In the News Again

In the News Again

Photograph of the "In the News, Again" comics anthology in print, lying on some vintage pebbly sidewalk somewhere. I don't know why but I'm always photographing stuff on random surfaces near my house. I guess I just get too scared of the outdoors to proceed much further.</p>
<p>The anthology itself is a duotone, half beige and half neon lime green. The text is set in big block letter blue, with thick wavy serifs. There is a photograph in the center of the cover. It depicts a drawing of an adult woman kneeling next to a photo of a little girl. Hand-written in two speech bubbles: "I love you" and "Don't ever forget it!"

In the News, Again: A SAW Nonfiction Comics Anthology
Recently I had the pleasure of joining a nonfiction anthology, In the News Again, edited by Emma Jensen and Karlo Antunes.

Digital art comics page. It has three panels depicting how my 2019 Geek Girl Con went. Panel one:

Above is the first page to my small entry. I wanted to do a comparison of attending a comics convention pre-pandemic vs. post-pandemic. I signed up for a two-page entry because I don’t have much experience with anthologies and did not want to over-promise. I remember thinking, as I created this incredibly short story, that I was slow and awkward and shouldn’t be making comics.

Then I realized…You know what, not everyone commits to 2- and 3-pt perspective in their comics. And not everyone puts crowd scenes in multiple panels. There are some things that just take time to draw.

To read the second (and final) page, consider buying a copy of the anthology here. Though my contribution is lighthearted and harmless, the anthology contains “stories that explore themes of sex, death and grief, mental illness, suicide and abuse, racism, slavery, surgery, trauma, animal cruelty, and violence.” As such I can only recommend it for adult readers.

I may release the second page to read for free at some point in the future, but for now I’m keeping it locked away in hopes of tempting book sales. Here are some other samples from the anthology, graciously provided by book authors:

Digital art of a page from the nonfiction comic, "Super-Hero Grandpa", by Aman King. It depicts the Phatnom, his secret hideout, his dog sidekick, his fashionable alter ego attire, his ancestral wealth, and his readership.

“A 6-page non-fiction comic about Lee Falk’s The Phantom (the world’s first costumed crimefighter in comics) and the ‘Phan’ community. I interviewed multiple fans, who come from different walks of life, to get their personal take on the character. The most creative aspect for me was depicting people’s real-life memories based on my own imagination. The best compliment I received was from an interviewee who said my ‘deviations from reality’ were a great improvement on the real thing!”
~ Aman King

Page of Adrean Clark's comic. It's a vignette of various buildings in a sunset tone. The overlaid dialogue reads like this: The Way Above is a meditative tour with Adrean through her memories of growing up Deaf and walking the Saint Paul, Minnesota, skyways as an adult. It illustrates the complexities of the city’s unique pedestrian route. Also available as a printable zine at https://ko-fi.com/s/ce2f357eeb“.
~Adrean Clark

Crop of a single panel from a comic about frogs. This is a muddy-looking brown panel done with something that looks like crayon or pastel. It features a forest in the background, with a human head poking up in the foreground. The person has scraggly brown hair and looks to their left. Something deep in the background goes,

“The Secrets of Mud is about the author’s discovery of a frog orgy in the middle of the woods on a rainy February. From the congregation of birds around the site to the sounds of the frogs diving beneath the water at the first sign of danger, the discovery is not obvious but pieced together from details scattered through the forest.”
~Mae Wilson

DIgital comic page depicting hands doing various tasks: Sculpting a bowl, weaving a basket, hammering a nail, chopping a cucumber, and gripping a handsaw. They are all contained in organic-looking blobby panels with soft pastel colors. The margins are black. Text on top and bottom reads as follows: “Thinking of Thumbs is Lynn’s reflection on MIchel Montaigne’s essay, ‘Of Thumbs,’ written in the 1500’s. She describes his fascination with the destructive power thumbs endowed on humanity and wonders why a Renaissance thinker overlooked the thumb’s contribution to civilization.”
~Lynn Bernstein

Photo of the back of the anthology in print form. Credits include: Featuring work by Emil Wilson, Adrean Clark, Maja Milkowska-Shibata, Jim Hamilton, Lynn Bernstein, Shannon Brady, Jeff Klarin, Walter Hudsick, Mahour Pourghadim and Sadaf Faghihi, Olivier Ballou, Maia iotzova, Cassie Seiple, Virginia L Small, Deanna Feinstein, Amelia Brunskill, Maria Fitzgerald, Jeannie Mecorney, Ken Harris, Mae Wilson, Emily Zilber, Justin M. Carroll, Don Unger, Donna Druchunas, Aman King, H. McGill, Darlene K. Campbell, Juliette Yu-Ming Lizeray, Siobhan Orient, Jamie Scandal, Janice Goldberg, Naters, and Laura Garzon. Text at the bottom reads

Clicking this button will take you to a third-party shop.

All proceeds from sales of In the News, Again go to Sequential Artists Workshop,
a comics school devoted to affordable arts education.

Care to read more?

In the News Again

In the News Again

In the News, Again: A SAW Nonfiction Comics Anthology Recently I had the pleasure of joining a nonfiction anthology, In the News Again, edited by Emma Jensen and Karlo Antunes. Above is the first page to my small entry. I wanted to do a comparison of attending a...

My Digital Shop: Now Open!

My Digital Shop: Now Open!

My Online Shop is Now LiveTruth be told, I’ve been promising this online shop for years. I think over a decade, now, people have asked for a digital shop and I’ve been unable to supply it. I’ve just not been able to set the shop up. It’s been a combination of perilous...

Amphiox: Launches Today!

Amphiox: Launches Today!

Amphiox: Launches Today!Today, my short story Amphiox launches in free-to-read format! This is the first time I’ve ever self-hosted a webcomic and I’m so happy it’s all come together. My partner Devin coded a website design I had in mind, and it is immaculate. Just...

Want to chat about this?

My Digital Shop: Now Open!

My Digital Shop: Now Open!

Photograph of the Amphiox mini-graphic novel, artfully posed within some overgrown ivy. The cover is black and has a fish tail on it with the title 'AMPHIOX' running vertically down the middle. Serpentlike coils writhe in the background of the cover. The artist/author label reads 'H. McGill http://hmcgill.art'.

My Online Shop is Now Live
Truth be told, I’ve been promising this online shop for years. I think over a decade, now, people have asked for a digital shop and I’ve been unable to supply it. I’ve just not been able to set the shop up. It’s been a combination of perilous housing decisions, competition for P.O. Boxes, and optimizing my offerings. A lot of the trouble setting up this shop has been really personal and embarrassing. Now, at last, I’m in a state of mind and security to offer products through an online shop. I am grateful that a lot of people really wanted my art to be available online. The convention exclusivity was not ideal for anyone.

After so many years, what was the tipping point for this shop to be set up? Basically — I have a product worth selling online, now. It’s a high enough price point to be worth my time shipping, even if I only get one sale during a given week. It’s an interesting and collectible item, too, at least for us grungy indies skulking around in the backroom of the comics industry.

When I finished my proof-of-concept short graphic novel, Amphiox, I explored several options for independent print distribution. Amazon seems complicated. Etsy destabilized years ago. I disliked Kickstarter’s embrace of blockchain. Crowdfundr, a Kickstarter alternative, created a workshop just for kidlit and Young Adult books. I was invited and it seemed good. I read through the recruitment emails intensely, before ultimately deciding I didn’t want to do crowdfunding at all. I fear scammers who pledge and then cancel the pledge at the last moment. The gamification of sales and possibility of failure turn me off as well. My online presence is simply not big enough to fundraise thousands of dollars.

All of this, and…

The weird thing is, I don’t want to grow too quickly. 

A crowdfunding campaign, especially one with official themed highlighting and curation, gets a lot of eyes. Strangers are introduced to indie products. These campaigns are designed to play on people’s emotions. Hopes rise. Crowdfundr was very kind to invite me but they had invited many similar people, so I didn’t feel like I was harming anything by declining. Since Amphiox would have been gathered into a group of other indie works, pending approval anyway, I couldn’t bear to see it fail its goal. A failure would be compared unfavorably to the other crowdfunding successes. So, in a way, I’m purposefully standing in the way of my own growth.

I’m not sure if Amphiox is the ‘first impression’ that I want the larger reading world to have of me. There are parts of a possible continuation I haven’t workshopped. My freshly-formed ideas are frequently too edgy for most readers, especially in the kidlit world. Amphiox isn’t made for a specific audience. It’s just me, fooling around. There isn’t even a concrete plan to continue it. I would hate to be shackled to overblown expectations, if it were unexpectedly well-received. I feel like it’s much better if this project gets passed around through understated word-of-mouth, via friends who share things with each other. It would be insincere to pretend this is a big, world-changing project worth hype. I like Amphiox so much better as a nifty little secret thing.

Photograph of a box full of 'Amphiox' graphic novels. The graphic novel has a giant fishtail with a glowing fin on the front. The graphic novels are stacked and wrapped in shrinkwrap inside of the box.The unboxing of Amphiox, 1st edition — pretty exciting!

Shipping is also an area where I lack expertise. I hear horror stories where unexpected fees make every sale cost the artist more to make and ship the product than to do nothing at all. Crowdfunding sites take fees. Shipping supplies were also something I didn’t have much experience purchasing in bulk. The local USPS office is also like something out of a Parks and Rec episode, in terms of in-person customer service (love them, but it’s true). Having stood in line behind a person with 200 envelopes that needed individual stamping, I’m willing to bet this post office isn’t equipped to handle mass package mail-outs.

So, what to do?

 

  1. I didn’t want competition. Especially not with my friends and fellow creatives.
  2. I wanted to avoid allying myself with ‘yet another’ digital platform, whose code of conduct might change unexpectedly or which might shatter and vanish outside of my control.
  3. I didn’t want my ‘test’ comic to be regarded as all that I am capable of, forever.
  4. And, most of all…I just wanted to see what I could do on my own terms, with low stakes.

 

Call me sentimental, but I’m really enjoying the experimental stage of my artistic identity. I’m not ready to give up the freedom that obscurity grants me.

An independent digital shop was ultimately my solution. I didn’t do much research, but I did compare Ko-fi’s shopfront to WooCommerce, which is built into my WordPress theme. Hacking a shop into my existing website appealed to my partner, Devin. I’d gotten almost all the way through setting up a WooCommerce shop but some sort of unknown technical hurdle stopped me from finalizing the shopfront. Devin is a seasoned software engineer so I asked him to poke around and see what I’d done wrong.

It turns out…

I’d neglected to click a button…

So then Devin clicked the button for me because at that point I decided to give him the win. I don’t quite remember if it was the button press that did this, but at some point the shop setup replaced my entire homepage with a default shopfront. I was so horrified that a feeling of calm settled into me. Was it ennui? This dead feeling? Well, displaying my stuff online doesn’t even matter, does it? I get like a hundred hits on each blog post, tops. I’m small, and this is fine.

Screenshot of the ugly shop layout, including an unnecessary sidebar, search bar, and an ugly stock photo of a 'come in, we're open' sign.The horror.

That’s the thing about WordPress and other WYSIWYG (What You See is What You Get) editors. A software engineer is going to look at code, understand it, and execute a clean solution. With a plugin, the backend is largely hidden. Out of an attempt to be simple, a plugin button can be quite unpredictable to press. It was nobody’s fault but mine, since I hadn’t deliberately made a backup version of my homepage. For a bleak moment, all the work I’d done designing my homepage had resulted in a blank, default shop page.

Luckily my homepage still existed on the server. The WooCommerce shop setup had simply made a new, different homepage and redirected to that. Some wrestling with the dashboard and everything was put back in place. I set up my shop with various items to make it seem less empty. I haven’t figured out how to ship prints yet, but I know they would really spruce up the page visually. Books get a little discount on postage rates so for now, I only sell zines. My first branch-out may be international shipping, but we’ll see.

Suffice to say, I’m now offering print and pdf-only editions of Amphiox, among other copies of my work. This isn’t crowdfunding, as I can cover an initial run by myself. But, if you’d like to help yourself to a copy from this run of Amphiox, I have some cute goodies included and appreciate the support. I printed my zines via Mixam, and my stickers via StickerApp.

Product photo of three different vinyl sticker designs, still in their StickerApp bags. One sticker is a smaller version of the Amphiox cover with rounded corners. Another sticker is the golden bee-infused 'H' logo that I use to represent my brand. The third sticker is an egg with a baby amphiox inside.

Order your copy of Amphiox here
(includes spoiler PDF and stickers):
https://hmcgill.art/product/amphiox-graphic-novel-1st-edition-preorder/

While you’re in the shop, feel free to add other things to your cart, too!
I print shipping stickers every Wednesday and ship by the following Saturday or earlier.

Care to read more?

In the News Again

In the News Again

In the News, Again: A SAW Nonfiction Comics Anthology Recently I had the pleasure of joining a nonfiction anthology, In the News Again, edited by Emma Jensen and Karlo Antunes. Above is the first page to my small entry. I wanted to do a comparison of attending a...

My Digital Shop: Now Open!

My Digital Shop: Now Open!

My Online Shop is Now LiveTruth be told, I’ve been promising this online shop for years. I think over a decade, now, people have asked for a digital shop and I’ve been unable to supply it. I’ve just not been able to set the shop up. It’s been a combination of perilous...

Amphiox: Launches Today!

Amphiox: Launches Today!

Amphiox: Launches Today!Today, my short story Amphiox launches in free-to-read format! This is the first time I’ve ever self-hosted a webcomic and I’m so happy it’s all come together. My partner Devin coded a website design I had in mind, and it is immaculate. Just...

Want to chat about this?

Amphiox: Launches Today!

Amphiox: Launches Today!

Image depicted is the cover to the webcomic, Amphiox. It's a black cover with criss-crossing blue serpent coils taking up most of the background. The coils writhe around each other with faint glimmers of scales highlighted, before vanishing into darkness. This is a teaser for the beast that will be encountered and explained within the webcomic. Layered over the writing coils of the Amphiox is its tail, oddly centered and still compared to the rest of its body. An amphiox's tail ends in a fin with rounded tips. The fin's color is a bright, bioluminescent gradient composed of yellow fading into bright skyblue, before tapering into a darker cerulean. The tail has vibrating red highlights. It casts a rainbow of highlights onto its own scales. Attached to this tail are two more, lesser pectoral and dorsal fins, in cerulean blue. The pectoral fin pokes out near the tail, and the dorsal fin is further up, and larger. Layered onto the tail is a vertically-aligned title text: AMPHIOX, set in a serif font and bright white against the darkness of the rest of the cover. Under the tail, floating in the darkness, is more text set in white: H. McGill, http://amphiox.hmcgill.art.

Amphiox: Launches Today!
Today, my short story Amphiox launches in free-to-read format! This is the first time I’ve ever self-hosted a webcomic and I’m so happy it’s all come together. My partner Devin coded a website design I had in mind, and it is immaculate. Just look at that horizontally-tiling ocean texture with smart scrolling!

…Please. Look at my site and compliment my tiling ocean texture. I’m really proud of that.

Fishing for compliments aside, reception to my cover design and concept (magic doom eels) has been enthusiastic. Readers recognize I am trying something different with this project. My efforts are meant to create a webcomic that is exciting for readers to pick up, and also manageable on my end to create and display. I have looked at webcomics for a long time. Amphiox is my first foray into testing my three webcomic theories.

Theory 1: Readers are here to read a webcomic.

My readers are here to look at comic pages and read a story. I must design my comic to be legible on, at least, desktop, and if I can manage it, then mobile as well. While it’s a time-honored tradition to hide jokes in the alt text of webcomic pages, I’d also like to use them to point to the full text transcription in every page. I have omitted news posts in favor of these transcriptions. After all, a reader is here to navigate from page to page and the story must be kept intact between said pages. I can’t have a news post from my life interrupting a reader’s journey after the fact.

Theory 2: The webcomic must be something I can maintain.

While comments sections are fun, activity is what begets activity. A reader who sees no comments on a page is not going to feel great about being the first commenter. Someone else deciding to comment on my comic is not something I directly control. I refuse to sign up to do community management. I would also fear fan-theories and headcanons poisoning possible future plans for the comic. With these aspects in mind I have omitted the comments section. I do not want my comic judged based on how many people have commented. Readers may happily discuss my comic elsewhere if they please. For the part of the reading experience that I personally host, I prefer that readers do not influence each other’s opinions of the comic, or my own opinion of my work. My comic should be a connection between my work and one reader at a time with a bit of a personal barrier for safety.

Theory 3: I must fulfill an unstated but very real promise between me and my readers.

That promise is a complete story. Too many comics go on hiatus unexpectedly. This comic is complete, and, starting July 10th, may be read in full early via PDF purchase. Attached to this is a preorder sale for physical copies. The physical preorder sale is mostly a courtesy rather than a requirement. This is why I have opted for independent preorders rather than crowdfunding. I’m ordering a small press run of Amphiox anyway — Readers can grab their copies upfront if they so desire.

Now, will the story of Amphiox be satisfying? That is up to the reader. On my end, I have 46 pages of content to deliver, and after that, my half of the promise is fulfilled.

Read Amphiox as it begins updating daily here:
http://amphiox.hmcgill.art

Reserve a copy from the print preorder of Amphiox here
(includes spoiler PDF on July 10th, 2023):
https://hmcgill.art/product/amphiox-graphic-novel-1st-edition-preorder/

 

Care to read more?

In the News Again

In the News Again

In the News, Again: A SAW Nonfiction Comics Anthology Recently I had the pleasure of joining a nonfiction anthology, In the News Again, edited by Emma Jensen and Karlo Antunes. Above is the first page to my small entry. I wanted to do a comparison of attending a...

My Digital Shop: Now Open!

My Digital Shop: Now Open!

My Online Shop is Now LiveTruth be told, I’ve been promising this online shop for years. I think over a decade, now, people have asked for a digital shop and I’ve been unable to supply it. I’ve just not been able to set the shop up. It’s been a combination of perilous...

Amphiox: Launches Today!

Amphiox: Launches Today!

Amphiox: Launches Today!Today, my short story Amphiox launches in free-to-read format! This is the first time I’ve ever self-hosted a webcomic and I’m so happy it’s all come together. My partner Devin coded a website design I had in mind, and it is immaculate. Just...

Want to chat about this?

Geek Girl Con ’22 Recap

Geek Girl Con ’22 Recap

Photograph of my assorted art zine, Crab Rare Arts Best, next to my calico cat, neatly arranged on a bean bag.

Where to Sell my New Zine?
I recently compiled a selection of my Pandemic drawings into an art zine. The fun of zines is sharing them with someone who will read them.

Photo of my calico cat turning away from an open zine in my hands. Drat!C’mon. Just read my stuff…

Having exhausted my household of zine-readers, I decided to table at Geek Girl Con. This is a convention that takes place in Seattle and was on hiatus during the COVID days. I had only tabled once before but the feeling of the convention was, well, a weight off my shoulders. Geek Girl Con feels a lot more personal than big comic cons, but it still has lots of people attending and there is plenty of workshops and panels to attend. I don’t feel bad for being an indie creator at GGC! In fact I feel very encouraged to continue doing my own thing. The sales last time I went weren’t bad either.

Digital artwork of a dragon chomping a dove. This is painted in a medieval style. The dragon is on a red background with a title of 'crab rare arts best' in the background. Doves perch in the tree, fearful of the dragon.Crab Rare Arts Best – my new 48-page zine featuring odds and ends, including drawings, doodles, and short comics.

This zine is named via magic square, so the title isn’t supposed to make sense. Scraps of knowledge were collated by ancient people and protected with magic squares instead of properly being titled. So I did that in the same vein. It’s 48 pages of unrestrained nonsense, pulled together by virtue of ‘this is everything I happen to have on my desktop right now’.

I also created giclée prints of my elasmotherium unicorn, my gastronomy chart, my medieval cat meme, and various small artworks I’d made on my livestream. I used my inkjet printer and archival-quality cotton paper. To fill in the rest of the table, I brought leftover acrylic fossil charms (some of which were in blind boxes) and some older zines from pre-pandemic times. Warlock’d and Hands & Feet made their appearance. Then Devin and I masked up, loaded everything up in the car, promptly snapped off the side-view mirror while backing out of our garage, and called in a Lyft to get the rest of the way to the convention. I totally forgot my banner so I sent Devin back for it. He arrived with all my forgotten stuff and also…dumplings. He’s sort of amazing.

Digital artwork of an elasmotheirum depicted as being unicorn-like in a field of interlocking flowers. The 'unicorn' has clearly stomped its way into a small fenced paddock, leaving ruin in its wake. The pomegranate tree from which the unicorn snacked is falling over. Regardless, the unicorn wears a beautiful blue collar studded with gems as well as a gold chain twining around the tree. It's a pastiche of the classical medieval tapestry 'The Unicorn in Captivity.'Of Pomegranates and Unicorns –  $60 print I had for sale.

I thought for sure this print was going to be the star of my show. I even made extra copies and an additional design with the recently-reconstructed horn. I only sold one, and I only sold it while I was away from the table! Maybe I should have Devin pitch this one in the future.

Digital artwork of a constellation chart. The joke is that these constellations are all food-themed, so that the chart is a 'gastronomy' chart instead of an 'astronomy' chart. The artist's personal favorites are 'Burger-cules' for Hercules and Drink-o the Dragon. Gastronomy Chart — Another $60 print I had for sale.

Much to my delight, Gastronomy Chart sold several copies. I even had it hiding behind the bone charms because the contrast of the dark night sky made the bones pop out. People still had a fun time discovering it and that probably added to its charm. I was worried about this one because online it’s never been very popular. Just goes to show that social media literally means nothing when it comes to point of sale.

Digital artwork done in the style of a 14th century illuminated manuscript piece. A small calico cat is angrily plinking away at keys on a pipe organ, while passive-aggressive flowers curl and twist up to the cat's thoughts: Mother!! print — a $40 offering at a smaller size than the big luxury prints, same quality of paper and printing though.

This passive-aggressive cat meme was the surprise hit of the show. You can really tell when someone is responding to something on the table. People would run up and show their friends or reference roommates. Glad I made a few prints of these as a joke. I couldn’t even use my tactic of redirecting purchases from the pricey $40 print to the $15 zine — People just wanted the cat, and they were willing to pay the meme premium.

In terms of other sales, I sold the average amount of zines, and was surprised by the enthusiasm for some of my older zines. Someday I will shift those out of rotation. Still have a few left.

Among the various cosplayers and con-goers near my table, I encountered a very tame iguana on top of its owner’s shoulders and I got to pet it. Everyone was wearing masks. My usual sales tactic of handing people stuff off my table to handle it was a little awkward, considering. Devin was also somewhat better at selling my stuff than me. I think he pulled in more sales. Lesson learned: I should just go walk around and relax more at these things.

You may have noticed the high quality of photos taken of my table in a previous post. At the convention, I met an amazing photographer (AnnaMaria Jackson-Phelps) who offered to take shots of my table. Sporting an impressive portfolio of print media photography, I was very excited to make her acquaintance and see what she saw through her lens. The organizers at Geek Girl Con put her in touch with me and it turned into a cool collaborative adventure.

I also met someone from the Sequential Artists Workshop in person for the first time! We both live in the Northwest area so it was cool to get my local social circle widened a little.

Photograph of a watercolor print arranged on a warm table, next to a cow-shaped succulent pot and on top of a cloth with delicate leaf embroidery. Paintbrushes lie near the print. The print itself is a bright crop of a restful, happy blue whaleshark swimming through a school of yellow fish in teal water.Look at this adorable whale shark print by Rebecca Martinez!

I picked up a moon rabbit sticker from Rebecca and couldn’t be happier with the design aesthetic. Now I just have to get back to drawing traditionally so I can get a new sketchbook, as I like to crown my sketchbooks with stickers. I highly recommend grabbing something from Rebecca’s Etsy shop if you can. It’s certainly inspiring me to do something digital, so that I have somewhere to send all this leftover stuff from the convention.

Should You Do Geek Girl Con?
All in all, Geek Girl Con only lasted one day, but it worked out really well. People had to buy then and there so I did about as well as I do during a three-day convention. It does make me wish that artist alleys were only open for one day, so that artists have more time to browse around and escape their tables during the rest of the con. I adore this convention and highly recommend it as just big enough to get visitors to your table, and just small enough to make you feel like you’re part of something special.

As far as health safety goes — everyone wore masks. It was still tricky to navigate health boundaries because part of a convention is handling merchandise and saying hello to tons of people. I know I accidentally thrust my hand out to a baffled person because I had totally forgotten not to do that anymore. In general I could feel my social skills grinding slowly into gear, but never really overcoming the awkwardness of basically holing up for 3 years with my partner and losing all of my small social groups in the process. There wasn’t anything particularly special in terms of health requirements outside of the masks and I believe (?) a vaccination requirement as well. So, do this one at your own risk when it comes to skirting COVID.

Geek Girl Con also does plenty of remote outreach via their Twitch channel. Geek Girl Con is something you can interact with all year round from any distance that is safe. I really appreciate all the work they do to make a safe vibe for a convention. Just really positive and light all around.

 

 

Care to read more?

In the News Again

In the News Again

In the News, Again: A SAW Nonfiction Comics Anthology Recently I had the pleasure of joining a nonfiction anthology, In the News Again, edited by Emma Jensen and Karlo Antunes. Above is the first page to my small entry. I wanted to do a comparison of attending a...

My Digital Shop: Now Open!

My Digital Shop: Now Open!

My Online Shop is Now LiveTruth be told, I’ve been promising this online shop for years. I think over a decade, now, people have asked for a digital shop and I’ve been unable to supply it. I’ve just not been able to set the shop up. It’s been a combination of perilous...

Amphiox: Launches Today!

Amphiox: Launches Today!

Amphiox: Launches Today!Today, my short story Amphiox launches in free-to-read format! This is the first time I’ve ever self-hosted a webcomic and I’m so happy it’s all come together. My partner Devin coded a website design I had in mind, and it is immaculate. Just...

Want to chat about this?

You Don’t Meet in a Tavern Promo

You Don’t Meet in a Tavern Promo

Digital artwork of the absolute oh my god edgiest edgelord dagger ever. It has an obsidian blade, purple leather wraps, a brass handle with a weird clover design on it. It's surrounded by a halo of abstract angels and pool-table green fields with fleurs on them. You can probably order this knife out of a knife enthusiast magazine. It would also not look out of place in Hot Topic. And this knife is not a phase, Mom!

Where to Stick This Knife?
One fine morning a little over a year ago, I set up a silly poll on Twitter. I asked everyone, since we were all thieves in a treasure room, which item to steal. About thirty-seven thieves weighed in and decided upon, among other things, taking a single knife from the treasure store.

In response to this, I created the absolute shiniest treasure knife possible. I streamed its creation live on my weekly Twitch stream. I gave the knife an obsidian blade, per chat’s insistence. Then I messed around with the symmetry brush because that seems to draw people in. I imagine it looks really cool live to see a mandala spiral out of nothing. I based a color scheme on the silly obsidian used to craft the improbably blade, and while it somewhat reminds me of the green felt on a billiards table, I liked it.

The knife then sat, fairly un-used, for a long time. I came up with a mystical moonphase archery set to accompany it later, but there’s something a little more special about the knife.

Digital artwork combining medieval lunar charts with book illumination, a wooden Ottoman horse bow, and fletched arrows. It is gilded with gold. The lunar chart combines the phases of the moon with eclipse patterns. A green orb representing Earth is in the middle. The bow has an arrow strung to it and is aimed downwards.

Flash forward to Geek Girl Con ’22. It was going to be my first in-person convention since the end of the Pandemic. I’ll have a more detailed post about this con later. It was very, very good. It was sort of a reinvention for me, moving away from painterly offerings and into more comic-book style art.

Photograph of my table at Geek Girl Con, courtesy of AnnaMarie Jackson-Phelps of Violet Daisy Games. The Warlock'd zine is posed on top of a gold tablecloth. More copies of it and the Crab Rare Arts Best zine are cropped by the composition. In the background, there's a couple of prints: One is the moonphase bow and arrow set, and the other is the edgy obsidian knife.Hey! I recognize that knife back there. Photo courtesy of AnnaMaria Jackson-Phelps.

One of the reasons I go to conventions is that I meet so many great people. The person I met of note with regards to this post was AnnaMaria Jackson-Phelps, a game photographer and TTRPG designer. She took this and many other photos for me. Then AnnaMarie granted me permission to share the photos on my blog. It was really kind of her and I hope she had a great time!

You Don’t Meet in a Tavern
In the follow-up email, AnnaMaria asked if I’d be interested in participating in her upcoming TTRPG prompt book, You Don’t Meet in a Tavern. While I couldn’t immediately commit to making new art for the book, I wondered…Maybe…maybe there was a home for my edgy obsidian knife here? I had a really honest open conversation with AnnaMaria about art licensing and I’m definitely very happy with what we decided to do.

I’m pleased to announce that my knife will appear in this collection! Keep an eye on Violet Daisy Games for more information.

Care to read more?

In the News Again

In the News Again

In the News, Again: A SAW Nonfiction Comics Anthology Recently I had the pleasure of joining a nonfiction anthology, In the News Again, edited by Emma Jensen and Karlo Antunes. Above is the first page to my small entry. I wanted to do a comparison of attending a...

My Digital Shop: Now Open!

My Digital Shop: Now Open!

My Online Shop is Now LiveTruth be told, I’ve been promising this online shop for years. I think over a decade, now, people have asked for a digital shop and I’ve been unable to supply it. I’ve just not been able to set the shop up. It’s been a combination of perilous...

Amphiox: Launches Today!

Amphiox: Launches Today!

Amphiox: Launches Today!Today, my short story Amphiox launches in free-to-read format! This is the first time I’ve ever self-hosted a webcomic and I’m so happy it’s all come together. My partner Devin coded a website design I had in mind, and it is immaculate. Just...

Want to chat about this?

Converting a Webcomic into a Graphic Novel Pitch

Converting a Webcomic into a Graphic Novel Pitch

Digital artwork of seven gangly goblins.

Retrofitting Dinosaurs for the Future of Humankind
RAWR! Dinosaur Friends started out as a webcomic concept, one that I wasn’t initially intending to pitch as a proper graphic novel. The first iteration was a slapdash, punk homage to the natural history museums I loved to visit as a child. The humor was derived from a style of internet humor called (sorry for the swear word on a middle-grade publishing blog) ‘shitposting’. I thought the combination of dry scientific concepts and casual style of writing would spark interest. The computer used grayscale tones so that it would be cheap to print. My computer was not able to handle brush strokes in Photoshop so I built it with vector shapes in Adobe Illustrator.

These comics were drawn with bezier curves and agony.

The first few comics were quite rough but I managed my expectations. If no one read it, that was fine. I could continue making it for my own enjoyment and that was enough. Making these comics made me feel like a small, safe child in a natural history museum. I posted it to a few comics and dinosaur forums and to my surprise, readers came out of the woodworks. I think I hit about ten notes and felt very happy.

One of the best responses to my comic was a polite inquiry about which dinosaur would be the most impressive to ride in a parade for a queen, and T. rex was a little too cliché. My response was to go for a gorgonopsid or a quezalcoatlus. Which resulted in…this.

And yes, I’m still friends with Andy Purviance, to this day. Who wouldn’t be?

A Taste of Attention, and Then: The End

This is the first comic I made that reached a larger audience than normal, to the tune of about two-thousand notes on Tumblr. I hesitate to call this ‘viral’ in an age where actual virality can rack up hundreds of thousands of interactions, but it was still an affirmation that hey, maybe something about what I was making was there, resonating with more people than I could ever know in my lifetime.

I brought my comic to an end in 2016. One factor was that I was an armchair paleontology fan and the space was increasingly hostile towards those who weren’t updated on the latest in paleontological finds, especially with anatomy. Another factor was that my comics, like much of social media that purports to be educational or historical, were being used as sources…and they most definitely were not researched enough to be considered educational. The final factor was, I felt like I was not challenging myself with the artwork or writing. The types of jokes fell into a few broad categories (Animal comparisons, simple stories that span millions of years and thus have unearned gravitas, mockery of pop cultural ideas about dinosaurs, gentle corrections of dinosaur facts, etc.). I also had better equipment than I did in my little un-air-conditioned 1-bedroom in Berkeley. I wanted to really draw some stuff and not be restricted by, well, restrictions that I had set up for myself to accommodate my unusual prior situation. I worked on a longform comic project called Warlock’d for a bit. Making a complete longform project is a lot different from rattling off one-shots every week. When I shopped Warlock’d around local publishing groups, I started to realize exactly how heavy and complex it was.

I wanted to, again, chase that high of rattling something silly off and getting a big, broad response. I was also getting more involved with my local comics and writing communities, and was being encouraged to create pitches to sell to publishers. RAWR! Dinosaur friends returned to my mind.

This was easily the most popular thing I had ever created. I understand that internet metrics are worthless, but 4000 notes must mean something, even if it’s just Tumblr.

I poked my little dinosaur comics blog with an updated, colorful version of ‘that horseshoe crab comic’, just to see what happened.

It exploded. The full-color version sits at around 14000 notes, currently. That je ne sais quoi  from six years ago must still be there. Then I checked my purchase history of when I formed a zine out of my dinosaur comics. Apparently I had sold about 500 copies of these zines. I wasn’t sure how impressive this was until I told other writers. They assured me that 500 copies is not a large number per se, until a person factors in the lack of wider distribution. Then, 500 copies is mildly impressive.

Cover of RAWR! Dinosaur Friends pitch. It displays several prehistoric creatures on a black background with a self portrait of the artist in the middle.My first attempt at rebranding, trying to keep a reference to my grayscale zine roots.

I shuffled RAWR! Dinosaur Friends, as a full-color iteration of the same anthology-type format, around to a couple of portfolio reviews. The response was that the middle-grade market currently only wants longform stories. Short stories and anthologies don’t do well. I restructured it as a large ‘story’ composed of hundreds of characters across all 15 geological eras, but still no dice. A graphic novel needs a story. It needs a main character, preferably one that 7-10 year olds can relate to. It needs a plot arc. It needs character development. It can’t be a friendlier version of a textbook for kids. Other than that, though, dinosaurs are a good, sellable topic for publishers to pick up, especially in the middle grade graphic novel space. So, what I was looking at was, small things that worked, a broad topic that worked, but an overall structure that did not work. Oh, and one small detail…

I also received firm pushback on the style of how dinosaurs speak. The compromise is to style the dinosaur speech bubbles to seem ‘screechier’ than the textbook writing. I’m not happy about this but I will do it so that parents and teachers don’t, in turn, screech at me for exposing their children to bad grammar.

Converting Short Stories into a Long Story
The other thing I set out to do was create some sort of main character for readers to follow through billions of years. I know that in most natural history textbooks, I was wont to skip to the dinosaurs. For my natural history book, I never wanted readers to feel like they needed to go find ‘the good stuff’. The whole book should be good. I talked to a comic artist and came across the concept of the ‘super-companion’, or character who experiences stuff in scicomm stories and can explain concepts to the audience. I’m not entirely sold on having a character who breaks the fourth wall to lecture the audience about themselves, but the concept as a general thing seemed do-able.

My first main character was actually the moon! I loved this concept of the moon looking down on the Earth and narrating what it saw. However, the moon’s not really a character, undergoing challenges and changing. If anything, the moon is fairly un-changing. 

I developed a new outline based on geological periods and threaded small adventures into an overarching story about hunting for T. rex through billions of years. This second character concept, Risa the Chrononaut, is meant to be an ‘audience step-in’ type of super-companion. She doesn’t turn to the audience and lecture them on anything, but she experiences situations a person could never experience in real life, such as tracking dinosaurs in the wild. She’s cloaked in a helmet so that the reader can imagine themselves more easily as her. She knows some things about natural history, but not everything. Risa does research on-the-fly with a magic glove that contains tools real scientists use in the field. She has her assumptions challenged as she progresses through a story about traveling through time and helping animals. Most of the assumptions I gave to her are ones I imagine some readers might have, such as mistaking ichthyosaurus and pterosaurs for dinosaurs (they aren’t!). She also learns that T. rex is a very late dinosaur which didn’t necessarily interact with a lot of the more well-known dinosaurs!

My non-storytelling goal was to make a book that causes kids to read through, and care about, natural history outside of just the millions of years that contained dinosaurs. My first outline focused on promising a T. rex in hopes that kids would understand the early geological periods were stepping stones towards the T. rex. When bounced off a trusted friend, this strategy resulted in the sensation of ‘suffering through’ the early periods to get to the dinosaurs. After the point of the story where Risa finds the T. rex, the rest of her story also suffers this way, reading like an extra-long epilogue as the age of apes peters out and what’s left over is humanity. That’s not fair to amazing time periods like the Cambrian, the Carboniferous, and the Paleogene. There are so many cool creatures to spot and takeaways that are applicable to modern human life. It would also negate all the science fiction worldbuilding work I was doing to make it so that kid’s didn’t skip to the dinosaurs!

This told me a few things. One, a T. rex is a compelling goal for my character. However, I don’t have to oversell a T. rex, since it’s naturally intriguing. My solution for draft 2 of my outline was to give Risa a greater variety of goals related to specific time periods. When I think about nature I think about survival stories. Each time period should challenge Risa to survive. I shared my revised outline with my former reader and she felt like there were improvements to the overall flow.

I passed the outline off to a different trusted reader for a fresh take, and the notes on reader interest were quite different. Instead of big lulls in the story where there were no dinosaurs, instead there were little spikes and falls of interest. This is probably a better way to tell a story, to have ebbs and flows of tension.

What next?
I’m going to write a rough draft based on this second outline, but I’m still going to seek out readers of my target audience age to see what sorts of things they like to see in stories about time travel and dinosaurs. If readers have an expectation from natural history, I want to fulfill that expectation. My plan is to have a full manuscript, twenty sample pages, and character sketches ready for a pitch. I’d love to find a publisher who is hunting for their ‘Dinosaur Book’.

 

Comics Tip

Soliciting Effective Critique with an Outline
I’ve been in a few critique groups and portfolio reviews, and one thing I’ve noticed is that outlines give me more useful one-off critique than full chapters or writing samples. Imagine: Everyone in publishing is very busy, whether it’s reading, writing, editing, or drawing. Would you have the patience to browse full stories from someone who might not be very good at writing yet? Let’s try thinking about the person on the other end of this for a second.

Critique groups are often unpaid. This means it’s a bit rude to resolutely shuffle a chapter per week to a random group of strangers. If you’re doing that, you’re better off hiring an editor. However, some groups may allow this. I avoid groups where this is the norm because it means, for every meeting, I’m reading 4-5 random chapters from ongoing stories where I might not get full context and will feel quite useless giving feedback. There are also times when someone’s long story is somehow unpleasant for me to read so that can be tricky to navigate. As a result I’m quite paranoid about making sure I value my reader’s time.

Enter the outline! A full story that requires no further context, stuffed into a bite-sized document. Now I can get feedback on important concepts such as character development, plot arcs, and settings. Nailing these upfront makes writing them out easier. I can also chunk the outline into parts to keep the workload interesting.

A good outline:
1. Immediately portrays the story’s concept.
2. Shows the main character and the arc and transformation that they go through.
3. Describes just enough of the setting to support the main character’s arc.

There are some writers who prefer to write without outlines, but they are generally already confident about their writing. I think outlines are the ideal way to share stories early, although they might not be part of everyone’s process. I get so much more out of reactions to an outline than I ever did to individual writing samples and chapters.

 

 

Care to read more?

In the News Again

In the News Again

In the News, Again: A SAW Nonfiction Comics Anthology Recently I had the pleasure of joining a nonfiction anthology, In the News Again, edited by Emma Jensen and Karlo Antunes. Above is the first page to my small entry. I wanted to do a comparison of attending a...

My Digital Shop: Now Open!

My Digital Shop: Now Open!

My Online Shop is Now LiveTruth be told, I’ve been promising this online shop for years. I think over a decade, now, people have asked for a digital shop and I’ve been unable to supply it. I’ve just not been able to set the shop up. It’s been a combination of perilous...

Amphiox: Launches Today!

Amphiox: Launches Today!

Amphiox: Launches Today!Today, my short story Amphiox launches in free-to-read format! This is the first time I’ve ever self-hosted a webcomic and I’m so happy it’s all come together. My partner Devin coded a website design I had in mind, and it is immaculate. Just...

Want to chat about this?