Q & A

I was answering a message in my patreon inbox containing some questions and I thought others would like to see the answers.

1. Have you had the chance to talk to people who came from Elan and actually are happy that they went? What would they say to you when you guys disagree? 

Yes, lots of them. I would say about 20% of my fellow Elanians are happy about it for one reason or another. Some because they had really, really fucked up lives and through surviving Elan, they give it credit for making them tougher or wiser, and some are honestly just brainwashed to shit and they never really snapped out of it. 

I mean, that was really something that you had to do while in Elan just to keep your sanity, you had to start telling yourself that it was okay and that the program would "save you" and a lot of other crazy stuff just so you didn't stand out from everyone else. But I guess some people lost their ability to realize they were just doing it to survive and they truly just became that person. The truth is, though there are exceptions, most of the people I know like this are doing really shitty in life. They are junkies, in and out of jail, in bad relationships, etc... But they somehow still believe Elan was great and helped them. It's pretty sad honestly.  

And to your other question, this is kind of why I stay neutral (as myself not as Joe). I used to get into in with some friends, trying to show them some of my research or just explain my point of view that Elan did not have good intentions. And they would get super aggressive in defending it. Like... crazy, actually crazy. I learned to back off and just stay neutral. Its a tough subject and a lot of ex-Elan people, for better or worse, have wrapped up their entire identity in their Elan experience. And that is a dangerous thing to poke. That is why I stay anonymous while doing this comic as "Joe".

2. How is your relationship with your family now? Did Elan getting shut down function as any sort of reality check with them? Did they ever apologize, do you think they feel bad? 

Its okay. I feel like the bigger person but it is hard to forget, even decades later. Especially when dealing with a mother and father who still pretty much, to this day, deny and refuse to open that door (or to let me walk them over to it). My folks are quite old now. They had me really late in life, so they are really approaching nursing home status at this point. Funny thing, if I had answered this question 2 months ago, I would have a different answer, but believe it or not, my mother did actually finally apologize. Like very recently. But it took her almost 20 years to do it. We had this huge fight over something unrelated and didn't talk for months, and towards the end I mentioned Elan, because I honestly feel like that is at the root of a lot of our communication problems. I don't know if it was because I am now doing this comic, but I really just let her have it as far as her refusal to even look it up, accept that it was closed for abusing kids, and that there was multitudes of info on the internet that she could look up and attempt to understand. 

I must have hit a nerve because a few weeks after giving me the silent treatment, she actually showed up at my door and for the first time, ever, accepted that something fucked up might have gone down. She didn't go into details and honestly, neither did I, because I was just happy she had finally taken that first little step. I really think our relationship immediately got better after that. Which again, is something I am happy about because my parents are getting quite old.

3. Did you ever see anyone from Elan again or try to reconnect? 

I saw a lot of people from Elan in the first 1-5 years I was out. I mean, I seeked them out. I think I may have connected with a record number of Elan people in those first few years. But it was a big learning experience. What I mostly learned was that regardless of what went down in Elan, these people were not the same. Like someone could be friend in Elan, as much as that was possible if you were careful about it. And then when I met them after Elan, that connection we had seemed to only exist in retrospect. Like we could talk about times in Elan and understand each other on that level, but the "after-Elan" experience changed us both enough that maybe we couldn't connect anymore as people out of Elan. I know that sounds weird, but I found that to be true in many cases, even with people I really tried to rebuild that friendship with.

It was like we had three lives. Who we were before Elan. Who we were in Elan. Who we are after Elan. And it was rare that we could sync one of those up. A lot of people left Elan and just went back to mostly who they were before, and some of those people came from very fucked up lives. And some people were normal before Elan but then after the whole experience they were completely fucked up. I mean shooting heroin fucked up. I mean get drunk and fighting strangers on the street fucked up. So I would hang with kids who I was cool with in Elan, and afterwards they would be serious liabilities. I didn't want to go to jail and a lot of these kids truly did not give a fuck about going to jail to prove a point.

I was just trying to smoke some pot man, that was my level in the years after Elan. Just chill and smoke. So yeah, I learned real quick that a lot of my old buddies were better to keep at arms length, like through facebook chat or the occasional phone call. But again, some of them needed to get something out of their system after Elan and they all did it in their own way. Not all went crazy, but enough did. And it seemed to me to be really hard to predict who would. Like I said, some of these kids were pretty good kids before Elan, but changed. And some were troubled but being in Elan kept a lid on it, but then they got out. And some went to Elan and just learned how to be better criminals and couldn't wait to get out and live that life. And a lot, tragically, just went down the wrong path with drugs because they were trying to cope with what they experienced there. And a good amount died in that first 1-5 years. And many have died in the decades since.

I mean the comic does a good job at putting you there. But nothing you read will ever match what it was like to wake up in that place day after day and be beaten down in that unique way Elan had. I feel really lucky to even be alive now and that is not me being dramatic, that is a direct result of seeing so many of my Elan peers not here anymore. 

4. Do you know Rons full name and do you know what he is up to now? Has he ever been confronted with what he did?

Yeah, I know who "Ron" is and many of us have tried following his whereabouts. Last I heard he was dead. But I've heard that a lot about a lot of staff since I left and many times it was wrong. Either started as a rumor by ex-Elan, or even possibly by the staff themselves so that people would stop trying to find them. Because as you can expect, there are a lot of people who want revenge, like legit "I don't give a fuck if I do life in prison over this" revenge. So many of these staff keep a tight lid on their details and use nicknames for work and all sorts of other ways to stay incognito.

5. What is your favorite thing to do now? Hobbies? What do you hope to do over the next year/5 years? 

Honestly, this comic has become something I really enjoy, as much as it the hardest and most time-consuming "hobby" I have ever had. It really dominated my life and kind of pushed all my other hobbies out of the way. I think a lot of people underestimate that I am really, truly, one person doing this. And I am a person who had never made any kind of comic book in their life. I am a person who had never written more than a page of thoughts down at once, and even then not very often. When I started doing this, I knew I was basically jumping into the deep end of the pool for the first time, having never swam, and I would either find a way or fail, and I knew I couldn't fail because this was obviously a story in my head that I needed to get out for a long, long, time. 

In the beginning I tried not to think of the implications of people actually finding and following it, because wrapping my head around that meant admitting this would be something I would could spend YEARS doing. Shit, I've never stuck to one thing for YEARS, ever! One project, one piece of "expression" for YEARS. That thought was insane to me. And here I am. Somehow still chugging away. Alone. With no help. With nobody in my life even knowing I am doing this besides my wife. 

I think a lot of people look at a comic book and it looks a certain way and they just underestimate the fact that like 30 people worked on that thing. And that many of them did it as full time job. And that money was involved to produce it. And that a team of writers existed to bounce ideas off of each other about how it would be written.

It sounds corny, but in a way Elan has become my "muse". Elan is some kind of weird existence that I can access in my head and pull from, and then I can use art and words to try to make that intangible thing into something that can be seen and printed out and touched. It's a weird feeling because some part of me has passed the point of no return and so it is kind of like I am just constantly free-falling with this comic, in a state of artistic panic, running on pure stubbornness that I have gotten this far on my own and I'll be damned if I am going to stop before the whole thing is told. 

Every time I finish a chapter and hit publish, it's like a drug. Because I truly don't know how the hell I managed to do it. And then I feel that momentarily relief and feel "high" on the fact that I actually pulled it off, until I realize I need to do it all again with the next chapter. And of course I have the whole story in my own head, but every time I start a chapter I am just staring at a blank piece of white with no fucking clue how I am going to turn that into something again. And the only way I even know it is possible is that I have done, at this point, 45 times in a row. Somehow. I don't know how. Just eating an elephant bite by bite I guess. Honestly, it's wild. I am like a 3rd party observer watching it happen and going "Now how in the ever-loving fuck did that guy manage to do that again!"

So yeah, tell the truth, my hobby is finding time to sleep, eat, play with my son, and be a good husband in between my two grueling jobs, my work (which ramped up like crazy because of COVID-19) and my secret life as Joe (which takes up 20-30 hours a week).

You know, my dream is for this to get on Netflix somehow in the next 5 years. It doesn't even have to be Joe vs Elan School, it could just be a "Making a Murderer" or "Tiger King" style of multi-episode documentary where the world can learn about this fucked up, mental, almost too crazy to be true, place called Elan. And I would love for this comic to inspire that somehow or to have the right person find this comic and then ask me to do that. 

I don't want money, fame (I will remain anonymous forever for the safety of my family), or anything other than for nobody else to ever have to go through some shit like this again. And I know I cannot stop that, forever. Evil exist. It will always exist. But if I can put a serious dent in it, as a survivor of it, then that would be the ultimate goal of all of this.