Culture

A Space Between Dreams and Nightmares: The Daily Doodles

Oh, it started as a simple thing on Facebook. A doodle a day. No big deal.

Then it moved to Tumblr. What’s this? Followers? A handful maybe. Nothing to write home about.

Defragmenting The BrainThe doodles marched on, drawings accompanied by weird stories about ghosts and parallel universes and space exploration…and the terrors of a normal life, the ones you see when you close your eyes.

Fast forward to today. David Michael Chandler’s Tumblr blog The Daily Doodles boasts over 100,000 followers.

He’s the editor of multiple Tumblr tags. He’s done interviews. He even held a coloring contest earlier this year. It’s essentially become what he does, and that’s pretty incredible.

Watching from a distance, it’s seemed like a kind of whirlwind, really.

It All Becomes MootThis isn’t a shameless plug. David Michael Chandler was one of the first “fans” of Stranger Dimensions (do I have fans?!). And it’s clear why I’m a fan of his; most of David’s work parallels the weird topics I’m interested in, and a lot of what I write about here on the blog.

Robots, time travel, multiverses. Shadow people and the end of the world. Space. It’s all there, in pictures and stories that wouldn’t feel out of place next to the nostalgic (and often unsettling) childhood tales of Ray Bradbury.

I always look forward to the next doodle that appears on my dashboard.

Anyway, I thought it’d be cool to share a few of my favorite Daily Doodles. I’ve been following David since mid-2011 (when I joined Tumblr), and I’ve got to admit: they’ve become drastically better and more elaborate as time has passed.

Be sure to click the title or image to visit The Daily Doodles and view the entire story. So, if I had to choose (in no particular order), these would be…

My Top 5 Daily Doodles

A Close Call

A Close Call

“As Alex Dorsey looks across the crowded room at Mariangela Diaz, he has no idea that in 99.99999% of the parallel universes that him and Mariangela both exist in, they actually meet at this party and embark on a horribly destructive and lengthy love affair that ruins both of their lives…”

The Shadows In The Dark

The Shadows In The Dark

“As long as Harry can remember, all through his childhood years,
There lived a Shadow in his bedroom, that feasted upon his fears…”

Adventures Through The Multiverse

Adventures Through The Multiverse

“Joy looks up as the console beeps, alerting her to the fact that one of the spheres within her holo-map of the giant, seemingly limitless Multiverse has registered a hit… She touches the sphere to check the data, and it’s clear: she found yet another version of herself in a parallel reality…”

Life in the Backseat

Life In The Backseat

“Leaning her head against the cool glass of the window, Hannah drifts in and out of a hazy, bored sleep as she sits in the backseat of her parents car, returning home after a long weekend at grandma’s…”

The Time is Now

The Time is Now

“One eye, the future;
The other, looks to the past.
Today, is ignored.”

Also, since you asked: yes, prints of The Daily Doodles are available for purchase.

For $25, you can star in your own personalized Daily Doodle. And for $50, you can get a print delivered to the pan-galactic mailing address of your choice (or your house. Whatever). $100 gets you a fancy GIF animation. There are rules and conditions, though, so be sure to check out all the details here if you’re interested.

Who wouldn’t want to have their own doodle hanging on the wall?

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Rob Schwarz

Writer, blogger, and part-time peddler of mysterious tales. Editor-in-chief of Stranger Dimensions.