Series Info

MISFIT'S JOURNEY is a series of autobiographical online comic strips about my life. The first several stories will focus in my life in Seattle, WA from 1988 to 1991. This ended up being a very important period of my life, as I learned a lot about such things as academia, progressive politics, romance, dysfunctional families, the sales profession, and the workplace during this time.

Although these stories will take place primarily in Seattle, they will also have flashbacks to my youth in Madelia, MN and Mankato, MN and to my college years at Saint Olaf College in Northfield, MN.

After I've covered the Seattle years to my satisfaction, I may move on to post-1991 periods of my life and tell stories centered in Minneapolis, MN.

The first story, "Mistaken Identity", is up on this site. It's a good introduction to what I was like during my Seattle years and what weighed heavily on my mind at this time.

Going forward, I have a general idea of the main events from my Seattle years that I want to dramatize in these stories. Exactly how I break down this period into stories is something I'm still in the process of figuring out.

Here's a list of some of the important topics I will cover in upcoming stories:

1. In 1989, I decided to leave graduate school and ended up working as a political fundraiser for nuclear waste cleanup. When I left graduate school, I was in many ways crushed and heartbroken. I want to cover how I got my self-esteem back.

2. While I was in the process of reinventing myself in the early '90s, I very much wanted to have a serious girlfriend. I want to tell the story of my first romantic relationship following graduate school. It's about a woman who was a child therapist and had become one because she was a victim of childhood sexual abuse. Things didn't work out between us, but the whole experience caused me to think about a lot about the issues children from dysfunctional families face in their adult lives.

3. When I worked as a political fundraiser, I met and worked with some great people, but I didn't make very good money. I was advised by a number of people that I would make a very good salesperson and decided to start pursuing better-paying sales jobs. I was inspired in part by the story of Microsoft founder Bill Gates -- an Ivy League dropout and former volunteer for George McGovern's presidential campaign -- to get work as a salesperson for a software company. I want to tell a story or two about selling software in the Seattle suburbs and adjusting to corporate culture after being a Seattle lefty.

MISFIT'S JOURNEY is done using a combination of digital photography and "mid-range" 3d art apps such as Poser, Bryce, Carrara, and Shade. You can check out out examples of this type of digital art at sites such as Renderosity and Daz3d.

Feedback is important to me. If you like my work, I would recommend posting a friendly response on the MJ comments page of my blog or sending me a short e-mail. If you just don't have time for that, make a small donation using Paypal or Amazon.

I would like to get started on the next MISFIT'S JOURNEY story later this year. I may start releasing these stories at some kind of regular frequency in the future. For starters, though, I wanted to get one story out and see how it plays.

I'm letting people read the first episode for free to help make a name for myself. I may start charging for the strips once I've done that.

If you're interested in keeping up with me and my plans, please subscribe to my blog feed.

-- Ben Adams, January 8, 2006