Detecting Phantasmic Activity in proximity to the Web

OK, I surrender. I'm twittering now. I'm sure it's the kind of thing everyone will find utterly fascinating.

Perhaps less insipid content can be found at Chud, where Thor's Comic Column lives on. (Even though that particular page doesn't list me among the contributors for some reason....) New columns go up every Friday.

I'm working on a couple of big projects, one for an ongoing client, another for a potential client (which will be really cool if it gets off the ground), and a third which is entirely personal, a gift for my sister and her new husband, who just got hitched over the weekend. In case you were wondering what's been occupying my time. It's a pair of nifty-looking Art Nouveau-ish posters, and I'll post 'em as soon as they're finished.

As for strips, as you may have noticed, a new Freak U. went up today, and I'm hopefully back on track from this point on. New Lemuria on April 4th. I'm still trying to get the backlog of strips coloured in, don't know how long that'll be, but I'm trying to get it done soonish. Possibly by the end of April, at which point I plan to unleash a marketing blitz on the web. Stay tuned.

I Found A Way To Make A Fantasy Webcomic About Blogging. Go Me.

A new Swordi and Sorcera story begins today in Lemuria!

(At the time of writing, the comic isn't completely coloured yet. But it went up on time! I'm improving!)

Whoot

Look at the awesomeness! I got this piece of Lemuria fanart from one Steph Cherrywell:



Steph, it turns out, is the creator of Intragalactic, a comic that I shamefully hadn't heard of--shamefully because I love space travel humour strips. I've been letting my webcomic trawling slide quite disgracefully over the past year, actually. Anyhoo, the strip's about a futuristic ice cream truck...ship and its zany crew, led by captain Benjamin Glee, who despite the name is a woman. In fact, she's an almost dementedly brave, cheerfully oblivious woman who's packing some extra pounds.

I think you can see Ms. (Mrs.?) Cherrywell and I seem to be of one mind here.

The strip's absolutely hilarious, and the archives aren't too huge, so go read it right now!

A Fiery Shower of Pixels Storming the Shore of Your Eyeballs

Lemuria issue #1, all 32 pages of it (including some that aren't online), is now available for download at DriveThru Comics, in both PDF and CBZ format. The cost is a mere 75 cents...just like comics used to be back in the good old days, when there were only four colours and the paper was all yellowy and rough, the way God intended. So for those of you who've always wanted to read Lemuria while curled up around the fire with a snifter of port, you can now do so.

Also, there's a Very nice four-star review from featured reviewer Brian LeTendre, which is kind of amazing, since it went up within 8 hours of the PDF file being uploaded. Efficient!

I'm hoping to have more downloadable stuff up at that site before the year is out. Will I let you know? Oh dear heavens yes.

Countdown To Dark Reign of Infinite Civil Crisis on Planet Comics

So, did I pick the worst possible time to be trying my hand at a self-published book? Or the best?

First things first here: I have a print edition of "Lemuria" now available. It's black-and-white, 32 pages, and features a 13-page backup story that is not available online, and won't be anytime in the future. Bonus print-only material, see. I don't have a Ka-Blam print-on-demand link for it yet, but if you want a copy just join this Facebook group and shoot me a message--or you could email me directly using the hotmail address that's on that page (no, I'm not going to print it here--I don't want to get spammed to death!) It's $3.75 plus shipping, which I think makes it a darned good bargain.

Now, that said, this is kind of a "limited edition" thing. I really would like to put out a colour version...but I don't know how plausible that would be. I've actually submitted it to various publishers, but of course I'd be delighted to publish it myself. Which I could do, printwise at least, but...

Well. If you're reading this, you are presumably a comics person, and you, to presume further, have not been living in a tree for the last few months, so you are aware that:

--Diamond Distributors, the only major distributors in the direct market comics arena, just increased the number of sales needed to have a comic listed in their magazine, Previews, thereby making it that much harder to break into self-publishing;

--Disney just bought Marvel;

--And DC literally just the other day had a major corporate shakeup, ousting EIC Paul Levitz and restructuring themselves withint the Warner Brothers corporate behemoth, complete with the new moniker "DC Entertainment". (CUE OMINOUS MUSIC)

A further point: many people have claimed Levitz has played a major role in sustaining Diamond past the point where it might otherwise have collapsed. Certainly the fact that DC only solicits with Diamond has had a major effect on the industry. What happens next could have a major impact on Diamond, possibly killing it, and the Direct Market along with it.

Now, I've been accused of being a dewy-eyed optimist when it comes to the comics industry, though I'll admit that has a lot to do with believing things couldn't possibly get worse. However, I'm generally of the opinion that the comics industry really needed a shakeup, and that there's a lot of potential good that can come out of all this.

However, I'll also freely admit that there's just too many variables to say anything for sure, and I'm not all that knowledgeable about the nuts 'n bolts of the direct market to begin with. For that I turn to Chris Butcher, manager of The Beguiling comics store in Toronto and all-around swell fellow, who gives a lot of perspective (this was posted the day before the DC shakeup). He does seem to suggest that the direct market is something he can do without, but his is a very well-run store with a lot of varied and loyal clientele, so I don't know how representative his store would be. While contacting the many and various publishers sounds like a pain, he claims he's not losing money by doing so. Furthermore, if Diamond goes away, surely SOMETHING will appear to take its place, if only in the promotional department--maybe it'll simply be a matter of increased advertising on the part of the publishers?

I just don't know. These are pretty wild times. One thing's for sure, though: the internet is looking better and better as a medium for indie comics publishers. I'm the type who likes to do things the traditional way, but the appeal of launching a periodical of Lemuria is fading really, really fast, especially now that my advertising is starting to pay off somewhat.

And yet...the death of Diamond could potentially blow the doors off for indie publishers. There may be no gatekeepers for at least a brief period, and that may be just what's needed for a couple of plucky indie books to slip through. As Chris points out, there haven't been a lot of breakthrough indies since Diamond became a monopoly.

It's going to be chaos, and it might get ugly. But you know what the Chinese say about Crisis and Opportunity...

The Lens Cap of My Blog Was On

OK! The first Lemuria story, "Slaves of the Demon God", is (basically) finished. I'm hoping to complete all the colouring and so on by the end of this week. Then I go full tilt into finishing the backup story for the print comic--which, for you to see, will require you to buy it! This story will be set in Lemuria, but feature a different set of characters--I guess it's a Terry Pratchett sorta thing. (Ironic, because I'm not really a huge fan of Pratchett, and I didn't set out to emulate him in any way.)

However, Swordi and Sorcera will remain the primary characters, and their new adventure will be hitting the web early next month--I'll tentatively say August 3rd, though that may change. The working title is "Entangled by the Tourist Trap".

From there on out, I'll be updating once-weekly, probably on mondays. The pattern will remain the same--Swordi and Sorcera on the web, other stories that fill out the world of Lemuria (and will cross over with the S&S stories eventually!) will be print-only. The first of these is a 13 pager about two other important characters who will also be recurring in the Lemuria stories, Hummu Stitchthrice and Hordo of Atlantis. I'll let you know when this is available to buy!

As for everything else: Freak U. will update twice-weekly when Lemuria isn't running, and downgrade to once-weekly (on Wednesdays, I think) when it is. To be honest, one of the reasons I'm a bit spotty with updating the current storyline is that I'm rehashing the script pretty heavily. I do have an outline worked out for all this, but it's amazing how much it changes and shifts when I sit down to thrash out the details in script form. For instance, there have now been several occasions when a character was meant to be killed, or turn out to be more villainous than they ended up being, but I ended up having too much affection for them and shifted the story. I've mentioned Brandina, who was going to be Smiley's first victim and ended up a major character; Mo was going to die at the end of Book One as punishment for colluding with Smiley; and most recently, we've got Ruy, who was intended as more of an antagonist (though he was always going to be conflicted and sympathetic). But you know what? I'm not Joss Whedon or Brian K. Vaughn, as much as I love those guys. Freak U. is meant to be more simply lighthearted and comedic, and I don't want to fall into what Eric Burns calls "First and Ten Syndrome" (when a formerly lighthearted strip gets really angsty and dramatic and horrible things happen to the characters). There might be room for a sweet or sad moment, but I don't want them to overwhelm the strip.

Which means less struggling with The Dark Side and more rocking out. Of course, there's also the advantage that now I get to introduce the completely ridiculous and completely AWESOME Vatican Vampire Hit Squad to be the main source of conflict, in a last minute addition to this storyline. Of course, now the Ghost of Whedon is once again looming over the proceedings. Damn you, Whedon, get out of my brain!

(For the record--at least one character has actually gotten darker and nastier than they were intended to be originally. I'll leave it to you to look over Book Two and decide who that is, though I'll reveal it pretty unambiguously at the very end of Book Two.)

Oh, and then there's poor Night Shift, my bastard spawn. I always assume it'll take less time for me than it does because it's so easy to draw...but unfortunately, it's probably hardest to write. Because I have to be funny. In four boxes. Every freaking day. But anyway, it's going to update from next week (starting July 20th) through to whenever Lemuria starts up again. That will be the pattern for a while--Lemuria takes a few weeks off, Night Shift fills the gap.

As for Critterville, I'd really really like to do more stories, but obviously it's forced to be a bit of a low priority right now. Maybe once Freak U. Book Two wraps up?

And Sometimes I Even Finish My Strips Before Posting!

Of course, as some famous painter or another said, "A work of art is never finished, only abandoned," and I certainly could tweak these strips forever without being satisfied.

Nevertheless, I'm going back and tweaking the past weeks' worth of Lemuria strips so as to trim the white space. This allows me to keep the strips the same size whilst "zooming in" on them a little to make the details clearer. I wasn't happy with the text, in particular.

More blogging to come this week. I know you're on tenterhooks.

Folding Maps

As I figured might possibly happen, today's Lemuria was cropped too big to fit comfortably on the page. I've added a link so that you can go to the enlarged image, though it seems that it's still coming out a bit smaller than I'd like, probably thanks to photobucket. Oh well, it's still legible if you look closely.

As I mentioned, this story was printed in black and white in The Blitz Comics Anthology, but this page wasn't included; I crammed most of that expository text onto the preceding page. I felt it needed a little something to ease us into the world of Lemuria, especially since the next page or two doesn't scream "fantasy comic". Also, I've always had a weird thing for drawing maps of make-believe places, ever since I was a kid. Ask my parents. They still have sheaves of doodles of Fantalandia and Dragonia stuffed away somewhere. A walking fire hazard generator, I was.

Many of the names on this map are significant, but I'll leave it to you to figure it out. Just know that I didn't create the concept of "Lemuria", and that there's a wealth of dopey new age literature on lost continents for me to draw on.

FCBD Shenanigans

I may not have the resources of a major comic book company, but I'm pushy and persistent! As a result I've managed to take advantage of Free Comic Book Day to a small degree to promote my new comic, Lemuria, as well as Phantasmic Tales in general.

If you happen to be out in the Oshawa/Whitby area (that's in Ontario...if you didn't know that, you're, uh, probably too far away to swing by anyway) tomorrow, you can pick it up at any of the following stores:

Worlds Collide--80 Simcoe Street North, Oshawa

Klyd's--600 Grandview St. S. #2, Oshawa

Comic Book Addiction--1032 Brock St S, Whitby

And I'll be at World's Collide in person...signing autographs...or something.

I'm also going to be sneaking this little sampler onto the freebies table at the Toronto Comic Arts Festival next weekend--that's at the Toronto Reference Library. So swing by. (I'm sure I'm reeeeeally doing the TCAF a favour by throwing my mighty promotional muscle behind the event.)