Oh Brother, My Sister

Forgot to post about it here when this went up a few weeks back, but I recently illustrated a comic for James Sturm's 12 Panel Pitch series on Slate.com.

It was a surprisingly fun piece to work on, and I'm pretty pleased with how it turned out. Story by Josh Melrod, art and layouts by yours truly. Click the image above to read it.

Darcy-Cheyne.com

Hey Josh! What've you been up to since getting back from SPX? Oh, I don't know. Just a little thing called...

That's right! Darcy Cheyne: Werewolf Hunter now has its own website! It is now officially a thing! It's been awhile since the last time I was actively updating and maintaining a webcomic, and the prospect is kind of both exciting and terrifying. But mostly exciting! Because I've been working on this story for awhile now, and I think it's gonna be really good! So please check out the website. New pages will be up every Tuesday and Thursday from now into the foreseeable future, so feel free to check it regularly. I think it's gonna be a pretty fun ride!

Post-SPX

 

So SPX happened, and it was a real fun time! Much was learned about comics, about ourselves, about the nature of FRIENDSHIP... And if you have any doubts, just look upon this picture of myself with my lovely tablemates, Chris and Marta. Revel in the friendship just streaming out of this sucker!

In all seriousness though, it really was an enjoyable show. Both the first print collection of Darcy Cheyne: Werewolf Hunter and my angsty teen comic Rage Forever made their debut and - with the exception of one minor snafu on the part of the print-on-demand company used for Darcy - I'm pretty pleased with how both books turned out. It was also really great catching up with some old friends and making some new ones as well, and just seeing folks and talking comics all weekend long. Comics, you guys! What's not to like? WHAT'S NOT TO LIKE??

In non-SPX news: a Spanish-language comic I did as part of a collaboration with the University of Iowa International Writing Program a few months back, El Equilibrista, is now online. Story by Angel Franco, art and layout by yours truly. The comic was partially inspired by the final performance of famous tightrope walker Karl Wallenda in San Juan. It's in Spanish of course, but as someone who does not speak the language, I think it still reads pretty well. You can also see some of the other comics done as part of this project over here.

SPX this Weekend!

Hey all! I'm gonna be at SPX in Bethesda, Maryland this weekend, on September 14th and 15th! I'll be selling copies of my newest book, "Rage Forever," which is about angry teenagers. I'll also be selling a small number of copies of part one of "Darcy Cheyne, Werewolf Hunter," the ongoing comic I've been posting on my tumblr as of late.

You'll be able to find me at table N6, along with my buddies Chris and Marta. Please stop by if you get the chance!

You've Got A Lot of Blogs to Check Out

Hey! So remember that super secret extra special comics project I teased around New Years? Well I'm starting to post it on my tumblr! New pages are going to be going up there every Tuesday and Thursday from now until the far distant future! I'll of course keep updating stuff on this here blog as the project continues to develop, but ya know, you can just start following my tumblr if you wanna see the good stuff as it's coming out. And oh, there is indeed some good stuff a-coming.

Also! While your checking out things on tumblr, why don't you check out my good buddy Nick Patten's new blog too! Nick's one of my favourite dudes, and he tends to pump out some pretty slick looking stuff. Also! You should check out some of the cool stuff my buddy Keith Jones has been putting up on his tumblr lately as well! He's been posting huge chunks of the current book he's working on, and it's looking goddamn beautiful! So yeah, remember to check those out too!

Skeletons Forever!

Hey all! I've got a comic up as part of Trubble Club's Infinite Corpse project! I think the Infinite Corpse might be one of my favourite comic things to come out of the internet ever, and I am extremely grateful to have been allowed to be a part of it.

Hey, Anyone Else Like Colour?

TCAF 2012

 
Sort of last minute, but I'm going to be at TCAF this Saturday and Sunday! I'll be tabling with Laura Terry and Jon Chad, and will have a mini preview version of "Darcy Cheyne: Werewolf Hunter" for sale. So if you happen to be in Toronto this weekend, come check us out!

Why Does it Always Rain On Me?

Hey Internet, sorry I have been a bad blogger as of late! I've been super busy drawing things, which has left me with a bit less time for updating this old thing than I've had previously. Here's a quick preview of what I've been up to, though! An early spread from the graphic novel I've been working on. Who is that guy chopping up those onions? Who is that mysterious hooded figure breaking into that house? Is something going on? Is there gonna be murder? Only time will tell! (And as always, click to view bigger)

Pancake Prevarication

I realize it's been awhile since I've put a full comic up on ye ol' blog-o-tron, so I figured why not rectify that, even if it is only a two-pager. This comic was originally done for the anthology Lies Grown-Ups Told Me, which is a pretty solid collection of comics if I do say so myself. As always, click the pages to view larger.

First the Drought, Then the Rain

Hey all! Sorry for the lack of updates this past month or so. I'm gonna level with you, I've been starting to delve a lot deeper into my work as of late. This might mean a slight decrease in the regularity of some of my posting for a little while (though hopefully not quite to the recent extent). Please don't take this as a sign of neglect! I still love you, Internet! I just need to ride this wave of recent creativity to its natural end before I can return in full force. In the meanwhile, here are a couple of quick things I've been up to this past month!

The above is a photo from a few weeks back, when I had a chance to speak to a couple of classes of grade 7 and 8 students at King Edward Public School. They recently completed a unit on comics, and had invited me in to talk about the craft, and what it's like to work on comics all day everyday (in brief: it's pretty awesome). It doesn't take much in general to get me excited about talking about comics with any age group, but these students came off as particularly bright and eager and were a real pleasure to talk to. Big thank you to Miss Venn for inviting me, and creating this opportunity.

Then secondly, because I have trouble bringing myself to put up a blog post without some actual drawing in it, here's an excerpt of some recent work I've been doing for the upcoming documentary Cartoon College. It's a documentary about the comics school I went to, as well as about cartooning in general, and is full of some exceptionally awesome people (including Chris Ware, Lynda Barry and Art Spiegelman, to name drop a few).

I'm in it as well - likely acting like a generally silly dude, as is my wont. I'm fairly proud of some of the drawing I recently completed for it though, which is perhaps a thing of note. Anyway, more on all that as the film approaches completion and release, but keep checking here for updates as time goes on.

Spider-Man Hates Weddings!

Saw this Spider-Man cover while bagging comics at work the other day, and instantly felt compelled to redraw it, if perhaps only for the pun. "With this ring, I do thee web?!" - hilarious! I'd submit it to the Covered blog, but it turns out they've already done this cover. Plus, I think my version kept a bit too close to the original. Oh well! Original cover by Gil Kane, who is a genius, and Spider-Man and all that stuff is owned by Marvel Comics, in case you didn't know.

I feel a bit bad for having fallen behind on the twice-a-month blogging schedule I'd had going for awhile, but I was away end of last month visiting Nick Patten, Ryland Ianelli and Beth Hetland! All three of whom are frickin' fantastic human beings, and who it was a total blast to see. It was fun having a chance to just wander around Chicago for a bit too. Beth even made a blog post about it! (I'm hiding in the dark in the picture at the bottom, 'cause that's what I do)

A couple other quick things: Steve Bissette recently posted a preview of his inks of my pencils for the N-Man collaboration we've been working on for the last little while. It's extremely exciting to watch this thing take shape - hopefully we'll have more for you some time soon. In the meanwhile, however, turns out SPX is this weekend! I won't be there physically, but I will be attending in spirit through my contribution to Lies Grown-Ups Told Me, which will be debuting at the show. Pick it up from Jen Vaughn, Nomi Kane or Caitlin M at table C6, if you're attending!

Ophestios, 1890

And after a brief break, we're back again with another addition to the still-growing comics section (which I'm already starting to consider trimming down a little bit. We'll see, we'll see). I realize that all of the comics I've added so far have been on the slightly lengthier side. Well let me tell ya, this one is the worst of the bunch. Good thing it's also probably the one I'm most proud of.

"Ophestios" is the comic I produced at the end of my first year at the Center for Cartoon Studies. I had a lot on my mind at the time, principally some ambitious thoughts on "comics as literature" coupled with a mild obsession with the works and philosophy of Bertolt Brecht. Suddenly, I wanted to do a "period piece." And I wanted it to have substance to it, and I wanted it to feel like all that great, depressing Russian and German literature that I'd learned to love in undergrad, oh so long ago. This was the result.

This story was originally intended as the start of a much larger piece, which I eventually set aside, but I think it still functions fairly well on its own. The Comics Journal's Rob Clough had some very nice things to say about it upon its initial release, as did Rich Kreiner more recently. Reading the reviews now makes me almost regret having decided to put this project on hold. But oh well. I'm convinced that the project I'm working on right now, in place of this, is pretty swank too. And there's still quite a few ideas behind the world of "Ophestios" that I still like, so maybe I'll return to it someday.

In the meanwhile, there are hard copies of the book still available for purchase through I Know Joe Kimpel, or through me when I appear at conventions. I wasn't sure if I had much of a desire to pump out another print run once this current batch runs out though, so I thought maybe a second life online might be the best way to keep the piece alive. At the end of the day, it's a story that I still like quite a bit. And hey, maybe you will too. (Be warned though, the comic contains both adult language and situations. Potentially NSFW)

Old Comics, New Comics

I just made two new additions to the comics section of this here blog, both of which are comics slightly on the older side. To be honest, I actually came pretty close to deciding not to put them up at all. It's hard for me to not look at these particular pieces now and not have part of myself go, "Gawd! But it's so... so... UNREFINED!" (I mean honestly, the lettering alone! Egads!) However, in both these cases there was at least something to the stories that made me want to put them up rather than leave them to die a slow, slow death in the obscurity of my computer's hard-drive.

The first of them was a comic produced as part of an anthology assignment during my first year at CCS. Our anthology theme was "chance," and my initial idea for the comic was mostly born as an excuse to make a really bad pun. You can actually read a fairly flattering review of this comic on the 365 Zines a Year blog over here. Although maybe you'll want to read the actual comic first. I dunno, man. It's up to you.

The second is actually even older, and is the comic I was required to produce as part of my initial application to CCS. The comic needed to be a minimum of four pages, and needed to involve yourself, a robot, a snowman, and a piece of fruit. I remember a good friend of mine, not long after finishing this, telling me it was in her estimation the best comic I'd done up to that point. And another good friend, having read this comic before actually meeting me, later telling me that the comic had led her to assume that I was some kind of giant jerk. Heh, so you know. You guys be the judge!

Paw Prints, Online!

So I've been monkey-ing around with this old blog a bit today, and decided it wouldn't necessarily be such a bad idea to add a comics section to it. The plan is to gradually add more and more stuff to it over the next couple months, get some of that stuff that's currently just taking up space on my computer online for people to see. Truthfully, I could probably just put up a bunch of comics up at once. But I kind of think it's more fun this way, heh.

Anyway, to start things, I've put up the recently completed run of "Paw Prints," the comic strip I've been producing as part of an environmental campaign at Dartmouth College. I've mentioned the project on this blog before, but now I'm putting the strip online in it's entirety for all you crazy people to see! This is my first time putting it all online, so that's kind of exciting as well. You can find it through the "comics" tab at the top of the site, or simply by clicking the link below.

N-Man vs Draculex!

Wanted to post a quick sample from a recently completed project. This is page one of my pencils for "The Bride of Draculex!", a brand new N-Man story that's going to be featured in the upcoming "Tales of the Uncanny: vol 1" by Stephen R. Bissette.

(Script by Stephen R. Bissette, pencils by Josh Rosen; artwork & N-Man, Draculex, Sally Stevens, all characters and concepts TM and ©1992, 2011 Stephen R. Bissette, all rights reserved. The penciler asserts his moral rights.)

You see, Draculex has totally stolen N-Man's girlfriend, Sally Stevens, and wants to turn her into his Space Vampire Bride! Well clearly N-Man's not gonna stand for that! Unfortunately, N-man's first gonna have to punch through all of those wolves, as well as a bunch of other things, before he's going to have a chance to save her.

Longtime followers might remember me blogging about this project a year ago, over here and here, as well as Steve's comments on the collaboration over here and here. These new pages are an expansion on those "sample pages" from a year ago, having recently decided to take what we had and transform it into a full story for the finished book. The story is currently being inked by Bissette himself, which is a huge honour, especially considering his current state of "retirement" from the mainstream industry. Not gonna lie, I'm pretty excited to see the finished version in print. :)

Anyway, "Tales of the Uncanny: Vol 1" is due to be coming out later this year from About Comics. I'll keep you guys posted as it gets closer to release.

CCS Awareness Week

Hey all, just wanted to make a quick shout out to the fact that this past week was CCS Awareness Week.

For those of you who maybe just recently stumbled onto this blog and aren't, perhaps, in the know, the Center for Cartoon Studies is a school focused entirely on the study and production of comics, and it's where I did my graduate studies for the past two years. I was, of course, making comics before going to CCS, and had I not gone there, there's still a chance that I might have continued to make them today. CCS is the place that got me militant about making comics though, the place that put my face to the wall and said, "Look! This is what comics are! This is what they're about, and this is what they demand of you!" And faced with said metaphorical wall, a young(ish) Josh, full of hopes and dreams, was forced to either embrace it or turn away. And so he embraced it. He embraced it, and he ingrained his ink-stained fingers into the coarse brick of it as hard as he could.

CCS also taught me about not being alone in this insane pursuit of this oddly specific artistic medium. There are others, just as dedicated, all pretty much universally amazing in their own unique ways, many of whom I can't now imagine not having in my life to some degree. CCS also gave me the tools to sustain all this, and to approach this art form with a far greater competency than what I'd possessed before. Essentially I'm trying to say that CCS was a pretty great place for me. And I've since graduated, and have started to move on towards that next big question mark on the horizon. And lord knows how that's gonna go. But I also know that I wouldn't be able to approach that horizon without nearly the same confidence I have now had it not been for CCS. So you know. Be aware.

"Edwitch" in Retrospect

So here's something that I've been meaning to make a post on for awhile now, but haven't had a chance to with moving and work and life and all that craziness. But it's been long overdue, so I'm doing it now. I want to talk about Edwitch.

Edwitch is my old webcomic, which I produced and kept updated on a fairly regular basis from about summer 2005 all the way up to fall 2008. That's a little over three years, in case you're counting. And its now been about three years since. I recently got the site back online however, and this is significant to me, and I want to talk about it. Edwitch was the story of a witch living in a city. And it was about magic and spooky things, and it was about having friends in bands. And it was about feeling like an outsider. And it was about wearing the exact same silly outfit every dang day.

I'm going to try not to get too caught up in nostalgia for a moment, and I'm going to talk about my decision to get it back online, despite it being "old work" and despite it no longer updating. Edwitch was my "training comic." I went into this thing knowing nothing, and... it probably shows, especially in those early strips. It originally started out as just something I posted to livejournal just for fun, and I'd only expected people I knew to be reading it. But, it grew. And I grew (and people started reading it, which initially freaked me the hell out). And I started to learn things, like how shading can add depth, and how adding backgrounds to panels makes them look better. It taught me discipline too, it's the comic where I actually started to develop some cartooning muscles. And I want to put that out there.

There are reasons for this. Part of it is me wanting to be able to point at this and say "Look! Look how far I've come! I didn't know what I was doing then, and look at me now!" Part of it is also me wanting to show how I got to where I am presently. I like the idea of showing the blood and sweat that go in to honing a craft, and allowing others to actually trace the learning curve. Because, personally, I'm still learning things, and I'm still putting things I'm learning up for people to see. So if you're going to show it, why not show the whole spectrum? It's owning up to your roots.

On top of that, though, there's another reason for me wanting to get Edwitch back online. There's the fact that I actually still love this comic. I really, really do. I mean, the comic... it was very much a product of the stuff I was into at the time (some of which I'm still into) and the stuff I was going through and thinking about at the time (some of which I'm still going through and thinking about, though perhaps to a lesser degree). And looking back, there are definitely some parts where I can't help but now think "ugh, why did I make that decision? I can't believe I ever thought that was cool." Yet despite this, it still came together. And the end result was a comic that is still fairly close to my heart.

I love the characters. I love their story, and the directions it went in. I even still love some of the stupid jokes. I love the themes that it explored, because they are all themes that I care about, and themes that I will likely continue to explore in my work as time goes on. Rereading Edwitch now, I can see ripples coming off it, ripples leading off into things I know I'll be working on down the road. Edwitch is an example of the type of story I like to tell. And the type of story I'll tell again.

So here is my point: my old webcomic is back online. It's there for you to read now, if you want to read it. It's a bit rough around the edges, but I like it anyway. And maybe you will too.

Edit: Also, for extra ridiculousness click on the little drawing of a dude saying "comix" at the bottom of the Edwitch site. ;)

Thoughts On Color

So you know what I've been really into lately? Color!

I feel that in the past, coloring drawings has mostly been more of an obligation for me than something I generally enjoyed. I mean, don't get me wrong, I do like when things are in color, and coloring has never been a huge chore or anything. I've even often been fairly happy with the end results. But until recently I've never really gotten into the act of coloring a drawing the same way I've gotten into the act of drawing it. And now that's started to change.

There are probably multiple factors that contribute to this shift, but I feel like one of the big ones is the fact that I've been getting really into Dave Stewart's coloring on BPRD. In the past, when coloring something, I've known that you probably want to have a baseline color for the object, and a darker shade of that same color for the underside and the parts that might be covered in shadow. Stewart takes this a couple steps further though. It's not a matter of just base color and shade - he'll often have a base color, a shade, a darker shade, and a separate shade for the light reflecting off of it. On average there is always at least three different levels of shades to an object at a given time! And this is different then using a gradient or anything like that too. Each level of shading constitutes a solid object unto itself. This is shading in layers! And it looks awesome!

Yes, I realize this is pretty much just an interesting shading technique. But it strikes me as embodying an approach to coloring that makes a lot of sense to me. It's like sculpting with color! Coloring by degrees. And it makes the whole coloring process a much more deliberate affair. I think the reason I haven't enjoyed coloring as much in the past is because all I've been doing is putting color on the drawings - which themselves are already completed. I haven't been sufficiently involved. With this approach, however, it's not just adding color, it's adding something to the drawing itself! You're adding further depth to it (both figuratively and literally). And the act of coloring thus becomes something closer to a continuation of the act of drawing, not just flatly coloring it in, but giving further life to it!

Anyway, I'm not sure if that fully makes sense or is exciting to anyone else. Maybe I'm just pointing out something super obvious, that I'd somehow never noticed before. But still it's exciting for me. And it makes me actually want to color things more. So I figure that overall, it can't be all that bad a thing.

Paw Prints

Hey all, sorry for not updating in a couple of weeks! I've been caught up with a couple of different projects this last little while, and its been keeping me pretty busy. But rather than sitting around and whining about not having anything to update about, I thought I'd make a quick post about one of these projects instead!



"Paw Prints" is a series of strips I'm currently producing for Dartmouth College's Project GreenLite campaign, encouraging students living in residence to develop healthier energy consumption habits. The strip focuses on a lone polar bear, separated from his home, traveling the Arctic and witnessing the direct consequences that global warming is having on the environment around him. I don't want to post any full strips until they're up online, but in the meanwhile I figured I'd post a couple of panels from two of the most recent ones. The bear actually goes through some pretty serious stuff as the story goes on. But you know, that's all part of the fun.



Also doing work for the project are two other CCS alumni, the incredibly talented Bryan Stone and Jason Week. They've posted a few samples from their strips on their respective blogs as well, so you should totally check those out too!