Exciting News!

Turns out I'm still doing those drawings every day. This is the longest I've ever kept up a daily journal project.

UPLOAD THEM, THEN!

I will, as soon as I get to a scanner.

WHY AREN'T YOU AT A SCANNER?

I'm on vacation with my family in North Carlina! I'm sunburned and sandy, and tired from digging holes. We're watching Coach Carter on TV, and it's okay. I'm making a journal comic of this trip. It'll be online when I get back in the middle of October.

PROMISES, PROMISES

Okay, here's something substantial:
I submit to an anthology magazine called gangLion.
Here are the first 3 pages of my 12 page submission to issue 2:


gangLion is awesome, because they accept and publish submissions from anyone, even children and animals! Check them out here:

http://ganglioncomics.blogspot.com/

and you can email them if you're interested in getting on the mailing list:

gangliongang@gmail.com

That's it for now, back to the basketball games.

A Week of Moments

Want to hear a story? I know you do!

Back in September of '08, my watch alarm would go off every day at 1:59 pm, and I didn't know how to turn it off.

So I decided to draw myself in the position I was in when my alarm went off, along with whatever I was thinking or hearing at that moment.

It was okay, but I wanted the drawings to be really high-quality, so (like an idiot), I made daily sketches that I intended to finish later. As you might assume, the pile of sketches stacked up, and I never finished them, and after a week or two, I got overwhelmed by all the drawing I had to do, and I called the project off.

I soon forgot about that project, and in January '09, started a new daily journal: Numbered Days. It was a 3-panel strip that I drew in a Moleskin daily planner that had really conveniently-sized spaces for each day.

It was pretty good, but I wanted the drawings to be really professional, so (like an idiot), I made daily sketches, and the rest writes itself. Needless to say, Numbered days (despite having several really nice strips), has gone the way of the Dodo, the Model T and the... previous daily journal I just wrote about.

But then, a few weeks ago, I was cleaning out my hard drive when I discovered the sketches for the first project, and realized I really liked reading them only a year later because they sparked my memory for what life was like last year.

So I have officially given Numbered Days the boot, and Re-instated the Original Journal, with one crucial twist- the drawings are crap!

By allowing myself to do quick, loose, occasionally sloppy drawings, I can ensure that I at least get something out every day, and it also raises the odds that eventually my ability to draw quickly and well will improve.

ON WITH THE NEW JOURNAL!

Whoa Nelly!

Here is the colour, as promised.

It's a colour comic, and it could be a huge thing someday:

CLICK HERE FOR COLOUR!

Just don't expect it to update anytime soon. I've got things to do!

Alright here we go

Things are really heating up over at Pulp Variety Hour, where there were two pages posted at once today! And only 2 weeks after the last post!

Clearly I have been doing a terrible job with the uploads, but I refuse to apologize. I've been writing a pretty long comic in my sketchbook, I just haven't posted it for some reason.

"Why?" you ask? Maybe it's that I hate posting my stuff in thumbnail form... I have to figure out a better website than this. More accurately, I am a pretty lazy guy, not gonna lie.

WHELP, HERE'S THE PVH STUFF:

PRETTY EXCITING, DON'T YOU THINK?
"YES"?
THEN GO FOLLOW IT ON TWITTER, IF YOU HAVE ONE!

'GIVE ME THE MONEY OR SHE DIES'...I think that's a pretty bad ass title for a story. Can't wait to see where it's going... I just have to keep drawing them, and Max will keep writing.

OH AND

The guy who writes Thog Infinitron (my new favourite comic), sent me some fan mail!

BE HONEST

Well, actually, he replied to my fan mail, but I'll take what I can get! And he told me to do something in colour! And since this is the internet and it doesn't cost any more than black and white, why the hell not?

GOOD QUESTION!

So the next post will have something in colour just for you, Riel Langlois!

Here's a preview:
RED
YELLOW
ORANGE
DIFFICULT TO DESCRIBE

oh and a comic

Here is some evidence of that comics-making I mentioned in the last post.
It's a new page of Pulp Variety Hour, my Twitter Comic which also still exists, despite having just been dealt a solid month of neglect. Enjoy!



Oh, fer cryin' out loud, this is the best I can do. Th' dang innernet's broken.

THIS BLOG STILL EXISTS!

Hey Guys! (All Five Of You)
(Hereafter referred to as AFOY)

LET'S TRY OUT THAT LAME ACRONYM, SHALL WE?

AFOY might be interested to learn that I am now constructing a LIST OF PEOPLE WHO HAVE EVER SENT ME FAN MAIL!

Since nobody has ever done so, that list is barely even existent. Here is a link to the warm divot in the internet's surface into which it will one day be nestled.

Oh, and if you've never seen my actual site, here's the front door.

I have made five spots in the list! Hint Hint!

Whelp, that's enough begging for attention. I don't even have any comics to show you.
I've actually been drawing comics like a madman lately. Buuuut... I haven't scanned any lately.

Hope you weren't expecting anything!

Weekend Comics!

Remember how I said I might make some comics on the weekend?
Well I made nine pages of them!
Just some crappy journaling-as-fast-as-possible comics, so they're a bit sloppy. But maybe worth reading? I was documenting the events of the weekend as they transpired... which basically boils down to a bus ride, then I wrote about beating up Scott McCloud, and then I forgot about the comic all weekend, and did a 2-page recap of everything that happened.

ON WITH IT!

Page One:

Page Two:


Page Three:


Page Four:


Page Five:


Page Six:


Page Seven:


Page Eight:



Page Nine:

Hope you liked it, despite the incredibly awkward pacing!
I've been working on a new Vorpbot and Bandana Girl that I might post later on.
(No, I don't expect anyone to know who Vorpbot and Bandana Girl are... but based on the names, I bet you can picture them im your heads.)

Better Know a Blogger!

Here is an anecdote that will make you feel like you know me (here I am pretending that there are people out there reading this who don't actually know me in real life).

AN ANECDOTE FROM YOUR PAST? TELL US MORE!

The year was 1999-2000. I was in a grade that wasn't high school yet. That's right, it was junior high. My friends Max and Andrew spent a lot of their recesses reading EGM- Electronic Gaming Monthly. Because they liked video games, and still do.

I liked video games at the time, and still do, but as with 22-year old James, 12-year-old James only sort of liked them in passing, hadn't really sunk his teeth properly into a game since Super Mario World for the SNES. (Which I had owned for 7 years at this point).

Point is, I got a subscription to EGM! A subscription to a magazine devoted to the latest news and reviews from the world of electronic gaming! News about and reviews of games that I had very little interest in playing, except for maybe at somebody else's house if they happened to buy them.

So why did I spend the 24 or 36 dollars for 12 issues of this rag? It wasn't peer pressure. I actually had a pretty good reason for wanting to receive the thing monthly:



That's right! I subscribed to the whole damn thing just to get the one bloody page at the back of the magazine! It was a comic, by the way, and a brilliant comic it was. I remember they lampooned the Pokémon craze by creating a Pikachu-like mouse with nuclear powers, and it was named Chernobyl! Classic!

Anyways the whole reason I told you this boring story is that I just found out Hsu & Chan is available online! In webcomic form! $0/year! Go witness its glory!

EPILOGUE!

Aaand in telling that story I just remembered what a huge role the Pokémon game, and the franchise in general, played in my life. I retract that statement about Super Mario World.

Now with MORE PULP!

Looks like things are HEATING UP! Now in its third page, I think this is the biggest project Max and I have ever collaborated on!

AND NOW A VAGUE AND POSSIBLY EMPTY PROMISE!

Come back on Monday, when I will post all the comics I draw this weekend! Maybe TONS, maybe some, maybe none at all... but I am seriously considering a sizeable project!

WE'LL SEE!

Latest Pulp Variety Hour

This would be page two. And what are you doing reading it here, anyways? Check it out on Twitter!

My Girlfriend

She is a beautiful and mysterious cowgirl, as evidenced here:


And look at the card she made me for my birthday!


That's right, she scoured the internet for all my favourite webcomics and brought them together in one brilliant page of awesomeness. If you are unfamiliar with any one of these characters, you should rectify that immediately, as each one of them is like 10 Bart Simpsons rolled into some kinda Nutty Koo-Koo Super-Bart. Here come the links, in reading order no less!


DAR by Erika Moen
History Comics by Kate Beaton
Penny Arcade by Tycho and Gabe
Lucy Knisley
White Ninja
The Non-Adventures of Wonderella
Dinosaur Comics by Ryan North
XKCD
Professor Brothers by Brad Neely
Dr. McNinja

Seriously, if you haven't read every single one of these geniuses, what are you even doing on this blog?

On the subject of fandom, let me show off the autographs I got at TCAF!


So by now you should recognize Erika, Lucy, Ryan, Kate and the Doctor, but what about that curly-haired fellow? That's Mark Thisse , prolific cartoonist and awesome dude! And the stick man on the post-it note? That's John Campbell, writer of depressing comics and self-proclaimed "alright sort of guy I guess".

If you don't know what TCAF is... hoo boy. Hold onto your hat.

Here is what my Comics look like.

As promised in the last post, some journal strips:


I went on a purchase-intense mission, and was pretty excited about the things I bought. Here they are!


The fall depicted here was much more painful than my illustration might make it look. I was going pretty fast when my seat fell off and I had to roll a bit until I stopped. Made it out with just 2 scrapes, though. If there had been traffic on the road, or if I had landed differently, it could have been a problem.

Here's a little one-page thing about puns in different languages.


Hopefully you can read Italian!

AND NOW FOR AN EXCITING ANNOUNCEMENT

Are you on Twitter? If you are, you should follow this account . I made it today with my good friend Max Lantz. He's a talented writer, and we're always trying to be a writer/artist team, and now we are:

THE GAME WORKS LIKE THIS:

He writes a twitter post, then I illustrate it as a page of comics. Then he writes another twitter post to continue the story, et cetera ad infinitum. We're going to see how long of a story we can write. We're pretty excited about it. I'll be posting all the pages here, but they might not read too well without the text over at Twitter.

I turned 22!

So my birthday was on Tuesday, and some awesome folks came out to help me celebrate- you know who you are! And if you forgot because of the drinking, here is a reminder!


Yep, I drew terrible portraits of everyone who joined me at my house. Luckily I'm not too self-conscious about showing off my bad drawings (maybe I owe this to my thesis professor, John Scott ). Also I have this three-pronged excuse: I was drunk, it was dark, and most of the time I wasn't looking at the page.

Sadly I left my sketchbook at home before we went to the bar, otherwise I could have drawn some even worse portraits of the people we met up with there.

AND LASTLY

Did you know I keep a comic journal? Why would you know that, I never show anyone. Point is, it's a daily comic strip about the stuff that happens to me. I've been having trouble keeping up with it, and think that putting it on the internet will help me out with that.

So: starting with the June 30th strip, I will start posting them on here! Coming Soon!

I'd better get to work on that.

Comics, As Promised!

So here are the highlights from my "Father's Day Weekend Sketchbook". Not that great a name because the only things I left out were unfinished/abandoned pages, rough sketches, some abstract pattern drawings and a terrible drawing of Captain Canuck. Also a bad name because 10 pages is a pathetic amount for a sketchbook. Maybe not bad for a weekend, though.

ON WITH THE COMICS ALREADY!

Let me be perfectly clear: this is a drawing of actual events. On the way to the lake, there was a point where I was responsible for both keeping the truck in the proper lane, and for keeping Menina from falling out the wide-open window. It was brief, though.

And most of the drive was far more relaxing. Check out this chilled-out sketch of my Dad and Menina, two of my favourite people there are:


Dad's mouth was open because he was singing to Amy Winehouse. I was going to write the lyrics in, but I forgot them, and I didn't want to put any old lyrics in because they would be "close enough". I don't stand for that kind of sloppy approximation!

AND NOW FOR SOME SLOPPY APPROXIMATION!

Look closely, or skim the page briefly, and you'll notice some truly sloppy text work. Totally ran out of room for the word 'boats'. And as for the bottom line, I guess I momentarily forgot how to spell 'mean'.

This is the introduction page of a two-page comic about how Menina- the supposed "water dog"- get this! Fell in the water and hated it! Classic! that page is basically planned out and if I ever feel like it maybe I'll ink it and post it.

"Well, that's all for now", he said, bowing awkwardly before an audience of... one? Maybe?

Welcome to the Internet, James!

FIRST POST!!! Oh yeah, I said it first. So don't even try to say it in the comments, or in any other comment on any other thing on the internet. Seriously, that shit drivel is annoying.

This past weekend was the third Sunday of June, so it was time for a very special celebration:

HAPPY FIRST BIRTHDAY, DAD'S NEW SMOKER!!!

If it doesn't look particularly enthused about its birthday, maybe it's just moping a little because it hasn't been set up yet. Maybe it's looking back on the first year of its life, and wondering what it means to smoke meat, and trying to imagine what that might be like.

As if to add insult to injury an entire year of insult, we barbequed some viddles on Sunday, not 3 meters from said smoker:


I refuse to personify them because conscious meat is creepy when it's all chopped up (conscious meat is just fine, by the way, if it's an intact pig or human), but if I did personify them, I'd say they were maybe a little disappointed to have to be half-assedly smoked on a barbeque, and I was certainly not too happy with the results of this method myself.

I really did have an enjoyable weekend, despite the impression you might have gleaned from all this whining. For Father's Day, I went canoeing with my Dad and my Dog in a SECRET FISHING SPOT! It was relaxing and sunny and mosquitos ahoy.

Here is evidence of that claim. It's also evidence that after a weekend apart from civilization, sometimes one forgets not to do really embarassing things like wear glasses and sunglasses at the same time.

Nice one, six eyes!

Did I mention this blog is supposed to be about comics? I'm getting to them, but first, an amazing creature we caught accidentally! My dad left his hook in the water overnight with a worm on it, and look, dear reader, what we found the next morning!

When I first saw it, I thought it was some kind of AXOLOTL, a creature I'd seen in the Aquarium of Niagara Falls in New York State. But of course, those live in Mexico, don't they? And the one I saw there was white.

So I did some research when I got home, and it looks like this guy is not unrelated to the exotic Axolotl. The Common Mudpuppy is also an aquatic salamander. And yes, those flappy ear-like things are gills! The entire species, like the Axolotl, has sort of given up on puberty, or at least the stage in their development where they get the ability to breathe on land. This sort of thing is known as Neoteny, and you can read a delightful comic about Axolotls and Neoteny here.


In closing, though, I'm glad it wasn't some rare breed of salamander, because he had totally swallowed that hook, and... killing rare animals is worse than killing common ones? But killing common ones is brutal too, and my Dad and I felt super guilty about having probably caused this cute guy's demise. My guilt, however, might be overwhelmed by how lucky I feel to have seen this amazing creature that I had no previous knowledge of. Yeah, that probably makes me a bad person.

MOVING ON!

This is where I would show you my drawings from that weekend, but I forgot to bring my book with me, so I can't scan them right now! So.... comics coming next post!

Enjoy your week, and take some kind of comfort in the fact that tomorrow is my birthday and I will be totally drunk. What do you mean, you don't find that comforting in any way? You wouldn't know comfort if it sawed your arm off.