Ye Olde Comique Booke Airte Struggle

In the early 90s I got my hands on Will Eisner's Comics and Sequential Art. I never read it. Not really. I flipped through it a lot, and took notes from some of the examples. I might have read a few pages. But reading dry texts like that was not my strong suit. I'm sure I missed a lot of valuable lessons from Will.

Which makes me think about comics as an art form and how that a lot of folks talk about it, ponder it, and theorize about it. I love that they do that, but it's not my bag. Just like with tabletop roleplaying games, I love making them and playing them but I am not sure I have much to say about the philosophical side of it or the theory side of it. Why does it work if I put three dots after a word to convey a pause or some unspoken thing? It just does. I'm sure there are good psychological reasons and I know it's rooted deeply in the actual material history of language and writing. But all I know is I put three dots when I want to suggest that sort of thing. It's all feels.

It's ALL FEELS.

And I might not even be good at it. I don't know. I know that people always enjoy my comics, but is it because they like how I draw or because they enjoy reading my stories? I don't really know. But I suspect, honestly, it's because they like how I draw. I know that's why I pick up books from Philippe Druillet, Vaughn Bodé, or Richard Corben. It is not for the stories. Those are fine, and sometimes good, but it's all about the visuals. I love the styles, the colors, the lines. I love the mark making. And how those marks come together to convey movement, meaning, narrative. Even when the story being told is, let's be honest, forgettable as hell. Or disgusting. Or ham fisted. If it looks cool to my eyes, I'm still gonna love that shit.

For example, I just read Druillet's Vuzz for the first time and holy motherfucker what a nakedly savage and nihilistic read. Vuzz is a psycho and a killer and a rapist. He JOYFULLY rapes and murders. Yet Druillet's exquisite lines and pacing and figures are so compelling you have to love the god damn book.

I kept all this shit in mind while working on Hellion Cross. This is the first full comic book I've created in a long time. I look at the finished pages and I ask myself "are these good enough?". Dangerous question to ask yourself. I could scrap them and start over and improve them, maybe. But why the fuck would you do that? I'm not a perfectionist. The next iteration would also have flaws and I would have exactly the same thoughts.

But I worry about stupid things. For example, I kept the 4 fingers style. In the original Pan-Gea comic, all the characters have 4 fingers like in old cartoons. So I thought... well, this is a successor to Pan-Gea, I might as well be consistent. And that's cool. I like it. But there's a devil on my shoulder going "Do you really wanna do that? Some guy will pick it up and say those hands look dumb."

But I can't help that. When I did the original Pan-Gea comics I had a few comments that the hands were weird or that the chicks were too fat. I can't be bothered with any of that. What am I trying to do here, make art for the masses? This is my shit, and folks who like my shit will like this comic. That's really all I can do.

Perhaps the story is lame, perhaps the hands are dumb. I don't know. It's not for me to say, is it? I make the art, the world judges it. That's just how it is.

Hellion Cross Center Pages

When I drew Hellion Cross issue 1, I decided to have a centerfold type of piece. A two page spread. I usually shy away from doing them because of printing concerns but I went for it. And it looks pretty good, I think.

Except it has a glaring error. I must have been half asleep when I was laying that page out in Photoshop for printing because I repeated a caption twice.

Here's the thing. I drew it without fully considering how the captions would fall within the safe margins. So I had to scoot one caption over to the left quite a bit. The problem is instead of scooting the correct one, I just copied the other one and placed it. Didn't even notice until a friend pointed it out in the actual printed book. Egg on face.

Anyway, that means the first printing of this book (currently the only printing) has an error and will be worth at least $10,000 more. You know it's true.

For the record, here's the corrected page and spread. Sorry about that.

Hellion Cross Pages

The interior of Hellion Cross is done! I'm rather pleased with myself because I haven't done a serious, long form comic book in years. And by serious I mean with jokes and worm monsters.

I started working on this comic around June 10 without much of a plan. I essentially wrote it as I went along, trying to tackle it page by page. I completed 25 pages by August 3. For me, that's lightning speed.

I attribute this to the fact that I refused to lock myself into a long-term trajectory, keeping the story moving along as quickly as possible and choosing to draw what I wanted to draw. See... I know my own worst habits. If I lock myself in, I get locked in... I can't seem to move forward. Keeping it loose works for me.

Black Pudding is loose. The reason I was able to do 8 issues at all was because I left myself tons of room in each issue to do whatever I wanted (within the scope of old school roleplaying).

Now that the interior is finished, I've been working on the cover (see previous post). More later.

 

Hellion Cross Cover WIP

The interior pages are finished... now time to do the cover art!

I struggled with an idea for this cover that made sense and was still visually interesting to me. It's a sci-fantasy with space ships, so I thought I would feature the primary ship of the issue, the SS Motorbreath. But my main character, Fawn Rainchild, is basically nude through most of the comic. How to show her on the cover without making the cover itself fully rated R?

In a sense... it doesn't matter. I don't suspect this comic book will ever grace Previews magazine or anything like that. This is a straight-from-me-to-you labor of love. I can show whatever I want to show on the cover.

So naturally I went with the perfectly normal option: woman fighting a worm monster. Right?

What we have here is the Worm Witch, also called K'lixtra, one of the members of the Pan-Gea pantheon. She's the goddess responsible for destroying the Isle of Gea, home to the mother goddess and all her daughters, the Princesses of Gea... of which Fawn is the youngest. When I started drawing this issue I had no idea where it would go. I didn't even know Fawn would be in it, but she very quickly inserted herself into the story (page 2) and took over as the protagonist. And her auntie, the Worm Witch, quickly asserted herself as Fawn's chief nemesis, just as she was in the previous Pan-Gea comics.

As I type this, the inking is finished and it turned out very nice, I think. I'm moving on to colors now.

I'm not sure how to promote the comic other than posting about it on social media and offering it for sale. My plan is to print 100 copies, each one signed and numbered. Stay tuned.

Zarp in Pan-Gea (color)

Here's the finished art for the new Zarp piece. Zarp hitchin' a ride across the broken lands of Pan-Gea on the back of a duck-skulled tigerlope with his friend Shullaroo.

Here's some B/X stats for ya bones.

Duck-Skulled Tigerlope

AC: 6 [13]

HD: 8 (36 hp)

Move: 150' (50')

Atks: 2 claws/1 bite or 1 gore

Dmg: 1d6/1d6/1d10 or 2d6

No. Enc: 1d6

Save: F8

Morale: 9

TT: V

Align: Neutral

Big, loping beasts with long horns. Can be tamed for riding. Will charge for x2 damage if 60' or more space is available.

Hump back stores fatty milk to sustain the beast up to a month without food.

Zarp in Pan-Gea

Lately I've been thinking about comics again. I used to be a comic guy, not an RPG guy. I was an active small press creator, self publishing an array of titles such as Anomalic, Blacksheep, and Random Order Comics & Games (which represents a transitional phase for me from all comics to mostly games).

Comics is hard fuckin' work. This is why I probably stopped doing them. The insane amount of time you pour into it may or may not pay back. It's fine, of course. Nobody owes me their attention and I learned decades ago that I'm an underground guy forever, not a highly successful artist in terms of doing it for a living. So I'm cool with screaming into the void. But I gotta be passionate about a thing to scream with comics.

Anyway... Zarp! I was thinking about doing some new Zarp comics. Which lead me to doodle the little devil more and more lately. Now he's showing up in works that were meant to be pure pinup. This one started out as a sexy bit and morphed into a cool Pan-Gea bit. And I'm super happy about how it turned out. This is the vibe I hit in the mid-2000s with Pan-Gea and is, I believe, my most authentic, unfiltered self.*

So this might end up on a comic cover or it might end up in an art book. I'm giving serious consideration to publishing a collection of my favorite art and putting it out there for those that might like to have it.

*Well... sans the naked bits dangling out. Which I'll happily draw as well.

Fawn Fanart

Ed Heil has been in the RPG art circles for a long time knocking out some cool stuff. Check out this wonderful rendition of my Pan-Gea character Fawn Rainchild!

Fawn Rules! (Old Art XXIX)

Fawn Rainchild RULES!

Princess of Pan-Gea (Old Art XXVII)

Here's a Princess of Pan-Gea.

Echoes (Older'n Dirt Art XXVI)

Page one of Echoes, a Pan-Gea comic written by my friend Jayne and scribbled by me on Paris Paper for Pens.

Fawn & Serpent (Old Art XXV)

More Pan-Gea stuff. This one was cool because a guy sent me a sketchbook in the mail so I could draw directly into it. It wasn't "his" sketchbook, in the traditional sense. He would take to conventions and pay comic artists to draw in it. Most of the art already in the book was from creators I didn't know but there was at least one or two pieces from big names. I just can't remember who the hell they were.

It struck me as a bit odd and risky to send a stranger such a treasure and ask them too doodle in it. But it turned out pretty good, I think. There's a color version of this that will show up in the series later. Since I'm getting old and senile I might forget I wrote this one and repeat the story like a codger telling tales of The Big One.

Sarrow (Really Old Art XXIV)

This guy's name is Sarrow. I think he was supposed to be a character in my comic Pan-Gea: Seven Arrows, but he ended up being cut. He's still bitter about it.

Pan-Gea Logo (Old Art XXIII)

Here's a logo I made for my comic Pan-Gea soon after its release. I was anticipating it to be a series, but that didn't pan out. Never got to use this one except on a tee shirt.

Brig Iceclover (Older Than Dirt Art XXII)

Brig Iceclover was a character from my Pan-Gea comic, a sister to Fawn Rainchild.

Reflections of Mortality (Old Art XVIII)

Pens and brush pens on bristol. Fawn Rainchild. Mid 2000s.

Fawn in the Hills (Old Art XIII)

Tremorworm (Old Art XII)

Here's another Fawn Rainchild pic, part of the Pan-Gea mythos. The setting here is a mystical lake called Rone. I have harbored serious thoughts that Lake Rone will be on my hit list of potential future projects. Perhaps a good old Old School Essentials setting. Who knows?

Snow Slayer (Old Art XI)

Another piece from the Pan-Gea age.

Brig and Wolf (Old Art X)

This one comes from the age of Pan-Gea, my mythic fantasy comic from the mid-2000s. I have so many memories of this time period, some good and some bad. This was my first professionally published comic book all of my own, published by a company and not by myself. So I was very proud of it. But I was also going through a ton of life changes - such as having our first kid. I crashed and burned, creatively, around 2004-2006.

This piece of art was from a moment when I felt like I was at my apex. Like I could do nothing any better, ever. Of course that's a silly way to think, but that's how our brains work, isn't it? We tell ourselves dumb things, bad things, lies, and junk to get by or to keep from reaching new levels of responsibility.

Daughters of the Goddess #4 (Old Art VIII)

This was from a series of Daughters of the Goddess - the Geans of Pan-Gea. There were six of them, I believe. All on bristol with markers and pens, per my usual style back then. I do miss working in that medium sometimes.

Oh, and this one was colored by my wife Dawna Keeney! She colored a bunch of my art back then. We should do that again...