Oh the things you find in olden comix :–|
Yet, I can't look away. The rabbit hole that is ComicBookPlus has sucked me into its darkest bowels and is giving me terribly sinister ideas 😈.
Noon, and I haven't drawn any pages yet. Jotting down ideas in a notebook this morning. Zoom interview with the Getty Museum in a bit, after which it's back to the drawing board.
Inbox at 15, mostly notifications. Been a while since I last laid eyes on new human faces.
It was a little over a year ago when I reached out to a few indy comix makers to form a collective, whereby we would release 8 monthly titles in PDF format via one dedicated platform, effectively resulting in 2 comix releases per week.
The idea seemed to have been met with great interest, initially, but then it—for whatever reason—just fizzled out.
Given that we practically haven't seen any new comix releases since the outbreak of COVID-19, seems to me like a collective of this sort would've been a really great thing to have around right about now.
Of course, I understand that digital-only releases will never suffice. Quality Collected editions would've been printed, and made predominantly available as direct-order specialty items via our platform. I understand the risk in attempting to bypass the traditional distribution structure, but from the looks of it... that structure has already more or less collapsed now anyway. And y'know, even if not, I'm not so sure it's a bad idea to be a producer of niche specialty things that can't easily be found in all the shops (a'la The Folio Society for books, or heck Allbirds for shoes).
I wouldn't attempt anything like that again though. Managing other people can be... uh, difficult. I'd rather build something that hinges entirely on my own singular output as outlined in Comix Engine 10. That way, if it fails or derails in any way, well then at least it's my fuck up alone (Will maybe start work on it in tandem with THE SOLAR GRID given that I now have the time and have managed to up my production speed).
Still, I think the other idea is a good one for whoever has the managerial bandwidth to pull it off.
9:10AM now. Woke up at 6:00AM after [finally] getting a good 9 hours of sleep! Will package and ship a few orders in the next hour, before getting back to the drawing table. And also have an op-ed to chip away at later in the day. Let's go.
8:20PM, still awake. Attempting to wind down with some of the wife's “pregnancy tea” (it's fine, it's just raspberry and spearmint and other herbal notes). Immersing myself hard in the comix zone. When I'm not drawing pages, I'm either reading comix or reading about comix.
These I printed and assembled from TCJ.com, an immense resource. It's an old habit I picked up way back in my teens, when the only quality reading material on comix-making could only be found online. It was very hard to get books then, at least for me anyway. And even with the abundance of books available today, I think the really good shit is really just the modest crumbs sprinkled throughout the crevices of the internet.
Regarding the reading material pictured above, it may be awfully historic, but there's still lots to draw from even in the wildly different landscape of today.
When I started to fall asleep at 9:00PM last night, I thought to myself: okay great, my body's finally going to make up for lost sleep from the nights prior.
Nope, by 12:00AM I was wide awake. It is 2:00PM now and I have yet to crash.
I think my body's just training itself to deal with the first few weeks of impending fatherhood?
On the upside, finished a page and it's only 2 o'clock, so plenty of time to get started on (and finish) the next.
Just about barely finished penciling a page, pretty loosely at that. Was planning on getting two in the can, but several hours were lost to trying to efficiently pay for and print USPS shipping labels directly through the online shop without jumping around between various applications or dealing with excessive amounts of copy-and-paste. It's either a case of no one having yet designed an intuitive enough system or my having reached an age where I may require millennials to explain shit to me.
I prefer not to ink on the same day I pencil. Only because it requires a slightly different setup given the change of tools: ink, brushes, water instead of just pencil and eraser. So I'm trying to work towards a system of 2 pages a day for penciling followed by a day for 2 pages of inking.
Minus weekends, that would give me 20 pages of finished comix a month. Of course in my case I still have to letter them, so add 4 more days on top that.
In the past, it would simply be impossible to plan things this way, because I'd constantly get invited to fly out to give talks or workshops or put on an exhibition, any of which could take up an entire week at any given time. Now that all of that is gone for the foreseeable future, I can (and should!) operate purely on the basis of a steady producing-from-home/online-retail existence. ¯_(ツ)_/¯
Not getting a whole lot of sleep tbh. Maybe 3-4 hours a night at most, which is unusual for me. It's not like I feel tired or crazy stressed or anything, at least not obviously.
Maybe I'm internalizing?
Finished up all things future child's room today, which doubles as the guestroom (because we plan on making our guests de facto babysitters obviously).
For a lot of people who work from home (I mean pre pandemic), hosting guests is often umm, undesirable, because it can very easily lead to cramping one's style. And while that's true, I love having guests crash at mine, even when the wife and I were living in a tiny studio apartment in Los Angeles, one that practically had no walls and thus no privacy, we always had folks come stay with us! And those are some of the highlights from our time in LA really. Probably a function of having had to relocate so often for a number of years now, always landing in a new place with no friends or contacts. So the only way to have any friend time really is to have long-standing friends come and visit.
Nobody ever came to visit us in Denver though.
I guess no one I know is into skiing. I have picked my friends wisely.
I'm assuming that one day people will be able to travel again, and stay for extended periods of time in houses that aren't theirs.
That would be nice.
Watched the old TMNT movie from 1990 btw and y'know what? It was really great to watch a proto Marvel movie* made entirely using practical effects and shot on real sets built out of brick, wood, and gravel and littered with real trash and real filthy puddles that actual people trained in martial arts got to roll around in (and teenage Sam Rockwell!). Even all the extras that are there just to get beat up are, y'know, actual live people! Imagine that.
Fine Eostre day, I say. Fine Eostre day.
*Fun action flick based on a comicbook sprinkled with a good dose of drama, high stakes, heart and littered with the comedic relief of one-liners? The DNA of the current Marvel movie formula is written all over TMNT.
Walking in a crowd? What is that?
Its odd how far-fetched things like the above feel right now (the above being an excerpt from THE SOLAR GRID, btw)
Today is break-from-drawing day (although I admit getting a couple hours of inking in first thing in the morning). Newsletter went out last night. Organized around the garage and set up my new USPS scale and QL-1100 Thermal Label Printer in the space for a more streamlined order fulfillment process (ah and also added the final coat in future child's room).
Didn't manage to get any exercise today but I'll get to it tomorrow, which is totally free save for packing and shipping orders, cookin' us a slamming cherry tart, and giving myself a little reading time.
Back into the production metronome on Monday.
Thinking I might try and revive my youtube channel in a few weeks time. I've got some seldom mentioned finds I'd like to talk about.
Found myself creating an alternate version of yesterday's piece today.
My RSS fetcher (Newsflow) was overflowing with too many unread posts (600+), so I spent a bit of the morning skimming through 100+ posts until I decided it's okay to obliterate all the rest and start fresh. Every once in a while I get into the habit of developing The Fear [of missing out], but then remind myself that it's okay to not keep up with all the things and just limit to the input my lifestyle's bandwidth can handle. Just as we gotta be realistic about our output, it's not a bad idea to be realistic about our input (and hey, maybe that'll give us more time for more output 😁). Removed a few feeds and unsubscribed from a few newsletters to bring it down to a manageable input flow.
Today is farmshare day where we pick up a box of fresh veg before venturing to the supermarket for kitchen staples. Papertowels and handsoap were still nowhere to be found last week.
There should be enough time to fiddle with a TSG page which I estimate will be finished by tomorrow.
It is a steamy 29C/85F today and very oppressively humid. Inbox down to 2, iced coffee keeping my brain in operation. No coconut oil in this one (it would solidify). Instead, a spoonful of coconut sugar, which I'm told is even healthier than the raw turbinado stuff.
Just realized I never shared this one here.
As I type this, it is 4:40 am. I've been up since 2:30 am after having only gotten a couple hours sleep. Mind ablaze but leading nowhere.
Goodbye, Monday.
Wife walked in and saw this on my desk and her face was overtaken by horror. IT'S FOR MY COMIX, I shouted, I'M NOT CRAZY!
In the end, I'm opting to go with the smaller, typed out text.
Started painting future child's room yesterday, and tidied up a bit around the office, but also made the time to read a little bit. It was good to step away from the drawing table. But with that comes a different perspective and thoughts on “the bigger picture.”
Friends in New York are either foraging for edible greens in what little shrubbery the city exhibits or—for those who could afford it—have fled out to the countryside.
Things aren't nearly as bad in Houston, but the situation is still dire as it is globally, and as I paint future child's room I find myself thinking about the future in ways I never have before.
