Kicking around the Baby Box

I've been rereading Kazimir Strzepek's The Mourning Star and thinking about projects I've got on hold, and it's making me want to pick up the Baby Box again. Probably not in the way I conceived of it at first, cause I've been drawing these goblins I really like lately, and they had nothing to do with Baby Box before.




See look, these goblins. I've been working on a goblin alphabet, too, but that's not hard – it's mostly based on some other alphabet.

Man, by Sketch #3 they're already turning into the space aliens from Life is Lies, with the unibrow... and the spears...? and the parka. Anyway, I'm excited for what I want to do with it; we'll see how the ideas play out.


This golem is going to be in the new Baby Box. I think there'll be two Baby Boxes. Originally I wanted the comic to be like what's below, and I think I'll still do that, but I also want to do something I can distribute really easily – like how Beau started distributing copies of Mime Hunters whenever he played a show; except I don't play shows. We'll see how it goes.


Man, though – so much is so good about Mourning Star. I was at the comics store the other day and I gushed a little bit about how much I wanted the third one to come out. I also want more Joann Sfar to get published in the US – this, for example. Fat chance, I guess. But think – Blacksad #4 is out in Europe, and the first three were just published last year in the US practically all at once. Does that mean they were a hit? Then why hasn't the newest one been translated ?? I don't grasp how this all works exactly, but my posit is "not entirely well."

Baby Box

I'm never really satisfied with the way I title things. Essays, comics, whatever. Except Mission to Mount Place, that's the best title ever. Except it's not the actual title. Anyway, I'm working on a new comic, and I think I'm going to call it Baby Box. For better or worse, obviously.

It's about an ogre.

He's friends with a bird man. The bird man is sort of like a tengu.

He's also friends with a tiny troll that turns into a cat. This is based on some folktales. They are the best.

I don't know when this is going to happen, but you'll be the first to know, obviously.

Kromdor, Being of Evil

In college I did art for a humor magazine, contributing incidentals for amidst articles. At a later point they picked up a comic strip I was doing:

Kromdor, Being of Evil


Aside from his vague resemblance to a Klan member, he wasn't all that evil. Stealing lollipops, giving homeless people Canadian change. Sometimes I still sketch him; above you see an excellent recent opportunity to test purple markers. But, I was going through an old folder and I realized I had a couple of these that I never submitted to the magazine.

Sometimes the strip is convoluted and bizarre. Sometimes it's really, really simple. Usually it's about spelling mistakes.† His evil minions are a green onion and a porcupine (now ghost porcupine – he died very early on). Below is the run where the porcupine's ghost appears.





That is some serious stuff. I'm pretty sure I drew them while I was a substitute teacher at a boarding school in Vermont, because they're on the back of a worksheet for like, Oliver Cromwell. It wasn't really Cromwell, or the Commonwealth, but yeah, something like that.

_____________________

†This led to another, unattempted strip – Metaphot, Devourer of Words – based on typos. Actually, I have a lot of excellent emails that would serve the idea well.

Life is Lies: IDs

This was a fun one. Now it's up!


Recently I dug out some sketches I'd done and defaced them in the name of Science. Stuff like a Tabasco bottle, a cyclops I guess, or a robot, whatever you draw when you're sitting around in a bar. Mostly these guys, though. I get tired of coloring things in digitally, right, and I like limited palettes; so, let's go, markers –

This was the original idea for London, and I'm glad I didn't go with it.

That said, it did lead to a different, excellent idea.

This one just isn't right for those aliens, but at least I finally drew his pint glass proportionally large. Right, I mean – they're three feet tall, and they're always holding regular-sized glasses. I figure they get little shot glasses of beer. Or no one serves them. Or
EVERYONE SERVES THEM.

(that last bit makes sense if you read this week's comic).

Nickel & Dime

I'm cleaning up a strip I did in 2004 and I love it. I'd consider redrawing it, although I'd rather collaborate on the writing this time. I'm into the action. When I did my thesis the following year there was significantly less action, and I've approached long narrative in more or less that vein since, so it's good to go back to something pretty different.


Here you see the planning page for Franklin Roosevelt fighting guerrillas and a giant python in South America with his cryogenic power suit. He and the ghost of Thomas Jefferson are trying to destroy an ICBM with an anthrax cluster bomb warhead. I completed maybe half of the whole arc. In the unwritten half they fight an elite team of Calvin Coolidge ninja clones, and ultimately discover their nemesis in the undead lich-king that was once William Tecumseh Sherman. I don't know what the deal was with Sherman, but Calvin Coolidge ninjas makes complete sense.

You may notice that Roosevelt's cryogenic power suit looks like a robot; that's because that's what robots look like – it's a robotic power suit. Other Observations: Apparently everything I wrote five years ago was directly influenced by Ninja Gaiden, cause duh. And I was doing different things with onomatopoeia back then.


Oh man, what was a thinking in the second draft?? CHGGIU is a way better laser sound than ZKGGSH.

Life is Lies: Baby Eaters

Ooooh yeah, this went up earlier this week. And if you wait for me to tell you every-every time then you missed the second part of Visual Score (here; it's still there, don't worry).

Captain Connecticut

My friend Beau has been working on a comic called Mime Hunters, which is apparently not posted, but it's amazing. He distributes them at shows. It's made me very jealous. I started working on a comic of my own: Captain Connecticut. There are zero issues so far, but hey. Captain Connecticut is the only survivor of the IPSS Fleetship Connecticut. He farms tobacco to sell to aliens, and when he's attacked by rocket ninjas he uses his gene gun to become super-powered and defend his flying space island.

It's pretty much the best idea ever. Now we turn it into comics.

The North Pole

I scanned this today to send to someone as a follow-up for an interview I had yesterday. It's pretty old, actually, and unfinished – the first eight pages of a twenty-four hour comic marathon (for which I was awake ten hours and asleep the remainder, clearly). The premise is that Santa Claus is a ninja, although that didn't really come out in the first section (unfinished scenes: fighting a giant pagoda robot and armies of ninjas; debriefing in Guantanamo Bay by the CIA, discussing Santa's origins as a Babylonian deity; etc). I should probably finish it.







If I don't get that job I can at least say I sent someone a picture of an octopus fighting an ape for professional reasons.

Koya Hijiri

My undergraduate thesis dealt with a 19th century Japanese Gothic short story, Izumi Kyoka's Koya Hijiri (The Holy Man of Mt. Koya). Half of the project involved analytical writing, and the other half was a comic book adaptation of the story. Oh man, Wikipedia has an excellently concise-to-the-point-of-disservice blurb:

Eccentric and superstitious, Kyōka developed a reputation for writing about the grotesque and the fantastic. "The Holy Man of Mount Kōya" (高野聖, Kōya Hijiri), is a tale about a monk's journey through a mountainous wilderness, encountering inexplicable and unsettling experiences. Borrowing and embellishing themes from Edo period popular fiction, folklore and Noh drama, more than half of Kyōka 's works incorporate some form of supernatural element. Kyōka's narrative style borrows from traditional rakugo storytelling, and also uses dramatic dialogues similar to that used in kabuki drama.

Hoo... that second sentence. Kyoka's definitely worth reading, don't let Wikipedia dissuade you. These four pages are just about at the end.