“Why don’t you do your website as a character, who else is going to know? Start where you want to be, and then you will evolve into it.”
When did I start giving myself career advice in my sleep? Either I was the one giving the advice, or a version of me, but in that dream, I couldn’t see. The thought left me restless, having given myself a problem to solve, and a plan for solving it.
Whether my name and words connote a certain personality is not something to which I have given thought before, and isn’t something anyone has discussed with me either, leaving me with even less reason for having the question now. But the question has now been asked, and I am don’t have an answer for it.
I already knew that writer Grant Morrison, in his counter-cultural conspiracy thriller comic series “The Invisibles”, had created the character of King Mob as a “fiction suit” for himself to enter the story as a cool and charismatic leader with plenty of agency, a healing sigil within a larger “hypersigil” of a series that would kickstart our culture into a more positive direction. I guess my mind decided to complete one step at a time.
But waking up on Wednesday 26th August 2026, I remembered what could have mixed into my dream. Dolly Parton had died on Tuesday, social media filling with her words, including a most pointed quote: “Find out who you are and do it on purpose.” I tried to find the origin, but I have no reason to dispute her having said it.
I had also watched a video by the “Comic Tropes” YouTube channel about the art of Hirohiko Araki, the creator of the long-running manga “JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure”. The video traced how Araki’s art evolved from the more typical shonen (boys’) manga of muscle-bound heroes fighting evil towards a stronger influence from fine art and fashion photography, which had been there from the start. Araki’s restaging of fashion poses into the famously striking and angular poses characters take in “JoJo” was juxtaposed with the outright retracing and copying of poses for which other manga creators have been accused, giving rise to the portmanteau “torepaku”, from the Japanese words for “tracing” and “plagiarism”.
Aside from the discussions of ethics and plagiarism, I was transfixed by the art. All I had previously seen of “JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure” was the first two episodes of David Productions’ masterful, ongoing anime adaptation of the series that began in 2012, which I mistakenly took as an outlandish and, well, bizarre story of rivalry in a well-to-do family in Victorian England. Having been shown the episodes by someone else, I did not know this was only the initial seeds of a supernatural, intergenerational saga spanning continents, inspired by Alex Haley’s “Roots” and John Steinbeck’s “East of Eden”, the wonder of humanity serving as its primary theme and message.
Later during Wednesday 26th August, I heard that Tim Curry had also died the day before. The most recurring tribute I saw to him was that his grand performances, from Dr Frank-N-Furter to Wadsworth the butler, had awakened their audience to who they could be. Tuesday wasn’t a good day for the best of us, the people you thought would always be there, waiting for your mind to fully switch on to their insight.
I had intended to find out more about Grant Morrison and King Mob, but I needed to work out how “JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure” fitted into all this. Finding out that part 4 of the series, “Diamond is Unbreakable”, was inspired by “Twin Peaks” would be all I would need to give its anime version a try.
I watched all thirty-nine episodes in nine days. I was struck immediately by the constant yellow daytime sky, a nod to Araki’s colour palettes changing with emotion, itself influenced by Impressionist painters like Paul Gaugin. I also learned about “Stands”, one way Araki had depicted characters controlling their “life energy” in the series. The hero of this story, Josuke Higashikata, can repair matter within a short distance, from healing a person to repairing a photograph torn to pieces, although he is unable to use his abilities on himself.
I was also quickly introduced to Araki’s impeccably tasteful song references: Josuke’s Stand is known as ”Crazy Diamond”, and eventual main villain Yoshikage Kira has one named “Killer Queen” in the manga, renamed to “Deadly Queen” in the anime, presumably for rights reasons, while the name “Stand” references Ben E King’s “Stand by Me”, a song whose lyrics fit Araki’s concept perfectly.
In “Diamond is Unbreakable”, a supernatural arrow is thought to be somewhere in the town, and anyone hit by it can develop a Stand, if they are mentally strong enough. Just as in Twin Peaks, Washington, the strange happenings in the town of Morioh could be coming from any number of people, from the eccentric to the unprepossessing.
In hindsight, I was watching the series so I could reach a story titled “Let’s Go to the Manga Artist’s House”. Koichi Hirose, a friend of Josuke, is told that the author of a manga he likes, an apparently supernatural series titled “Pink Dark Boy”, has moved to Morioh, so he decides to visit him.
There are antagonists, and there are manga antagonists, but then there is Rohan Kishibe, a manga artist created by a manga artist. Immediately, he looks eccentric, an artist whose clothing has pen nib motifs everywhere can be placed, always wearing pen nib earrings and a headband with serrated edges, reminding me of Archie’s Jughead Jones. He has clearly been made rich by his work, but everything is secondary to his work as a “mangaka”. He is adamant that realism is at the centre of writing an interesting story, the world there to be studied... which includes discovering a spider, killing it with a craft knife and, for the experience, licking its insides.
I am going to tell you right now that, spider aside, I have produced what I think is my best work when I have directly experienced them, like coming to like the dispensing of my own possessions, and having climbed over the O2 dome in London and reached the top of the dome of St Paul’s Cathedral. I have travelled across the country to see an art exhibition about Keith Haring, can describe sitting in a seat on Concorde, and had four pieces in a row suggest themselves to me by having been on a trip to New York City. I have bought items to be able to talk about them properly, from physically being able to hold a laserdisc and CED, to uncovering a TV guide for shows that were never broadcast, to using a typewriter. Perhaps I should only write about experiences going forward.
Then it is revealed that Rohan was hit by the arrow, just as Koichi had been earlier in the series. Rohan’s Stand, “Heaven’s Door”, means he can read people like a book... by opening up their face like pages in a book, reading their contents.
If I was going to write this website as a character, it appears that character already exists, having done so since the original manga story was published in 1993. I needed to know more.
Next time, I will tell you what I found.