tiny tiny Teaser

(Sep 17, 2010)

Ever since I finished up the initial pages of Americus back in April, I started brainstorming on what I wanted to work on next. When I started Americus, I though I would finish it up and then get back to the story I was working on previously – One of the Johns. Unfortunately, it just didn’t seem like it would work. I don’t know if it was sitting in my head too long, or if maybe the part of me where that story & characters had come from had moved on.

While I was waiting to hear back from our editor at First Second, I kept myself busy with illustration jobs and other odds & ends, while brainstorming in a very casual manner. Unfortunately, everything that I seemed to come up with felt very contrived, or not full enough to sustain a longer story [or my interest].

A month or so ago after thinking about some things that was happening to a friend, a tiny idea sparked. The more I thought about it, the more I could feel it – in my gut – that this was going to be the next comic that I work on.

I’m still working on the very last bit of Americus, and will be for the next couple of months, but in the back of my head I’ve been piecing together parts of the puzzle. It will be a long, long while before any of this is anywhere close to be doing done and drawn and ready to put out into the world, but even so I wanted to share a quick drawing I did based on some sketches and doodles that I had done while on the plane to Vietnam.

It will be interesting once I do start to draw it to see how much the idea and drawing will change from this initial doodle.

Anyhow, I guess I missed the big celebration – one whole year of us posting on this blog! I’ll admit that we haven’t really kept up with it like we had hoped. And now with Americus being serialized online and the next year or so of promoting that [& it’s publication next fall!], and with Jason digging his heels in ready to start the Amateurs, who knows how often each of us will be posting in the next year?

I hope that even with all of our own projects taking off that we can all make time to drop some words & drawings here every now & then. It’s nice to have an outlet like this where things are sort of a free-for-all or where we can flex our creative muscles for some exercise every now and then.