Wednesday, March 25, 2020

Sketchbooking Retro #2

These doodles are from the margins of various notebooks from work. While in meetings discussing the philosophy and metaphysical nature of manufacturing*, I would often doodle in the margins.

These particular doodles are little covers for a mini-comic** idea called Land of Hof. I actually did at least one issue of this comic, a story called "Winter". It lived on my old website until I took the site down so I guess I need to repost it here on the blog***.

Hoo boy... let's see if we can trace down the lineage of this. I guess it started in 2000-2003 as an RPG concept. Land of Hof was from a dumb acronym: HOF = Heart of Fantasy. The gist was to cut through the bullshit and get to the heart of what I loved about fantasy. Somehow the character Zarp become enmeshed in the idea and so I had the concept of a series of mini-comics about Zarp in the Land of Hof. I even fancied the idea of a box set of mini-comics, with dice and a game. Because I hadn't yet learned my lessons about biting off more than I could chew.

*Please tell me my sarcasm is explicit.

**What's a mini-comic? Well, that depends on who you ask. In my universe, a mini is a 4.25" x 5.5" folded and stapled comic book, usually made on a copy machine. But this is, as I understand it, a very old definition. Today a mini-comic is just any sort of DIY comic book. Size does not matter. When I say "mini-comic", I am usually referring to the specific 4.25" x 5.5" format.

***Why is the old jwarts website gone? Because I never updated it, nobody ever mentioned it, and it cost me money to maintain. The blog is far easier to maintain and has more recognition across the various nerd populations that I frequent. I am not a dynamo of self-promotion. If you like what I do,
share my shit please. I am but a lonesome polecat otherwise.

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