I have been so unbelievably busy these past few months (MONTHS!!!) that I rarely get to draw outside of commissions + necessary work + sketchbook drawings. Here are some silly marketing assets for the Melbourne Comics Art Jam and Alexander Comic if and when I need them.

MELBOURNE COMICS!!! I am thrilled to be partnering with the brand new City Library (narrm ngarrgu Library, near Queen Victoria Market) to host the 💃 MELBOURNE COMICS ART JAM 🤩 every Saturday!! An art jam is a casual gathering of like-minded artists. At narrm ngarrgu we will co-work, doodle and chat with each other about writing, drawing, reading and being part of comics! All skill levels and career stages are welcome! Adults only (for now) For artists by artists.

OUR FIRST EVER INAUGURAL JAM IS THIS SATURDAY, APRIL 20, 1-3 PM And all subsequent jams will be occurring weekly (except for one confirmed recess) Meeting Room 1, Level 1 narrm ngarrgu Library and Family Services (near Queen Victoria Market)

More info: (reimenayee.com/melbourne-comics-art-jam)

Aw thank you!! I only hope my craft gets better as the books continue! < 3 And that you'll keep enjoying the experience!

I don't know anon, my home country Malaysia doesn't legally support LGBTQA+ people and discriminates against women too... The logic / gotcha you're trying to imply from your question falls apart for anyone who lives in a socially conservative country (which is the majority of the world btw). Do you also agree the lives and rights of myself, other queer Malaysians and other Malaysians have less value objectively and in a conflict, should be killed indiscriminately because our country is LGBTQA+ intolerant? Yes or no? Get off anon and tell me to my face right now. The lives and safety of civilian people and children are unconditional. Just because a country has a better position on some social rights doesn't mean it is absolved or excused from performing war crimes and other human right violations. See: the US, UK, Australia etc. Folks are free to call out those wrongs whenever they occur. If your sense of justice, empathy and compassion is dependent on zero sum games and conditionality and no nuance, then you're not practising justice, empathy or compassion, but total arrogance and regressiveness. There is no argument to be had here.

I was commissioned by Netflix SEA to illustrate a promotional poster for Avatar: The Last Airbender recently.

I don't know if it'd be wise to start from the very beginning of gothic fiction because the works tend to be very meandering - which I appreciate mostly, but it's not really a mode of storytelling for this fast-paced plot-driven reading landscape. If you end up liking gothic fiction, you can go there.

Gothic fiction especially older ones are categorised into 'Terror' (psychological, more interior, think of movies like The Lighthouse and Get Out) and 'Horror' (visceral, exterior, think 70s slasher films) The Monk is an early gothic work that's exemplary of the Horror branch. Witnessing the downfall and perversity of the monk/the church as an institution, the way the demonic is used as a character and the wild ending(s) that you gotta build anticipation for through that thick tome make it worth reading. Carmilla is an early vampire novel that's surprisingly very sapphic. Obviously with this being a Victorian era morality work the sapphic has to be framed as only something a monster would do and that the big strong Man must defend the femmes from, but the author allowing the emotion and the sensuality to just exist between the girls is cool. There's obviously the classics: Dracula, Frankenstein, Jekyll & Hyde, any of Edgar Allan Poe's stories, even Phantom of the Opera. I'd recommend working backwards from the things you know from pop culture so you can see the differences between the original and the interpretations.

It's definitely one of my favourites from the classical canon* - and one of the very very few pieces of art I like so much that I'd consider myself a part of its fandom. I hardly ever feel a need for fandom for most things (even things I like a lot!) so that's pretty big. What totally struck me was the tonal shift in the last half. The way it approaches grief, mortality and the transience of life is so beautifully thought and sublime, especially after all that bro-ing and macho-ing before. Its vision of the afterlife and the world arising from a spritual quest are influential too - you might see that influence come up in the later parts of Alexander Comic. *in my own personal quest to read more of very old literature, so far I have read the Odyssey, Beowulf, the Alexander Romances if you count those (all of them are not of the level of these epics btw), The Conference of the Birds, and currently WIPing the Iliad. I want to read the Dream of the Red Chamber and Journey to the West soon. And maybe Canterbury Tales and the Decameron.

Neither. I have read all the books as a kid but didn't like it enough to be part of the fandom. Never watched the movies other than the first one either.

Thinking about the Ancient Egyptian portions of Alexander Comic Book 2. First, here's Alexander's ALKSINDRS face. This is from the relief of him on the Luxor Temple wall, with a twist from the pink granite statue of him (?) at Liebieghaus. Second, look at my man's drip!!! I am really happy with how I designed his coronation outfit - even if I have NO idea if I will ever feature it in the comic. He's looking so glam with all the beads and gold.

Who is this guy... I swear he has absolutely NOTHING to do with Alexander at all. No way.

Midcareer Artist/Author Tip: Save a copy of any interviews or reviews about your work because who knows if the outlet where that was published will completely collapse

I'm really grateful I'm sorta shameless enough to archive copies of interviews and especially nice reviews of my comics because if I hadn't, this particular interview with the British Library would just be gone forever. I've put up a copy in the Alexander Comic website, so at least this piece of my webcomic's personal history is intact and accessible.

Late last year the British Library experienced a huge data breach / cybersecurity attack that completely evaporated the digital archives. Blog posts, the manuscript/illumination archives, web pages, exhibition catalogues, ... they are still down months later. It's wild to me that such a thing can happen to a PUBLIC infrastructure - a NATIONAL library and archive!!! Decades of information gone like that. Its been months and months of barely anything coming back online.

As an artist from outside the UK, I literally CANNOT access any of the European manuscripts of the Alexander Romance in their collection - meaning the British Library as a resource is impossible for Book Two. Which is wild cos the Library was like almost 50% of the bibliography and art references for Book One. As someone whose dayjob is to build, manage and audit workflow / data infrastructure this stuns me in disbelief at how lax the library was about backing up their website and digital infrastructure. They don't even have offline, offsite copies?? I'm talking about basic things here, not even the high level security and data engineering stuff. (all this being said with the knowledge that the British Library itself keeps getting their budget cut)

Anyway idk, this whole thing is a big lesson on archiving things online (and always backing up your stuff). Cos the Internet isn't forever apparently.

The official poster and other illustrated assets for this year's Perth Comic Arts Festival, an independent artist-led festival in Perth, Australia.

I am thrilled to be illustrating for one of my favourite comics festivals in the world!! This year's theme is "Mistakes" and how mistakes can teach you in your practice. I interpreted the theme visually through the philosophy and aesthetics of kintsugi (the art of repairing broken ceramics) and wabi-sabi - both are centered around integrating flaws as part of beauty and art-making - as well as risography and print offsetting.

These animals are mostly Aussie natives, with a few that gesture at the overseas diaspora that make up PCAF's committee and participating artists. (The tapir represents Southeast Asians aka me :3)

I have a whole entire blog post I wrote last year btw: The Rise of the Bots; The Ascension of the Human. (Reading it again a year later I am glad I am still validated in my thoughts)

My entire being and output as an artist is rooted in process, thought, craft and connection. I am open about my process and I share/create resources constantly. I have literally experienced the thing people mean when they say 'art transforms you' just by being so close to it every step of its making. All my comics have this centrality of personhood attached to them - if it's not obvious that the artist's hand (me) is in it, there is the characteristic focus on our emotional/cultural/artistic thread across history. Just as NFTs and what they represent were antithetical to how I interact with the world as artist and audience, so is the use of so-called AI art. NFTs and AI Art share a common hype cycle / speculative mania that comes out from an annoying vulture mindset that only knows how to eat itself to fill its belly, so I don't expect it to last too long. However I don't appreciate the damage both things have done to the utility of the internet, the degradation of art as a commercial pathway and the destruction of the image as a historical/educational/legal tool. (Which is why I am becoming more underground and turning towards alternatives like the Web Revival, small presses, curated resources and in-person communities)

The technological concept around LLM (pattern recognition and matching it to a goal), especially for medicine and statistics, is not itself problematic, especially when it follows ethical and data handling regulations that have been defined. However, when people talk generative art, what we are talking about, and fighting against, is the exploitation of resources and labour, and the further disconnection of worker = labour, human = society artificially imposed by the Corporate MBA / techno class in the pursuit of infinite stockmarket growth which then introduces a type of brainrot that can only think of things as producing value in relation to how fast one can seize for themselves Westernised Ideals of Fame and Fortune. Also like, this whole AI thing is part of the degradation of entertainment (the loss of small-to-medium outlets, constant mergers, nobody owning their digital streaming products they bought, the laundering of journalism/curation into press releases), the internet (the algorithimification of everything, constant spam, search engines getting worse, the worsening of socmedia as a tool) and the intellectual rigour of all information.

It's all part of this rot that's spreading outwards.

TL;DR bro I make all my art by hand and I am a nerd about informational integrity

Thank you!!! This book has been so troublesome to produce - I am just glad I can finally show it off!!

✨ ANNOUNCEMENT

Thank you everyone who waited during the hiatus (a hiatus prompted by postgraduate studies RIP)! I'm excited to announce that Book Two is DROPPING SOON!!

The tentative date is at the end of this month, as soon as I settle down from travelling for a book tour and Lunar New Year family / birthday* shenanigans. Book Two is going to be a wild one, and will be the start of all the ambitious visual and narrative promises I hinted at in Book One. It will be a slow, one page a week update until I get my bearings.

*it's also my birthday today :p (Feb 15)

Alexander, the Servant & the Water of Life is an award-winning adult historical webcomic and graphic novel about the life and legends of Alexander the Great. Fearing death, Alexander embarks on the quest for immortality, alongside a mysterious servant. Book Two: Katabasis Alexander the Great is led through a mysterious jungle of memory by a strange and haughty deity, encountering the many ghosts of his past in the years before he became king.

Book One: The Hero's Journey is completed and available to read for free online, or for a price in PDF and deluxe hardcover in English and French.

February 15 2024 (Announcement for Alexander Comic)