nature ought not be absolute. Would you believe that this guy would rather dry up ‘n die than ruin another picnic by taking his thirsty fangs to the softest baby with the deepest veins? And would you believe, just when he’s ready to die of thirst and turn to dust, a sickly human boy named Thum — a kind-hearted crusher done crushin’ — finds our starving bug — a big-hearted bleeder done bleedin’ — and hatches a plan to invite this feederfly back to where he slumbers?

‘Cause what difference does it make to a deep sleeper if you punch a hole real gentle and slurp-slurp real quiet? When the fully sated feeder’s kin catch wind of his safe space for suckling, he realizes that there are matters more complicated than how and when to die. Does Thum’s frail frame house enough blood for the swarm or does devotion to the hive leave Thum a husk? How do you choose between those who are kind to you and those who are just your kind when one lives for the other’s suffering? Better pick quick, little bleeder, or you bet yer butt you’ll regret it.

WHO: Josh Simmons and Patrick Keck
WHAT: Jessica Farm and Crusher Loves Bleeder Bleeder Loves Crusher book signing
WHEN: Friday Dec. 6, 5-7pm
WHERE: Floating World Comics, 1223 Lloyd Center

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