! - page twenty-one

Finally!

The Briefest of Interludes: a not-so-brief interlude, part two

I really do have a page of ! coming, but I got back from vacation to find a preview of Secrets and Lies in my inbox. I have seven pages in the book, so you know I gotta pimp it here.

press release:

White River Junction, VT, May 20, 2008 – SECRETS & LIES is an anthology of comics edited by veteran web cartoonist Cayetano Garza Jr. which will make its debut at the 2008 MoCCA Art Festival in New York, NY (June 7-8, table C27).

The book features a wide spectrum of comics creators from all over the United States and from every corner of the comics industry. Comics legends SR Bissette (Swamp Thing, Tyrant) and Rick Geary (A Treasury of Victorian Murder, Gumby, Heavy Metal) share the stage with webcomics luminaries Shaenon Garrity (Narbonic) and Chuck Whelon (Pewfell). The book also features work from alumni, current and upcoming students from the Center for Cartoon Studies in White River Junction, Vermont and the surrounding cartooning community including recent graduates Joe Lambert and Bryan Stone, freshmen Lucy Knisley and Dan Archer and recent Xeric grant winner Colleen Frakes (CCS Class of 07) as well as many, many others.

For an expansive preview of the whole book, as well as pre-order information, click here.
Print run is limited. If you're not going to MoCCA, then I'd suggest ordering one now.

Following is a two page preview of my story, titled Untold Mysteries of (Popular) Science:


I get a free copy for being a contributor, but you'll probably want to buy one.

Next up: more !


Really.

The Briefest of Interludes: a not-so-brief interlude

Hey! Remember me?
Been a while since I posted an update for ! here and I have more coming, but I'm going away for the holiday and I thought I'd let you know what else I've been up to lately before I disappear again.

Some of you may remember me mentioning that I was working on a rewrite of my Lost and Found story-sketch (or sketch-story) for Cat Garza's Secrets and Lies anthology. Well I finished it now, and it's ended up quite a bit different than the original.

I cut the length by more than half to seven pages. The layout treatment is altered a bit, as are the character design and dialogue. It's also a completely different story called The Untold Mysteries of (Popular) Science.
Here's a brief exerpt from page two that pretty much sums up the premise:




I've also been playing the "part-time illustrator." My friend Chris is on the board of directors for the local Humane Society. He asked me to work up a design for their "Animal Transport Vehicle." Here's the colored pencil rough:



So all that - and, like, real life - has been keeping me pretty busy. Thanks to everybody for your patience. I'll be back with a page or two of ! next week, after the holiday.

! - page twenty

This has been a story about convergence and just about everything finally comes together on this page. All the threads get tangled up over the next couple of pages and the rest of the story will be spent unraveling them.

Here,of course, we have monster meeting robot, so it seems as good a time as any to give a shoutout to Monster and Robot Industries, three talented cartoonists to whom the entire tone of this story owes a debt.
Not incidentally, Monster and Robot's own Edward J. Grug III has begun serialization (at his LiveJournal) of a story written by my friend Alexander Danner - author, poet, cartoonist. It's called "Bring Your Daughter to Work Day" and I've been looking forward to this collaboration for some time. Alexander and I are also working together on a story which will eventually run right here on this blog.

So how's that for convergence, anyway?

! - page nineteen

Go on, try to make some sense of what's going on here without the benefit of the previous pages. I DARE YOU!!

(reminder)

! - page eighteen

For those of you who are interested, I've cobbled together a rough "story so far..." page at my site. I just threw everything in as is so some of the pages don't line up and the images aren't scaled down at all - which makes it a little tall for most browsers.
As I get nearer to completion I'll try and tighten up the presentation a bit, but this gives you sort of an idea of the overall scope.
enjoy...

! - page seventeen

I'm only partly sure what Derik is up to lately with his comic Things Change, but I know I like it. Check out the trick he pulls over the last couple of pages of the "Tiresias" chapter.

! - pages fifteen and sixteen

As promised.

! - page fourteen

I guess I lied about that two page spread this week. Turns out the next two pages work much better together than this one would. Actually, I was just gonna make it a three page spread but I haven't finished the third page yet.
I guess I could've just put this page up last week. Sorry.

The Briefest of Interludes: Welton Colbert

I'm holding this weeks page of ! back for a two page spread next week.
In the meantime you get this guy:


Anybody else notice that Ryan Estrada has been sneaking more and more Welton Colbert appearances in lately? He's been popping up more and more often at Ryan's livejournal. And just recently ol' Welton even (almost) reprised his roll as online host of the WCCAs. It's like he's coming out of retirement or something.

I was once a target for one of Ryan's Comixpedia pieces featuring Welton* I even wrote a kind of rebuttal strip for the Welton Colbert "guest week" a few years back. I had a whole story worked out featuring Welton, Rupert Murdoch and Fox News, Ryan Estrada himself, and an overall indictment of modern society. Turns out it's a lot more work than I had thought to turn out a NINE PART INFINITE CANVAS EPIC!?!. I never made it past the prologue. The panel above is one of my restart attempts (when I first got my Wacom - note the shaky line). The original prologue is still up at my website.

I don't much feel a part of the whole "Webcomics" thing anymore. But, as Derik already pointed out, ! could be considered an infinite canvas comic. I guess I'm still right about where I was three years ago...


* Although, take out the text intro and the attack could've been leveled at Cat Garza, Patrick Farley(sites' down), Demian 5, Daniel Goodbrey , Neal Von Flue, or any number of better known (and, dare i say, just better) "Infinite Canvas" cartoonists.

! - page thirteen

Lucky page thirteen. Why do I say lucky? My son got pretty sick this week. I've spent the last two days pretty much exclusively taking care of him, so you're lucky* to see a page at all this week.


(*- or unlucky, depending on how you feel about it)

! - 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.