Intern Sam Devine slips between the photocopied covers ….
Down by Union Square tourists clog the streets like automatons bent on material satisfaction. You can almost hear their thoughts humming beneath their skulls like the cable car cord beneath the road.
“mmm…Neiman Marcus…bzzit…shoe sale… must…buy…”
What you can hear – all too often – are the guys who ask for change:
“Spare change?” “Help the homeless, tonight!” “Street Sheet, Street Sheet.” “Would you like to buy a comic book, sir?”
Wait: what?
Thom creates beautiful art, as honest and brutal as the life he leads. You can find him pushing his photocopied mini-comics next to the Street Sheet sellers on O’Farrell and Powell. If he sounds familiar, you probably used to see him at 16th and Valencia hawking “Mission Mini-Comix.”
I picked up three of his little books the other week on St. Patty’s day: Burritos are the Best, The Sun Also Sets, and Tha Funky Worm – “You know,” said Thom in his West Coast stoner drawl, surrounded by the green, white and orange mayhem of the afternoon. “Like that Ohio Players cut.”