A BRIEF BULLETPOINT HISTORY OF THE MAN WHO STARTED IT ALL:

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‣Mathison Mauswick Jr. was born to Mathison and Ethel Mauswick in Gildymare, Maine on December 4th, 1911

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‣By all accounts he was a lonely child with social deficiencies that, for whatever reason, prevented him from making the kind of friends otherwise endowed by an idyllic childhood

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‣I say idyllic, by which I mean he was never beaten but certainly scolded beyond reasonable measures for typical juvenile behaviors like talking to himself in the bathtub, climbing the big magnolia tree in the front yard, folding paper, or bouncing a rubber ball inside the house

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‣He was slightly closer to his mother, who sang to him off-tune lullabies but only when he was already asleep. It was customary for his father, a naturally withdrawn figure, to offer him a handshake in lieu of hugs, which he deemed more than satisfactory to convey his paternal approval

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‣Mathison did poorly in school but enjoyed art. He had many bullies. His early journals were filled with whimsical doodles which included formative sketches of all the classic Merrymouse© characters that would eventually bring him fame, recognition, and longlasting success

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‣”Mathy,” as he was called by his secretary, premiered his first full-length feature, Pip Piper the Faunboy, at the tender age of 22. It was an instant hit, filling its young wide-eyed debut audience, whom he bussed in to see it for free, with the kind of effervescent wonder that his brand would be known for generations later

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‣Mathy never married nor did he engage in any traditional courting rituals during adolescence

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‣Mathy was not ugly even though he felt ugly all his life, which might as well be the same thing

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‣Consider a child so starved for conventional friendship that he resorts to drawing more unconventional friends into being. These are not humans but animals—silly apocryphal playmates bounding across the neatly compressed void of a white abyss, made kinetic, suddenly brought to life with the shuffle of a page, the bright blood of his ink

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‣Consider a child pressing his precious drawings to his chest in a silent basement, weeping just out of view of the sunlight slicing through a window because he much prefers mute, lopsided shadows over the blinding knives of sunlight’s symmetry

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‣Consider the sadness that spirals down

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‣Consider all the events in-between—a rise, a fall

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‣Consider the heart as a delicate, stringed instrument—how it can be plucked as easily as it can be broken

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