I'm Not This Good, Guys...

I'm not sure if I'll be posting pages here, but I just had to share this. I don't know what happened, but I like it.

Goodnight, Everybody!

I guess the least I could do is explain what's going on here. You see, it started out simple enough: I was working a ton of overtime during hours I'm not used to, so by the time I got home I neither had the desire to draw anything, nor the ability to draw a straight line. But things started to get a bit weirder as time went on, which I won't go into because that's not really what matters here. Long story short, META-FICTION IS DEAD. I've realized that the story was a bad idea, and was always a bad idea, though forty-some-odd reboots should have tipped me off sooner. Of course, this doesn't mean I'm done drawing comics altogether, I'm just letting this particular story die. I'm going to take the time to explain my reasons for this, but if you just want to know what I'll be going from here, skip down to the part labeled THE FUTURE.

What it ultimately comes down to is that it was impossible to pace this properly. Going by the plot outline I made a couple months ago, it would have taken five pages for anything related to the underlying plot to actually happen. That would have been unreasonably slow-paced for a bi-weekly print comic, but as a web comic with more scheduling issues than a one-plane international airport on Christmas? I've always stressed that a web comic needs much different pacing than its big brother, the printed comic, but it seems I'm really bad at taking my own advice.

The other problem was with the plot itself. The story was to follow Meta, a minor comic book character who became self-aware and vowed to overthrow the writer in an act of revenge for killing her family in her back story. But since she had little chance of this actually working, she had to devise several plans involving more central, more popular characters that couldn't be as easily written out as her. The problem here is that Meta would have to be an invader into already-fleshed-out, perfectly functional comic books for this to work.

This would have been fine for the Ace Chapters, where Ace would have been given a portion of Meta's powers in order to defend himself from the writer's plans to end the comic by killing him, but is later revealed that he was in fact given all of her powers to become the "new Meta" in the event of her death.

I had also written the Corino Chapters (Corino is Kinji redesigned, remember) with this very notion in mind and had it explain Meta's own back story. You see, Corino's story was supposed to take place over several years going from Lovecraftian shenanigans in 1919 to getting into run-ins with the mob in 1928. As he grew older, Corino would have been an academic tutor to the adopted daughter of the Malvasias, a mob family. The daughter, Alexia, finds out that Corino is a mage, and has him take her on as his apprentice so she can find her real family's killers. Through this, she eventually manages to break out of the comic and become Meta. All of this turns out to have been Meta's doing in the first place, since she exists outside of regular continuity and had been a friend to Corino since his story first started. It's rather complicated, but it would have worked according to the outline I had made. But like the Ace Chapters, it served the main plot without detracting from the world itself.

Then we start getting into some trouble. I had mentioned that the plot would have started in Chapter 5. That was when the writer would have gotten fed up with Meta messing with his plans (at this point she would have revived Ace from death and empowered him, and cut a storyline short). He would have created a team and empowered them to kill Meta and any characters she had interacted with. The team? Zweihander, Freedom, Jeremy Coinsnap the Lone Gunman, and Joe and Jane from Accounting. Sounds fine at first, but this would have meant that Zweihander and the gang would be displaced from their own world, a world I liked, and the lot of them would be nothing more than antagonists that pursued the characters in each of their stories. But that wasn't too bad compared to what came next.

There was to supposed to be a world based on characters that I had created a long time ago, but never had any use for. It was basically a Justice League-esque story involving this team of superheroes. Here's the big issue I had with that: one of the things I posted on DeviantART (back when I still posted on DeviantART) depicted characters meant to exist in this world. Back then, the idea wasn't even in its infancy anymore, it was more in its adolescence. That was, what? Two years ago? I've had a lot of time since then to develop the characters and their world in case I had a chance to use them. I had developed this big back story behind the world and themes which justified having these superheroes running around.

Basically, there was this big war for independence. During this war, it was discovered that the government had produced this sort of chemical and put it in their army's food supplies, which enhanced their abilities. The resistance ends up stumbling upon this and accidentally becoming exposed to it themselves, and after winning the war, it becomes spread around the general populace. Fast-forward to 15 years later, where people eventually realize that the chemical never stops increasing one's abilities, and it affects people differently, based on their goals and personalities. So now everyone has super powers. But people adapt to this, which makes it strange that one particular group suddenly decides to dress up in spandex and vows to fight the crime that the now-super-powered police force has no difficulty doing already. So they're more of a beloved spectacle than anything, and people just like hearing about them even though they don't really do anything.

It turns out that the founder of the group, a woman named Angela, is really only trying to make a name for herself, since she feels like she's constantly in the shadow of her father, one of the heroes of the revolution. Similarly, the rest of her teammates have their own issues and none of them really look up to Angela, each of them having differing opinions on who should lead the group, what their mission should be, etc. So it starts off being this sort of deconstruction of the kind of people that would wear a bright costume and go fight crime, but we get to see the characters develop to the point that they eventually become a true inspiration and legitimately save the day. The underlying theme to the whole thing was supposed to be, "It takes a freak to put on a mask; it takes a hero to live up to it."

Hopefully you can see why I was reluctant to water it down and just make it a justification for why Angela was together with Meta and the others. Even with the final character in the group, for whom I had to completely fabricate a story and a world from the ground-up, I had this problem. See, the idea was that you had this debonair gentleman named Gabriel dressed up in an expensive suit and tailcoat, dining and ballroom dancing with beautiful women, and killing zombies.

Sounds simple enough, right? But then I got to thinking about the world this takes place in. It was basically just a world where the dead tend not to stay dead. What would a world in this situation be like? Obviously, it would place a pretty damn big emphasis on death. The living dead would be considered people whose souls failed to go on into the next realm, and you couldn't just make steel-reinforced coffins to keep them from getting out. Because then you'd never realize that Uncle Jeff's soul hadn't moved on, and he'd just be trapped in his box for all eternity. So you hire people like Gabriel. "Pallbearers," we'll call them. These are the guys who make sure that the dead can move on. They do this by sanctifying the body (which usually involves embedding a piece of blessed silver in the dead's skull). And if the dead do arise, it is their job to destroy the body of the deceased since, while it may not be the ideal way to move on, a soul with no body to inhabit will have no choice but to do so. Once the deceased is buried, we observe a week of mourning, and if they don't arise, then we'll have a gala celebration in honor of his passing on!

There's so much more I can do with that concept other than, "This stuff happens, then Gabriel teams up with Meta." So that's what ultimately forced me to cancel Meta-Fiction. It was a tough decision, but it was necessary. Blame the fact that I chose now of all times to actually become a writer, as opposed to someone who just writes stuff.

THE FUTURE

Right now, I'm working on the next Zweihander comic, which will actually be a remake of the first story featuring them, the second chapter of Newtrul. I'm doing this because I love those characters, and I love writing them. But the chapters they were in are just painful to read now that I've gotten better, and there's much more I can dowith them. Sheriff Justice Freedom will be in it this time, and I've adjusted the characters' personalities a bit. I've hit a bit of writer's block with ending the opening battle against Machinegunhands, specifically how to shift to Zweihander and Jeremy Coinsnap the Lone Gunman tracking down the big bad. Before, I was just able to cut back and forth between the two concurrent stories, so I can't go by that. But I've got the first eight pages or so all written and thumbnailed out, so I'll be able to start working on it as soon as I confirm my route.

Like I touched on before, I plan on expanding the individual stories that were going to be included in Meta-Fiction into their own comics, maybe even get something published. But, that's kind of a big milestone I'm not the least bit prepared to grapple with at the moment, but it's certainly something I'd like to get into someday, after I get the hang of producing things more quickly. I could definitely see the Angela and Gabriel stuff as their own comics, and I think Corino's universe would work best as a series of one-shots. Sort of a "Mystery Theater with Corino de Moura," in keeping with the old horror publications that inspired the redesign.

I've even started thinking about how I can use the characters from the Ace Chapters again, and I've written out the concept of what is basically my attempt at writing, essentially, a Shin Megami Tensei story, something I'd really like to do. I mean, I love reading about religion and mythology, and I always have. Then I played this game where it was like, "Holy crap! I'm fighting Ahriman with Vishnu, Beelzebub, and Metatron!" So it really opens the door for me to write a story where, for instance, Apep kills Ra, which covers the world in an eclipse and has gods like Ammut, Khepera, and Sekhmet fighting over the right to become the next sun god by sponsoring humans that share similar ideals with them. For instance.

So yeah, ending Meta-Fiction does not in anyway mean I'm done with comics. Right now I'm like a kid in a candy store- I have all these ideas, and I have to decide which one I want to work on right now. I'll stick with Zweihander for the moment, but we'll see.

Page One Finished

Sorry, I got kinda carried away and I wanted to see how the page would turn out. But I've been picking up extra hours at work, and extra hours means extra income, meaning I could finally pick up BlazBlue and Devil Survivor. Both are quite awesome (even if the latter has an AI that blatantly cheats), but that's not why you're here. Let's see how this bad boy turned out!

See, that wasn't so hard, was it? Of course, I still have a long way to go. You'll notice how I abused the hell out of the "warm in front, cool in back" rule, because it's literally the only thing I know about color theory. I'm really going to have to get off my ass and study that at some point, but I don't know where to begin. The internet is a lousy way to find tutorials, and I haven't exactly seen any "How to Digitally Color" books anywhere. Oh, well. I have a feeling that just practicing couldn't hurt.

And again, since I like comparing these things:
I'm not sure whether I should continue posting pencils or just bite the bullet and start focusing primarily on the new site. But to be honest, I'd really like to draw the next scene, so I'll probably just end up continuing with the pencils.

Finished Page Preview

I've been working on inking and coloring the first page. Not a whole lot, since I'm not finished penciling this chapter. I just wanted to make sure I knew what I was doing. Here's a small preview of what the finished comic might look like.

Since I like comparing these things, here's the pencil version.
I'll be back with new pages soon!

Marathon, Part Three: Redemption (Pgs. 11-13)

Yeah, I knew I probably couldn't keep up that pace for long. Bowser's Inside Story certainly did not help in that department. But anyway, here's three more pages!

Didn't really want to work on this page. The reason being, it's totally pointless. Seriously, it exists solely so that we can cut away from Machete, and then cut back to him in a different location/time. That's it. Still, it let me switch Richter back to his redesign, which I wouldn't have done otherwise. The fact that he keeps getting beefier with each page is unrelated to that, but Leena's tits seemed to go up a cup size in each successive panel she was featured in, so it's a fair balancing act.
Good thing I've read The Sandman. This would have been much more boring without a frame of reference.
I haven't actually looked at any of these pages on my desktop. Hopefully when I check this post, they don't look messed up.

EDIT: Spirit Indian's font is inconsistent between the pages, but that's probably for the best. His unique font is not quite as readable as I had previously believed.

Marathon, Part Two: Cross-Pollenation (Pages 9 & 10)

Two more for ya.

As you can see, I've tweaked Machete's design a little bit. He'd always bugged me, all the way back to his first appearance. He and Keefe were originally very thinly-veiled cameos from Adam Elbahtimy's characters. When I later decided use Ace, Keefe, and Machete for their own storyline, Keefe was easy enough to alter (though it wouldn't really happen until /Newtrul), but I had never really found a niche for Machete. I remember the first time I tried to change his look a bit, Adam told me he looked like a whore. But I think by now, he's at least a character. Maybe not a great one, but he's at least a functional device for the story.

And his clothes have finally received the upgrade that should have been obvious from the beginning. Really, just changing the top t-shirt into a collared, button-down shirt? Why did it take me five years to come up with that one?

Getting My Ass In Gear (Pages 7 & 8)

By Thursday, I'm going to post up to page 13. Next week, I'm going to post about seven more pages. It's time I finally did what I claimed I would.

Technically, this puts us at the same spot we were at before I redid page six, but you'll see. By the end of the week, Machete will be in a lake of Hi-C, talking to his Spirit Indian.

(I wouldn't be making these claims if a chunk of the work wasn't already done.)

Her Name's Leena Sinclaire, By the Way (Pg. 6 Remix)

If you missed my comment before, I decided to redo page six because Richter was being played too straight and was sucking the fun out of the atmosphere. So here's the "real" page.

There we go. I'm glad I did that joke strip, since it gave me some good ideas for Leena and Richter's characterizations. Lately I've been into anthropomorphism (not furry anthropomorphism, thank god), and somehow the Rapemobile concept just came out of that.

Extras and Stuff

I honestly couldn't tell you where the time went. There are a number of factors that are now limiting the amount of time I have to draw, but I was also just being really lazy about it. And when I did draw, it wasn't for the comic. I can owe that to a lack of direction in where I want to take the plot, which is what sank the past dozen or so attempts, but I think I have a good idea now. Thing is, I'm gonna have to redo page six, because I'm playing Richter way too straight, and he's sucking the fun out of the atmosphere. That's a trap I've been falling into ever since Newtrul.

So I'm gonna get right on that. In the meantime, I've been making a few other things.
The situation in page six reminded me of something similar that had come up in one of the Doujinshi Attacks I had done. I like this style of coloring, but it's not gonna stick. It's a total pain to work with, grays don't look very convincing, and worst of all, it jacks up the file size something awful while I'm still working on it. And that ends up making Photoshop lag like crazy while I'm trying to draw. So screw it.

I was planning on making these into character portraits once the site is done (now there are MORE technical problems!) but since I now know which direction I'm moving in, I'm gonna have to go with something different. But here you go, in order of how radically changed the designs are.
I'm getting a little less paranoid about using cross-hatching and stuff, but I'm still afraid of putting it on human figures. The problem is, it looks like a texture to me. Because of this, the robot head actually looks better than Ace. Never thought that'd happen.
Didn't mean to make this so cheesecake. In the original sketch, Meta was wearing those cotton tights that extend to the calves. I don't know what they're actually called. But while I was coloring, I couldn't come up with a color that didn't look stupid. I messed around with the Replace Color menu for a while, and flesh-tone was the best-looking thing to show up. On a side-note, this could have easily been Millia Rage fanart.
I don't really like how this image turned out, but the design's still relevant. Believe it or not, this used to be Kinji. I've been wanting to make him a "harder" magician; less Final Fantasy, more occult-ish and metaphysical. But I knew I couldn't do that without totally cannibalizing the existing character. After that warm-up comic, I figured it was time to get my balls together and just go for it.

He'll be the subject for the next chapter, so we'll have to wait and see whether or not it actually works. Oh, and I've always had a problem with his name. It was an unfortunate product of my weeaboo days. His name is now Corino de Moura. It sounded a bit unfitting at first, but it's grown on me. Perhaps it will do the same for you.

Back to the Comic (C1P6)

I had spent my weekend doing art exercises, designs, outlines, all that kind of stuff. But I think it's about time I made a new page.

I'm learning quite a bit about framing and layouts. Hopefully you find this page a bit more dramatic in presentation than the ones that came before it. One problem I notice is in the beat panel near the end. When I ink this page, I'm pretty sure I'll change it so that Richter's the same size in both of the last two panels. It's a bit jarring right now.

You Deserve Better (C1P5)

If you've been sticking with me this long, you deserve better than a few blue chicken scratches with no backgrounds. I've just been lazy about this, and I'm sorry about that. So from now on, you'll be seeing this:

Doing it this way is beneficial to me, too. In any case, I hate drawing one-off background characters. You know why? Because they invariably end up looking more interesting than the main cast. I actually don't really like drawing teenagers and twenty-somethings. I love me some wrinkles and cheekbones. Hell, how do you think Joe, from Accounting became a regular character?

The Band's All Together (C1P4)

You knew he was gonna show up.

Norrin Keefe, Herald of Galactus (C1P2+3)

I should have said, "I may be able to post [the next two pages] tonight, assuming Guilty Gear Accent Core Plus hasn't been released without my knowledge." Actually, that's not the entire truth. I had an incredibly bad idea for a "shortcut" that ended up making me redo the second page from the ground up. So, I just didn't want to have to draw it again. It being a larger page than usual certainly didn't help to inspire me when I could have instead found ways around the greater knockback to Millia's delayed Tandem Top which slightly nerfed her constant-pressure game. Like you wouldn't do the same if you were as tremendous a nerd as I am.

But it ended up helping this page out a bit. Since I didn't want to just draw the exact same thing again, I made it a bit more animated and quirky than before, and it's much more full of life than the abandoned version. I couldn't tell you why Keefe has the Power Cosmic, though. Also, I'm definitely gonna redo that car. There's a pretty damn good reason you shouldn't use photo references- it looks totally out of place.

I'll most likely end up tweaking the dialog for each page when the finished versions are posted. Every script is a rough script for me, since the fact that I work alone lends me a lot of flexibility. I almost always end up changing the dialog to fit the panel better, and since it's a last-minute change, it could always flow better than what I end up with. This process will hopefully let me think of something better by the time this is over.

Drawing is Hard (C1P1)

Writing, layouts, construction, pencil, ink, color, letters, it's all a lot of work to do at once. So... I'm just not gonna do it. My new site will be up as soon as I get around to actually finishing it, and since this blog has always been a placeholder for the main site, I'm gonna utilize it a bit differently.

Obviously I have a big problem trying to stick to a schedule, and one way to get around that is to create a bunch of stuff all at once, and release it in increments. So what I think I'll do is, I'll draw everything in pencil at first and post it here, then when my site opens I can just go back to a page, ink and color it, and post it there. So this blog would end up being more of a workshop like I had always intended, and I have almost no reason to screw up my schedule.
I tend not to add in backgrounds until after I ink the figures, otherwise it gets too messy. But they're in a lunch room. Meaning, it's come full-circle, and boy does it take me back. Ace's character has changed quite a bit over the years, so rather than pretend like it never happened, I figure I'd establish his Toblerone tendencies right off the bat.

I've got two more pages mostly finished, so I may even be able to post them both tonight with this system. And if I wait until this chapter's done before launching the new website, I'll have plenty of room to work with.

Final Draft (Chapter 1 Cover)

I came up with this after hours of being unable to design a suitable cover emphasizing the action scene near the end of the chapter. Eventually I just thought, "Screw it, I'll just do something to tie it back to the old comic." I laid this out when I just had a rough outline, so I was actually able to make Hi-C an important part of the plot. But more importantly for the sake of establishing a mood, the whole chapter deals with nostalgia, so if you saw the cover and went, "Oh crap! I remember Ecto Cooler; that stuff was awesome!" then it puts you in the correct mindset for the rest of the story. So while I threw it together at random, after doing some work I made it into what I hope you'll find to be a very appropriate cover.

I used a liberal amount of the Blood Splatter brushes made by Dead-Brushes here, but I didn't compose it all very well, so the background doesn't look quite as good as it could have.

Okay, Yeah. Let's Go With This (S1 P5)

I'm freakin' amazed at how well this actually turned out. I don't think I'll go quite so over the top from now on, but otherwise this experiment was a complete success.

Like I said before, this is the last page. This was really more of an exercise than an actual attempt at making a comic, so it won't fit in with the rest. Obviously, I just drew whatever I felt like and came up with dialogue as an afterthought, so no big loss there. But don't worry; I've got the next script written out, and it's something I'm actually happy with. I'll be doing layouts this weekend, so next week you'll see some pages of the final, FINAL incarnation of this story. And now that these results have got me all pumped up, I'll be tearing ass to get it done. See you next time.

Oh God You Guys

I thought I could finish this page today, but the miserable bastards calling themselves the influenza virus have kicked my in the shins and pissed in my skull. I'm going on vacation tomoaroow so the next page won't be done until I get back so here's what I've got so far.

Was that hard? Was that so goddamn hard to color? What's been wrong with me until now that I couldn't do something so easy? All I've learned is that hot colors advance and cold colors reced, and colors get lighter and desaturated as they get further awy. Goddamn, that isn't tough.

THis is gonna be the last page of this chapter, because it isn't going anywhere anyway. I'll use part of my vacation to actually write something since I'm warmed up now. So goddamn warm I wast to jump int some liquid nitrogen.

Sorry aboput spelling and grammar errors but I barely care right now.

Hate to Keep Opening This Can of Worms, But...

I've been holding myself back when it came to the ink (and the expressiveness in general), but when I took the kid gloves off I decided to try something new. I don't think it looks half bad, but feedback would be appreciated, especially since I've changed my mind on this issue half a dozen times. So let me know your thoughts.

Consequently, if your thoughts are, "I liked it better when Gurren Lagann did it," then that's alright. Being compared to Gurren Lagann is never a bad thing.

Same Week and Everything! (Page 4)

I usually don't get the opportunity to work on a comic for eight hours straight (and if I do, I usually don't take it), but it certainly helps when I do.

Perhaps A Bit Too Optimistic (Page 3)

I should be done with the next page soon, but that double update thing was a bit much to hope for. I'm kinda drawing beyond my ability here (which is pretty much the point), so getting these pages done takes me an absurdly long amount of time. Still, I like the way they're turning out, and I'm sure I'm learning something by doing it.

EDIT: Looking over the next page, it's a good thing I exaggerated how far along I was on it because it's completely unnecessary. Here's what it looked like.
More action, and that's it. The artwork wouldn't have been any good either without some major tweaks. The last panel is just a different shot of what's going on in the previous two, and you'll notice that Flesh!Ace is actually earlier in his wind-up than in the previous panel. Plus, panel 2 would have just sucked, and I can tell that even with basic stick figures. There's also too much of a jump between this and the previous page. I may as well just cut to a different place if there's going to be that much of a time disparity (which is what I'm going to do). But don't worry. Sensical or not, I'm actually further along on the next page, so that shouldn't take too long.

Flow Issues (S1 P2)

Up until this point, I had been seriously making this up as I went (the third panel of the previous page was the first thing I drew, and I had absolutely no story in mind at the time), so this doesn't flow too well with the first page (especially the line about how Ace gets to deal with things), but it'll improve from here.

I had to switch from Blambot Casual back to Digital Strip. It isn't as pretty, but it's a damn sight easier to read. Now, just to show that I haven't been slacking off entirely, I've already got the construction for the next page done.

Told you I take this stuff seriously. Anyway, I hope to have this finished by Thursday, but I'm sure I'll run into some problem with it.

That's More Like It! (S1 P1)

Ah, now that's a much more comfortable fit! So what if there's no color? My roots are in black and white, and even now that's what I prefer to draw, and to look at. So there.

Yeah, another new design for Ace. The hood was getting in the way of his hair, and that solid black just made giant splotches on the pages. This is much more varied, easier to work with, and is truer to his original design, I think. You may also notice I finally cut the back of his hair. That whole spine thing has always looked silly, and has always been a problem, but I kept it because it's always been a part of his design. But I began to figure that I was the only one who cared, so... SNIP!

I Dunno, Guys...

Is this me? I don't really think this is me. I don't want to draw this type of comic. But hey, that's what these shorts are all about, right? If nothing else, I'm starting to find my inner voice.

And you know, I like having melodrama punctuated by goofy bullshit. I also REALLY like black and white, and I'd prefer to draw in the pseudo cartoony noir style that I was doing (and that I hadn't really shown you).

I'm going back to the drawing board. I'll see you in a few days to give you an update on how it's coming.

Rendesvous at R'Lyeh! (Page One)

Finally got this thing done! Man, was it a pain! The good kind, though. Although that part where I lost the flash drive it was on got me a little nervous! (It was under my desk)

I've said before how one limitation to doing an online comic as opposed to a print comic is that it needs to be paced page-by-page, but the medium's biggest advantage is the infinite canvas! In its native resolution, the page was thirty inches long! That's almost twice the size of the standard comic book page!

I still don't really like the background colors too much, but if I never practice, I'll never get better, right? And I'm sure you're sick of hearing me complain about it over and over, so forget it!

Well, That's Not Too Bad

So I believe I'm finally ready to put my work to color.

It finally looks better colored than it does in black and white, and I think that's mostly because of the much brighter pallet I used here. I'm kinda going for a Saturday morning cartoon look to match the artwork and the lighter, softer attitude of the whole comic. I think it compliments it pretty well, but I'd love to hear other opinions on the matter. Of course, I'm still pretty lacking in this subject, but at least now I have no excuse not to practice.

Yeah, Kinji's still albino. I don't have an actual reason to do it anymore; I just think it looks better. And seeing as how he now has nothing to do with Final Fantasy, it helps to justify his clothes (I just couldn't bring myself to radically change his design).

The Staryu thing next to him is Decarabia, a Grand Marquis of Hell as described in the Lesser Key of Solomon. He knows everything about herbs and metals, making him Kinji's cooking assistant.

Again With the Resetting!

Well, technically it's not a reset, but I am ditching the chapter I was working on. The A Plot went absolutely nowhere, and the chapter didn't really connect to the story as a whole. I was also having difficulty establishing the characters, both to the readers and to myself.

I've got the story to the first chapter pretty much worked out, but I've decided to go in a different direction for now. I think I'll finally take the advice Adam gave me over a year ago and focus on doing a few shorts until I get accustomed to the characters. There are quite a few of them this time around, so I definitely have to be careful about this. I mean, Meta ended up being kind of a disaster of a character, so I don't want to repeat that. Kinji's also changed almost completely, so I want to take that slowly.

Also, I'm hoping to keep an actual schedule here. I'll let you know what I'm planning as soon as I get my first page up.

More Boxes Than a Crash Bandicoot Game

This is gonna be my last day with an internet connection for a couple weeks, so I thought I'd give fair warning. I didn't get the next page done, mainly because I'm re-examining the comic so far.

I think I'm gonna tighten this stuff up, and start posting again when I've fixed some of the issues I have with it. Right now, it's too goddamn complicated for it's own good. I've gone through about seven pages of exposition and shit's still cryptic. I've really gotta trim the fat, here.

The main problem is that I'm just not good at going without a script. The attempt at launching the comic with that Richter-centered story proved that. I used a very rough script with the Personal Accountant Joe attempt, and even that ended up better. The problem there was in general direction of the series.

I'll be back as soon as I can.

Page 11 Preview

I may not be able to ink this for a few days, so I figured I'd at least show you the pencil work for the next page.

So yeah, I'm finally getting into the meat of this chapter. I'm really looking forward to working on it.

Pages 6-10 (wait, wut?)

I had to make some exposition pages that explained what Ace and Meta are and what their purpose is supposed to be, since I couldn't really do that with dialogue. The thing is, the chapter flows much better if the exposition comes before the flashback, since it solves the pacing issues I noted before. So basically, pages six, seven, and eight are the new pages.

The last panel gets better when you realize that the two are expies of Dan and Rorschach.
This is a crossover between my old characters (or just old designs) and Adam Elbahtimy's. It was kinda rough deciding which of my characters I wanted to include since I didn't want to use multiple characters from one comic, and unlike Adam, I've just recycled the old characters over and over again. The rabbit thing in the center is supposed to be Karu Kari, from a comic that only lasted four pages. I couldn't remember what she looked like, so I just went with "ax-crazy cartoon bunny." Kinda jarring compared to the others on the page.
I'm trying to find smart ways to use screentones. I've never really liked them, but I need to realize that you're not looking at a piece of paper- you're looking at a lightbulb with lines all over it. I don't think I'll be coloring the comic after all, so this is the next best way to control the light and dark values. Right now I'm just using tones to do what I can't with regular ink.

And I must admit, the writing up there isn't great. I should really formally script out exposition at the very least. If you're having trouble following what's being said in the last page, let me put it this way. During the Infinite Crisis event in DC comics, Superboy Prime infamously punched the fabric of time and space, and after the event, writers used that as an excuse to screw around with the continuity. Why was Jason Todd brought back to life? Because Superboy Prime punched reality! All kinds of screwy stuff are happening! Ace and Meta basically exist to punch reality as many times as it's needed.

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And just so there's less confusion, I'll finish up the sequence.
I really hope I can get my site working soon, so I can organize this stuff better.

I Know, I Know. Here's Pages 4-7.

I've been keeping busy (or trying to, at least) on a few things. Notably, I'm working on launching a new web site. The layout's all done, and it's looking pretty nice, but there's one problem- the damn thing doesn't work. But that's neither here nor there: let's post some comics!

I had to totally redo this page for one particular reason- in the first take (which you can see at the bottom of this post), Meta just kinda layed back and whined for the entire page. First impressions are everything, and I knew that she'd be pretty damn unlikeable if the first impression of her was a whiny bitch who got drunk all the time (getting drunk some of the time is A-OK, though!). Plus, now you have shirtless, overly-muscled Ace, which hasn't been seen since Author/Draft!
Crazy Ace on the other hand, hasn't been seen enough since then. This page brings up an important point- EVERYTHING IS CANON. If I've put it in a comic, it's canon to Meta-Fiction. This Ace is the same Ace that fought Richter with Keefe and Machete by his side, threw rocks at Kinji, and made Colleen's life a living hell. It makes things both more simple, AND more complicated, but you'll see why it's necessary later in this chapter.
I thought that the "pull away" thing would be enough to signify that this is a flashback, but looking at it now, I guess not. Originally, the comic was in chronological order (before I redid page 4 and added page 5) so I hadn't thought of it. The business guy's name is Abe White, and when I heard it in my head, I didn't realize it that "Abe" would look a whole lot like "Ace" when typed out. But I liked the name more than anything else I had come up with, so in the end I ran with it.
INFODUMPING! I did alright with this page, but 4 and 5 still sound too stiff to me. In this page, the character has a good reason to sound like he's just expositing- the other characters don't know about the buyout. Pages 4 and 5 are examples of the hardest thing about writing dialogue- having two people talking about things they both already know just for the audience's benefit, without actually having it sound like they're just providing exposition. They need to actually sound like they're having a conversation. That is hard as hell. I did my best here, but damn.

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Here's the original version of page four.
It's a shame I had to replace it, since the artwork is a lot more interesting here than in the replacement pages. But you can see where I'm coming from, right? Meta is just an unbelievable cunt on this page, and now that I'm seeing it again, the dialogue sounds even more like info dumping, and the page ends on a flat note. Web comics really need to be paced page-by-page because of the way they're read, and there needs to be some kind of reaction from the reader by the final panel, whether they laugh, get intrigued, feel sad, or go "FUCK YEAH!" If there's no reaction at all, it's a failure as far as the pacing went.

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One last thing. I've been working on something. DO YOU RIKE IT!?
The line art in this comic has always been begging for some color, but I've always been so bad at it that it just looked better in black and white. The problem, as you can see, isn't the figures themselves (any idiot can cell shade presentably well), but in the backgrounds. Every damn background I've tried to color has always looked so flat that it really brought the rest of the page down. Here, I took a page from Frank Miller's book and made it just stylish enough that it gets people to think I'm sucking on purpose. Then, it's not shitty. It's subversive.

Actually, I am kinda surprised how that panel turned out. I'm still not sure if I'm gonna do this for every page. If I do, it'll be done after the black and white version goes up- coloring can easily take as long as every other step combined.

And that's (finally) all from me today! I plan on working on the comic more exclusively for now, so expect more updates soon.

Chapter 1 Page 3, and What's Up With the Marvel Shit

It took me forever to finish this thing. Partly because of needing to adjust to my new work schedule, and partly because I kept friggin' forgetting to put it on a flash drive so I could work on it over the weekend. I actually only have a panel and a half to ink, and then lettering, and I can post another two pages. But I'm ready for bed, so I'll post those over the weekend.

Now that I'm done with my brilliant commentary on Marvel's events, I guess I should explain what all that shit was about. I had to establish a few things:

A. This story takes place in a series of comic books
B. The main characters are supposed to keep the story going in these comics
C. They're not very good at it

So somewhere along the line, I came up with this. Well, actually, I can't remember what exactly I had come up with. Iron Man was tapping a pencil out of boredom, but by the second panel he and Cap were fighting over it. But hey, I accomplished what I set out to do.

I was planning on using a team of Captain Ersatzes, but for some reason I used the actual characters instead. It got me out of designing five characters for three pages, so that's probably the only reason. That last panel up there was supposed to be a gag panel, but because I was using the actual characters, my inner nerdiness stopped me in the middle of drawing the dust cloud and said, "Dammit, Rob! You're drawing Captain America, Iron Man, Wolverine, Spider-Man, and She-Hulk fighting over the Infinity Gauntlet! You will NEVER get another chance to draw something this awesome!" So even though the panel was too smushed, I tried my best. My Iron Man looks pretty bad, though. I'm just no good with tech.

My last word on the matter is that it was certainly fun, if pointless. I just wish that I had messed around with the characters more, like changing their outfits between their 616 and Ultimate versions and stuff. Spider-Man turns into Deadpool for one panel, but that's about it.

Chapter 1 Page 2

I really need to get my laptop back in working order. It sucks not being able to work on these over the weekend.

EDIT: Fuck. I forgot She-Hulk was an Avenger. I was going for the New Avengers lineup to start with, but since I couldn't make up my mind when actually drawing it, I'll admit the mistake.

Okay Now...

I forgot that I hadn't posted the finished cover, so here it is now. I've already said what had to be said about these pages, so let's leave it at that.
(Except that Kinji is now albino just because otherwise there'd be three blond dudes on the cover)

EDIT: I forgot that JPGs hate red, so I saved the cover as a PNG this time.