Dear snorers,
Hello from the summer time, where I am trying to reeeelax.
Unfortunately, I’m a freelance artist millennial who thrives on the life-affirming structure of accomplishing thing after thing, lest I fade into purposelessness.
Schools out! Are you twiddling your thumbs? Scrolling your eyes out? Or are you channeling that restless thumb syndrome into your next masterpiece?
I say boredom is the flavorless glue of life! It’s the oat-milk in your chai tea latte, the shoelaces on your doc martens, the shower curtain liner in your shower— not the patterned curtain itself, but that plastic thing that goes between the curtain and the tub (which you should probably change because it’s full of mold). It’s where all our best ideas come from! So this ToonStack celebrates the bored and the boring. Happy summer solstice, and bring in the ennui!
Tim Sniffen
What I like is this guy is at zero enthusiasm, but still he's trying to write a memo. And the plant on his desk is healthy, so clearly he does care about some things. Also I'm positive the woman who has stopped to listen has more important things to do and can't wait to leave.
Kyle Bravo
These are basically my kids.
Theora Kvitka
I once went rock climbing outside on a cliff in Arizona. If you've only climbed indoors, you forget that this is actually a dangerous sport. I am averse to physical risk, but when I’m wearing a cushy harness above a thickly padded floor, and there's someone who loves me at the bottom holding the rope, I (mostly) lose sight of the fact that I could die. Maybe this dumb cartoon is trying to say that if you’ve been bored for long enough, you would literally climb anything, walls or rocks, death be damned.
Sarah Morrissette
I’ve had incredibly boring jobs in my lifetime. One of them was folding t-shirts and occasionally selling t-shirts in a Cancun (Mexico) shopping center. Why do they have to be folded JUST SO? Another one was hostessing at a pizza restaurant in California. I had to STAND THERE, looking happy, next to that wooden podium thing and GUIDE PEOPLE to their tables. Why can’t they pick out and find their own tables? Another job, I was cleaning the feet of fluffy mechanical toys. The gift shop owner wanted me to put them back in their boxes and re-sell them as new!!! What a dirtbag. Needless to say, that job didn’t last long. So, people, do not give employees boring tasks! You know exactly what I mean—there are countless ways to give a thankless job “added value.” Think certain kinds of recreational drinks and mind altering substances. Your employees might thank you one day for turning them on.
Polly Lou Adams
Being at peace with yourself sounds so boring. What would I even complain about? What’s the point of life without complaining?
Chris Gural
They say necessity is the mother of all invention but I think an argument could be made for boredom.
Kendra Allenby
I drew this while thru-hiking the Continental Divide Trail, 4.5 months of walking from Mexico to Canada along the rocky mountains. Three of those months I was alone, all day, almost every day. I experienced many of the healthy, empowering, beneficial effects of long stretches of boredom - a dull sleep that lets you wake up in calm and creativity. I was also, after 3 months, just barely this side of bat-shit-crazy-nuts.
Joe Dator
I’ve long suspected that we are all just a dead phone battery away from creating some sublime masterpiece, probably in the time it takes to do Connections at a bus stop. That’s why past civilizations created so much magnificent art, because there was just nothing else to do. Oh well, I guess we’ll never know what world changing art, literature or scientific advances we could have contributed to the world, because we just couldn’t get bored enough.
But wait, there’s more!
Amy Kurzweil teaches cartoon classes on Patreon! Sign up now to get the recording of every past class!
Amy Kurzweil ’s graphic memoir, Artificial: A Love Story, was named a best book of 2023 by The New Yorker, NPR, and Kirkus!
Check out Sarah Morrissette’s paintings on Instagram.
Subscribe to Polly Lou Adams's semi-regular Substack, the Poop Scoop, for more cartoons and memoir comics.
Kyle Bravo has a Patreon, a Substack, and cartoon zines for sale on his Etsy.
Joe Dator is having a big sale on originals from The New Yorker over on my BigCartel store and he’s open for commissions, custom cartoons, maybe even some mild landscaping work at joedator.com.
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All so good!
Brilliant. All of them