MAYBE WE’RE NOT ALONE AFTER ALL
Jomny Sun takes spare line drawings and bad spelling and turns them into something profound Jonathan Sun is better known by his alien alter-ego Jomny (@jonnysun), an icon in the social-media movement known as “weird Twitter.” His new book, everyone’s a aliebn when ur
a aliebn too, threads original prose together with the text of some of his tweets to create a surreal cartoon journey starring Jomny, a doughy little alien sent to investigate “humabns” on the faraway planet “earbth.”
Jomny never actually encounters a “humabn,” but does meet a melancholy tree, a haughty otter who insists he is an auteur, a swarm of bees who are afraid to get too close (love stings!) and a beaver who is too busy being busy to be a “friend.”
The story, complete with its themes of alienation, isolation and deplorable spelling, embodies the trials of life in the internet age. It spotlights how very strange the world looks through the fresh eyes of an outsider — or someone who feels like one.
Sun, 27, a Torontonian whose unpindownable career has included architecture, engineering, comedy and playwriting, is a doctoral student at MIT’s school of urban studies and planning. He spoke about the world he has crafted and why he feels like a hedgehog just along for the ride.
This book is made of small, mostly selfcontained scenes. What were the common threads?
It’s almost autobiographical. I was working on the book for a year, so it’s the documentation of what I was going through that year. It tackles solitude and loneliness, anxiety and depression.
There are a few threads about what it means to be different and celebrating those differences. Part of my mission was to make every character kind of “othered” in some way. It deals with not knowing who you are and trying to figure out your place in the world.
Is therapeutic art an interest of yours? One of your other projects is the Twitter bot @tinycarebot, which users can follow for self-care reminders about drinking water and taking deep breaths.
(The story) does provide a kind of nonpolitical oasis. But at the same time I think it has deeply important messages that apply in our time now more than ever. There is this fear of difference and this fear of outsiders coming in. I hope the book might worm in and incept the idea that difference is good.
Do you have a favourite scene?
I’m actually more the hedgehog character than the alien character. The hedgehog likes this idea of what it means to create and be an artist.
The one I always think about is with the hedgehog. The snow is falling. It’s just like this quiet peaceful moment when the hedgehog and the alien are sitting and watching the snow fall and talking about life and art.
Who is the alien Jomny?
I think (the character) did come pretty fully formed. As I was tweeting, I was always spinning the idea in my head of what a physical or a drawn version of this character would be. I think (Jomny) definitely has a backstory. The most important thing is that the alien comes from a place where sameness is the goal. On the home planet, there are millions of aliens, and they’re all the same and they all want to be the same. They celebrate all their similarities. And Jomny is the odd one out; the one who has never felt right. On Earth, they feel at home.