! - page twelve

Just another page for ! this week.


Ho hum. Hum de dum...

sketchbook: more postit stuff

More postit sketches, drawn at various times throughout the day. Not really a comic this time, but it kind of looks it.

They really oughtn't have given me access to the postit notes.

! - page eleven

You know, I haven't read many reviews of Yuichi Yokoyama's New Engineering that say anything beyond "It was weird. I liked it." (or sometimes, "I liked it, it was weird"), but Ryan Tokola manages a step better in his review of the book. 

He makes some good points about the "architectural" treatment of the stories and the role that the incidental material plays in the reading experience which only really touch on part of what makes this book really great.

And it is great, but like all great thing it's not always obvious why. Sure, the character design is "out there" - that's cool. There's a stylish, otherworldly disconnect throughout. And the omnipresent "sound effects" give the stories amazing tension - but fuck all that, really (isn't that just a hyper stylized version of what happened whenever Adam West socked Cesar Romero in the jaw, after all?) It's the treatment of "story" that blows me away here.

There is nothing so much as plot - or characterization - or dramatic tension/resolution here (not in any traditional sense). What we have instead are finely choreographed construction scenes, or battles, or whatever... that ultimately lead... nowhere. These are narratives- sure - but not "stories." And yet it's as engaging a read as any you'll find in comics. It reinforces a belief I have that runs counter to what so many express - that "telling a story" is not necessarily the be all and end all of all comics. Yuichi Yokoyama conveys his message without the traditional constraints of storytelling that everyone says are so all-fired important.

His book, and comics as a whole is better for it. New Engineering is a fantastic, and important, and challenging work.

That is to say, It was weird. I liked it.

(Link to the review via Derik because I keep forgetting to read Guttergeek myself)

The Briefest of Interludes: on Religion

Last week I spent all my comics time - when I would usually be preparing another page of ! for you all - on Alexander's Uncertainty and on my rewrite of Lost and Found for Cat Garza. To make up for the lack of a ! here is a little doodle postit comic I made when I should have been actually working for a living.
I hope the three of you left reading here will enjoy it:



Next: back to !

! - page ten

! - page nine

Page nine. Are you following all of this?

! - page eight

This was the roughest week yet in a rough new year, I think. The kids aren't sleeping well (well... Sophie, mostly) so that means we aren't getting any sleep. Jamon picked up a cold (so it's kind of like sick all over again). And then of course we picked it up too. Pile that on everything else that needs to get done every day (but quite often doesn't). For most of the week I've been like a sick-sick zombie with too much to do and no energy to do it. I feel lucky to have squeezed this page out.

(Aw, quit yer griping Tim)

Anyway... !, page eight here. I'm noticing a lot of visual echoes between the threads from page to page. Not quite planned... but I like it. Go ahead, see what you can find.

! - page seven

Not much to say for this week. Been keeping extremely busy without having much of anything to show for it. Here's ! page seven.

! - page six

Page six - and, wow! Where the hell have I been?

This new year has not been kind to me so far. Times've been tough and they're getting tougher, so posting will slack down here for a while as life slowly grinds me into a fine pulp.
I'm shelving Squirrel before it even really gets started. It's far too time consuming a process and what little time I have at this point needs to be focused elsewhere (i.e. non-blog stuff).
I'll continue to post ! pages as they're finished. Maybe one a week? More if I'm lucky. It's probably hard to follow, trickling out like this. When it's done I'll collect it in some form and you can see the thing all at once.
Beyond that, maybe I'll post some sketches and doodles and stuff. I've got a couple of projects that I just don't feel comfortable posting on here, at least until they're done. A rewrite of Lost and Found (hope none of you were too attached to that one as it appeared here) and a long-delayed project with Alexander Danner. So much to do, so little time...

Real life is kicking my ass right now.

! - page five

Happy New Year ever'body. To celebrate I drew the next page of ! for you.

Go nuts.

A Boy and His Squirrel - Page Three

Finally!
Continued from here, as you'll remember...

! - page four

Told you this would pull ahead. Really, I am still working on A Boy and His Squirrel...

! - page three

Page three. Almost done with page three for squirrel too, so these stories are neck and neck right now. I imagine ! is gonna pull ahead though.

If this weren't just a little sketchbook comic I'd have soo many ideas to artsy it up. Don't want to keep redoing what's already done, though. Not even at this early point, not when I have so much else to do.

! - page one(again) and two

I redrew page one of ! cause that's what I do: redraw things. Tightened it up a little, compressed the narrative (i.e. added a panel) and left out the hatches.

and then I drew page two:


One and two are a two page spread so here they are side by side:


I'm having a bit of trouble with drawing A Boy and His Squirrel this week. I hope to have some up next week. I'm still working on it...

! - page one

So much for "obsessive need to post here..."

I bought a new pen over the weekend. Rather than jump back into A Boy and His Squirrel, I wanted to warm up/break in the pen. So here's page one of another story called !. It's meant to be my best bad Steinberg impression but with all the hatching I accidentally put in it's like a poor man's (bad) Gauld. I'll be using this as a warm up to Squirrel pages so I'll jump back and forth between the two, posting here.

You know, if all goes well...

The Pen Runneth Dry

Continuing the stellar launch of my latest project here at the ol' blog: two pages in and I've hit another stumbling block.
The pen I've been using to ink these pages has gone and dried up on me. At least dried up enough that I can't get the line I want out of it. It's taking me about four times as long as it should to ink each panel - retracing the lines to get a good mark. Very frustrating. I can only use the one kind of pen as every other I have bleeds way out on this cheap sketchbook paper. Rather than butchering the new pages (as in the exerpt above) I'm gonna wait to draw more until I can find me a suitable replacement. I don't know when I'll get the chance to - soon I hope.

So, some filler then...

I've got a few other projects in the works right now, as well as normal sketchbooky type stuff to post. This'll fuel my obsessive desire to update this page. A Boy and His Squirrel will be back as soon as I buy a new pen.

Sorry about the rough going, but I'd rather have something I like to post, rather than just something.

ehh... such is the life of a sketch blog...

A Boy and His Squirrel - New Page Two

Page two again.
That's right. That's how things are gonna go here.

I've thumbed out the next several pages and will continue to do so. Hopefully a little planning ahead will stave off any more difficulties like this page gave me. I think I'm revising my "schedule" (more like goal) from three to two pages a week too, though this week is only one page (again).

Anyway, in other news: Ira Marcks once again has an internet presence! I'm a big fan of his old Angel Interceptor works. Along with their return, he's also posted a lot of his newer printed work. This is good news to me and you as well. Thanks to Phil McAndrew for the tipoff.

A Boy and His Squirrel - Page Two

Page two. Missed posting this yesterday...
Not as satisfied with this page. Had to fight the urge to redraw it.

Thanksgiving was crazy busy, just as I thought. It was nice having the family together.
Of course something always goes wrong. My sister, in town from England, brought along some kind of mystery illness (maybe probably picked up in NYC, where she was on business). It may be chicken pox or it may be scabies but in either case I have a two year old and a four month old exposed to something. Oh boy! Something else to freak out about. Can't anything just be easy for once? It's a holiday for chrtistsake.

A Boy and His Squirrel - Page One

Here we go, page one is up...
and now time for a break.

With my usual spectacular knack for timing, I'm starting in on this one just before a holiday weekend. We're hosting my family for Thanksgiving this year, which means I'll be busy,busy,busy. So I probably won't have another page up until next week. Sorry about the lousy planning on my part. I may through up something for you to look at. No guarantees on any new pages.

So much for that schedule...

A Boy and His Squirrel - Title Page

This feels like kind of a cheat - posting a title page like this. But I wanted to get something posted today and this was quicker than a real page. I'm going to be taking a little more time with these, with an eye towards collecting them at some point. It'll still be write-as-you-go but I'm thinking in scenes rather than in pages this time. I'm shooting for three pages a week but will only post them when I like them, and realistically I probably won't stick to that schedule. Anyway, here we go...


And, uh, guys? I haven't been at the whole LiveJournal thing long, but I think I may have broken it. Andrew has been a pretty vocal supporter in the comments section there and I always appreciate his comments. He's an immensely talented cartoonist as well, I'll miss his posting stuff to LJ. It is sad to see his journal close but I wish him well In wherever he goes next.

First real page scheduled for Wednesday.