It doesn’t look like much, but I just finished breaking down the thumbnail layouts to a 24 page comic, a one-shot revival of my Sword & Sorcery thief character Sîan.

I wrote the script a long time ago and I’ve been carrying it around with me whenever I travel or have some time off for years, figuring I might get a chance to get some personal work done in my down time, but it never ends up happening.

I’ll admit that I’ve developed a bit of a mental block around comic book layouts, that I wasn’t going to be able to do it anymore. I’ve done a lot of finishing of comic art, from tightening up existing layouts and pencils to a lot of inking, but I haven’t thumbnailed a comic story from scratch in over a decade. Not since I started the unpublished Lemon Drop Kid in September of 2011. It’s a bit of a silly block as I spent that decade doing storyboards for TV animation, which is basically doing clean thumbnails day in day out without the fun of doing pretty finished art. Thumbnailing is the hardest part of comics for me, which probably explains why I came to hate storyboarding so much, and why I’ve feared trying comics layouts again after so long.

But I digress…

This comic has been the planned “next project” for awhile, so I decided to block out January through March to get the comic completely done: layouts, pencils, inks, letters and colours.

I sat down to work the first week of January, and it was a bit of a struggle, partially because I discovered that the script I had been carrying around for years was little more than a beat sheet with basic action descriptions and a handful of bits of the snarkier dialogue written. So I had to flesh out the script, which has been an ongoing process as I thumbnailed as I went. I also got a bit distracted playing with a script writing template and somehow ended up writing the outline to a new Wahoo Morris book including writing the first draft to the first chapter. More on the that later. The hardest part of the process was adjusting from my “for film” thumb nailing process and back into a “for comic book page” mentality. I had to cut a lot of what I first drew and get back into choosing the essential shots, but I slowly got there. It’s still pretty rough, and no one but me could possibly make sense of them, but they are done. One more mental block broken!

Next up is the rough layouts and pencils.

Once again I’ve been silent for a long time, with no posts to the website in awhile.

2021 didn’t exactly go to plan, and I wasn’t as productive in comics as I’d hoped going into it. Household stuff kind of took over for much of the year, and a massive house renovation that lasted 4 months had us crammed into about three rooms of the house with stuff and furniture that wouldn’t fit into the storage unit piled everywhere, with limited space to work and a lot of distractions.

I started getting back into the swing of things in September, first inking the majority of the last short story I need for the long planned anthology of my sci-fi and fantasy short stories. I’ve got a few more details left to figure out, including whether or not I use the existing cover for the much shorter existing digital version or do I draw a new one. I’m not quite ready to launch it yet, so I’ve got some time to figure things out, but hopefully it and another new/old short project will be out before my next convention appearances (still on hold for now).

I’ve also done a little bit of brainstorming and have started the outline and script to what may be my next Graphic Novel.

In other work, I was asked by my friend Michael Cohen to draw an alternate cover for the reissues of his 90’s series Strange Attractors. I was a big fan back in the day so I eagerly said yes. It was a lot of fun. I’ll post the coloured cover once it hits Previews. They are being published by It’s Alive Press.

I was also asked to ink Tom Fowler’s pencils on issues 3 and 4 of Refrigerator Full Of Heads from DC/Black Label/Hill House Comics. Isn’t that a mouthful! As usual it was a lot of fun working over Tom’s pencils. It’s pretty gorey stuff, but quite funny as well, and Tom is doing some of the best work of his career. It’s pretty amazing work and I’m looking forward to reading the rest of the series!

My “refreshing” of the portfolio section of the website sent me down the OCD rabbit hole again, and a week later I have tweaked almost every page and filled in holes and fleshed out skeletons of pages that have been sitting unfinished since I designed this site in 2007.

I’m getting close to being done, but one thing that is endlessly frustrating me is the alignment of the site.

The theme I based it off of was a fixed width theme, which I kept, but like Wahoo Morris DotCom it floated in the center of the browser.

For some strange reason I wanted this site to fix to the left of the browser, but I’ve wanted to change it to a center floating design for a long time.

The problem is, I took a deep dive into css back in 2007 when I designed the theme, but I haven’t done anything other than some basic HTML code if I’m not satisfied with the layout options in WordPress, and I have no clue how I did it or how to reverse it. I’ve been able to get the site to move to right side of the browser, but nothing I do will get it to float in the center.

It is maddening.

I’m going to have to give up until I can get some help, because when it comes down to it, it really isn’t that important and I have better things to do.

Like draw some comics.

***EDIT*** And… a friend was able to help and it is now centered! Hopefully the fix will play nice with all the other elements of the theme.

I’ve been keeping a separate comp file of my published work since my first comic Elflord Vol. 1 #6 came out 34 years ago this month.

I apparently haven’t been very diligent about filing comps as there are a fair number of issues missing, and I forgot about the file after I “got out” of comics in 2000 (when I went in to animation) and the publications slowed down. It took a few minutes to cobble together this stack from various shelves, and I’m too lazy to go digging in the actual comic book collection longboxes for the missing singles, so this is what I’ve got!

There are probably close to a dozen single issues missing and most noticeably I don’t have copies of any of the collected editions of my Elfquest work, from the WaRP Graphics reader collections, the DC collections, or the most recent Dark Horse collections that have compiled about half my output for them at this time.

What is also missing are the two daily webcomics I did for a cumulative 14 months, and all of the unpublished pitches and complete projects that will never see print, or won’t see print for a long while.

But I digress…

For a long time I’ve been feeling sorry for myself that I haven’t been able to work in comics full time (and make a real living) in 20 years (until this past year) and I’ve been lamenting how little work I’ve produced in that time.

But I did a little bit of quick math, and I’ve produced a fair amount of pages since the summer of ’86 accounting for a conservative estimate of a cumulative 10 years of full time work.

I have inked a conservative 1154 pages of published work and pencilled and inked (and sometimes written & coloured) 994 pages since “going pro”. Not all of those full art pages have seen print, and some will never see print, but that is the nature of creative work.

I’ll never be able to get an accurate page count as so much of my work at Aircel was as an assistant, and I haven’t even considered the amount of time I’ve put in as a production designer and publisher. And I’m not going to go digging to pull up all of the abandoned tryouts and sampe pages I worked on in down times.

If you average it out, that’s 63 pages of comic art a year for the last 34 years. If I’d produced 120 pages a year, I’d consider that a decent career.

I can’t account for every moment of the rest of that time. I’ve spent a cumulative 15 years in animation. I spent 1 year as a “full time” musician at 22 (ie didn’t have another job even though I should have had) two and a half years cumulatively working service jobs and I’m sure another cumulative year staring at the ceiling thinking “what’s next?”. I could probably count writing out this post in that category. Oh, and I was still in High School for the first year of my “pro” career.

I’m not sure what the point of this is, but the goal is to draw comics full time from now until I retire/croak. If I could do 120 pages of full art a year for the rest of that time I would be a happy cartoonist.

I’ve currently got 20 pages of Wip stuff going and a script for a 28 pager I’m going to start soon enough, so only time will tell…

The Kickstarter campaign to fund and pre-sell Wahoo Morris Book 2 is into the final stretch and hopefully heading towards the goal post.

As of this writing it is at 86% funded with $460 dollars to go to reach the finish line. The campaign is all-or-nothing or else I would already be out celebrating as I’ve raised enough money to print the book and the extras, and hopefully most of the shipping. I’m basically short the amount I need to pay the Kickstarter fees! Oh, and actually get any money, obviously. 🙂

I’m still optimistic that I will get there. There is usually a flurry of pledges in the last 48 hours when the saved notifications go out and folks decide to get off the fence or not.

There are no guarantees though, so if you are on the fence, I have a few bonus rewards to sweeten the pot, and a few stretch goals to encourage upgrades:

WAHOO MORRIS COMPANION – ALL backers at the $8 and above level will get a bonus PDF digital download of this Sketch Book/ Art Book/ Script Book. It is still being designed, but will contain every piece of art, sketch or doodle I can find that is not already printed in Wahoo Morris Book 1 & 2.

DIGITAL COMICS BUNDLE – ALL backers at the $12 and above level will get a bonus collection of PDF digital comics that collect every creator owned short story I have ever completed as well as the Bonus Wahoo Morris Companion. It will be 6 or 7 PDF comics including some of my best work to some of my earliest work. Watch my art progress over a couple hundred pages of art and a span of over 20 years!

BOOKMARKS – ALL Physical Backers will get a double sided bookmark as well as the bonus digital content above.

$3750 – All physical backers of Wahoo Morris Book 2 or Book Bundles and up will get a 6×9 mini print included. Offered as a bonus Digital Wallpaper for backers of digital Wahoo Morris Book 2  or the digital Book Bundle.

$4000 – All physical backers of Wahoo Morris Book 2 or Book Bundles and up will get a second 6×9 mini print included. Offered as a bonus Digital Wallpaper for backers of digital Wahoo Morris Book 2  or the digital Book Bundle.
This is a preview of the print in progress. Final will be inked and in Full Colour!

$4750 – If we hit this goal I will write and draw a NEW 7 (maybe 8) page Wahoo Morris short story delivered as a PDF to all physical backers who pledge  for Book 2 or Book Bundles and up, and all digital backers of Wahoo Morris Book 2 or digital Book Bundle.

Hopefully there is something in there that appeals.

And if you can’t pledge, shares on social media are always helpful in the spreading the word.

 SHARE the WAHOO MORRIS KICKSTARTER on TWITTER

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Let’s get this book funded! 🙂