Rusty Rowley

I make comics and zines and good times. Interviewer for the Small Press Expo.

[NOBUNAGA🇯🇵🏯_夏樹蒼依 @japan_nobunaga]

USA. A Mexican restaurant. We had not yet ordered anything, and the food was already arriving.

Chips. Salsa. Unrequested. Free.

I stopped the waiter. "We have not earned these."

"They just come with the table, man."

They come with the TABLE. In my land, hospitality is a debt. Every gift creates an obligation, weighed carefully, returned in the proper season with interest of feeling. Here, the gift arrives before you have even proven you can pay for dinner.

This is not an appetizer. This is a declaration: we trust you. Eat.

I ate with the gravity the moment deserved. And then — I must report this calmly — the basket emptied, and a new one appeared.

"Did we…?"

"Refill," the waiter said. "It's bottomless."

Bottomless. They have wells of salsa. The supply lines of this nation are beyond anything my ancestors imagined.

My friend warned me. "Don't fill up on chips, dude."

Too late. I had accepted three baskets. Honor demanded each one be finished — an unfinished gift is an insult. By the time my actual food arrived, I was a ruined man.

I was not hungry. I was not comfortable. I had been defeated by a courtesy.

Generosity that arrives before the request cannot be repaid. It can only be survived.

I know the rule now. I have made my peace with the basket. One basket. Two at the most.

Who am I deceiving. There is no number of baskets I would refuse. The trust of a nation is in that salsa, and I intend to honor all of it.

[Rusty Rowley @RustyRowley]

@eat_dc I can’t stand pickles but have a friend who is a pickle fiend. Got her a bag of these. She said they were only okay. Many better pickle snacks out there.

[Rusty Rowley @RustyRowley]

@starwars These are adorable. This video is unhinged. From spilling more candy than makes it in to flattening the whipped cream to making it a milk fountain. Pure chaos.

[Rusty Rowley @RustyRowley]

@KatieScarlett94 I am! Just started getting into things there. I’m under RustyRowley

[Rusty Rowley @RustyRowley]

@eat_dc Never in my life did I know this until right now and it is blowing my mind.

[Rusty Rowley @RustyRowley]

@ShopAEW This is a fantastic design. Who did the art for it?

[Joe Mochove @joemoc]

Hey everybody. My dad has had a stroke and I will need to help my mom out in the near future. If you can, please donate. If you can't donate, please share my fundraiser.

https://t.co/KUO0SsHVxO

[Apocaloptimist @Apocaloptimist5]

So they built a whole working off-grid community and y'all are just knocking it down.

[Silver Sprocket @silversprocket_]

We're so excited to be announcing the next step in Silver Sprocket's journey to truly be an independent press with our first fundraiser!

[Liana ✦ ◜herssian.bsky.social◞ @herssian]

it's okay if you don't know where the light source is coming from. as long as it comes from the heart, homie

[Matthew Rosenberg @AshcanPress]

Your periodic reminder that calling out things you hate is great and all, but remember to shout about the things you love too.

[Rusty Rowley @RustyRowley]

@Nnedi My default is usually the book. I prefer pacing my own reading over audiobooks. One exception was Michelle Zauner’s “Crying In H Mart”. I read it and then also listened to her narrate the audiobook. But I’m a huge fan of her music and just wanted to hear it in her voice.

[Rusty Rowley @RustyRowley]

@ctrlaltquin @Press_toJump Congrats!

[Bill Nelson @SenBillNelson]

In 1968, during Apollo 8, Bill Anders offered to humanity among the deepest of gifts an astronaut can give. He traveled to the threshold of the Moon and helped all of us see something else: ourselves. He embodied the lessons and the purpose of exploration. We will miss him.

[Rusty Rowley @RustyRowley]

@LAinsidernow @CBSNews This would be the longest headline ever written.

[Rusty Rowley @RustyRowley]

@KatieScarlett94 Yep! From Ngozi Ukazu that does the “Check, Please!” comic.

[Scott Hechinger @ScottHech]

Wow. Fiona Apple is a real one. Watch this video. Calling for donations to bail out Black mothers for Mother’s Day. Her fans already came through w donations & spreading the word. Over $30k! Let’s “fetch the bolt cutters” & support even more. I just gave. https://t.co/uGGYWfaNrO

[Rusty Rowley @RustyRowley]

@MahmudAsrar Nights has been my favorite monthly book lately. Perfect dialogue by Wyatt Kennedy and gorgeous art by Luigi Formisano.

[Luke Humphris @LukeHumphris]

The Pinky Guard