Original Art Sundays No. 232: The Next Sharp Invitation, p. 4

It never lets up, does it? Wasted half a day trying (unsuccessfully) to get rid of annoying adware on my Mac. Very irritating.
Well, back to the work!
I'm quite moved by the death of Prince, and am developing a story on the subject. It will have to wait a bit as the deadline for the draft of Sharp Invitations looms large.
Here's the next page of the current story.

Again, lettering digitally, using the Colleen Doran typeface from Comicraft. The rest is hand work.
This page went through several iterations before I settled on this one. Finding the right pacing and mood was very challenging! I toyed with over-the-top stuff like the bus devouring kids, which I toned down to that second panel. While it's hardly subtle, I like the idea of the smiling bus followed immediately by the "demon bus". We had the shell of a school bus on our land up north, right at the edge of the woods near the creek (which I always pronounced "crick"- hey, when it's your creek, you can pronounce it however you like). I always think about that rusty ghostly shell when I think of my time on the school bus.
The borders in the first two panels are free hand over ruled pencil lines. The third panel has a ruled ink border as well, implying a more grave tone.
There's a great deal of rather obvious (to my mind, at least) foreshadowing on this page. I shan't give away the next page, but I'd be very surprised if anyone was surprised by its contents.
I've rendered buses several times- for some reason, they show up in a fair number of my works. I usually don't spend a lot of time on backgrounds, but inspired by Scott McCloud's suggestion that they be considered environments rather than backdrops, I cribbed this bus layout from a page in the B & W run of ZOT!

Here's another page that uses the bus, from an earlier attempt at a graphic novel on trans issues. This was done shortly after Tranny Towers ended, and was originally intended to tell Athena's story more fully, though I did away with the funny animal motif. Pretty good bus work here too! Maybe I should do a whole story set on a bus some time...
Ahem. Back to the issue at hand.
I have exactly three weeks to complete this project, including a small print run. I will complete the work in roughs, and do as many finishes as time permits before going to press.
Let's get back to it!

Best Comics of 2013 No. 15: The Mysterious Strangers

Well, here we go with another year-end countdown. I prefer to do these day by day rather than all at once, as most folks do.
First up, a book I was initially exposed to during Free Comic Book Day. Oni Press' The Mysterious Strangers is an era- specific pastiche: early 1960s superheroes, spies and rock & roll, in a nonstop action package.

Within the first three issues, we've had Mayan intrigue reminiscent of the pulps (early Doc Savage comes to mind here), a superpowered spy team (our title heroes), a not-so-thinly veiled Beatles  homage, and a very cool riff on my beloved Doctor Strange! There are hints of X-Files (and by extension, the X-Files' inspiration, Kolchak, the Night Stalker), coloring and art reminiscent of Ditko and Mike Allred courtesy of Scott Kowalchuk, and some terse if dated writing by Chris Roberson.
Yes, the whole thing is incredibly silly. And it isn't really about anything.
I don't care.
It's become fashionable for all (ahem) serious comics to be crawling with profundities and deep insights on the meaning of (fill in you pet message here). And  (cough) SERIOUS comic readers are expected to follow suit. But I see nothing wrong with well-crafted escapist fiction.
If that's not your cuppa, so be it. But life is plenty hard enough. While art and literature and cinema and comics and films (and on and on) do help to direct and inform our lives, there are plenty of times when you just need to take a break and take some comfort in a really wild, well-told story.You can parse anything for its deeper meanings and usually find some, but give it a break once in a while. The Mysterious Strangers is a really smart book that's a great getaway.
The sentiment is best summed up in this sequence from Scott McCloud's ZOT!

Tomorrow: Number 14, safe as houses!