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Bald Eagles smokes weed and dies

The first comic of Victor’s I saw was "After Birther" from the Project Superior anthology.

For the past couple of years Victor Cayro, whose comic we've showcased, has been my favorite cartoonist and the biggest asshole in my roster of friends. I first saw his work at the recommendation of Danny Hellman, who described his stuff as being batshit insane and Victor as the kind of guy who would show up to comic conventions completely drunk and pass out around noon. I thought that comics had gone down a path of sickening self-adoration—I was sick of all the Craig Thompsons, James Kochalkas, and Jeffrey Browns drawing idealized versions of themselves. I thought that comics as a medium needed someone like Victor Cayro to move things forward. No more self-love. He takes comics back to a primal Zap Comics level of intense feelings and true experimentation.

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The first comic of Victor’s I saw was "After Birther" from the Project Superior anthology. In it, Victor Cayro depicts himself as a nerd with cystic acne who lives with his deformed little brother and collects news clippings about a local menace known as “Whyte Devil.” While tracing another artist’s drawings in the park, Whyte Devil tricks Victor and his brother into reversing bodies. A battle ensues, in which Victor tears out of his own skin in order to become a new person—not once but twice. Eventually all of the characters die or something. I forget. The comic left me reeling with excitement about what I consider to be the most relevant artistic medium. That’s pretty deep.

Since then he’s done comics for Kramer’s Ergot, Typhon, and some other shit too probably.

Victor is kind of a nutcase who rambles and uses a lot of puns and racial slurs when he talks. On top of that he attacks me almost every time he drinks. He lives on almost nothing, has a lot of “theories,” dresses like a hobo and is entirely a for-real great artist.

Why do you call yourself Bald Eagles, Victor?
BALD EAGLES are so hard-set in the psychology of Americans as the symbol of integrity, strength, and Freedom. My work standing alone permeates that, compounded with our treasured Bird of Predation. I will answer your other question: “WHY DO I MAKE COMICS?”So I can live forever.I Am the physical Embodiment of all living and dead BALD EAGLES

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ALSO, I make comics to entertain myself primarily, and others. Its gratification level is on par with pleasing a partner sexually, doing 300 consecutive push-ups, and holding a newborn baby your wife shat out her cunt.

PLUS, let's not forget the power of thought: I am what I say I am—just maybe not exactly to the the degree of which I fantasize myself.

Let's take the exchange between Chow Yun Fat and Ti Lung in A Better Tomorrow Part One.

Ti Lung: Do you Believe there's a God?

Chow Yun Fat: Sure, I'm one--you are… you're a God if you control your destiny.

Ti Lung: Only, we never know how things will turn out.

Chow Yun Fat: No you don't.

Tell me about these masks you made.
I draw all the time, I need to escape it, but I also have to remain productive at all hours--if I'm not ruminating on my next story or comical illustration, I'm bringing it to life. It's all really a thankless process--all of it, including the final product--UNLESS I SELL IT. So I figured I'd try something new like wasting time making crafts. It's actually fun and easier for me to make my characters in 3-D with cardboard and papier-mâché. Also, it gives me something else to hide behind when I'm not supercharged on Natural Ice, belligerence extract.

What do I have here? The beginnings of a sexual predator, a BALD EAGLES head and the accompanying body suit foundation, Bart Simpson Medicine Algonquin, and a dumb skull head because people like death and Stupid simple shit AND because I have every intention of selling this impersonal work as a means of paying for the basic life amenities, sustenance, and special comfort foods such as lentils and rice.

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How bleak is that? Life is great, I'm still very passionate about my work, improving the quality of said work, raising the bar even past the Gods. Just defy'n’ the heavens around, that's all.

How did you entertain yourself in Dubuque before you came out to Brooklyn?
Drinking past blackout stage, always smelling like I won the cigarette smoking contest, inhaling copious amounts of weed and watching reruns of Dinosaurs on Sloobinn Slab's Couch while he pretended to act gay, then waiting until I fell asleep to place a Dixie cup on my Clothed Sleeping boner--then I'd wake up to him sucking it…. Peculiar things, many things.

How I entertained myself was exactly that: Me entertaining myself with my own output. I've Never really had expendable funds to recklessly acquire collectibles, but I'm sort of lying because in the same life I've 'ad 100-dollar nights spent on myself alone at the karaoke bar.

Hanging loose wit me bloques, boys with such amazing nicknames (that I assigned them and for the most part only I address them) as Admirable Hairline, Bucky O'Hare, Cocca-Leah, Evander Sloobintudes, PorkLouey, Hyman Escalante, Snarlos O'Kellys, Tim Potleaf, Slopington Heights, etc.

A Short Description of a good night would be a house gathering accompanied with drinks, anecdotes, jokes, spilling beans on the local scene, talking shit about each other to each other, and allowing ourselves to be caught in the midst of lies to keep things honest.

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The last few years in DBQ the fun consisted of this type of living room pow-wow native to these Americans. That's not all I did, but perhaps it's what the VICE audience could relate to most: wasting time and being slime.

If I wasn't with friends and loved ones, I was working on my comix, art, and VHS/Digital 8 video compilations--my art and personal life are intrinsically interwoven, particularly with the video work, because the videos can capture them better than I can rewrite or draw them. Life is the best author, seconded only to me.

Tell me about when you were fat and how you got thin.
As a young buckaroo my favorite things to do were eating food, staying overnight at my friend's houses, and eating their food, and playing Commodore 128, staying up late, eating more food before I went to bed, and sleeping on my stomach, so my boner dug into the mattress hard and kept me awake all night. I enjoyed these activities even more than coaxing out loads--especially since I didn’t manually blast staxx until I was 16 because I thought it was a shameful homosexual act.

Also, I spent the days reading only the best underground comics, and not that hoity-toity college radio shit like Robert Crumb's Skate Shoppe Adventures, Dan Clownshoe's Ghost Busters, Gary Panter's Elaborated Mistakes--I'm talking real esoteric ID-explorational spiritual deconstructionalist indie shit Like Erik Larson's Savage Dragon, Keith Giffen's Trencher, Simon Bisley's Melting Pot, Academic comics.

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If I wasn't do'n’ that, I was eating my friend's food and audio dubbing over early episodes of Ren and Stimpy, or eating and watching my favorite action-movie sequences frame by frame on the VCR using one of those circular toggle nobs, you know what I'm talking about? Analyzing the movements, gun flashes, armaments, bullet shells, and gore.

These were major attributing factors the to fat-fuckedness.

When I was 14 in ‘94, I went to Peru to visit relatives at the weight of 220 pounds, contracted amoebic dysentery, and didnt shake it for over a month. The end result was a Spic on a stick, I was a five-foot-ten bobble head at 158 pounds. Sixty pounds lost in six weeks or less.

Oh yeah, and in 2004, I lost six pounds when my appendix was removed in fragments. Drew a comic about it, then Sammy Harkham bought me an ice cream cone, ate it, gained all the weight back.

I heard you got your appendix taken out in Peru to save money.
If I would have had my appendectomy performed in Peru, it would have cost me cost me five cents. The procedure: removing all my internal organs, replacing them with broken calculators and antiquated mechanical toy skeletons, guinea pig dander, and barnyard straw, then soldering the incision shut with a craft store glue gun using a pico de gallo base adhesive.

I'm not here to undermine Peruvian healthcare, I'm sure they'd do just as good of a job, if not better--and it would've been $40 thousand cheaper.

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BUT. It didn’t happen there, it happened when I was living in a DBQ boarding house, on top of old smoky, my life covered in shit.

Why'd you leave your home of Dubuque, Iowa?
Because you were using my homemade catchphrases in your illustrations, not accrediting sources, then selling them. I came here to break your fucking skull apart, but when I showed up you quickly presented, as if anticipated, all the books I was in and politely asked if I'd sign them. I took pity (was fooled yet again), gloated in vanity, and spared your life.

Why else?

To pursue a life of poverty in comics in the big floating piece of shit disguised as an apple, but most importantly in pursuit of pooey. Pooey is the common term for romantic interest in DUBUQUE, and only I use it. So the question isn't valid. I never left it--I brought it with me. I am the Spirit of DUBUQUE. As long as there is Hamburger Soup (a tradional DBQ delicacy), I'll never claim defector to my beloved bluffs. Chupar mis los testimonals.

Tell me about your living situation/conditions. The last time I saw you I noticed that your fedora had a hole so big that it was basically a sunroof.
Not basically--the top was wholly severed. I got mad, punched the top out like a real Ghandi, who was renowned for using violence as a means of stress relief. That same night you saw me, I tore the hat in half. Something made me mad again--I think it was because I drank four Sparks in row within an hour and was pissed off that I was drunk, because I used up my allotment of drink tickets and thus meant I actually had to spend money at the bar. I'm a better person when I drink, as you can attest.Do you have Indian blood? When you drink you have no tolerance and it turns you into an awful parallel version of yourself that tries to beat me up.
I drink irresponsibly, large quantities in short time spans, then I'm fucked up. That's my secret, mystery solved. To further solve the mystery…

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I see you once a month maybe. In the sober days you've committed a number of inexcusable transgressions; however, through diplomatic AIM exchanges preceded by heated hate fueled emails we were able to calm the storm--but we don't get the chance to make the resolve while looking into each other's biological eyes. VIDEO CHATS don't count.

Whenever you see me, usually at a Matthew Caron POGO in TOGO night, of course I'm drunk, and perhaps you say one thing to tip me off, or I just remember how you've pushed my buttons, and I feel that the least I can do is yank your hair for all the feathers you've ruffled.

BALD EAGLES is very fair. I don't act poorly unless I've been provoked, OR unless I just really wanted to, whether it's warranted or not.

Your first published work was in the Big Book of The 70s.
What's there to tell you besides that I was in it? I did a two-story strip therein entitled “Moodrings.” I didn’t write it, I drew it very poorly, but not intentionally. After seeing that in print, I was determined to come back to the drawing table, and the comics world, with a vendetta against myself.

I and the subjective/objective reality I've created for myself suffers from an incurable case of LIONHEART syndrome, prone to initial defeats subsequently countered by second winds that blow the sails off opposing galleons. The whole bet's on Attila. However, it's a wrong bet.

Tell me about your comic for Legal Action Comics.
Both my inclusions to the Legal Action Comics anthologies are worth the read, I'm not going to to spoil the pleasant suprises they offer when Danny Hellman still has boxes left over regardless.What are you working on now? I have hundreds of pages of notes/scripts, etc. Doing commissions, working on scripts, and soon I'll be doing some web comic--bullshit, RIGHT? The pending projects, the real meat carriers are TOP SECRET--I don't want to see some half-artist take away my proposed ideas and get his dome sucked and published courtesy of me voluntarily handing out any gold nuggets. There is a forthcoming solo book from a reputable small publisher, and that's the extent of what I can disclose.

In the meantime, chupar mis los testiculos, and besa mi culo during wet fart season.

Check out more of Victor’s work here.