ROC Talk

I'm in a comics mood.

I was in a comics mood this time last year and I knocked out a 25 pager with Hellion Cross. I printed 50 copies of that book with an egregious error on the center spread... I had drawn the center pages without considering the correct margins. I had to manipulate the positions of captions to make it work and in doing so I duplicated one caption and deleted another. No idea how.

Fast forward to today... I'm finally going to launch ROC: Random Order Comics... a "regular" comic book title I where I can just stuff all my comics work. When I get something finished, I can just add it to the next issue. When I hit the 28-32 page count, I can do a cover and pull the trigger on it.

I'm not worrying about what kind of content goes in each issue or how I'm going to publish them. They are standard American comic book format and I'm keeping it Rated R or under. I'll probably stick to black and white for now. Those are my only rules. There may be fantasy comics, goofy strips about politics or memories, or whatever I feel like drawing.

Here's a few pages from the first issue. I'll post more about it later. This issue is complete other than a cover.

Hypergraphoid

Drew this silly comic this past week. Made a little mini of it. I have a bunch of little minis so maybe I'll eventually put a batch up for sale if you wanna have copies. Zines!

Now enjoy the intense cartooning. Or go read it on my website.

 

Artists I Like: Rick Geary

I had no idea Rick Geary was born in the 1940s. I guess I assumed he was roughly my age. But that's because I don't do my research and I assume too much.

Geary has a long career spanning back to the early 1970s when he did work for various newspapers. He was in National Lampoon for years. I recall seeing his work for the first time in Heavy Metal when was a teen, so it had to be around 1988 since that is when his first story appeared in the magazine. (Is he in the new Heavy Metal??)

The one book I own of his is Jack the Ripper. Apparently Geary is a bit obsessed with Victorian murder because he did a whole slew of those kinds of books ranging from the Borden murders to the killing of Abraham Lincoln.

His style is iconic. I don't know his tools, but it always felt like he was using technical pens (maybe dip pens) and working with delicate precision over these pages. But I suspect his comic pages are not large scale. I don't know. But the Victorian murder books are digest sized, or around 8.5 x 5.5 inches or something. If I was publishing at that size, I would draw on 8.5 x 11 or something. (Look at me speculating about what I could probably just research.)

Geary does good work. Check it out.

 

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.

Overton

Random comic I was compelled to draw this morning. I like firing off a simple 4 panel strip if an idea is burning a hole in my psyche.

As to the content... hope it's obvious. That Overton Window is a fucking bitch. You pride yourself on riding the  middle ground but that middle ground just keeps slip slip slidin' into destruction, buddy. Might want to correct your course because whoever is painting that line is on some bad drugs.

 

Hymla the Horn!

CW: This post contains a bit of nudity, so you might want to hide it from your granny. A lot of this art is more appropriate for my Blood Red Pinups blog, but I'm in a mood to blur the lines and feeling less interested in compartmentalization.

Theme music for this post: Wo Fat's entire discography, but The Conjuring and The Black Code in particular. I think Hymla's theme song is probably "Beggar's Bargain".

Those of you reading this thing who care, let me know in the comments if you want to see a god damn Hymla the Horn comic book. I'll do what I want, you know that. But it is a strong motivator to know anyone out there gives even one shit.

HYMLA THE HORN: The story of a low class, low brow dishwasher turned slayer.

Hymla the Horn was born from a sketch. I can't seem to locate the original sketch sheet, done in Clip Studio Paint. But I did find a snippet of it that was saved on October 8, 2022, with the name "Hymla" drawn on it. So I must have created her at least by Oct 2022, duh.

Since then, she has popped up in my sketchbooks over and over again. I played an AD&D character based on her. I wrote a comic script. Clearly this brash, brazen ne'er-do-well looms large in my head. Both figuratively and literally. She ain't no wispy little daisy, after all.

The first Hymla drawing I can find, 2022.

Eventually I will make a Hymla comic book. I don't know when. I don't know how. I just know she is inevitable. So far there is one script written: Hymla is introduced as a lowly cantankerous kitchen helper in a tavern dive bar. A cult invades the bar and turns everyone into a mindless cult member, so Hymla brutally and bloodily slays every motherfucker in the place with various kitchen implements. Then she takes the tavern owner's old sword off the wall and walks off into a life of adventure, having discovered she has a knack for slaying.

Hymla is like... what if Conan/Red Sonja but fat and sassy and mean and missing a front tooth? Pure fight comic, violent as fuck, just for funsies. A character that says "I don't give a shit what you think" and means it.

"But why is she called Hymla the HORN?"... Because it sounds cool. I added the tagline "the Horn" right after doodling that first image and creating an AD&D first edition character. One of her carried items was a horn (the kind you blow). She also had a magic sword that she could blow through the pommel to inspire her comrades. None of that Dungeons & Dragons info is canon to the character, though. Just a riff on an idea. But that is the origin of "the Horn". It also ties into the first comic book script because her boss, the tavern owner, has a fancy old horn on his wall that she takes with her when she leaves the bloody mess behind. Unless I change up the script.

Bit of a tangent here, but fuck it, this is my blog... I don't savor the idea of having to draw the same thing over and over. Which is why my relationship to comics has always been slightly at arm's length. Though I was much more of a comics guy before getting into tabletop RPG creation so heavily in the 2000s and later in the 2010s. I used to draw a lot more comics, folks. Anyway... I resist the idea of giving this character a signature sword and horn because I don't want to have to draw the same thing all the time. One of the things I always loved about Conan comics was that in each story he could have a different weapon, different clothes and armor, different everything. All that was consistent was his personality, his long black hair, and muscles.

Hymla's world is Yria, the same setting I've explored in the pages of Black Pudding RPG zine. Well, to be fair, when I use this setting for stories and comic ideas I tend to cleanse it of elves, dwarfs, and halflings. But that's neither here nor there, as the rubes are wont to say. I think it matters not. Maybe those folks all died off in a plague or maybe they are still around, just not showing up much. Can't say yet. But this is the world of the Worm Witch, Blazing Heart, and Hunter Raven and all that jazz. Hymla just walks through it for a good time.

And that's Hymla. What matters is she's a fat, tough, mean, mirthful, belligerent motherfucker who wanders the land slaying monsters, wizards, and other villainous bastards while drinking, gambling, singing, and probably fucking. Not a sex comic idea, mind you, but definitely a hard rated-R. And NOW I'm officially rambling. You are witnessing me working out the idea on the page, naked for the world to see.

Anyhow. Here's the ultimate collection of Hymla the Horn artwork, as it stands in the year of our lord 2024, September 2.

This ended up being the cover for Black Pudding issue 8.

Doodled during a D&D game where we fought a kraken in the middle of the night.

Hoofnar's Gods are Real

I've always been a guy with multiple worlds in his head. And it feels like all of them have sort of collapsed or coalesced into two distinct worlds that are, as far as this writing, not connected.

One of them is Pan-Gea, which encompasses all of my work on Black Pudding and the new comic Hellion Cross as well as the Troika!-based RPG books I've done. It is all one grand setting, just spanning a lot of time. The connective tissue between them all is a pantheon of gods, demigods, and immortal beings such as Nest the Moon, Seer the Sun, and the Worm Witch.

Contrasting this is another world I call Yukkara. This world is about funny animals. Why is it distinct? Because in my lizard brain I NEED and WANT a world that is entirely comprised of talking cartoon animals (along with demons, dragons, wizards, etc.). No humans, you see.

The world of Yukkara is largely "governed" by six powerful gods pictured here in this sketchbook drawing. Each of these deities have "clever" names that are word plays which I will unpack for your pleasure and entertainment. If I'm not terribly mistaken, this is the first time I've posted about these guys. I know I conceived them years ago because I have multiple documents and journal entries that mention them going back in time at least a decade.

• Owldina is the Goddess of Knowledge and Wisdom. She is represented by an owl. I don't remember Owldina's name referencing anything other than she's an owl. Which is funny because she's a knowledge goddess... get it? There's no extra knowledge to uncover on that one. Hah.

• Jehawkva is the God of the Skies. He is a hawk or some other raptor. Jehawkva is a play on both hawk and jehovah. Clever bastard.

• Marduck is the God of War. He is a duck. Marduck is just a play on Marduk, who isn't specifically a war god. But it also sounds like Warduke, and he's a war guy.

• Buddacuda is the Deity of Truth and Mindful Doing. He is a fish. Buddacuda... seems obvious to me.

• Porkus is the God of Death. He is a pig. Porkus is Orcus but a pig. It's been done before, but that's fine. Something as obvious as Porkus is gonna get done over and over. Same with Marduck. It's fine.

• Eweweh is the Goddess of the Earth. She is a sheep. Eweweh is a combo of ewe and yaweh. Clever bastard. I even threw in a little bit of lore, as the kids say, that Eweweh is often characterized as a male god, which pisses her the fuck right off. Which is a nod to the fact that Yaweh is a masculine god figure. The layers of my cleverness are rich and myriad.

Hellion Cross Cover Art?

Here's the cover I drew for issue one of Hellion Cross.

What do you mean those worms are phallic?

Now... I'm on the fence here, but I might do a different one and use this for the back cover. My reason is simple: I made this one as suggestive as possible without making it actually erotic.

This is not an erotic piece of art. This is a woman locked in a fight with a worm monster. Worms are phallic. I drew the worms the way I picture worms to be in my head. I didn't actually look up any worm images because they're gross and it wasn't necessary for the piece. I drew Fawn in a way that suggests she is nude (she is) but isn't overt about nudity (it isn't). She isn't having fun, obviously, and the worm monster isn't having fun either, obviously. It's a battle.

But god dammit, that's a lot of phallic stuff she's holding in her hands, right?

I'm such a bad, bad man.

Anyway, the comic is done except for any changes I might make in deciding the cover art. I'm on the fence. I'm not sure if this is the image I want on the cover. It might end up on the back cover instead.

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.

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.