Hi folks–for those of you who thought my last video showing off my drafting board was entertaining, then I’ve got more bad cinema and too quiet audio for your amusement.
Incidentally, you can probably see why I never developed a podcast: I’m a low talker who cannot raise his voice, and I’m a slow talker. But, I use what I’ve got, so there…
Now that I think of it, I believe I forgot to post this one, too:
Hi, Folks:
My friend A.P. Fuchs, the prolific publisher of Coscom Entertainment, has produced a quite a few Axiom-man books, but so far they have been mostly prose novels. (Check them out. They are available on Amazon.com, and in the Kindle Store) Now A.P. is taking the dive into a monthly Axiom-man comic, and the results should be great.
On the surface, Axiom-man is a coming-of-age story; it is also a nuts-n-bolts, ground view of becoming a superhero. Gabriel Garrison is granted amazing powers by a mysterious stranger across an internet connection. In biblical times this message and gift would have been delivered by an angel, and perhaps it’s that way here as well. Gabriel’s own name also alludes to this angelic connection, as the original Gabriel is one of God’s four arch-angels. I could go on making connections, but really I should leave that to you, the readers.
Gabriel’s private life is a mess, and it reminds us simultaneously of Clark Kent and Peter Parker. Gabriel is a wage slave, a bit of a non-entity, and he’s enamored with a co-worker who wants nothing to do with him.
I could go on and on, but here’s the thing as I see it: Axiom-man is a parable about man’s ascendant nature or soul. (Of course, when I put it that way, it doesn’t sound entertaining–but it is!) If you prefer to just read it as a story about a man who becomes the world’s first superhero and has all sorts of problems with learning his powers and coming to grips with his enemies, then that’s fine too, because it’s all here.
Axiom-man is available for pre-orders now.
…and this is what I’ve come up with.
For it to work with Comicpress it would have to be a modify of the Comicpress theme.
What do you think? This comic is one of the most important things in my life, so it deserves a nice hangout.
The exact diminsions are a work in progress.
Now, to find and hire a theme developer…
Today, I spent most of the day working on the second “Johnny Saturn” graphic novel, and it’s going to rock. I was surprised by how much text and sundry information I had to pull together, but I shouldn’t have been. We are using Lightning Source again for printing and distribution.
I just sent a new “Johnny Saturn” page to our colorist, and it holds next week’s episodes.
I need to draw and ink another page of Last Rites so that my other colorist has something to work on early next week. I’m really proud of this series, and Kevin already sent me issues 1 through 3 (available at Indy Planet), and we are working on issue 5 out of 6. Vampires! Real vampires, not sparkly ones.
It has been dawning on me all week that I need to have a Johnny Saturn app. They already exist, published through the Graphic.ly and Panel Fly, but I would like to have one or two in my own stores. I have no real idea how to make an app yet, but I’ve found some powerful free programs that may set me on the right path.
If you followed my blog earlier in the week then you know I’ve been have some issues with the “Johnny Saturn” site re-design. I finally hit a breaking point this week, and came to the conclusion that I am going to switch from Comicpress to the Webcomic plug-in. This will let me use any theme I want, including the oh-so-flexible Atahualpa.
On any given day, I can usually draw and ink a page. Lately, I’ve been thinking about Jim Aparo, who produced two beautiful penciled, inked, and lettered pages a day. I want this, not because I could spend less time drawing a week, but so I could draw twice as much per week! Productivity is the comic artist’s villain, it seems, one that we constantly try to overcome to keep up or produce more. So, this is a new goal of mine, but I will not sacrifice quality for speed.
Hi, Everyone!
I’m proud to announce the “Johnny Saturn” 10 and 11 are now available on Indyplanet! Click on the covers to get there!
Today, I read an interesting thing: The “10,000 hour rule” is a term for how long it takes to make someone a master at something. They say this is roughly synonymous with ten years of practice. I believe this is correct. I’m in my seventeenth year of drawing comics, and I really don’t feel like I hit my stride until six or seven years ago.
I also came to a new understanding when I gave up coloring comics to focus on penciling and inking, my first loves. Essentially, it’s this: If every skill takes years to approach a professional level, then I may not have time to learn everything. This is a trouble because I am an inveterate do-it-yourselfer, which means I cover everything—art, promotion, merchandising, conventions, you name it. As far as webcomic creators go, I’m probably in the majority in this.
But, how did I become a DIY guy? It’s simple. I don’t trust much of anyone, or at least I didn’t. The first person to get inside my “trust zone” was Benita, my co-writer and editor (and wife). After forty years of not trusting to collaborate with anyone, I let Benita in. I already had great respect for her writing, storytelling, and imagination, so why shouldn’t I respect her creative input? What made my ideas inherently superior to everyone else’s? Nothing, really. So, our teamwork is based on respect, pure and simple.
It wasn’t easy to change. I was sick as a kid, so team sports were out. I spent a lot of time alone, and that made me very reliant on myself. But, now I’d like to think of myself as a different person: the Collective of Heroes has been important in this, because I have learned to trust fellow collective members, and Arne Schulenberg of “Union of Heroes” has been an outstanding partner.
More recently, I made an adjustment again when I gave up coloring comics, and I discovered that some of the artists I worked with were better at coloring than I am. “Johnny Saturn” was better because I didn’t try to do it all!
I cannot help but feel that my stubborn DIY ethic has held me back sometimes. For example, I made only half-hearted attempts to find a publisher for our comics, opting instead to self-publish. That meant I was in charge of everything, and finding time to actually create new material was getting more and more difficult. Up until about 2000 I made numerous submissions to Marvel; after 2000, I started to resent tying my success and self-worth to other people, so I stopped with the submissions. Now, if I wanted to make comics, then I could: I didn’t have to wait for someone else to green-flag me.
But, I am DIY no more. This week I was posed with the need to study CSS to make WordPress sites do what I wanted, and I realized, I don’t have time for this. I need to be drawing comics, not learning coding that will be out of date in a few years anyway. I don’t have an extra 10,000 hours to devote to it.
So, for the first time in my life, I’m turning over more and more to other people or just putting it out of mind. I hope to have many years left to live, but I have to be smarter with my time. I can’t be everything to everyone. It took almost fifty years to come to this conclusion.
Hi, Folks!
People have been kind and not mentioned what a mess the JS site is. Because, you know, it is. A mess.
After years in roughly the same configuration I decided it was time to refresh the site, and this bled into a site redesign. It didn’t take me long to find out that I was making a real mess of it, and the site became a tar pit of unfinished details.
Well, enough of that. I got wise about it. I set up another WordPress Site, installed the Comicpress theme, and one of Phil Hofer’s child themes. Now I can tinker with that site until I get exactly what I want and leave this one in peace. Later, once the other site is perfect, then, presto, I’ll install it here.
My relationship with CSS is spotty at best. In the early days of the internet I set up HTML sites all the time. Now we are in the realm of the CMS, and CSS is an unknown country to me.
So, do all these acronyms sound like a lot of gibberish? Sure, but you can also read it this way: Making a site perfect is just plain hard word.
I’ve got terrific Johnny Saturn news coming down the pike, with lots of new options, content, and merchandise. None of it gets done till the website looks pretty.
Earlier today, I decided that it was time to grow up and stop feeling emotionally attached to my artistic heroes. Then, I realized that I couldn’t.
Let me backtrack.
Today, I learned that Al Rio had taken his life. I discovered Al when he was working on Gen13, and he came to have a profound effect on my own art, especially in the early days of Johnny Saturn. I could describe how I feel about his loss, yet I won’t: every man’s pain is ultimately his own. You have yours, I have mine, and telling you about my feelings of loss is little more than half-baked drama.
I thought about the other art heroes I’d lost, such as John Buscema, Gil Kane, Gene Colan, Johnny Cash, Frank Frazetta, and so on. All my artistic heroes are at least my age or older than me, so I may well live long enough to see them all pass, and why would I wish that pain on myself? So, I decided I would sever emotional attachments to the people whose work I admired.
It’s not that simple. The arts speak directly to one’s emotions, or at least they should if fully appreciated. Add to this the fact that you can’t really separate the art from the artist. Every line they draw, word they write, note they sing is direct representation of themselves. Ultimately, you cannot love an artist’s work without feeling strong emotions for the artist themselves.
So, I will continue to care, and I will keep admiring the artists for producing the work I love. The person who you thought so highly was, no matter how much you might have exalted him, human. They are irreplaceable, yet fragile. So are we all.
Time to put a few notes on paper . . . well, digital paper.
We’ve moved much farther into a paperless world. Cursive is no longer taught, letters and post cards have gotten more and more rare, and e-ink readers or tablet computers make for a comfortable reading experience. This is great, and I’m all for it, except for one thing—digital media is fragile.
Digital media breaks down over time, becomes corrupted, and becomes obsolete by changing technology and platforms. It is truly ephemera, easily obtained, and easily lost. And, it can’t last. It is unlikely you can put a CD in a safety deposit box, open it in a hundred years, and read it.
Paper books, on the other hand, have often lasted hundreds, even thousands of years. The same problem exists for digital movies, because the only way to really preserve them is by printing them to film which usually has a 100 year life when stored properly.
So, be happy we live in the digital age with all the benefits (and dangers) that implies. But, if you are creator of media, make sure to save a paper copy. In the best of all worlds you would use acid free paper and archival inks in a humidity controlled environment that is void of direct sunlight. Well, not everyone can achieve that level of preservation, but do what you can. Paper lasts a long time.
Creating a comic book is a lot like directing a movie. Every scene, every word, every image has to keep the reader engrossed in the story.
While the pictures do not move, comic book artists have one advantage any Hollywood director would love to have. “You have an unlimited special effects budget,” said Scott Story, a local comic book artist and author.
Story and his wife, Benita, presented a workshop for a small but enthusiastic group of comic book artists at the Noblesville Public Library Monday.
By day, Scott Story, 41, is a mild-mannered illustrator, designing ads, logos, Web graphics and greeting cards. Benita Story, 41, is a bookkeeper. By night, they do battle in the world of superheroes, arch villains and comic book publishers.
Entirely self-taught, Scott Story began drawing professionally 11 years ago. He was inspired to go into comics after encountering “The Dark Knight Returns,” a novel-length Batman comic. “Which is this really grim and gritty comic, and that’s when I realized comics would be cool for adults too,” Scott Story said.
The Storys shared their experience in developing comic book characters and getting their work published. They have created Johnny Saturn, a superhero whose best days are behind him.
“Johnny Saturn is an over-the-hill superhero. He’s all beat up like a professional athlete at the end of his career when their knees are shot, but he still has a job to do, a terrorist to catch,” Scott Story said.
The pair works together on their creation, with Scott doing the art and developing the ideas and Benita fine-tuning and humanizing the dialog. They have self-published the first issue, paying for the printing costs themselves. They also publish their work on several Web sites like komikwerks.com and moderntales.com.
Regulars on the comic book convention circuit, the Storys are now starting to gain readers and interest from publishers. They said one publisher has expressed an interest in releasing Johnny Saturn to a national audience. It is an intriguing offer, given Johnny Saturn’s fate in issue one.
He dies at the end of issue one,” Scott Story said.
The workshop is part of a series of activities organized by the library’s Teen Zone. Molly Mrozowski, Teen Zone program coordinator, said programs like the comic book workshop are suggested by the teen themselves.
“We have a teen board, a group of seniors actually at the high school that advise us on program,” Mrozowski said.
“One of the members knows Scott and Benita so she suggested it, and I contacted them and we went from there. It really was a teen-developed program.”
Terry Newberry, 15, of Decatur, Ill., who will soon move to Noblesville, attended the workshop to learn how he could bring his own comic book hero, Needor Dacson, to life.
“He is a sword-fighting evil-pursuer, also a ladies man,” Newberry said.
As for Johnny Saturn, the Storys will begin publishing episodes on komikwerks.com while they continue to work with their print publisher to put their comic book on store shelves.
But how do the Storys plan to keep Johnny Saturn going after killing him in the first issue.
“Read the second issue,” Benita Story said.
