Any visitors from #rpgfan on IRC will immediately recognise the last panel as a giant in-joke. That said, let's move on to other things.

Liz is going to be an interesting character. Unlike Matthew, she's completely educated in the affairs of romance. Really though, one could replace "romance" with "carnal lust" and get away with it. I don't want to say any more than that about her, because then I'm telling and not showing you who she is. That's the key to writing actually. You want to show your readers what a character is all about, not tell them straight out. It's easy to tell your audience that a character hates another character, but it's far more effective to show them. This tip is kudos of Jerry Cleaver, once again.

Matthew's overprotective and overhelpful mother is really an exaggeration of my own Grandmother in some ways. My Grandmother isn't, however, paranoid about sex. Rather, she tries to encourage me to stick with nice girls and get lucky. It's really odd when you hear that out of a woman over 60, but then of course, this same woman enjoys a round of King of Fighters and has gotten most of Chrono Trigger's endings. That might not sound like much, but for an adult who doesn't understand video games well, nor has much time to play them, it's quite an accomplishment. I love my Grandmother dearly, I just wish she wasn't quite so candidly helpful about my relationships.

Here's a shout out to Timothy Duong at Dominion Arts. I'll be working with/for him as a writer. I'm in charge of coming up with the technology for our TCG, as versus magic, which should be quite interesting. Ask Tim about it if you really want to know more. Tim's the creator of Lores, a webcomic at RPGFan which I've done some guest strips for.

This strip was odd. When you create something, you very often have no intention of changing it, re-writing it, or otherwise mangling it in any way at all (there Will, I said it). This time around however, I ended up re-writing the strip four times, then went back to the original idea and rearranged the dialogue. It worked out for the best, and some of the other ideas I had have been shelved for later use.

In a sense, this strip is how I cope with a lot of pent up artistic frustration. I don't feel any urge whatsoever to make the strip shiny, and it's a release I'm thankful for. With previous attempts at webcomics, I've always wanted to do the best darned job possible. Now I have some real advice for those of you getting into this field: Let the shit flow. As disgusting as that may sound, it's really sound advice. Jerry Cleaver, author of "Immidiate Fiction" has been a guide for me when it comes to writing. Like Hemingway said: "The first draft is always shit".

Stop and think about that, honestly. If an accomplished writer like Hemingway said his first draft is always shit, yours will be too. Don't let that get you down, and in fact, don't try to make it shiny the first time around. If your art isn't perfect, don't worry about it. Post it anyway, see how people react, and try to get some coaching out of it. I say coaching, because criticism has become an ugly word in my dictionary. People want to call it constructive criticism, but it's really just nitpicking. Coaching is when the other party has helpful advice instead of a critic's knife. It's fine if they don't like your stuff, but are they willing to help you make it better? That's where coaching and criticism veer away from each other.

Kristofer Straub, author of Checkerboard Nightmare, whom I've mentioned before, whines. But his whining is essentially "take it or leave it" coaching. Read Punchline Prima Facie and see what I mean. Let the shit flow, and you might get something good out of it over time.

Tuesday, September 16, 2003

Welcome to A 1000 Days Like This, heavily inspired by my liking for romantic comedies such as Maison Ikkoku and Kimagure Orange Road. In the past, I've tried my hand at adventures and daily gags both, and neither has panned out for me. My adventures are too lengthy for a single-page format, and my daily gags suck. I'm not a funny person on the spot. Given time to think and conceive of a joke, I can be mildly amusing, but you wouldn't want me to be the life of the party otherwise.

In the past, I've worried about making many comics, making clean comics, making comics that look like Leonardo Da Vinci illustrated them. Then I read some very good advice by Dik Browne, creator of Hagar the Horrible: "A comic should look like a human being drew it, not a machine". That put any preconceptions I had about my art to rest. Al Capp, creator of L'il Abner was also famous for his ideology that comics should be well written, even if they're not well drawn, never the other way around. Bill Watterson held similar ideals, and so on.

I'm not a good cartoonist and I'm not ignorant enough to assume my work can even touch that of the aforementioned cartoonists. However, they are some of the few I look up to in the industry, and that's why I credit them for inspiring me. Doonsbury and For Better or For Worse didn't start off as being well drawn, but they eventually became two of the most adventurous comics in the newspapers, both artistically and literally. Kristofer Straub, who writes and draws the online webcomic Checkerboard Nightmare, is also an influence. His sense of humour isn't found many other places on the web, for two reasons. One, Checkerboard Nightmare is neither a reality comic (re: Real Life, Mac Hall), nor a gaming comic (8-Bit Theatre, Penny Arcade). It's satire, pure and simple, and done in a way that pokes fun at everything contemporary. Most revered comics (Doonsbury for example) are similar.

My aim with A 1000 Days Like This isn't to create a comic with longevity. In all reality, it's going to run the timeline and then end. If I feel the comic was worthwhile and people want to see more (and I'm willing to create it), I'll write a sequel, or another, similar story. I'm not Rumiko Takahashi (the richest woman in Japan and a revered comic artist) who can belt out one adventure after another to the same audience across many series', but I can try. I hope you, the readers, enjoy the comic and follow its life. A thousand days can be quite a long time in the comics, after all.

Monday, September 08, 2003 | Archived Commentaries