Hellion Cross

I have spoken many times about ZSF, a space game I was/am working on. I did a metric ton of character sheets for it, just for funsies. And I have several drafts of the game written. But I needed something to get me over the edge, to help me commit to the bit.

Simultaneously I started thinking about comics again. Like, a LOT. Finally these things are aligning. I'm working on a new comic, Hellion Cross, which is set in the world of ZSF. At this moment, I have 11 pages inked. I haven't decided yet if this issue will be 24, 28, or 32 pages long. Still on the fence about that.

It has been a long time, it seems, since I dived this far into making comics. This is all I used to do. TTRPGs were a distant second in the back of my mind, though I never stopped fiddling with them. All through the 90s, 2000s, and of course beyond... always, always noodling and doodling about the elfgames.

But comics were always primary for me. I started seriously working on them in 1987 and didn't stop focusing on them until around 2012 when I suddenly shifted gears into an obsession with roleplaying games, particularly the OSR-type. Even then, the result was Black Pudding... a zine that looks a lot like a comic book.

So, what's up with the new comic? I started with a short script wherein a salvage ship finds a frozen woman who bursts out of her ice cage and sort of barges onto the ship, taking over. Much to my surprise, the character morphed before my eyes into Fawn Rainchild, the primary character of my Pan-Gea comics. I didn't expect to see her again, especially in space. But there she was, demanding to be in the book.

Who was I to say no?

So the small crew of the SS (space ship) Motorbreath comes up on a frozen Fawn, naked on a small planetoid. She comes out of her frozen spell and boards the ship, using up the hot water for a shower.

Now... you lascivious types might be going "naked", "hot shower" and thinking this is a prurient comic book. Tut-tut as they say. This is a serious comic about space adventure. The naked woman bit is just because the god damned wizard who gave Fawn the freeze spell was a pervert, most likely.

Where does the book go from here? Well, there's a secondary storyline about a robot vs. human war. At some point these two storylines will merge and we'll see a bigger picture, I'm sure. But right now I'm doing this comic the way I like to do everything: page by page, idea by idea. Hey... Mat Wagner, creator of Mage and Grendel, did it this way. So can I.

You'll know when I know.

ABOUT THE ZSF RPG

Oh yeah. So the comic title is Hellion Cross (unless I change my mind). But it is set in the Zoa Space Frontier, or ZSF. This is the wild west of the galaxy, outside the Galactic Main where everything is safe and sanitized. It's a dangerous place. Apparently, according to what I've written so far, there's a fuckin' war going on. But I feel like this is a relatively trivial matter. The robots of the RIO (Robot Imperial Order) have been warring with the UHF (United Human Federation) for countless years. This current war is just one of many, with the robots and humans fighting over resources. Perhaps they fight so much because the humans created the robots and the robots have a lot of mommy/daddy issues as a result. The humans... they just like to fight over resources. Always have.

So anyway, the game. It is going to be called ZSF, unless I change my mind. It's a space romp RPG. The setting, the ZSF, is magical space, mind you. This is not "hard sci-fi". This is pure space opera and sci-fantasy. There are wizards and shit. You will see barbarians with swords and blasters. This is my shit.

The RPG is an original system. A big part of me wanted to use GOZR as the system, so I could just wrap that setting into ZSF more easily. But I foolishly created an entirely different one. Mostly because I wanted to get away from the d20 as the core die, even though I love it and I think GOZR's system is great. I wanted to peel away from that a little bit. Right now ZSF uses a d6 pool with exploding dice and stuff. But more on that later.

First step is to get the comic done. A setting, in action, with characters and visuals... this will help establish the tone and "what you do" in the game.

But I've rambled on long enough. Back to inking.

Here's page one of Hellion Cross, y'all. Colors later.

Artists I Like: Molly Moonstone

Here's a rare one for the list. Molly Moonstone is both a visual artist who draws beautiful pinup girls and is also a beautiful pinup girl herself. Go figure. I certainly am not in that category myself.

Anyway... I found her work on Instagram, like so many others, and she kind of enchanted me with her curvy, voluptuous figures drawn in a playful style with  nice textured coloring. I really dig it more than many of the other popular pinup artists working today. Good shit, check it out.

Artists I Like: Jim Roslof

Yet another great artist, and another entry into the list that had a huge influence on me: Jim Roslof!

Roslof became a TSR staff artist in 1979. I know his work primarily from Legends & Lore (formerly called Deities & Demigods). He illustrated various mythos in that book and the ones that struck me the most were his contributions to the Finnish and the Greek, and of course his larger pieces such as the incredible Thor image from the Norse pantheon.

What I loved about his work was how the lines flowed wildly, like gesture drawings. Consider his drawing of Ahto or Aphrodite. Notice how some of the lines are incomplete, the inking almost chaotic. But it holds together perfectly and delivers a powerful form.

Ahto from the Finnish Mythos

Aphrodite from the Greek Mythos

Cover art for Lathan's Gold

Meilikki from the Finnish Mythos

Thor from the Norse Mythos

Artists I Like: Vaughn Bodé

Another great artist who has had a profound influence on me is Vaughn Bodé*. Many of you will be saying "Duh" right now.

I have went through a few different broad artistic phases in my life. One of them, perhaps the most profound, to be honest, was during my 30s (I turned 30 in 2000). It was not until around 2001 that I first got my dirty hands on any Vaughn Bodé books. His style and influence had already seeped into my work via other routes, most notably the 1977 Ralph Bakshi film Wizards. Now, the history of that movie is that Bodé and Bakshi were working together on it and Bakshi for damn sure took a shit load of Bodé's style and work directly into the film. But Vaughn died in 1975 and thus was unable to continue that work. There is a lot more to that whole story, including a lot of bad vibes between Bakshi and Vaughn's son Mark, but that's a story for another time.

The point is I didn't have direct experience with the artist's work until I was in my 30s and it was about that time that I hit a mini mid-life crisis of identity. And, consequently, my entire artistic approach was reborn. I found my voice. And the work of Vaughn Bodé was instrumental in making that happen.

Bodé was one of the names in the 60s/70s underground comix movement, though he wasn't part of the whole San Francisco scene. He was editor of the East Village Other for a time, which was an arty tabloid, a kind of underground answer to the Village Voice, I think.

He was prolific as absolute fuck. I mean seriously. The man died at age 34 and left behind countless comic book pages, stories, tons of book covers and interior illustrations, and inspired the modern grafiti movement. By age 34 I had barely found my own artistic voice.

What drew me into Bodé's work was the immediacy of his forms and lines, and the utter lack of filter. His comics, such as Deadbone Erotica and Cheech Wizard, had zero fucks to give when it came to being polite or decent. Tits, ass, and dicks were frequently drawn. Hell, just look at one of his little lizard guys... they all have a little dick bump. It's super fun. But also... satirical and scathing. Some of Bodé's pieces are so extreme they are very hard to look at today, not only bordering on "is this OK??" but crossing over into "I'm pretty sure this is not OK"**. But he was clearly trying to make a point, not just being an edge lord. From commentary against war and capitalism, to commentary against racism and sexism... he was saying a lot.

Vaughn described himself as bisexual, pansexual, omnisexual, transvestite, transsexual, gay, hetero, and all of the above. He clearly did not want to be put into a box. 

*BTW, you can type "Bodé" with the accented "e" by using Alt+0233 on your standard keyboard. Maybe on a Mac it's like Macbutton+0233. I don't know Macs.

**For example, some of the Deadbone strips feature strongly racist caricatures of Asians. Also, many of the strips feature women being murdered and otherwise assaulted. Though, to be fair, it's still within that context of "making some kind of social commentary point". Sometimes I get it, other times I don't get it. But this is the complex and difficult relationship we have to have with complex and difficult material. It's not cut and dry. The creator is not a shining beacon of purity, he's a troubled, clouded, brilliant, beautiful human being whose work shocks, amazes, and fills one with wonder. And sometimes cringe.

Page from the original Cobalt 60. Drawn on typing paper, I believe.

Collab with Larry Todd.

Cheech being himself.

Saturday Morning Art Rumble 12

In our last episode, I just picked some random art to show. Here I also pick random art to show. But maybe I'll try to speak about some of the pieces. Folks tell me I don't say enough about my own art. I don't share my thoughts and shit. More here.

I was probably thinking "but you CAN show both at once". lolz...

I did this robot guy when I was working on another Troika! romp book. Didn't finish the book, decided to make a new space fantasy RPG instead... ZSF will be coming eventually, folks. Eventually.

I just like making funky cool band logos for fake bands.

Tweets McTussle will FUCK YOU UP.

This was a fun comic page I did for my Black Pudding Kickstarter. Kind of kicked me off to doing more comics, which I am thankful for.

Sketch for the cover of Cozmic Metal Heads. Cool.

Yeah, this was page one of a Zarp comic I never finished even though I really love this page. Maybe I'll dust it off and finish it. It's like an 8 page, fully scripted. Why u no finish??

Art for Jim Wampler's Scientific Barbarian, I think. Or was it one of his mutant books?

It's a chainmail chick, yo. I am not sure why I highlighted her nipples. It's weird and embarrassing, not that I look at it. I should redux this one because otherwise this is my shit right here. My jam.

 

Paper

I've always had this weird creative roadblock related to paper size and art format.

I love seeing comics that use the American standard 8.5x11 format well. It's the size of paper we were most likely to have lying around the house, so it's got a nice stripped-down vibe to it. A no-frills, can-do kind of paper. Don't gimme no gimmicks, I ain't fancy, just get a sheet of paper and start drawing!

But also... a standard pack of white 8.5x11 paper is really shitty to do any finished art on. A standard sheet is about 75 GSM (25 or 27 Lbs). That's just typing paper. Very thin and fragile. A few too many erases and you've got shredded paper. Plus it takes ink like a whining child.

My preference is for something like a 270 GSM (100 Lbs) bristol board, smooth. I can live with cardstock, which is 225 GSM (80 Lbs), but it tends to be less smooth. I am a smooth paper guy, probably because I've always been mostly into pen/brush and ink, not so much into the graphite or paints.

One of my favorite papers is Borden & Riley Paris Paper for Pens, an ultra-smooth, ultra-bright white paper. It's not thick like bristol, but is durable and dense. It's designed to take ink very crisply, without any bleeding. And it does the job. But if you work wet, you might not like this paper. It'll buckle with heavy applications of wet media. If you're using a lot of pens, like Microns or brush pens, it's the bee's knees.

Standard comic compared to 8.5x11

So anyway... I am a bit obsessed with format. I need to know before I go into a comic book project exactly how I'm going to print it. Because that shit matters. If I just start drawing on an 11x14 pad, for example, and I take advantage of the whole page, then I've established a comic book format of the American standard magazine size. It'll convert to an 8.5x11 book or perhaps a European comic format, like Heavy Metal or Tin Tin.

But American comic books are typically 6.625 x 10.25... they are taller and skinnier than 8.5x11. Your 11x14 comic page, when shrunk down to fit a standard comic book, will have a huge area of white space above and below the comic... much more than you probably intended. To combat that, if you are going to print in standard size, you need to have larger margins on the sides. Use as much of the page as possible on the top and bottom, but you need to squeeze up your sides to fit that comic format. When working on 11x14, for example, you might go with a live area of 8.4x13.

Ok... see I'm down in the weeds here. I just wanted to express my thoughts about paper size and format.

Right at the moment I'm staring at a pack of 11x17 smooth bristol. Very nice. And 11x17 is a fairly standard size to work on for classic comic book making. At least that's what I've been told many times. I have used it and it's great, but it's bigger than I'm used to and it takes longer to finish a page. When I work on comics I like to feel the vibe quickly and move fast, cranking out pages as much as I can because I know that iron is going to cool down and be less workable. I try to strike while it is hot.

Then I start thinking about paper and... oh boy.

Hey, FYI... most of the pages of Pan-Gea were drawn on that Borden & Riley paper I mentioned above. I bought pads of 11x14, then cut them in half! So each page of Pan-Gea actually only measures 7x11. They fit very neatly into that standard American comic book format. But they are drawn basically 1:1 ratio... and most comics guys will tell you that you need to draw larger than your printed final version. The shrinking of the art to fit the format helps clean up your lines and makes everything look tighter.

And it's true. But also, it's a bit of bullshit. It's only good advice if that is the effect you are going for. This is an art form, not a science. If you want to draw comics on little post it note and BLOW THEM UP to fit a comic page, that's your bag, man. Do your thing. Could look rad. I don't know.

Comics is a wide open medium for creating. You should do what you feel like doing.

This post... is an example of turning on the nozzle too high and trying to fill a small Dixie cup. You're welcome.

Artists I Like: Marie Severin

Part of this series about creators who make me happy.

I love the fact that I can discover "new" artists I never really heard of before... even if I have really heard of them before! Marie Severin fits that description because I'm positive I saw her work at some point as a kid in some comic or another. And I know I heard the name. But I didn't know Marie was a comic artist. Go figure.

Born in New York? Check. Born a long damn time ago? Check (1929). A KILLER artist? CHECK. Marie Severin had all the right stuff to be a Mighty Marvel Master. And she was. I think she is probably best known for drawing the Hulk, Doctor Strange, and Not Brand Echh!, which was Marvel's in house parody comic sort of riffing on Mad, I think.