Savage Nobles in the Land of Enchantment

A big thanks to everybody who came out to my release event at Cosmic Monkey. It was wonderful to see/meet you all! Here are some pictures from Saturday night, taken by my friend Matt Cruz.

There aren’t a lot of pictures of me here because my head was constantly bent over as a I drew doodles on people’s title pages.

Here are some celebrities holding my books – click the images for giganto versions.

Stumptown Underground editor and zinestress Katie Ash.	The one and only Hopskotch SunDAY! In the background you can see my housemate (and caterer) Katy Ellis O’Brien.
Hereville author Barry Deutches. Barry led the Comic Creators meetup group that workshopped many of SNitLoE’s later pages.	Jake Richmond, who draws an adorable/horrifying webcomic called Modest Medusa. He also led the meetup with Barry.
Kevin Wilson, who draws Titanzer and also provided my button-making supplies.	Ron Chan, who hangs his hat at Periscope Studio where I used to intern.

So BY THE WAY there was an error in the printing that I didn’t notice until after the release party. Page 176 is where page 176 should be, but it’s ALSO where page 76 should be. I am 90% sure this was a mistake on the part of the printers, but they have been so accommodating I’m not going to give them a hard time about it. Anyway, all the copies I sell from now on will have the correct page 76 inserted discreetly in the proper place – you probably won’t even notice unless you feel the scotch tape.

Lastly, here is a picture of me being happy and a picture of my friend Alan doing his best Kafir impression:

You can now pre-order the print version of SNitLoE from my online store!

I will mail your copy (or copies) as soon as the books arrive, probably on or around the weekend of September 24th. Books cost $15 each, plus a one-time shipping charge of $5. If you like, I will sign your book and draw a little doodle of one of the characters on the title page.

The store page also has a free download of the entire comic as a .cbz file. If you have friends who enjoy the soulless experience of reading immaterial comics by the cold blue glow of an iPad or laptop, please tell them about this download!

The store also has buttons! But these are not really worth buying unless you are also buying a book!

Lastly, if you live in PORTLAND FREAKIN’ OREGON, you should definitely save yourself $5 in shipping by purchasing a book from me directly. A good place to do that might be my release party on October 1st at Cosmic Monkey Comics. But you can just as easily accost me in the park, at the Max station, in my own bed while I’m sleeping, etc. and I will gladly sell you a book on the spot.

SNitLoE was always meant for print, even before I started posting it online, and now that I’m done drawing the story I’m wasting no time turning this ungainly webcomic into a beautiful paperback book. One important part of this will be designing the cover. I’ve always imagined a cover similar to the image currently on the facebook page, which I also use on promotional cards. It’s the band standing in the desert with their instruments, Tonya’s fist in the air. I drew that picture almost a year ago, so obviously I’d redraw it nicely for the book cover.

This afternoon I messed around with a couple other designs. Please vote! Bare in mind that these are very loose sketches – the exact layout and colors will probably be different, so just vote based on the general idea of the cover.

1.) Original                                                           2.) Blue New Mexico

3.) Abbey Road                                               4.) Face Window

5.)  Thirsty and Miserable                        6.) Upturned Van

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There is something about designing covers that draws artists towards symmetry. Do a Google Image Search for the phrase “graphic novel cover” and see how many of them display strong bilateral symmetry. While the interior of a comic may be full of dramatic dynamism and daring diagonals, covers are often comparitavly static images. I think this is because, while comics are supposed to convey the passage of time, covers often show a frozen moment, or a representation of a state of being rather than a narrative event. Look at the amazing similarity between these covers by two of my favorite young comics artists in Portland, Sarah Oleksyk and Dylan Meconis. It’s pretty remarkable.

Remarkable!

Here’s the larger version of the picture I drew for Tonya to find on Greg’s desk – a classic example of something that looks like virtually nothing on the shrunken-down webpage, but will look detailed and cool in the final printed book.

It was actually kind of touching to draw this… it’s the last time I’ll get to draw the band together as a group in this comic, and actually it’s the first time since page 31. The skyline in the background is supposed to be the Savage Noble’s hometown of Philadelphia, PA.

Here’s a picture I did of Theo and the other characters from SNitLoE in the style of local cartoonist Theo Ellsworth. Consider it my modest tribute to this awesome artist.

I actually got to chat with Theo Ellsworth over burritos last weekend when we were both in Washington for the Olympia Comics Festival. Even though I was bumping elbows with much more famous comics artists during the festival, none of them intimidated me so much as Theo. I feel as though in this candid photograph of the two of us you can actually see the nervousness in my facial expression and posture.

Why would this be? Festival guests Larry Gonick and Paul Chadwick are both excellent artists, but I basically understand how they got that way. They practiced a lot, studied the works of artists they admire, probably read a few instructional books on art or storytelling, or got pointers from fellow cartoonists. By contrast, Theo’s artistic process is completely opaque to me. If his comics are to be believed, he basically gets inspiration by delving into some weird interior mental zone and meeting a bunch of thoughts incarnated as fantastical creatures.

This might be why meeting him in person was so intimidating – anyone else who’s met him can tell you that Theo has about the gentlest, least intimidating personality you could imagine. The cognitive dissonance comes from knowing that his mind is nevertheless capable of concocting bizarre mystical visions, and may be doing so at any moment. As he was talking to me, was he imagining tassled antlers springing from my head or little monster-men driving on my shoulders in tiny cars?

Even though I’ve spent the past year honing my “craft” by studying the Masters, and even though I have a long-standing aversion to the “Vesuvius” school of creativity – i.e. the muse strikes you and you simply spew out its inspiration on the page, there’s something I still seriously admire about this kind of self-taught, highly personal/intuitive creativity.

When I was a younger and less technically schooled artist, I loved putting little weird things in my drawings, cramming every inch of a picture with whatever quirky idea struck me at the time – sometimes without even knowing what to expect would come out of my pencil. I sort of miss that now!

(By the way, don’t take any of this to mean that I don’t think Theo’s work is also technically very good – it is! Nor is all of it psychologically ponderous – it can be very lighthearted as well.)

(Also, just so you don’t think I’m an obsessive fan-boy, I named the character Theo long before I had ever heard of Theo the artist. It’s a coincidence, I swear!)