24-Hour Comics BLARGH@#$*

Greetings, world – I am writing to you from Hour Ten of the Trees & Hills 24-Hour Comics Day event at the Kellogg Hubbard Library in Montpelier, VT.  I just finished page 10 of my story “Sam and the Prophecy of the Allrus,” so I’m only a little behind schedule, but I’m already too tired to bother including hyperlinks in this post.

I got my schedule a little mixed up and won’t have the next page of “Spring in Headville” ready for Monday, so here’s the plan: Monday I will post the first page of “Sam and the Allrus”, then I’ll continue with my “normal” Monday-Thursday updates. BUT! On every other weekday, I’ll continue updating “Sam and the Prophecy of the Allrus”. There will be so many comics! I won’t promise that they’ll be good comics, though.

Okay, I’m going for a short walk, and then back to the grind…

End of month productivity report

Well, my first month trying to draw a half-page of finished comics every weekday has passed. How did it go?

Drawing a half-page every weekday would have yielded me 11 pages in September; I actually drew 15.25. Not bad! Except I hit 11 pages before the month was half-over because of a procrastination-induced marathon and some fun drawing at SPX, so it wasn’t steady production. In the second half of the month I fell a bit short of the target rate, skipping some days and drawing a little extra on others.

Still, though it didn’t go quite as smoothly as I’d hoped, I drew more often than I had been before. I published the last issue of Square Dance at the end of May, and from the beginning of June through the end of August, I drew 8 finished pages of comics – so I’ve definitely improved. October will have a spike in page count because tomorrow is 24 Hour Comics Day, but beyond that I hope to just keep drawing steadily.

TIME & 24 Hour Comics Day

Behold, the latest Trees & Hills anthology: TIME! 64 pages of comics about time, co-edited by me and containing my 5-page story “Take Your Time” and Daniel Barlow‘s 4-page “Great Moments In Time,” which I drew, plus a comics-filled calendar with 5 comics by me (4 Spinning World + 1 new strip), available now for online purchase.

Speaking of time, on Saturday October 2 I’ll be participating in the Trees & Hills 24 Hour Comics Day event. Come see a library full of people racing to draw 24 pages in 24 hours, and pick up a copy  of TIME while you’re at it!

Zero #1-4

I’ve started making little 8-page 1/4-size minicomics to give out at conventions and around town. I just print a set batch (usually 50-100) and when they’re gone, that’s it – I’ll reformat & reprint them in my zine. Eventually I’ll post PDFs of some community- or holiday-related issues for people to download & print their own. The (not very prominent) series name is Zero; here are photos of #1: Super Friendly Garlic, #2: Winter in Headville, #3: Seven Aspects of the Landlord, and the newly-printed #4: Cupid’s Mission (yes, I’m saving some for February):

Zero 1 - Super Friendly Garlic cover

Zero 2 - Winter in Headville cover

Patterns of Play exhibition

PLAY, this Spring’s Trees & Hills anthology, is appearing in a group art exhibition called “Patterns of Play” at Greylock Arts in Adams, MA on Saturdays from September 17 through October 30.

I trekked out to far western Massachusetts for the opening, and though I thought for a while that Google Maps had sent me on a wild goose chase into the forest, I arrived as promised and had a good time. The show is full of fun stuff, and the opening featured a robot puppet performance. I finally got to meet Marianne Petit, who besides co-running Greylock Arts also contributed to the T&H Swingin’ Hits anthology (now collected in First Harvest). Either she or Greylock Arts co-honcho Matthew Belanger took this photo – behind me you can see a blender which appears to have a small person trapped inside. I was also pleased to see cartoonist Howard Cruse, who is himself co-curating an exhibit of underground comics in neighboring North Adams a month from now.

Anyway, if you’re looking for something to do tomorrow (or some Saturday in October), you might head out to Adams to have a gander at this show while it lasts!

Workin’ outside

Some months ago I thought it would be a good idea to work outside, so I brought my computer & papers out to the front lawn and sat down. It was pretty awkward and uncomfortable, so I went back in, resolved to figure out how to make it better, and forgot about it.

This Monday the idea came back, and I realized that my current “office” is a folding TV tray and a folding chair, so I dragged them out to the yard behind my window (actually, I used a “camp chair” instead of my usual). It was great! All that sunlight and fresh air made my computer seem a little absurd (and made the screen harder to read), but what a difference! I plan to work outdoors as much as possible until winter precludes it. I didn’t do it today because it looked like rain was coming, and yesterday I was away from the house, but if the weather’s clear tomorrow, you know where I’ll be!

Another new routine – progress

Last blog post I mentioned my desire to draw at least a finished half-page of comics every weekday, which seems like a do-able pace and would produce way more comics than I have been (I count a page as art meant to be printed at 5.5″ x 8.5″). I decided this in August, didn’t do it, then decided I would start at the beginning of September. With half of September over, I’ve sat down to do the math and see where I’m at.

If I’d stuck to my schedule, I would have at least 5.5 finished pages by now.

I didn’t stick to my schedule at all, in part because of procrastination from stress about finishing the new Trees & Hills anthology.

Instead, I drew…
9/7: Daniel Barlow’s comic for TIME (4 pgs)
9/8: My comic for TIME (5 pgs) + a calendar page for TIME (0.5 page)
9/12: part of a jam minicomic (1 pg) + part of another mini (1 pg)

…for a total of 11.5 pages, twice the minimum I should have by now! I guess that sort of makes up for being off-schedule. Erratic bursts don’t help me in the long run, though, so here’s to the slow and steady accumulation of finished comics pages.

SPX, rambling

Hey, I’m tabling for myself and Trees & Hills and Offshore Comix at SPX this weekend! Come see me if you’re around Bethesda, won’t you?

My next scheduled appearance after that is at MICE in Boston Sep. 25.

I’ve been wanting to establish a routine of doing comics in the morning, but have been getting up too late. I also want to do at least a half-page of finished comics every weekday, and decided I would get serious about it this month, then didn’t.  That’s probably because I was so busy procrastinating 2 different strips plus editing duties on TIME (the about-to-be-released Trees & Hills anthology). Anyway, although the goal is to work everyday, in the last day or three I’ve drawn 9.5 pages, which numerically is like I did double my daily half-page this month, and then some. And now I hurt. Little to no sleep + lotsa drawing = ouch.

I aim to get in the groove after SPX.  Look out!