A stick in the mud battles crime!

"Why good verses evil? Why hero verses nemesis? Life doesn't work that way!" 

    Spoken like a true stick in the mud! Which is not a very exciting situation. A stick in the mud does just about the same thing as a Hero with no nemesis! Just ask the post-Joker, pre-internet Batman depicted below. 

    

    Besides I think life does work that way. We all apply narrative to our lives and life supplies the bad guys to go with it.

    For instance, Tim and I grew up together and we each had a nemesis, someone that just rubbed us the wrong way. Personality, face shape, something made us hate these guys! As unreasonable as it was, it was a relief to have someone to blame all the world's ailments on. They were the bad guys, the epitome of bad taste, and the reason children were starving in third world countries all rolled into one. As children we couldn't do anything about world hunger but we could give the guys we felt were responsible a good frowning.

     

     In the world of fictional storytelling there is always a constant struggle of good verses evil. So for our upcoming comic, entitled Friends & Foes, we decided to turn that on its ear. In true, stick in the mud fashion, the hero and the nemesis meet at an early age and become friends. 

     

     What then? Where will the struggle come in? How will we drive the story forward when our protagonist and our antagonist would rather hang out and play video games than battle to the death? We don't know the answers but it sure will be fun finding out!

    

Who is this, Tim, you speak of?

This pajama clad crusader is Tim. 

      He is a lesser known character. So lesser known in fact that he hasn't been in a comic at all yet! He will be one of the main characters in an upcoming project that we are working on. If you are wondering who "we" includes stay tuned!

    We, includes but isn't limited to, myself, as well as my BFF Tim Johnson. (and yes he was the model for the comfy crusader you see here) We have set out on a comic creation adventure together but we would love to have your company along the way! -insert wholesome visual of Mr Rogers tossing a loafer from one hand to the next-
    Until next time... neighbors.

Btw, did anyone reveal their age by catching the Rancid lyric above?

The story so far...

What, your writing a comic book, at how many years of age?!

    This question is posed to me quite a bit. Sometimes it even comes from within my own head. Despite being an artist for the last 15 years comics never jumped onto my radar until recently. As a child I only had a few comics. One issue of Spider Man, (is there a space between Spider and Man?) One issue of Punisher and one musty smelling issue of Archie. But I never searched out any more than those first few issues. 

    Later on I broke a bone while skating and had to take a break from my outdoor activities. I set out to teach myself to paint. My mother loved the idea. She eagerly bought me art supplies with visions of impressionist paintings swirling around in her head. She probably had a spot all picked out for her sons masterpiece to hang. A spot that no doubt still collects dust down to this day. You see, I painted then and continue to paint things that no well balanced person wants hanging over their sofa.

    Then things took a turn, during one of my art shows. It was entitled Apocalypse Meow, and I had the idea to write a blurb for each painting. The blurbs were all just as bizarre as the paintings but they were a true look into my head and people loved them, sometimes more than the paintings themselves. During the opening a friend asked me, “Do you ever read comic books?” 

    “No,” I responded, more than a little confused by the question. But it stuck in my head and I kept thinking, why did he ask me that? Looking back I see now that the whole show was in essence a comic. Albeit in a larger format than normal but all the same...

    After that I got the bug to write so I did. I wrote a few novels and enjoyed every minute of it but the question asked at Apocalypse Meow rattled around in my head until one day I picked up a comic.

    In my opinion (and that’s all you’ll get here on my blog) comics are the perfect marriage of storytelling and art. The journey to that discovery has been long and filled with stops and detours but now that I have been bitten by the comics bug... I have a fever... and the only prescription... Is more comics! 

    But it wasn’t just my love of comics that I gleaned from that art show. The blurbs themselves taught me that discussing art with folks can be just as rewarding as making it!    

    That’s where this blog comes in. I have a few comic projects that I’m working on at the moment and I will no doubt be posting sketches along the way but I also see this blog as a vehicle to ask and answer the really important questions in life! 

    Such as: How much lotion would Aquaman need to survive a trip across America? Or, who would win in a fist fight Yeti or Bigfoot? What’s the most appropriate weaponry for a centaur wearing a ski mask? It’s these types of questions I intend to ask and I expect to hear some really great answers!