The last full Amy story, “Amy Makes a Friend,” is now up. We did have a few more stories planned, and one more fully scripted, but life will have its way. We do occasionally talk about continuing the series, and it might still happen one day.
I do have a few pieces of bonus material to come.
Tea Fougner is raising money to save the Wardenclyffe, Nikola Tesla’s labe in Shorham, Long Island. Long Island is short on interesting locations to start with–it would be a particular shame if this one were allowed to be torn down.
Via Tea:
“So, earlier today I linked to the New York Times article about Wardenclyffe, Tesla’s lab in New York, that is being sold for $1.6 million. Right now, The Tesla Science Center is trying to raise the money tobuy the land, prevent the lab from being torn down, and turn it into a museum.
So I am here to help them, with the blessing of my father, who claims he is Tesla’s living reincarnation.”
“>
The third Amy story, “Amy Considers her Options,” is now archived. In this one, we have a split between internal & external narrative, as Amy tries to choose a new pet to bring home. I adore Bill’s faux crayon drawings for Amy’s inner thought panels.
I launched a brand new project today! It’s a little something I’m calling Simpleton: A Writer’s Sketchbook. As the subtitle implies, this won’t be a full-fledged narrative undertaking. Rather, it will be a place for me to try out little bits and pieces, experimental ideas, single panel thoughts, and a whole bunch of bad ideas.
Since, as you know, I’m not artist, I’ll be trying a variety of alternative illustration techniques. Photography will play a big part, as in today’s installment, despite my being no better a photographer than I am an artist. I’ll also be playing with some minimalist Illustrator work (fans of Panel One may eventually see some familiar boxes), and I’ll also be playing around with bastardizing some existing art by whoever gives me the okay to tear their stuff apart. (Neal Von Flue is on board, and you’ll get to see how I’ve brutalized one of his old strips next week).
Anyway, I’m aiming for weekly, mostly Mondays, with the occasional bonus strip on Wednesdays. The first installment is up now–a single panel photo-comic titled “Waiting for Astronauts to Come Home.” Check it out!
The third Amy story, “Amy’s Double Life” is now up in the archive. This is where Bill and I really started to get more structurally playful–we rotated the temporal axis 90 degrees in this story!
The second Amy story, Amy Steals a Cookie, is now up in my comics archive. In this story, a trivial crime leads to serious consequences.
So, as I believe I mentioned earlier, I’ve been working on putting together a print edition of one of my plays, Parens. Well, I did it! I don’t have the full order in hand yet, but I received my first copy, and I think it looks pretty darn spiffy, in its understated way.
I plan to sell copies at The Maine Comics Festival in Portland in a couple of weeks, and I’ll be selling them direct from my website, of course, once I have the copies in hand. In the meantime, if you just can’t wait, you can order directly from Lulu.com. (Print copy is $10.00, or you can just buy the download for $6.00. I make the same profit either way.)
And hey, if any theatre people out there read it, and like it, and maybe want to produce it–I’m all ears!
Here’s a synopsis:
Parens. is the story of Brook and William, a wife and husband, the impressionable student and the lover of language, who now speak only through voice recorders, their lives encoded in battles over grammatical minutia.
It is also the story of Eloquence and Bill, the two children who ferry these messages back and forth, always bouncing from one parent to the other, struggling to find their place in a fractured family.
Weaving forward and back through three pivotal days, Parens. reveals a chain of events that will force Brook and William to finally confront the state of their family and to make the most important decisions of their lives.
I’ve started adding the old Amy stories from Picture Story Theatre to my main comics archive, under the series title of Amy’s Picture Stories. “Amy Plays a Game of Chance” went up today. This was one of my first illustrated comics, and the very first one which I collaborated with Bill Duncan. I think it’s fair to say that Bill and I have both come a long way since that first story, but I still have a deep affection for it. This one story lead directly to my regularly creating comics, not to mention that it resulted in a lasting friendship with Bill and his family.
I’m going to try to add another Amy story each day until they’re all up.
I noticed that my first collaboration with Grug, Bring Your Daughter to Work Day, has been getting a noticeable spike in traffic over the past few weeks, but couldn’t figure out why. It didn’t seem to be getting any prominent links or anything like that. Then I saw a news posting, that pointed out what I should have realized in the first place–the actual Bring Your Daughter to Work Day (now called “Take Our Sons and Daughters to Work Day”) just passed! Duh!
So…Happy Take Our Sons and Daughters to Work Day everyone!
Busy as I am these days, I don’t often have time to go hunting for new comics. But I do always check the linked sites for people looking to buy adspace on my site, to make sure they’re not linking to anything I find terribly offensive or objectionable. And every now and then, I find a great new comic as a result.
The first one I found this way, probably a couple of years ago now, was Buttersafe,by Alex Culang and Raynato Castro, a strange comic with a darkly random sense of humor somewhat in the vein of The Perry Bible Fellowship. I don’t read many straight-up humor strips, but this one often delights me.
Today I found another strip that seems promising–Amelia Altavena’s Sketchfervor, a journal comic that occasionally reminds me of Erika Moen’s Dar, interspersed with some lovely flights of fancy, such as today’s strip, wherein Amelia vomits up a Miyazaki-esque canine companion.
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