November News

Just a quick update on some things that I've been up to this past month.

1) New Shop!

I opened up a new online shop! You can check it out over here. I've got copies of the first print collection of Darcy Cheyne Werewolf Hunter, my angsty teenage comic Rage Forever, and some other stuff too! So give it a look, and maybe even consider buying something if you feel like it! It's a pretty cool way to help support me if you like the stuff I do. And try to keep an eye on that space in general, as my hope is to continue to add new stuff to it over time.

2) Comic Reviews!

Comic reviewer Rob Clough put up a pretty cool review of some of my recent work on his blog recently, as part of his month-long "30 Days of CCS" series. Rob has some really nice things to say in the review, and I am incredibly grateful for him taking the time to write it all down.

3) Edwitch Archive Back Online!

And finally, I spent a couple days a few weeks back putting the archive for my old webcomic, Edwitch, back online. You can now read the whole thing online here, from now on hopefully through to eternity. I've written about Edwitch on this blog before, and a lot of the stuff I wrote then still rings true. Some parts of it feel a bit hard to look at now, but I do like the idea of keeping it online for posterity's sake. At the very least I think it's neat to be able to look back on as a form of context for the stuff I'm producing now. So I'm glad it's back online for that.

Craig Thompson

So I went to see Craig Thompson talk at the Toronto Underground Cinema a couple days ago, after a friend reminded me about it last minute. This was possibly a bit of a deal for me.

Reading Thompson's "Blankets" for the first time was a big part of what originally got me thinking about making comics more seriously (I'd been producing my webcomic for about a year at that point, but had never considered pursuing comics as an actual career prior to then). So he's always been someone I've admired pretty strongly.

What struck me the most about seeing him talk, however, was less the impressive nature of his work (though there was certainly a great deal of that) than the relate-ability of it. This is someone who, historically, I've always put on a bit of a pedestal. I love his work, but it also always seemed so unattainable. So I was a little surprised to find myself nodding along to his talk about exertion and process, and the slog of working on a longer piece. "Yeah man, yeah... I know how it is."

Then afterward, met up with some friends to go see Dark Dark Dark and A Hawk and a Hacksaw, which was pretty rad as well.

Also! Something I forgot to mention in my last blog post! But my friend Bryan has just started putting a huge chunk of his old comics online these past couple months! If you like comics (as presumably you do) then these are some comics worth reading. Especially the Onion Head stuff. So you know, maybe go check it out!

"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. ;)