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Fairy tale anthology try outs

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Hey, I am currently waiting with baited breath to hear if my submission to GuruKitties ‘Once Upon a Time’ Fairy Tale comic anthology will be accepted.  I put in a piece for the cover art as well.

This dude here is my wolf.  Surprised right?  – that I could choose a fairy tale with a wolf character in it?  I mean, it’s not as if you couldn’t toss a rock in the land of fairy tales and hit a story with a wolf in it.

Anyway, I hope I hope I hope I get into it.  I’m tired of all this success publishing articles and chapters professionally as a librarian.  I want some success publishing as a comicker!  I’m just kidding, I’m not tired of professional publishing success, but I do want some art/comicking/novelist publishing success too.

So, keep your fingers crossed for me!

Participate in the 2nd Annual Mini-Comics Day: May 26th, 2012 | Mini-Comics Day

Participate in the 2nd Annual Mini-Comics Day: May 26th, 2012 | Mini-Comics Day published on 1 Comment on Participate in the 2nd Annual Mini-Comics Day: May 26th, 2012 | Mini-Comics Day

Participate in the 2nd Annual Mini-Comics Day: May 26th, 2012 | Mini-Comics Day.

Do you know me well enough to know that I am already way too excited about this even though I’ve only known about it for 10 minutes?  Of course I’m going to do it.  You should do it too.

Now I gotta figure out what I’m drawing.  And, should I print up multiples; do you want one? …without knowing what it’ll be yet?

Faith Erin Hicks

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A little while ago I may have mentioned Friends With Boys because it is an awesome comic that has now come out in honest to goodness touch-able form.  Really, you can buy it from bookstores (if any have managed to survive around you) and hold it’s wood pulpiness in your hands.  I did.  One of the coolest things about Friends With Boys is that the author has more comics in pulpiness and intangible form.  Check them out on faith erin hicks’ webpage » Web Comics.

I wish I had more afternoons to while away reading her comics, and then when I am done I wish she had more comics I could while myself away within.  Faith Erin Hicks is awesome.  I kid you not.

Project rambling

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I don’t know if you noticed that I have a few comics listed on the site that haven’t really started yet.  It’s kind of a commitment to the project.  If I tell someone I’m going to do it, then I have to live up to my side of the bargain.  That’s what this is, I’m going to ramble on about all these great ideas I have and that will mean that I’ll have to follow through eventually.  I am actively trying to limit myself to how many running projects I have at any one time.  I found that the relief and pride of getting one of them done is too good to delay by adding more commitments to the mix.

I will be finishing a couple more things before I get on with it, I mean with the other things I want to do.  The other stories I want to write.  Did I tell you that I usually think of my characters first and then make the story around them?  Maybe they aren’t completely thought out, but they’ve got flesh.  I’ve got so many stories racing through my head, gathering up so many characters, that I felt bad about abandoning them to dreamy memories.  So when I drew them I had to figure out a container to put them in so they wouldn’t get lost.  That container is a highschool.  Yup, at some point in time they all went to school, sorta.  Anyway, once I get some things scanned I’m going to start building an online (and expandable) yearbook so ya’ll can see the people who fall out of my head.

And in the midst of thinking up a highschool for all these people to live in, I figured out a great flashback story for Levi Levi.  It will explain how Annie became his book-keeper/office-manager type person.  And it will feature the time traveling twins Clement and Rosalie Skitt.  They’re up on the characters page, but did not yet have a story of their own.  Technically Levi Levi’s next chapter isn’t their story either…so I came up with one.  It will be a choose your own adventure type alternative format comic – which means I can’t put it up anywhere until it’s mostly figured out and drawn.  I mean, choose-your-own adventures don’t happen linearly so they can’t be doled out once a week.

And none of this has anything to do with my next huge comic idea:  The 22 Lives of Marcus Trapp.  This one actually requires research, so it’s slow going.  Just writing about all of these makes me excited about them all over again.

Email from my sofa

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So…remember when I said I’d be updating all my comics (that’s three + the drawing board, so four technically) once a week?  I suppose you noticed that I failed big time on that goal this month.  I have been away from my sofa, the place where I do all my drawings, sitting cross legged with a stack of sketchbooks on my lap and NCIS playing on the TV.  Instead, I have been spreading the good message of longer resource sharing due dates.  And yeah, I know that makes no sense to people not in the business.  But I gave 1/3 of a presentation at an international conference!  I manned poster session at another conference!  I made great improvements to my resume!  I’ve been traveling way too much!

But enough excuses!  This past weekend I was able to spend some quality time with my sofa.  I have finished the first chapter of No Evil.  I will scan this and get it running here for your pleasure and then I will concoct the next chapter with the story telling help of doomedmoviethon Richard.  I have made great headway on the story of Ramone, Joy, and Gee (that’s Flip Side to you) as well as Levi Levi (which is also winding up a chapter).  They will be back in force.  And I finished a sketchbook.  That means that I’ve got a whole bunch of newly scanned artwork just dying to worm it’s way into your eyeballs.  Are you ready for all of this?  Well?

SLG and me

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Ok, so long ago and far away I took a trip to Emerald City Comics.  I was just getting into comics and I found the listing in the yellow pages while I was on my Summer vacation.  What I found there was a slightly fear inducing, utterly magical world of tables and boxes filled with stories and pictures.  This is where I found ‘Hero Sandwich.’  It was a collection of about six issues that comprised one story line.  I fell in love.

I can’t say if this was really in a time before the internet or if it was just a time before I was aware of it.  Basically, I had little access to finding more except for that same shop, Emerald City Comics, or the ad for a publishers catalog in the back of ‘Hero Sandwich.’  The ad was already old and I wondered, as I filled out and sealed up the request, whether or not I would hear anything of it.  A month or so later, I had mail from Slave Labor Graphics.

I gathered up my meager allowance savings and placed my order for a few titles including Milk and cheese, Library Bonnet, and Pirate Patrol.  My comic book collecting was slow in those days and everything got put on hold during the school year.  By the time I made my second order, I had found SLG’s online site and discovered Johnny the Homicidal Maniac, Rare Creature, and Lenore.  Eventually SLG publications started showing up in honest to goodness bookstores, and then in used bookstores.  This is how I found Rex Libris.  That bowling ball monolith logo was all I needed to see to know I wanted the comic it lived on.

Somewhere in the middle of this I got the idea in my head that I might create a comic myself.  I’m not even sure where this initial attempt ended up.  I think I can remember it being pretty bad, you know typical Mary Sue turned mutated super hero.  It was the idea of SLG’s open submission policy that made me even want to attempt comicking.  I was misguided, I know.  I have much better reasons for drawing comics now.

Why didn’t I make the connection

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So, I went to Megacon a few weeks back (or more – I’m so bad at time now a days) and I ran into two great people named Tara and Paul Abbamondi.  They probably didn’t realize that I thought they were so great, ’cause I’m not good at getting that out there, but I was charmed by their comics and walked away with a couple in hand.

Now in the present, I’m looking up their sites to share them with you and I find on www.tarabba.com a link to the comic she did for 24hr comics day and it looked familiar.  So, I went back to the post that I did about 24hr comics day and saw, yes, I had found her before.  What a fabulous message from fate!  Only I wished I’d have remembered how I admired her work already when I first met her.

I am now going to faithfully follow her and Paul Abbomondi, from whom I bought 31 Horribly Bad Horror Comics.  His journal comics, These Sweet Memories, brings out the voyeur in me.   The chuckling, sighing, commiserating voyeur.

Etsy Indie Comics Haul #2

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The first trip was such a success I had to go buy more and then I had to take a really long time to write about all of it.  And here is what I got:

Kay and P 00 & 01– Starts the story of Kay – music student and P, her skeleton ?ghost? friend.  The story is painted really completely with great detail and a nice way of coloring the background to be a little lighter – accentuating the forward action.

Terka – fabulously conceived world of monsters.  I like the city gate and museum settings.  The line work is clean, stark and wonderful black and white.

Carnival – is an anthology of short comics about going or being in the carnival.  It’s amazing how differently a group of artists can treat a theme.  The variety of story alone is fascinating and all of them well done little scenes.

Southpaw – I love the drawings and the style.  This is a fabulous little zine.  Mostly art zine/sketchbook style with a few comic sequences.

Breathers – What can I say?  The whole idea of a semi apocalyptic future where everyone has to have breathing apparatuses when they are outside and yet everything is still normal is great.  I wanna keep reading.  I’ll have to get the next book.

Red Planet Ride #2 – Just as fabulous and beautiful as Red Planet Ride #1.  I had to get it.  So, this wasn’t really so untried a purchase.

The Bad-Ass Habit – Nuns, all girls boarding schools, arrows and bear traps.  What more could a girl want?  And that’s not even spoiling this delightful and stark fairy tale.

Emiko superstar – The dull to fabulous summer story that everyone wishes they had with a healthy bit of apprehension.  At least me – totally a story that draws you in and makes you feel part of it.

The Cauldron in the Back Cabinet – Kinetic drawing and excellently rendered gloom and dark autumn days.  I love the mystery and the reveal.

Charles & Renfield – Beautiful little mini comic by Kiki Jones.  I like the story book style.

Fish Food – little vignettes by Ashley Quigg are like beginningless and endless dream scenes.  There is a new twist on every page, and yet they all flow together.

Umbra – Wordless and wonderful.  The pictures almost look as though they could be woodblock.  Dreamy story line.

Mephistos – The art work is sketchy and spare.  The page compositions are genius in a ‘hey this is so pleasing to follow/read/look-at I didn’t even notice why’ kind of way.  I really wished the story had gotten further before the issue ended.  I guess that’s how I’m going to get the next one.

Mason and Clarence from Your Name Here

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more web comic love

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I think I said before, you know back in my first web comic love, that I would follow up with more as I had time to read more of the ones I had bookmarked that looked as if they were really smashing.   Well, I’ve had a little time and they were really smashing.  Here’s some more of the maybe-you-haven’t-found-these-yourself type of comics, that I’m only doing you a good turn by telling you about them–so that you’ve heard of them now.

Friends with Boys — Ok, so I was reading this and it was wonderful with a bit of quirky and I was really interested to see where it was going but it wasn’t there yet.  Then, I go back to it (’cause it’s taking me a really long time to write this post) and it has a massive amount of new pages and now I cannot wait another second for the next page!  Oh, and the drawing style is absolutely beautiful!

Todd Allison and Petunia Violet — The style is fresh, endearing, and colorful.  I like how it just jumps into the everyday life just before the intrigue explodes and takes you along with it.  The characters are explained as the action progresses; yes, a great way to hook a reader.  I am hooked!

Sfeer Theory — Really gorgeous and polished.  I don’t know about you, but I often find it hard to get into a story that is also building a completely different world with hierarchies and vocabulary.  I mean, it’s a hard thing to do–take a story completely out of reality as we know it and not belabor the process.  Well, I am completely intrigued in this world, and really want to see where it’s going.

Fishbones — Nice style!  Good story set up…surprised and liked the flash-back pages.  Yes.  Page 52, introduce new character as liking Giallo films, do I need any other reason to like this comic?  (and yes, I owe all my knowledge of Giallos to Richard and doomedmoviethon, but you’ve been there, right?  trying to explain something to someone and having to give a history lesson just to get to your original point.  It’s nice to find people who just know.)

Dresden Codak — Oh it’s so pretty.  And though I am still confusingly wrapped up in story lines and another world (like I said–hard to do right), I am still eyes-glued-to-screen on every single page.  This is a comic that somehow creates a fabulous, complicated, touchable group of characters with a few words and drawn expressions.

Octopus Pie — is about two women living in Brooklyn.  From the description, I have to admit, I didn’t really think it would appeal to me, but I had hopped to it from another comic that I already liked who liked it and then I couldn’t stop reading.  I.  Couldn’t.  Stop.

The Meek — This is another some-other-world one that starts out all wild girl in the woods and ends up genie in a bottle who is going to take over your soul and end the world.  After it hurts people that is.  No, not horror.  Definitely fantastical and earthy at the same time.

2D Goggles or the Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage — Did anyone else have to take History of Computers in school?  Is this dating me?  I came from the time when schools realized that computers were the coming thing but they were still new enough to need a full introduction to ignorant children.  The point being, I had to study Charles Babbage and his Analytical Machine.  I never thought I’d be using my learning to read comics one day.

Badirfilay — So pretty and weathered and gloomy and really just starting up.  Even so, it’s been picked up my Manga Magazine.  I”m excited to see where it’s going.  I love the secret underbelly of society thing.  Or, is it the secret controlling force of society thing?

Johnny Wander — What can I say… I am not the first to stumble upon this comic, think it was pretty spiffy and then promptly fall in love with all the characters.  I have feelings of the stalker in me:  I want to meet them and shower adoration upon them…only I’d freeze up and not be able to say anything ’cause that’s how I am.  The rapper Adam WarRock mentioned in his forward to volume 2 that the comic felt like home when you were home sick.  I’d have to agree.

Band Vs Band –Did you know I got a box set of Jem and the Holograms for Christmas.  Band vs. Band by Kathleen takes all the best parts of cartoon bands and makes them gorgeous!  I love the magazine covers and the band interviews.

Bucko — by Jeff Parker and Erica Moen, billed as a comical murder-mystery.  Not sure where this is going but it is fantastic so far with a host of unique characters that split the action without managing to make it confusing at all.  It makes me think of Canada, but I have never been there.

The worst part of web comics

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is that they can sometimes live hard and die too soon.  The ability of any story teller to put up their stuff as they spin it and countless web hosts to help them means that a lot of stories die half lived…forever frozen in history and the internet archive and destined to frustrate eager readers in perpetuity.  This is a whole heck of a lot different from published comics that generally have a proposed story line and map to completion before presentation to potential readers.  Webcomics are like swimming in comickers head soup–right there inside the ideas that make the stories, ideas that sometimes have no ending in sight.

As far as I can tell, this is exactly what happened with Hanna is Not a Boy’s Name.  I stumbled onto it late, maybe a year or so from its first page and long after a devoted following had erected a facebook page for it.  I bookmarked the site, subscribed to the RSS feed and checked back often as it continually did not get updated…not even a news item from the author.  I wanted more, damn it!  So I checked back again just as I was gathering my best of webcomics list and found out that the site had completely vanished.  It was gone…I could not even scroll through the pages I had already seen, and as I fumbled through Google results I found it for sale!   Oh my luck!  Volume 1!  I had wanted to possess it anyway…I am so giggly.  I am waiting for the mail to arrive.  (UPDATE:  arrived and I am so ecstatic!  Can’t wait for more.)

Ok, but not every stalled and deleted idea has a happy ending; case in point:  Gjerde Sha:  Part Time Zombie.  It is markering genius!  It is beautiful!  It is not updated since June!

And, somehow even sadder, the comics that are killed…by an announcement that they will not continue.  I was just getting all sewn into Will Work for Blood and now it is over.  It was so promising, it was mysterious and bleak, it is over.

Indie comic Etsy haul #1

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The Filigree – Martin Øbakke and Celena Cavala create this fabulous fairy newspaper complete with advertisements, classifieds, and photographs.  And, as far as I can tell, all the photographs for the stories are of characters they have created in doll form.  Do I have to say this is a fabulous idea? and it is fabulously pulled off.

Stone Monkey and Red Planet Ride by Jim Round – These are plane old adorable, and polished and full of color.  The environments created within are amazing.

Ghosts of Pineville from CricketPress –  I never lived in a place with a haunted house or a ghost story, but I’ve read a lot of books and watched a lot of movies set in towns that did.  It’s kind of like the quintessential American mystery and that is probably why the Ghosts of Pineville felt so nostalgic.  This is good stuff.  Good stuff.

All of Them Witches by Patt Kelley –  Tiny short stories and vignettes with a surreal fluid and pointy style.

Grickle things The Hiddenwait…NOT an Etsy purchase, but I must include it in the haul because it’s fabulous and was part of the same shopping spree.  Sorry Etsy.  This is an adorable story by Graham Annable.

Flesh and Bone – Julia Gfrörer put together this beautiful, painful lump of bound paper and story.  Her details and the plethora of line and movement only emphasize a fantastical and tragic story.

Web comic love

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When people find out you like to read comics they always ask you which ones you like, you know, to compare with their own list.  Webcomics are the same–and, oddly enough seem to have a different cast of fans than regular comics do…maybe it’s generational, dunno.  Anyway, I am really bad at having an answer to such simple questions on the spot, so I am making a list to permanently, at least in this moment right here before I find more, answer it.

Hark, a Vagrant! — is fabulous literary and historical comics by K. Beaton.  Yes, much more than a simple web comic now, I just bought the book and spend pleasant, multitudinous minutes paging through it.

Wondermark — by David Malki reminds me of the intermission animations in Monty Python’s Flying Circus…

Two Keys — “a noir-ish urban fantasy webcomic by Nuu and Schumie” took me a couple looks to get into only because I thought I wasn’t looking for anything with a complex and well constructed story.  I’m totally head over heels for it now and bought the first volume to fuel my covetousness.  Also via Manga Magazine.

Sailor Twain or The Mermaid in the Hudson — beautiful charcoal work and enthralling story.

Strange Investigations — arresting noir-pop bitonal illustrations and promising beginning.

Megan Brennan comics and illustration — isn’t actually one ongoing comic, it’s a collection of comics in various stages of ongoing-ness, or maybe only one is ongoing at a time.  Anyway, really fun and colorful–which pleases my eyeballs.

Spare Keys for Strange Doors — includes something like the paranormal investigators who help the police set up while still being completely fresh and fun.

Plume — is painfully gorgeous, with a nice intriguing beginning and not enough pages!

Scarey Go Round presents Bad Machinery…read Murder She Writes — is a fabulous comic that comes from a fabulous comic with more fabulous comics to come by John Allison.

Two Guys and Guy — is a strip style comic about a group of friends by Rickard Jonasson.  I like the style and I laugh, so it’s good, and even better than that I just found out it has a feed….A FEED!  Now I can really keep track of it!

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand, that’s all she wrote for right now.  I’m the kind of girl to search and gather until I’m tired and then come back later to examine and sort…so, I’ve got a bunch of things bookmarked that I just haven’t gotten to yet.  I will add to the list later, after I’ve read more.

About the comics

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Hey, hello, hi.  I just wanted to take this opportunity to remember that I have comics and that three four of them are actually ongoing at the moment.  You can catch them all at the comic launch–including the one or two that are in conception stages.  Levi Levi is my forever going to be ongoing comic until I stop comic, and I have some some big plans for Flip Side and No Evil.  They all have feeds over in the right hand menu, too, if you’re into feeds and stuff.  I know I am.  I’ve got a truck load of comic feeds going to my reader, and sometime soon I’ll talk about all the webcomic goodness I have found out there that other talented, better comickers are doing.  Right now it’s about me.  ALL ABOUT ME!  Comics:

In the Holiday Spirit

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Here is my Christmas card this year, inspired by Krampus cards from Victorian times.  I’m still reeling from having a started and completed novel project for November.  But now there are comic pages to draw, and old projects to get back to.  I intend to make good use of my holiday vacation week.

But before that, I’ve got a commissioned painting to finish…oh and those comic pages I talked about.  I’ve got plenty of penciled Levi Levi that need ink and scanning.  Not so many of No Evil and Flip Side, but I’ve got plans man! Their stories will not falter!

 

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