14. HUNTER S. THOMPSON: Buy the ticket
Hunter S. Thompson (1937-2005) was an American journalist and writer, famous for his Fear and Loathing articles and inventing Gonzo journalism. “Buy the ticket, take the ride”, was kind of Thompson’s life motto – he would throw himself into crazy situations head first, often becoming the protagonist in his own stories. Some of the ‘rides’ Thompson went on include: joining the air force, hitch-hiking across America, working in Puerto Rico and Brazil, experiencing hippie culture in San Francisco, living with the Hell’s Angels biker gang for a year (and getting the shit kicked out of him from said biker gang), running for sheriff in Colorado, traveling to Saigon just as it was falling at the end of the Vietnam War, going on the campaign trail in 72 and, most famously, heading to Las Vegas carrying “two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half full of cocaine, and a whole galaxy of multi-colored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers and also a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of Budweiser, a pint of raw ether, and two dozen amyls.” Despite his epic drug and alcohol binges, Thompson produced some of the best writing of the 20th century, becoming a voice for the counter-culture movement in the 70s.
-I like to describe the style I used for this comic as the offspring of Ralph Steadman and Quentin Blake, but if the child was born with no arms and had to draw with its feet.
-Steadman is a brilliant cartoonist and was Thompson’s frequent collaborator and sidekick. He has such a dynamic, energetic and violent style that matched perfectly with Thompson’s words.
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awesome
!!
Love the style
it’s good to mix it up once in awhile
Needs more ink splatter.
I love your work and ideas. I’ll be spamming you quotes from time to time.
totally needs more splatter, i know
Hi Gav,
Love your work! I was wondering if you had done any quotes from Helen Keller… I particularly like this one, however I think there is a longer version of it…
“Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. The fearful are caught as often as the bold.”
Cheers
Linda
That is a Helen Keller quote. This is a double entendre that on one hand suggests being bold and on the other suggests trying LSD.
Ahh that was just a suggestion, not a replacement. I’m a dolt. “No sympathy for the devil; keep that in mind. Buy the ticket, take the ride…and if it occasionally gets a little heavier than what you had in mind, well…maybe chalk it off to forced conscious expansion: Tune in, freak out, get beaten.”
thanks for the full quote
Some really good neuron flexing going on here.
Cheers Gav!
love the simplicity of the message itself
I LOVE the pure unbridled joy in that last panel..
I really enjoy this site, but I don’t like this one so much. The name of the ride just suggests to me that the course she was taking was one of fear and loathing, while you’re saying that those are keeping her from taking the metaphorical ride.
what a guy
<3
Your work inspires me out of that rut that most of humanity is usually sadly in. Thank you for bringing life to words the way that might have been in the speaker’s head when they were thinking them.
the metaphorical ticket is a LSD trip. Anyone who has seen the movie Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas can tell you that
“We already have *one* Hunter Thompson!”
Just discovered this site. It’s amazing!