Red Eye, Black Eye

Status: Completed

In the days after September 11th, with the ruins of his job, relationship, and city crumbling around him, cartoonist and roustabout K. Thor Jensen packed a backpack, bought a bus pass and took to the open road. His 60-day, 10,000-mile journey is chronicled in this ragtag romance. From riding the back of a burning couch in Birmingham, Alabama to aiding stray dogs in Butte, Montana, building a giant papier-mache vagina in Columbus, Ohio to smuggling drugs across the border in El Paso, Texas, Jensen searches for the last remnants of a meaningful life as he rides the Greyhound bus. Stopping over in eighteen cities, he interacts with a diverse cast of supporting characters, and they each recount a story of their own to him, cobbling together a modern Canterbury Tales for the slacker generation. Red Eye, Black Eye is a fractured portrait of life in 21st century America, as the protagonist and his compatriots drink, fight, stumble and fall their way through their travels. It's also riotously funny, charmingly crude and beautifully drawn.