Joey Comeau

A Softer World, ha ha ha

city of trees

delight.

delight

Sun on her naked body. Sun on her smile. Her hand moving, sliding quiet toward her shirt, like clockwork.

“Back to work.” I can't hide bitterness in my voice. “You act like your computer is more important than me.”

She looks at me, co...

giggles.

My brother died. He's still here. Just out of sight, screaming like an asshole. You can only hear him inside the house. I know, because the neighbours don't complain. The way he screams, they would. Other times he laughs. At least when he's screaming it still sounds like he's him. Like his mind i...

Edith. (A love letter.)

Edith,

You haven’t had time to write back and already I am writing you a second letter. I was taught to have better manners than this and I suppose this letter is evidence of how little I learned. I am not the proper young woman I could have been.  

There ...

christmas is for cowards now?

"I loved it, but it's hard to recommend"

Bullshit. This IS the book you share. This book makes lifelong friends

"This book's fucked, you have to read it."

buy someone you love UNDEAD HUNGRY GRANDMOTHER BIRTHDAY PARTY for christmas.

actually get to know someone.

2025-12-02 07:14:37 +0000 UTC View Post

god laughs.

a life needs secret plans.

mystery and adventure and hope. things might be boring now, or quiet, or slow, but at any moment the pieces will fall into place. you'll pull the floorboard aside and get out that little box of passports you keep there. you'll reach behind the couch for your go-ba...

the hospital sounds... restful.

the events and people we encounter in our day might be fake, might be robots from other countries. the news might just be advertisements. you can't even trust videos of cute animals anymore. that adorable possum is stealing someone's drinking water and warming the planet.

if we could go bac...

The world used to be softer: Just go.

these early comics with scanned text from my typewriter have an unconscious emphasis on certain words, and other times the words blur, your mind drifting off halfway through a sentence.

the lucky accidents of film and the physical, imperfect type helped create a feeling like the world was ...

The world used to be softer: it still is, but it used to be, too.

(the world used to be softer: a classic comic from the Softer World archives, and some memories.)

-

a world where cats spoke to god, and giant babies terrorized towns. where sea monsters were real, and being in love was punk rock.

that was a softer world, at first.

aspir...

The world used to be softer: Baby Doom

(the world used to be softer: a classic comic from the Softer World archives, and some memories.)

-

baby doom! a recurring character for a comic with no recurring characters. but the idea of baby doom was too silly to not revisit in the coming years, and pictures of baby emily were to...

The world used to be softer: Wednesday's debut.

(the world used to be softer: a classic comic from the Softer World archives, and some memories.)

-

this was the first A Softer World comic, both online and in the photocopied zine that we originally created. We stayed up late in the 24 hour photocopy shop, with a sta...

Today I got rained on

I forgot how alive you feel when out of nowhere it just starts POURING rain. Nature hides in the background a lot of the time, and then suddenly it is so powerful and all around you that it feels li...

CARGO - Chapter 2

Chapter 2.

It was my day off. No mops, no brooms, no gravity scrubbers. 

There's a fake window in my cabin. If you've got a window in your room you don't feel like you're down deep in the middle of a spaceship. You aren't trapped at all! You could pull that curtain back and des...

Cargo - (chapter 1.)

Chapter 1.

"Resident Deck Twenty Six, Yellow Circle," the elevator said. The doors opened onto an enormous number 26. Beneath that was a big yellow circle. Too big to miss. Practical signage for your modern retirement spaceship. 

I pushed my supply cart out of the elevator. Aro...

a softer world was ever friday

the night forest burns

(An excerpt from the current draft of my sci fi retirement ship / dog novel "CARGO" )

-

I knelt at the door with the wrench, and I ran my fingers over the door panel, looking for the hidden latch. I found it, and the panel slid down an inch, revealing the bolts that held it securely ...

Walking Mitchie

Walking Mitchie was a goddamn ordeal.

Every corner we turned, he had to meet someone new. It was exhausting. We weren't even to the train yet, and we'd stopped four times. Sometimes we stopped to smell an invisible spot on the floor. Then we turned another corner and oh look, there was a ma...

the glow pond

When Mitchie and I reached the forest deck, he stayed close to my feet until we were on the soft soil path of the park. I wondered if he liked the gentle way the ground held his feet. The wood chips and sliding mud. It was quiet here. The night forest was more alive and yet more private than the ...

home again home again

some people can't be rescued (Untitled Sci Fi book scene)

We walked back to the elevator and waited. When it arrived, Soup gave me a long look, sighed, and then pushed a button on the control panel.

"Think of it this way," I said. "Maybe saving the ship will be an adventure! You'll be a hero!" Soup nodded. But he clearly liked the idea of adventur...

hello

After work, Jonathan was in the hallway, holding up the wall again. There was a beagle sitting patiently at his feet. She seemed like a well behaved dog. Mitchie, meanwhile, was already trying to shove his face under her tail. She just sat there, staring at me with bored eyes while my dog nuzzled...

putting the A in asynchronous orbit (scene)

"I didn't throw anyone out an airlock," Marlene said. "I feel good about that. I locked them up. Just for now. They have food and water and they have their service animals. Some of them are locked in a hallway. The botanist and Jo are locked in a hallway. But I made sure they have food. And some ...

who knows why computers do anything

Mitchie was absolutely in love with Marlene, he couldn't take his eyes off her. It wasn't like the strangers in the hallway, where he was excited to smell someone new and then move on. He hung on her every word. 

I could hear the small, two car train coming down the track toward us. 2025-07-09 03:29:50 +0000 UTC View Post

somebody to love

"Hi Mitchie," I said. "I'm Charles."

He only had one good eye, but in the clear bright eye there was something that seemed very real. He didn't hold himself like one of the service robots. He didn't want to cheer me up, or tell me how smart I was. 

If anything, he looked tired. H...

Singularity

When actual AI wakes up, this is what it will be like.

Chapter 2. - untitled sci fi (mitchie).

2.

I dressed up nice for dinner. My goin' out clothes. I wore a proper shirt with a starched collar. I wore slacks and a vest. It was my first time taking Mitchie out in public, and I was nervous. Self conscious. 

I know it shouldn't have mattered, but it did. People were going...

terrible businessman

I'm really focused on this science fiction novel. Charlie and Mitchie.

Revisiting the mix of melancholy and sweetness that I'm so drawn to. Chapter 2 is done now. Polishing to post very soon.

I should be promoting my other books instead of writing! I'm a terrible businessman. God! <...

in defence of Marlene

"She's not people," the man said, giving me a long look. "She's cargo." He was maybe thirty years old, and he was wearing a uniform for one of the fabrication decks. Out here working a long shift to make some money to take back to his family on Earth, no doubt. "She should be in her hospital bed,...

"untitled Charlie and Mitchie project" Ch1 rewrite1

Hello. This is an expansion/rewrite of the first chapter. I'm finding the right balance. I want there to be warmth and kindness all through this, while still propelling the book forward. Science fiction was the first genre I e...