All posts in Comics

I made a book that makes me not want that Mickey Mouse notebook I mentioned last week.

You can make your own custom cover hardback notebook. All you need is:

A notebook (mine was 3 bucks from big lots)

An old comic book (Mine is a page from issue #18 from the Shogun Warriors comic series)

A jar of Gel Medium

Just coat the front of the book with the Gel Medium and then slap the comic page on. You can cut it down after it dries. Once it is dried then coat it again with the Gel Medium. Don’t worry, it will dry into a clear coating that will help protect your book from wear and tear. Let me know when you get yours done!

Zig Zag : Mish Mash

Are you tired of hunting all over tarnation looking for that anthology with a story by J Chris Campbell in it? Can’t seem to remember where that Apple Dumpler comic strip you loved appeared? Your hunting and remembering are a thing of the past thanks to the futuristic “Guided View Technology.”

The technological savy folks at Comixology and AdHouse Books have joined together to bring you something special from J Chris Campbell.

Zig Zag : Mish Mash

For just one thin dollar you’ll get 48 pages of J Chris’ best comics that appeared in various anthologies over the years. The Apple Dumpler, Orson Spinwell and Attic Bugs are all together and in the palm of your hand at any time. You’ll never be alone again!

Available Online Also
You don’t need one of those lousy iPhones!

You can read the comic online, right now! Head over to comixology.com and buy it online in their newish online comics reading website for reading comics online! It’s like reading a real comic but you have to click to turn the pages. And there’s no worry about keeping it nice because it’s on the internet and that means it’ll be in perfect condition every time you read it. You should try it out, go on. Click here and check it out.

Years back a local company contacted me about doing a kids activity page and a comic strip. I said sure and decided to use Little Fat Pig Thing for the comic strip. The magazine only made it to issue 2 before it folded. “But there are 3 comics here” well yes there are observant one. I had already done the comic and kids page by the time I found out they were gone.

Click Cartoon for larger view:

I enjoyed working with Little Fat Pig Thing but I stopped using him when I realized he was subconsciously modeled like a cartoon that was on at the time.

Our Broadcast Day

My comic pal Pat Lewis is putting together an anthology called OUR BROADCAST DAY. Basically it’s a collection of alt-cartoonists’ takes on television shows of all genres, past and present. He has not released any official information so I hope it’s cool I post about this because I needed something to blog about today.

Over the last couple years I developed a loose way to write my comics. Sometimes I’ll come up with an idea while standing in the shower, driving in the car, eating a sandwich or pretending to listen to my wife talk. Once I’ve finally come up with an idea that I think will be fantastic I begin the next step in my process. I procrastinate until the very last minute, and usually later than that given the situation and the kindness of the editor.

Once I’ve run completely out of time I finally draw out the boxes on sheets of paper. That is when I decide that my original idea was no good and force myself to come up with something new. I sit someplace away from my computer and just start making up the story right on the page. I start to sketch pretty tightly while I act out the story in my head. I wade out into the stream of conscious and see what I can catch. Each panel moves the story along as I make it up in my head and try to keep up on the page.

I incorporate some sort of delima, conflict or standard story telling device I don’t know the name of. Sometimes I write some wording down other times I just try to get the idea of what might happen. Usually a little over halfway I realize what the end of the story has to be. It’s one of the best feelings I get while creating the comic. It’s like figuring out the solution to a puzzle. So once I’ve done that I totally loose any motivation to actually draw the comic.

I take the beginning that I’ve come up with and I go to the computer and start typing in the dialogue. Looking at my sketches to see where a panel might be combined and where I can add something or take something away. I believe writers call this editing but I’m actually still writing the comic and it’s not even fully written so I don’t believe it’s a revision. But for whatever reason I have to type out the dialogue and see it on the screen before I can move on.

I usually just get a little over halfway done and I might number the panels. I try to figure out how much room is left to fill with other things but I leave it blank and start laying out the page on the computer.

I lay out the type in each panel and see if I can combine anything then I start drawing. Once I’ve finished up the beginning of the story I start looking at how many panels are left before the resolution and end of the comic. Then I jump back over to my script and try to come up with something to bridge the gap. Sometimes I’ll just keep going, writing the story on the page as I draw it on the computer. This part of the process is kind of fun because it’s more like a puzzle again.

Anyhow to make this long story not as long, I finish the comic and I print it out and read over it for typos. I send it to my friend’s to catch typos (usually only giving them a few hours to respond because I’m already pushing the limits of what a deadline is). Then I hand the comic to my wife and she reads it and says that she doesn’t get it and why didn’t I use her idea she gave me when I was whinning about not having any ideas for the comic in the first place. That’s when I stomp off pouting and read the comic again. I change a couple of things and send it off to the editor. Then a week later I contact the editor with new files because I forgot to save the changes that I made last minute and sent them the wrong files.

Then I just sit back and wait to hear from all the people who loved my story. The waiting is endless.

Here is a comic I did for one of the Wide Awake Press anthologies. Back when I thought I might enjoy drawing comics by hand. I realized that it’s about the same amount of work and correcting typographical errors are a lot harder. The story isn’t really autobiographical but it comes across that way.

Click for full images: