About Oh Well

Oh Well is a comic about life and music and young people in the mid-90s in Buffalo NY. It follows the experiences of 19-year-old Jonah as he moves to a new city, attends a new college, meets new people, and starts a new band—however the hell one managed such things before the internet, cell phones, streaming, and social media.

The anti montage

I've come to think of the approach to the story of Oh Well as an anti-montage. Oh Well is—in short—about a rock band. And you know the montage in movies about bands/ musicians/ the music business/ prestige artist biopics, where the band/artist goes from playing to five hecklers in a bar, to playing to ten hecklers, and one of those ten hecklers is their future manager, and then they're playing to 100 people in the same bar, frying eggs on the van's radiator, sleeping in their shoes, then playing a bigger, better club with 500 hundred people? And this all takes like 30-90 seconds. Maybe then, in an additional 30-90 seconds, there's a nicer van, a tour bus, a fancy recording studio, wide-eyed innocents partying poolside at the Chateau Marmont, a private plane, and then Madison Square Garden? The montage blasts past—just so that we can get to the selling out, post-success interpersonal conflicts, and descent into joyless drug use.

Sometimes I see this montage and I think "Who gives a fuck about the interpersonal conflict and the inevitable drug abuse?" Didn't we just miss the most interesting story that was glossed over in 90-seconds? The artistic growth? The 99% perspiration? The scene where everyone else in the band learns how to set up/ tear down the drum kit? Change fuse on a guitar amp? Writing a song is almost never the result of a divine touch, repeating the titular catchphrase aloud to oneself, furrowing your brow, and then scribbling in a notebook.

So that's the journey. It's going to take a long time.

New episodes are posted every Tuesday(ish)—check on Instagram and Bluesky for drops.

While I have a rough idea of the long arc of Oh Well, who knows? I anticipate a complete run of 250-300 episodes. That's a lot, so I appreciate support via Patreon—you just get good vibes right now, though hopefully we'll branch out into fun stuff.

(Also, Buy Me A Coffee, if you're commitment phobic)

About Patreon

Oh Well is funded by reader support via Patreon. I mean, I'll probably keep making it whether or not people support it, just far more slowly and tediously and with less anxiety about disappointing my supporters. So gimme some anxiety!

If you're unfamiliar with Patreon, lucky you: I'll explain! No, there is too much. Let me sum up—

Patrons can subscribe at $1, $3, or $5 (or even, like, $27.65) per month. The different patronage levels of special "perks"—ranging from "thanks for $1!" (but, like, sincerely) to behind the scenes sneak-o-peeks, doodles, process posts, and probably the occasional rant. Find out more on my Patreon membership page.

Another key form of support for Oh Well is sharing the website with someone who you think might like it (music nerds, comics nerds, rust belt nerds, nerds who think the 90s were as cool as the 80s, nerds who enjoy infrequent and poorly drawn cartoon nudity, nerds who climb on rocks). You can also just "Join for Free" on the Oh Well Patreon page—add your voice to the multitude!—and maybe I'll swing some muffin bottoms your way from time to time.

About me (Josh Marr)

I'm a worker bee, parent, deep-sleeper, dusty guitar owner, art director, and (now) cartoonist living in rural Vermont. Although I've been doodling, starting, stopping, and having the coolest ideas for years, Oh Well is the first comic I've made that other people can see.

I had been "adulting" for years—with a creative career that gave me the excuse to let my personal projects evaporate on the backburner. As a parent, reading the kid-oriented graphic novel work of folks like Victoria Jameson, Hope Larson, Aron Nels Steinke, and Raina Telgemier (among many others) that again made me think "What about comics?" So here we are.

About Process and Practice (for the nerds)

My studio/office is in the corner of an unfinished bathroom in our house. Really: we took out a busted clawfoot tub and I put in my desk.

1. Scripting in Scrivener
2. Layout in InDesign (check this—big fan of Jessica Abel, she credits Alison Bechdel)
3. Print rough layouts and add pencil sketches
4. Scan sketches and adjust InDesign layouts
5. Final drawings are inked and colored in many layers of Clip Studio Paint and sometimes Photoshop
6. Before OWL015, I sketched, bluelined, and inked, completely old-school analog. I got a tiny, cheap pen tablet and combined that with my analog process until OWL028. From here on out, I'm going entirely digital (still doodling in notebooks).
7. All of this happens between 8pm–1am. I'm actually getting less done because my oldest child is a teenager now and stays up later and I am older and go to bed earlier.

Years and years ago, I suggested making an episodic comic that would be posted online as an Independent Study to my academic advisor in the art department. "I've never heard of that before," said my advisor. So, I kind of invented the webcomic. It just took me 30 years to get it together.

Contact

I am bad at social media and I'd still have a rotary dial phone if I could—but you can see my clunky "THIS IS DAD. I'M TEXTING IN ALL CAPS. BYE, LOVE YOU, DAD" posts on Instagram and Bluesky or Reddit.

Hate it? Love it? Meh it? Did you see the frame in which a character uses Diet Dr. Smooth as a chaser in October 1994 even though Tops didn't start selling it until March 1995? Email me at ohwellcomic@gmail.com (I'll respond at the pace of snail mail for that true mid-90s feel)

But then, seriously, just read the comic and then go outside or something.