Grubby Comics
A few years ago I got myself into kind of a rut while working on what was meant to be a big deal debut graphic novel. I eventually came up with the plan to write and layout simultaneously in attempt to preserve the visuals that popped into my head while writing. A clumsy solution, but having never worked on a story this size I was figuring out my best practices as I went along. The book didn’t happen for a number of reasons, but it left me with some extremely loose page sketches that I still really like the looks of (images 1-7 below, images 8-11 are the closest to completion from the project ).
Around that time (2015-2016) I also drew a few lil one-off comics as both vibe try outs for web comic ideas (images 1 & 2 below, with 3 being a follow up from 2019) and tests for Clip Studio, which I’d just begun using (image 4, and images 5 & 6 are redraws from a few weeks ago).
There’s no point here. This blog post was just an excuse to finally show these off in one place. I really get a kick out of old abandoned works that sometimes get repurposed as new art, but more often stay in their grubby lil unfinished state for eternity. They’re beautiful in their way and, for me, continue to serve as a source of inspiration for new works even though they themselves never really made it.
IN, a recent one page comic I posted to Sunday, was something of a tribute to these types of comics. The idea was to take a totally new nothing-idea and take it completely seriously. To see what one of these grubby comics would look like as its own fully realized project. Also. (image 1 is the final version, 2 is an early stages version from when it was called Zeez, 3 felt empty, and the logo on 4 was too big a deal)
✦✦✦
I discovered Dalbello’s 1984 album Whoman Foursays a month or so ago and cannot get enough of it. Devious Nature is probably my favorite song on it, even though the part at 2:21 is like nails on a chalkboard.
