Very flattering and humbling in depth review of THE SOLAR GRID by Carson Grubaugh over at Living the Line on Youtube.
comix
Been a few days on this double-page spread from the next THE SOLAR GRID, and the end is still not very close in sight.
I like where it's headed, but I can probably spend the next couple of weeks fussing over the details that can go in the background. I think instead I'll cast it aside for now move on with the remainder of the chapter and come back to it when all other pages are at the very least roughed out. I tend to leave a lot of drawing for the inking stage anyway.
Just had my first “fuck, what was I thinking?” moment.
In preparation for drafting the last two chapters in THE SOLAR GRID, I've been re-reading all THE SOLAR GRIDs I've put out to date in an effort to find all the authorly breadcrumbs we tend to leave ourselves. Breadcrumbs that often come in handy when bringing the whole yarn to a close. But as early as chapter 2, I found that I may have done the unspeakable. It's really fucking bad. There is a point to it, but that point doesn't quite transpire till several chapters later, which is way too much to ask of a reader. It's the sort of thing that upon sight makes you want to toss the book at the nearest wall. As early as chapter 2 for crying out loud!
Only now, 8 years later, am I able to envision a far more graceful way of pulling it off, which I may just have to adjust for the collected edition. Shit.
I'm rather surprised no one has called me out on it yet. It's really fucking bad. Fml.
And then there are typos littered throughout the series. So many terrible typos. So many printed copies including said typos as well as my horrible Ch. 2 mishap. This will drive me mad, at least until the amended collected edition.
Finally remerged back to life right before Labor Day weekend, otherwise known as another American excuse to grill meat and watch sports. Neither of which I did, but rather O got to tend to some lingering house issues (some of which involved power tools, so yeah, still very American).
Have also been working on multiple comix projects, one of which is pictured above; an Arabic edition of a short autobio thing called SELECTIVE MYOPIA which I did for The Nib many moons ago. Because it'll be running in B&W, I had to mess with various attempts at tones to replace the colors, which is what you're seeing in the print-tryouts above. Although the color palette in the original is very limited, it is utilized as an integral part of the storytelling. To get the same effect with halftones meant needing to be able to easily differentiate between the different tones while also making sure the tones aren't awfully distracting and are 100% print-friendly.
Been working on another comix gig in addition of course to THE SOLAR GRID (will it ever end?). And actually, there was yet another short comix thing I worked on a little while back. It's called MOUTHFAIL, currently being serialized on my substack.
Actually now that I think of it, this year really has been the year of comix for me. Usually my time is taken up by projects of a very different nature, and I have to literally carve out little nooks of time to do comix, but this year... it's been mostly comix so far. Not entirely, but mostly.
Off to Oslo in a couple days which leaves me with the impossible task of attempting to ink 7 pages of comix in less than 48 hours. Get the entire batch of 14 pages scanned and ready for [digital] lettering on my flight (and maybe a little in my eventual hotel room) so I can send this project out and be done with it before prepping my keynote presentation, which luckily isn't until day 4 of the conference (June 30).
I've been riding the 1000mph wave for a good few months now and it looks like it is bound to continue for the remainder of the summer. It'd be nice to sit under a tree and watch the birds sometime.
I won't get deep into the details because I'm not big on ranting, but it is worthy to relay that the day started at 5 in the morning with plans to arrive at our final destination at 3:00pm, which actually would've been 5:00pm our time so all in all a 12-hour ordeal. But no, we only made it by midnight so more like 2:00am our time, and did so missing our checked luggage.
Because I'm not at a point where I can take a week-long trip away from work right now, I decided to bring my work with me; namely a handful of penciled comix-essay pages I've been working on for an exhibition catalogue, and those pages being 11”x17” and kept safely in a sturdy portfolio of larger size, didn't quite fit in my carry-on and so into the checked luggage they went (and I sweeear I felt something bad was destined to happen right then and there).
So yes here I am all super prepped with my special portable Da Vinci kolinsky sable brushes, my Saiboku Aya Ink Stick, my porcelain ink stone, in addition to an assortment of fountain pens acquired specifically for inking on the move, but without the pages all said tools were supposed to be used on, pages that are at least a week's worth of work onto themselves.
I stare at all these tools and silently eat all the words I might've ever said against working digitally.
Keeping my fingers crossed that lost luggage may be found and returned before the end of our trip, because otherwise I'ma have to pencil aaall those pages all over again, and there's nothing I hate more in this world than backtracking.
AND FINISHED! Almost.
Notice how it is blank next to where it says “C (digital)”. That is the cover for the digital edition, which I approach differently to print editions for good reason.
Where I added “BM” slots at the very bottom? That's “Backmatter” which I realized I hadn't made much space for on my chart. I have it indicated as 3 pages there, but they actually ran to 9! All finished though. So yeah, this chapter runs quite long. I don't imagine the next three will need to run as long. 🤞
Saw Gaiman speak last night, part of a book tour apparently. Not sure I know of any other author who can fill a sizable auditorium with a paying audience for what is ostensibly a book promotion event. To Gaiman's credit though, he didn't read exclusively from his book, but read other stuff as well; a couple never published poems. He also includes little anecdotes and life stories between each reading. The entire event was 2 hours, Gaiman standing, never sitting, and never even moving around the stage. To be stationary for two solid hours, and do nothing but talk at a dimly lit crowd of some, I dunno, 2500 people and manage to be captivating, insightful, charming, and also damn funny the entire time is an immensely admirable feat. Again, I can't think of a single other author capable of pulling it off.
He even read a Batman poem.
A Batman poem.
First day of one full week of solo parenting has commenced and I am already dead. And it just so happens to coincide with the week I'm determined to wrap up this chapter of TSG because it really has been an awful lot of time, hasn't it?
His mother though—gods bless her—did book a sitter for 2 days out of the week, and organized daycare transport for 3, so at least that's some of the load taken care of.🤞
Currently reading: BLOOD, SWEAT, & CHROME: THE WILD AND TRUE STORY OF MAD MAX: FURY ROAD, and the title does not lie. If half of what is recounted in this book is true, then the making of this film is truly mad and most certainly unlike that of any other film in history. The book reads fast and drops glorious little nuggets throughout along with much inspiration. And I'm willing to bet that the 384 pages dedicated to chronicling the movie's wild journey barely scratches the surface. I was only 50 pages in when I realized I had to go ahead and order THE ART OF MAD MAX: FURY ROAD immediately, which I'm actually surprised took me this long to get around to.
This may just be the most agonizing part of graphic-noveling, when you're so close yet still so far. When you have an allotment of pages that are: penciled, inked, and lettered, ostensibly completely finished pages, exceeeeeept not quite. For this particular chapter I'm working on, the pages require a final sweep of touchups, halftones in some cases, and colors in others (sometimes a single tone of color, or two tones, or “full-color”, which in my case I have limited to 4 tones). The fact that each set of pages requires a different process to be brought to the finish line, means the amount of time each page requires is quite different, which makes it significantly hard to accurately assess the amount of time each page needs to finally be done-done. Which is frustrating.
New computer has arrived though and I'm finding that it is already helping speed up the process.
Prison Chart system: back-slashes for pencils, forward-slashes for inks, strike-through for letters, and then finally a blackout for pages that are done-done (like I said, some require various degrees of color and some don't).
I am a poet.
Cranky this morning. Little sleep and little accomplished to show for it. Ordered new computer in futile attempt to save me from this machine's taunting ways. Doesn't arrive till next week and will have to put off a few tasks till then.
Never a good idea to spring straight from bed to work. Will now attempt to gave day its proper start: shower, shave, breakfast, coffee, proper clothes (underwear and t-shirt at the moment), and then back to dialoguing this thing.
Poetry, sheer poetry.