Alice Blank, Illustrator

Comics and Illustrations from the jerk, herself!

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"they say there was a big war here once. But who cares about stuff like that?"

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i have no mouth and i must kiss the chef

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"that old wreck in the canyon? nobody's known how to pilot one of those in a long time.."

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thinkin' about ged earthsea

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KING OF COINS

the King of Coins winds up our earthly suit this week. he's a dude that's all about the bottom line -- accumulating wealth and fame and success and all the sorts of things that can make your life more comfortable under capitalism. because of his incessant materialism and absolute dominion over the physical, this is a card with close ties to the major arcana card The Devil! it's usually taken more positively than the devil is, especially at first blush, but this guy is definitely about absolutely controlling his surroundings to give him the cash and luxury he desires. the mythological figure associated with this card is the Green Man, a ubiquitous figure of rebirth and renewal in folklore. i mostly chose to incorporate him because this card is all about that green, man. the coin in this case is the very concept of money. i find it a little funny that because of tarot's elemental mapping, "nature" and "earth" get lumped in with "physicality" and "materialism". people who are inclined towards magical thinking, in my experience, tend to attribute a lot of metaphysical and magical potential to the natural world. tarot kind of flouts that (maybe accidentally) and i think this card specifically calls attention to that ironic counterposition. fun to think about!

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QUEEN OF COINS

todays card is the queen of coins. queens tend to represent nuanced mastery of the driving aspects of their suits. this makes the coin queen someone who is deeply comfortable with and enriched by the physical world-- she is a great lover of animals, of sensual and worldly comforts, of fulfilling her bodily desires, and probably of kinky sex. hers is a warm reign, if a little insular. like a lot of queen cards, traditional interpretations have foregrounded the idea that this card represents a quasi-maternal relationship, a sort of gaia-like "earthmother". i usually resist these readings because i think they're grounded in a pretty blatant misogyny, but this one i let squeak by just a little. if any of the queens are going to be caregivers, it's probably this one! this is a card that signals to the querant a period of nurturing fulfillment and of realigning with their grounded material needs. the mythical figure associated with this earth-attribute face card is the dryad, nymph of the oaks, & the coins are her nips.

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KNIGHT OF COINS

todays card is the Knight of Coins (stylized here as "cavalier" in order to avoid confusion with the King card). this knight's earthbound temperament makes them a tribute to what i will lovingly term the Slog. you know that feeling when the sheer enormity of what we must do as human beings to continue physically surviving starts weighing on you? when you can't believe you have to get up and tend to your bodily needs and also go out into the world and do a series of often apparently meaningless tasks just so that the fragile little peace you've constructed for yourself doesn't blow apart like a house of cards? this knight is a champion of that routine, an emblem of the endlessly mundane but extremely necessary. it's a card about getting to work-- not necessarily because the work is good or you care about it or you are working towards something bigger, but because The Work Needs Doing. depending on how this card is drawn, perhaps the querant should prepare for a long period of seemingly inconsequential practice, or perhaps the routine needs breaking and this card serves as a warning. either way it seems like the querant is gonna be B•U•S•Y. the mythical figure associated with this face card is the artificial giant made from mud or clay. i feel like the most common reference point for this concept is the golem from Jewish folklore? but these weird automatons crop up in stories for as long as sculpture has been an art form and human facsimile has captured our hearts. even galatea could get in on this action! there is something dehumanizing about committing to the Slog, maybe-- but something comfortable and rewarding about being a little machine, also. here the coin is the magic circle -- a ritual in a lot of esoteric practices that serve to ground and direct wayward spirits.

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PAGE OF COINS

todays card is the page of coins. pages represent a youthful naïveté and earnest beginning with regards to the principal aspect of the suit-- for coins, physical health and wealth. this card tends to signal an opportunity to start a new craft, or perhaps just renew one's perspective on an old one. it can also be an omen of imminent financial windfall like a lot of coins cards. the page is the mandrake, a root vegetable with a long medical history and mythologized for its psychoactive properties and oddly humanoid shape. coin cards are associated with the element of earth and also often with physical well-being, so this curious little guy seemed appropriate! here the coin is a penny-- a lucky indication that maybe something good is about to start.

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TEN OF COINS

like all tens, the card is meant to represent a sort of satisfaction and completion of the guiding aspects of the suit-- for coins, this is materialism. usually, this is interpreted to mean something pithy regarding the physical work the querant has done on this globe-- whether that's the relationships they've formed, the art they've created, the wealth they've amassed, or the ideas they've proliferated, this is a card about the querant's sustained legacy. usually this is a good omen-- it points to something positive about the querant's impact, or maybe just indicating that the querant has HAD an impact on the world is positive enough (though that seems wrapped up in some questionable ideas of "life's purpose"). in regards to the art, i kind of struggled! i ended up landing on thinking of all the tiny universes i've dreamed up over the years creating comics and reading stories and talking to my loved ones. physically realized or not, it's pretty cool that all those cosmoses are tangled up somewhere in my brain. i guess this card's image is sort of the vain & self-aggrandizing hope that if anything survives my withered physical form, it's that sort of creativity! here the coins are little bubbles that surface the wreckage of society, filled with objects unknown and possessing their own secret life.

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NINE OF COINS

today's card is the nine of coins, a card that represents a self-centered fulfillment of the guiding aspects of the suit (material health and wealth). it's usually represented by an aristocrat strolling in a garden, and it generally indicates that the querant has reached a point of well-earned satisfaction and achievement in some meaningful physical sense. it's a good omen, for sure! while drawing this card, i was thinking a lot about the beginning of moebius's le monde d'edena, a story BROADLY about two genderless space mechanics who crash on a foreign planet that is seemingly an uninhabited paradise. the first act deals with their struggles as they eat the organic food and breathe in the untreated air and remember that they are man and woman and are tempted by each other. it's dated and quasi-biblical and mostly serves as the artist's soapbox to talk about how we should all eat fresher food, a moral i take a lot of umbrage with (let's not mention the culture of assault the book tacitly seems to endorse). i find myself interested in the prior concept of weird detached satisfaction as one roams through the infinite cosmos and sees incredible things, unbothered by material thirsts which are quenched immediately. so i tried to channel that imagery here, obviously inspired by retro sci fi comic art. here the coins are moons, those heavenly bodies the querant may feel aligned with as they experience bodily fulfillment chomping on their space noodles.

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EIGHT OF COINS

the eight of coins is our card today, and it's all about knowledge, studying, and learning the inner workings of something practical. i think i have kind of a child's reverence for audio engineering and mixing and music theory in general, since it's a skillset i wholly do not possess. i can pluck out a few chords on the banjo but that's pretty much it for me. folks can make entire soundscapes out of beeps and boops and that's pretty cool! thematically i think this card is pretty similar to the three of the same suit, but it's more oriented towards being a student than a master, and more oriented towards abstract thought than practical skill. here the coins become some vinyl for our little producer to spin and spin.

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SEVEN OF COINS

today's card is the seven of coins, a card that is all about cultivation. this card feels a bit odd, for the coins suit! like it feels like it belongs with the cups, instead? it has to do with the long process of growing something valuable through minuscule efforts, often referencing a human relationship or a flourishing career. this card's emphasis is on the unseen and often under-appreciated hours of labor that growing requires. as i was contemplating how to depict this, i was thinking a lot about this quote from bertolt brecht's psalms (transl.): "the solitary tree in a stony field has a strong sense of futility. it never saw a tree. there are no trees". sometimes the painstaking ordeal of growth is a lonely futile thing, i guess. this feels more in line with the grounded cynicism of the coins than other interpretations of the card, to me. here the coins are, well-- pentacles. they are grounding totems, hung with care from a tree which will, providence willing, blossom again in the springtime. regardless, they'll swing in the wind, a reminder that at some point, attention was paid. is this description particularly pretentious, even for me?? please forgive me!! i went to grad school for literature, empty gestures of self-importance are my bread and butter

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SIX OF COINS

todays card is the six of coins, a card which is all about C•H•A•R•I•T•Y. it is purposefully vague about whether the querant is on the side of the donor or recipient. giving alms is traditionally a morally unambiguous thing--and there are plenty of folks who need assistance and who i fully advocate supporting without any of this philosophical junk-- but i think this card calls special attention to the way that a society built on the expectation of charity towards the marginalized is deeply flawed. everyone should have enough!! the rich should not get to pick and choose who deserves support, and it should not be looked at as anything other than reparations when a little charity goes the way of the abused. i hope that this card would cause the querant to question the role they are signaled as playing in this interaction, recipient or donor, and to refocus their energies as much as possible according to the injustice that provides the framework. also, hopefully this goes without saying but the charity here need not be strictly financial in nature. obviously i think philanthropy can come across pretty predatory, and that definitely colored the direction i took this card. however, millipedes (which are not this big) are in reality super sweeties and don't harm much of anything since they are usually detritivores and eat plant garbage. so also this card is more complicated than that! because i do think giving freely of one's self is a really good thing, even if it feels unnatural the way a bug feeding baby birds feels unnatural, and i don't want to discourage the human impulse to help out. this card is about a lot of things! here the coins are lil chicks, unaware of their role beyond their own personal hunger.

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FIVE OF COINS

todays card is the five of coins, a card which sometimes is subtitled "dark night of the soul"! brutal! it takes the material comfort of the four and locates it squarely out of the querant's reach. while warmth and security are nearby, our subject must continue to roam the cold streets. maybe something is profoundly out of sync with the querant's spiritual life, or maybe it's as obvious as having lost something significantly materially valuable, but no matter how you slice it this card is a rough draw. the art here is a little disorienting, maybe, but reckoning with any level of poverty can really rearrange what you thought you knew about the world, in my experience! here the coins are the decorations on a warm window-- shedding light and appearing beautiful, but ultimately a poor facsimile of actual comfort.

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THREE OF COINS

todays card is the three of coins (or pentacles). this card mirrors the three of wands, in that it's about working towards an envisioned goal or ambition. however, because of the grounded nature of the coins suit, this card deals specifically with the mundane, humbling work of actually practicing a skilled labor and slowly honing your expertise. i like this card a lot! not necessarily my illustration, but i love the focus on any pursuit as a series of practical efforts. i find thinking of illustration or any of my hobbies as slowly building through trial and error to be really rewarding. if you ever watch somebody who has devoted their life to learning a craft it's pretty mesmerizing! here the coins are wheels, something that gets you from point a to b reliably through repetitive motion and also the object of our wheelwright's dedication.

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TWO OF COINS

today's card is the two of coins (or pentacles), which is maybe the most basic a "two" card can be in tarot-- it represents balancing two opposite pursuits in your life. this is a card about work-life balance, or work-other work balance, or life-love balance-- any number of dichotomies that it takes a lot of finesse to find moderation between. in the rider-waite smith art this is represented by a juggler, but people who are adept at this always strike me as a little magical, and i guess im a little bit in the spirit of the season. here the coins are two yo-yo's, two rhythmically fluctuating foci.

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ACE OF COINS

we are starting the suit of coins, sometimes called pentacles (which feels obtuse) and sometimes discs! its associated element is earth, and it is the suit that deals with physical and material states-- usually, this equates to financial things or matters of bodily health. to that end, the ace of coins is meant to represent a sudden shift for the better in terms of either money or physical well-being. the coin here is a peppermint (candy) sprouting amongst peppermint (the plant). candy is a nice physical reward that provides an immediate good sensation, and peppermint has long been touted as an aid for myriad health problems. a humble offering from the earth, and a nice place to start a whole new suit.