Just doing something

I'm making some big, slow changes in my life. Nothing to be worried about. In fact it may lead to more creative output. Hard to imagine anything could make it less, huh? I can't even seem to give up making comics even though I have to wrestle with my own hands and with photoshop every step of the way. So, enjoy this flash-forward of Of Dragon, if anyone remembers that thing on top of the site there.

Hate which breaks stones - Of Dragon and Woman #27

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So there's not much happening on this page, but everything that happens and doesn't happen is very significant. So I hope you'll forgive me for spending a whole, massive page on it. It was actually the only way I could think of to keep the pacing on a somewhat even keel. And it's decompressed and shit. I hear the kids love that. Okay, it's me. I love that.

I was so proud of myself for remembering to not draw any blood in the last panel there, but then it occurred to me 1) my questionable skills probably don't make it very clear the blood is supposed to be missing and 2) I think I accidentally drew Jenny adult-sized. Kids are tricky to draw in involved poses, with their stumpy limbs, and no frame of reference or nothin'. Well, we can call it a metaphor for the ends of childhood or something.

I'll be honest with ya, dear reader: I kind of like how this turned out. Well, the line art and the colors individually. Not sure if they work together in any way. But the perspectives, the framing, the layout, the anatomy and body language and even some amount of consistency in the shape of Jenny's face is all about as good as could be expected. It's nearly pretty enough that we could forget we're seeing a seven year old exhausting herself with self-harm and going to sleep in a damp forest alone, cradled only by the branches of a spruce tree.

Why do these things happen? Oh right I'm the one who makes them up.

Changing tracks - Of Dragon and Woman #26

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That wasn't so hard, once I sat down to do it. Don't know why this page took like two weeks more than it should. The subject isn't bothering me that much.

Although I have been thinking of my bullies in school lately. This here is basically a textbook literal example of Bullying A Dragon, and you might think bullies aren't really that dumb, but let me tell you, they are.

I terrorized my bullies. I stole stuff from and planted stink bombs in their desks. I saved a piece of bread in my mouth for an hour to spit at them once. They thought it was puke, and I didn't correct them. I told them, privately and sincerely, I was going to walk across town on a night when they least expected it, sneak in through their window and slit their throats in their sleep. I used shoes and yardsticks and cement snowballs and every wicked tool within reach to inflict as much damage as I could. I understood the principles of Machiavelli before I ever heard of him; that if you should hurt your enemy, you should destroy them so utterly you need not fear their revenge.

I was tougher, faster, smarter and more patient than all of them, and they knew that. I had no respect whatsoever for the rules of warfare or any respect for their basic human dignity or any understanding of the basis of civil human interaction - I really only learned empathy when I was about 24 - or any considerations other than solving the problem of getting them to stop being such shitty fucking human beings, and they knew that too. I'm not trying to be self-aggrandizing here; I'm just saying I was a fucking monster with greasy hair who might respond to any given aggression by biting or farting or simply sitting still and letting myself be quietly strangled in order to make you feel bad with equal probability. And nothing would stop my bullies. Self-preservation isn't their strongest skill is what I'm saying.

So, does it seem extreme for two big boys to sit on a girl so a third one can hit her with a stick, knowing she can tear them to pieces with her hands but chooses not to? No. The only thing they care about is getting a reaction to validate their sorry existence. This I learned in grades 1 through 8. The reasonable solution is of course to withdraw. The world clearly doesn't want us in it.

To take place, to speak, to care, to trust, to live at all is an act of rebellion.

That got a lot heavier than I was expecting. Anything fun that's been going on? Well, I've been trying to quit caffeine and sleeping 12 hours a day at inconvenient times. Again. Watched Arrival which is like a two hour emotional gut punch mixed in with the hope of being able to understand both the universe and other people.

That was good. Also I'm much more proud than I should probably be over a thing that happened in the trailers before the movie. A Scottish accent said "Choose life" and, just like that, maybe fifteen years since I last saw the movie or read the book, I knew, with surprise: They're making a sequel to Trainspotting. I confess I'm not super hyped to relive any dead baby hanging from the ceiling staring at me- trauma, but it's fun to just know this is a thing that exists.

And speaking of books I read fifteen years ago, I watched Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency, which is wild television of the most finely thought-out kind. It makes you feel smarter just for trying to figure out what's going on, and it makes it seem possible that being open to the interconnectedness of all things can let you ride the synchronicity waves and have the universe work for you as you work for it.

Oh and my best friend has a water damaged bathroom that's going to make her apartment unlivable for an unforeseeable future while her insurance "maybe" supplies some loaner accommodations and the paralyzing fear of possibly needing to move is preventing her from dealing with any of this. So, some ups and downs.

Of course you get bullied either way - Of Dragon and Woman #25

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So anticlimactic, after all the struggle to get this page done. Oh well, when it's just one page among two thousand it probably won't matter.

But let me tell you of the worst Christmas ever. I slept and pooped, and dreamed of shitting my pants, and wished I could lay cable lying down. I fell asleep in the bath and got a library book wet. I missed everything, even the Internet streaming celebrations I had hoped would sustain me on this first Christmas away from my family. I still haven't exchanged any gifts. And I feel really bad about not getting this page done in time.

I can't promise too much, but let's try and get at least one more done this week.

The page title I attempted to translate from a line in a comic by Joakim Pirinen, where a man meets himself as a young boy. They have a strange conversation about things that could/will have been that I don't exactly remember, but that line stands out. The English language doesn't really convey the self-evidentness, the universality, the perfect obviousness of his statement; it took several years for it to really register for me, as something said by a human (well, cartoon bear-creature) rather than universal law. You get bullied - that's just the way things are. I may have something to say about my own experience of bullying in the near future, but I wanted you to know where these words come from. And where I'm coming from, which is the reality that you get bullied, and people hate that you exist, and try to make you not exist for their satisfaction, and there's nothing you can do to stop them.

The night deepens - Of Dragon and Woman #24

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Just a simple splash page full of moody colors and nearly abstract vistas, I said. It'll look good but it won't take but a day, I said. Actually it didn't, the first time. Except I don't know how to photoshop and I could not get rid of the pixelated white lines in between the sky, the woods, the swamp, the cliff, the three trunk and the crown left by the magic wand tool and had to start over. What you got to do, you see, is paint in those lines while you've still got basic blocks of color to work with.

Alternatively, paint black ink outlines on things like a regular normal comic book artist.

But then, after wringing my hands for the rest of the day and then doing it all over again, I pressed the wrong button and lost all control of photoshop and had to reboot it and lost about half of the picture again. I was sure I had saved pretty recently, too. 

So anyway, I hope knowing the struggle of bringing this thing from in my head to your eyes improves it. It's an important page to me. I even saved you a larger, word balloon-less version.

If you want, dear reader, I'd like to hear a story about the first time you went somewhere that your parents didn't know about. Me, I sneaked out at night when I was eight or nine to scribble over racist graffiti on the playground. You can turn a swastika into a house, and write out mocking explanations of whatever genius abbreviations they use for slogans and/or names for their movements in your area. I had "BSS" to work with, for "Bevara Sverige Svenskt", "Preserve Sweden's Swedishness", which I turned into "Bu för Svenska Sadister". Probably don't need to translate that one. 

Somewhat clever for a nine year old I think.

Current mood/music: Nostalgic for Lemmings. I think when I got to this level, and heard this music, was one of the first times in my life I realized I didn't know anything. It was so far outside anything I expected the game to do, or any music I was familiar with. And you know kids, we didn't have the Internet in those days. I didn't have anywhere to turn to to give me the tiniest hint what was going on, what to do. I had one friend who liked videogames but Lemmings wasn't his jam. I had a videogame magazine but it hadn't occurred to me I could be one of the people writing letters to it. I had to go into this strange wild world all on my own.

One of these days I'll come up with an anecdote that's not a wildly Freudian excuse for why I'm making the exact comic I'm making.

Something something white linen - Of Dragon and Woman #23

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Not sure why everyone ended up wearing white nightgowns today. It has a lot to do with me panicking and racking my brain whenever the time comes to coloring any piece of fabric to come up with any color other than washed out dirt to give it.

Speaking of panic, where the Hell did this entire week go? I have been feeling the crushing pressure of audience expectations combined with no audience support (aw, I still love you, dear reader.) And my sleep cycle has been all over the place. But still

Naah, that's an idle game. The time is just huge cause I keep it on while doing useful things. (Including sleeping.) Sometimes I even play it while playing real games, like

Okay, that checks out.

Anyway! One page this week, with several hours to spare. The next page is going to be much simpler and after that, who knows? I love my job.

Current reading: This lovely sad short story (I'm so going to make use of the phrase "It's rude to do things other people can't do in front of them"), The Martian and Homestuck.

Current music: London Underground.

Current mood: The feeling of lying on a heated stone floor gently washed with an ankle deep stream of hot salt water.

Night falls, and you're alone - Of Dragon and Woman page 22

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A fairly simply, good-looking page, right? Light on dialogue and characters and backgrounds. The emotional punch of it however too all day to work through so I could start drawing it. I should at least learn to see it coming. 

And then there was the reflection in the water in the last panel that took about three hours and a lot of cheating and blur tool and still looks like butt, but, you know, the feeling is the important part. And panels 2-5 looks pretty good I think.

Still trying to get ten pages done for the comic's first week. I believe in me!

A series of silences - Of Dragon and Woman page 21

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Have you ever had people you trust and depend on reveal that they think you are a monster, dear reader?

That's part of the reason this page has taken two and a half days to make. I don't know if it's because I'm more invested in the drawing or more in touch with my emotions than I used to but this feels so real to me. 

Also I'm an old man, and I tire easily. And, if you've read this far you probably know I hate straight lines - oh boy, the time and energy I put into building my janky panel borders alone - and the establishing shot demanded a wide angle on a finely built wooden house, with windows and a fence and everything. So you see the problem.

And, funny story, I got a bit further with understanding the page space than on the last page and was able to stack three pages in this one. Though it did require getting rid of a funny little bit where Rosa's dad walks by and Jenny calls him "Mr T." (Rosa's parents' names are René and Randall Triton) and now we have to live without those piping hot 1980s pop culture references.

Speaking of references, maybe I should point out that line  "Black always wins" isn't one. It's simply an observation on the nature of TV static that a five year old growing up in an ethnically homogeneous micro society almost completely cut off from the rest of the world can make, unburdened with the knowledge of what those two colors usually represent. You've got to consider the context.

Oh yeah, I mentioned something about the iron age before, didn't I? That was what we could charitably call an "oversimplification" (rather than "misdirection" or "lie"). The truth is, this village is only limited to "mostly" iron age technology because it's been many generations since anyone made it here from outside, and bog iron is all they have. It might have been more fair to draw a wind generator or two somewhere before this, but I like the understated reveal of the barely functioning TV in in what we have up to this point just assumed was a standard high fantasy setting.

One more question for you, dear reader: Do you ever watch the static looking and listening for ghosts?

Concerning concern - Of Dragon and woman page 20

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Several things:

It's ten o clock in the Goddamn morning as I write this. Which is nice because I haven't seen this much daylight since Saturday.

Yes, that's supposed to say "picked potatoes", not pickled. What would the smell of pickled potatoes be doing here? Jenny enjoys the fragrance of dirt sans potatoes; earth which has been used up, plundered and left with gaping holes. Even though it smells gross. Which actually opens the field up for questions to my dear reader: What's your favorite weird smell? And have you had any weird sensory reactions to shock?

Also, a large part of the process of drawing this page consisted of pacing around my apartment obsessively going over the events in my head before remembering I was supposed to draw them. Those poor girls.

The main reason it's taken eighteen hours to get this page done, however, is not the emotional burden, nor the many difficult to draw poses and exacting facial expressions. It's because the comic is drawn on a 1:2 page, that is, twice as tall as it's wide, or roughly 20% taller than you expect a sheet of paper to be. I decided on this solely to make the comic stand out - if it's published on paper, it could be either an unusually rectangular book or one with really wide margins I could fill with notes. But I didn't expect me to suddenly figure out how to use that space efficiently. This page was supposed to be two pages, I crap you not. Only when I started drawing it did I see how much room I had, and the scene went on and on, more and more decompressed, panels multiplying and still there was no end to the page. The last (and biggest) panel wasn't even scripted, it just came out of a desperate need to not leave the bottom of the page empty. Serendipitous, really, cause I think it adds a nice little bit of mood and also orientation to the scene.

In conclusion it's been a magnificent day for me, with not entirely unwelcome results, though I fear the next page may take even longer. It's even more emotionally involving, and I probably need to sleep sometime this week too.

Shifting, shifting - Of Dragon and Woman page 19

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Surprise! It's chapter two. And that repeating motif of traveling I was talking about fell apart real quick huh. But I think it works in this case to show a sense of isolation.

And oh boy, if you were reading this comic as it came out you'd have a grueling time waiting for the next update now wouldn't you? I bet it's going to take at least twelve hours before we find out how scary a five year old is who can break your bones with her bare hands.

What's crackin - Of Dragon and Woman page 18

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So many neat little things going on here, visually, colorially, layoutically, and some little character establishings too and even some oblique pop culture references. You'd hardly think this was drawn by someone sitting down to draw after eight hours of drawing. Just to take an example, in panel 5 we see one of those moments where the presence of the magical makes everyday life just a little bit different: Jenny can't tell a lie, and she's trying to deny being "it". Just a little thing, but can you imagine not being allowed to say "No" to things you don't like?

That being said, I'm massively irritated by Rosa's hair, by Jenny's lips (they should be a darker grey, but I can't draw lips to save my life) and by that triangle I forgot to color in panel 1, and I severely doubt the impressionistic panel 6 is working. I know, why don't you put your two cents in the comments below, or even my patreon, dear reader?

(I think I'm guerrilla marketing myself. Can you even do that?)

In which motivation is established - Of Dragon and Woman page 17

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I've heard you should always show what a character wants as early as possible in the narrative. Well, we can't get much earlier than three years, right?

(I can't figure out how to draw Jenny like a three year old and not like a five year old but that's not going to be a problem from the next page. We can imagine it's like a cheap movie that could only afford one actor to portray the character throughout their childhood, right?)

So I want to do at least one page a week (see my patreon if you want to see how you can hold me to it!) but of course I'm publishing this one one minute past midnight on Monday so that I can go on and put up a truly ridiculous number of pages throughout the week. I'm aiming for ten. Where ordinary serial authors try to build up a buffer, I prefer to maintain a constant stream of raw creation for as long as humanly possible and see what happens.

Now you're going to say, obviously you're going to burn out in like a month and then stop updating for years like you always do, Emil. But my hope, dear reader, is that you're going to find my work. And I really don't see any point in resting until you do.

And anyway, I feel like I'm tapping into the boundless energy of 2004, when I did this for the first time. I farted out over 100 pages of this terribleness to a Comic Genesis site which I'm fairly sure no one ever saw. I didn't care, I was just happy to be making things no one had made before. I only stopped because I happened to notice everything I'd made so far looked like a garbage fire that itself is made out of garbage.

Yes, I'm now remaking that same comic twelve years later. Hopefully both looking and reading a little better. Why not something new again, you ask? Because, and I'm entirely serious here, this is the story I was born to tell. It's just a little harder this way, which is fine cause it's the only way it can be.

Boy, I'm just bursting with motivations today. I just felt like sharing a little. What is up with you, dear reader?

Status of next page: Beautifully laid out, dialogue needs some editing. (Did you see how I used to do it in 2004?)

Edit:  Thanks to proofreaders Navi_Chem and Compleatly.

Life lessons - Of Dragon and Woman page 16

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The colorist generally has the most satisfying job in putting the comic together, but this segment has its problem. Namely, 90% of everything is made of wood, hemp, dirt and other brown things. Also the people of Underhill River all have this cosmopolitan sandy brown skin tone for secret reasons. Weird little isolated iron age villages deep in the woods, what are you going to do.

What we're going to do is get this junkheap moving. Patreon is locked and loaded. I'm already envisioning myself alienating my 120 twitter followers and the fine people of Lrrchat as I plead and beg them to give me *cough*

I mean, welcome, dear readers, the many hundreds of you I imagine will find this comic in my near future. I hope you have some opinions; I hope the comic is giving you something. In all frankness, after 17 years I'm dying to hear what people think of what I do, so please let me know in the comments below.

The next page should be due as early in the next week as timezones allow.

Of Dragon and Woman page 15: The end of the beginning, OR ONLY THE BEGINNING?

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This is the last of the 2011 pages which I think like one guy ever saw before. It's 6 o clock in the morning and I have another page laid out and dialogued and a patreon ready to launch. I don't know if I'm going to sleep today. Probably should. I'm seeing my one friend in 10 hours. But I'm aching to get this thing started, and I hope you'll help me, dear reader

Of Dragon and Woman page 12-14: It came from the woods (most strange things do)

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My love affair with the green-blue section of the color wheel continues, but I'm not sure anyone could guess that's dried meat the newborn baby is eating. Maybe I should have had the characters explain it, as they explain so many things we're seeing here. Eh, the art still looks cool.

Of Dragon and Woman page 11: Cave story

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Small complaint: The word "forces" should probably have been "rapes".

Otherwise this is probably the perfect synthesis of my "cave painting" sort of style and subject matter, burdened only by the vast amounts of narration covering up half the damn page. You can almost overlook how the one human character in the comic so far is a woman who's been kidnapped, raped, tortured and killed without even being given a name. Well, her name is Nina, and we haven't seen the last of her. (I mentioned time travel, right?) So I hope you'll give the comic a chance to take those tepid harmful hero origin story stereotypes and turn them around.

Of Dragon and Woman page 8-10: Some go to Heaven, some just go into the sky

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I'm overly fond of the montage on page 9 in the middle here where I wanted to convey the dragon in motion in his almost indiscriminate feeding frenzy and ended up turning him into a brilliant blur of blood and fire and lightning.

He's passionate. He speaks from the heart. He's here to shake things up. He's absolutely going to kill you and worse.

Of Dragon and Woman page 3: RGB

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I drew these first couple of pages in I think 2011. I thought I'd have to redraw them for this, but on critical examination they hold up enough. Better to keep moving forward. Still, this layout stands out to me as basically perfect. Such keen intuition for how to build comic books, and I only had to learn to read comics before I learned to talk to people to get there.

Of Dragon and Woman page 2: Zoom

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In the immortal words of Tom Waits, you must risk something that matters. So why not pledge to my Patreon and give me something to risk?

Of Dragon and Woman page 1: Let's do this one more time.

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Long time readers may recognize this change in direction. I've started this webcomic, oh, I think five or six times since 2004. With writing the novel in between. Now the publisher has rejected my novel - seventeen years of work - in a record-breaking two weeks, it seems a good time to start taking my cartooning seriously.

I have been told most webcomic artists quit when they turn 35. I turned 36 this month. Well, I've never liked doing things the easy way.

And to empower my commitment here and for once in my life make myself stick with this thing I'm getting on Patreon! Do pledge a buck or two, if only so you can take it away from me if I should slow down my updates or in any other way let you down. The fear of letting you down shall be my driving force.