The character in the comic above first appeared in Psychopolitica as a prospective new anchor for my Weird News Project.
It was created by Giorgos Terzakis upon my request:
Jason Novak, the author of the comic strip above, developed it further:
PsyPol reader Clark McGillis sent in his own version (which I re-colored):
This was in October, 2021. We’ve tried a few more characters for the news host position (e.g.: 1, 2, 3), but then a real person, the distinguished economist and public intellectual Glenn Loury, unexpectedly took it over about a month ago.
Now, the Saint is returning, perhaps with a different purpose.
Before drawing the comic, Jason said this in an email to me:
It’s hard to articulate quite what I have in mind, so maybe I’ll do one story just to give you a better sense of what I’m envisioning.
It’s definitely a character that wouldn’t speak.
It seems like there would just be total understanding if you encountered it, almost like a mirror.
We decided to treat it as a collaboration.
But before I take my turn in trying to move the story and the character further, I want to invite you to do the same.
One of my favorite features of the Saint of the Desert is that he’s stepping into our world like a mythological character might—not through me, or Giorgos, or Jason alone, but through a bunch of people at the same time. He feels discovered more than invented. The way Giorgos saw him was different from the way Jason did, and this makes him more real to me, as if he exists in a dimension we can’t perceive directly, and is casting these different shadows onto the imaginations of different artists.
So, if you want to try your hand at drawing him, or if you have a feeling you might know what world he is from, or if you have seen him in a dream and have a story to share—please send me whatever you’ve got to nikita.s.petrov@gmail.com.
 | A guest post by
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Ginsberg is doing a poetry reading in Southern California in the sixties. The Saint of the Desert appears. The young poets are frightened, all the saint does is listen. Ginsberg says, “welcome, old friend.” One of the youngsters asks, “you know this guy?” Ginsberg says, “of course, here is the long lost Wandering Buddhist, he wanders the Earth after rejecting Zoroaster.” The youngster replies, “seriously?” Ginsberg says, “yeah last time we were in Jersey we all got a drink to talk it over, the bar tender had never seen two Buddhists, a Jew, and a Zoroastrian all walk into a bar together. I was one of the Buddhists and the Jew.” Nobody laughed at Ginsberg’s joke. They were too afraid of not understanding. The Saint of the Desert just smiled, got up and walked away. The youngster and Ginsberg watch him go, and the youngster says, “I’ll have whatever you guys were having.”
Oh, I thought that was Glenn Loury! 😂 If he's a purveyor of the news, I can see why his ears fell off, and why he seems so confused. I can't draw, but I'll look for him in my dreams, and report back if he shows up.