zine preview #2

from the story "My Friend Steve"

I have decided that between now and the publication of my comic zine, I will attempt to post a preview panel every week.  Here is the first one.  You may recall that I already posted some bits and pieces from this work-in-progress earlier, hence the number 2 in the post title.

zine preview

 

 

 Here are a few bits and pieces from a comic zine I plan to finish this summer.  It will include some short stories and some single-page pieces.

eavesdropping for fun and profit (okay, not really for profit)

The story behind this begins way back when I was in a teenager and I started writing down random things that I heard people say.  Eventually I had quite a collection of these quotes in my notebook, and many came from my then-daily rides on the Metro buses.  In 2003 I mined this material to make a one-page comic called "Overheard on the Bus," which was published in Seattle's alt weekly, The Stranger.  This comic is unfortunately not online anywhere anymore; I have a copy of the file somewhere on a CDR, but hell if I know where it is.

Fast forward to a few years ago, when I was given a copy of Syncopated (vol.3), an anthology of nonfiction comics.  Imagine my surprise when I reached the third piece in the book, "Overheard Conversations" by Rina Piccolo  -- not only was another weirdo out there writing down overheard snippets of dialogue, but she had also written a comic about them!  Her comic is very different from mine, as she actually reflects upon the nature of these acts of voyeurism ("The majority of overheard conversations are more commonplace, even mundane.  But it's often these that intrigue me the most..."), in addition to including a whole collection of funny, mysterious, and otherwise thought-provoking fragments of conversation with fictionalized speakers.

Anyway, fast forward to a couple of weeks ago, when I was looking through my notebook and rereading some of the quotes I'd written down.  I'd been wanting to do a finished one-page comic for a while, since for the past year-plus I've been primarily working on the seemingly endless rough draft for a graphic novel.  What better idea, I thought, than a sequel to the original "Overheard."  So I dug out a couple of my old notebooks to reference along with the current one, and the result is what you see here.  Ta da.

p.s.  I wanted to have the text appear after the comic, but realized that on many peoples' screens (such as mine, ahem), parts of the panels would be obscured by all the crap on your right.  I can't make the comic smaller, because it is already more blurry than I would like at this size.  At the end of the day, after hours of coloring and other stuff, I am too tired to figure out doing anything about this.

cemetery at sunset

Here is a panel from my upcoming Halloween 'zine piece, because I feel it is one of the best panels I've done so far, and (unlike most of the panels, or most of my work in general), both the penciling and inking seemed oddly effortless. I know I've been talking a lot about this comic, especially considering the fact that it's only six pages, but the thing about doing comics is that it's ridiculously time-consuming.  For much of the past few weeks, this story has been occupying my thoughts, because I've been working on it for hours nearly every day.  In the end, people are going to read the whole thing in a minute and be like, "Is that all?"

character sketches

some of the cast

the old devil-on-the-shoulder trick

brothers

These are recent sketches of characters from my current work in progress.  I'll probably regret putting this up, as the final artwork is still a long way off, and by the time I draw them for real, the characters will probably  look somewhat different.  Oh well.

how to make comics and influence people

Books -- sometimes they are big.  And red.

A little while back I bought this enormous tome about one of my biggest influences, Jaime Hernandez.  From the introduction (by Alison Bechdel): "The Locas stories may have been, in part, a masturbation fantasy -- the women are certainly beautiful, and drawn with an unmistakable sexual vitality.  But that same vitality -- voluptuous, palpable, acutely observed -- infused everything in Jaime's stories, from the telephone poles, to the exhaled plumes of cigarette smoke, to the folds in a sleeve, to the precisely calibrated tension in the ropes of a wrestling ring.  This drawn world had a pulse."  Yes.  I think this is why I sometimes get hung up on doing backgrounds; I want everything in the panels to seem like part of a living world.  I know I'm not quite there yet, but I'm trying.

In conclusion, I am aware that tons of people have said that J Hernandez inspired them to do comics, but I'm just gonna get in line with the rest of them.