PJ Holden's Blog – Page 6 – Comics, Drawing, Writing and more (or less)

The New Normal

I’ve mentioned this a few times in the past but will very much make a point of spelling it out here.

I hit, prior to covid, on a strategy I called “Two Things” (A terrible none-name but describes it perfectly) basically making sure every day had two objectives in it, and then when I do those things, that’s it. Thats your day done. Relax.

Now, the reason for this, for me, was that I’d very often do quite a bit more than two things, spend all day in the studio and fret and worry that I haven’t done enough. Two things was about setting a boundary around the work that I do to ensure that a) I get enough done, and b) I don’t beat myself up for getting too much done.

Two things can be any two substantial things, for me, just emailing my accountant is a thing – the cognative load of which can knock me out for a few hours. Drawing a page in pencil is one whole thing. About 12 pages of layouts is one thing.

So one productive day could look like emailing accountant and 12 pages of layouts.

Now, this stood me well, given my day was often broken up into fractured moments because… well… two young kids and wife working from home.

BUT – I’m now operating in a new normal. Wife and kids all out all day, either working (in case of wife and eldest) or school.

(In fact eldest making plans for a trip to Japan in the summer, youngest making plans for trip to London in summer means for the first time my wife and I can plan a weekend break at some point without worrying about babysitters. )

So my day now looks like:

9-12 work. One THING.

1-5 work. Another THING.

And then every one is home.

If I can do that on a schedule, that will solidly help you draw 30 pages per month.

Now, this means I might successfully hit the dream goal of a 9-5 and then relax in the evening. But I won’t because the free time will become extra time, time to play with for things like creator owned work. But the nice thing is, since I’ll have done my TWO required things, anything extra is EXTRA. No matter how much or how little I do.

That’s the plan this week. Let’s see if it works!

When Harry Met Sally

I watched this a couple of days ago, I can’t remember when exactly I saw it first, but I will say I was 18 when it came out and it wouldn’t have been much long after that. I suspect it left a deeper lasting impression on me than I’ve ever realised. I’ve seen it a few times since over the decades, but not for a long long time. This and Sleepless in Seattle – two of Nora Ephrom’s finest romcoms, I think both heavily imprinted on me. I suspect I fancied myself as something like Harry, acerbic and funny (but really slightly lonely and bitter) but was surprised in the recent viewing to see how New Years Eve is such an important fulcrum in the film – and I love New Year’s Eve. New Year’s Eve is a new leaf, fresh start. A reboot. It’s unboxing a brand new computer, taking the cellophane off a new drawing book, that first stroke with a brand new brush pen. Love it. My wife, conversely hates it.

When my wife and I met, I think I was banging on about watching An Affair to Remember (which was the movie referenced through out Sleepless in Seattle).

I should watch both again.

Kobo in Kolour

My wife bought a Kobo ebook and it arrived yesterday. I will say, it’s actually a love little device. She got it because it integrates with Libby and she can borrow books on it. (More on borrowing books in a second!)

The box it was packaged in though, what in the name of chinese-puzzle-boxes was up with that. It looked unopenable. I eventually figured out it opens from the bottom (!)

I hadn’t really noticed on the cover (though it’s there for those with eyes to look) that it was colour! Blimey. I bought my kindle white in about 2016 and I think the cheapest colour ereaders where in the five to six hundred quid area then. This thing was £150. (My kindle paper white at the time was £100 which in 2016 was a lot of money, but in the present, a thousand years later, that’s just the price of a nice lunch for two)

I haven’t tried comics on it, but I WILL! I WILL!

Public Lending Rights

When the library lends a book out, that you have contributed to, you can get a little bit of cash for it to happen. It’s amazing. This happens regardless of whether you’re the copyright owner. So if you’re a comic artist, it’s perfectly reasonable to go on there and sign up and tell it which books you’ve contributed to and what percentage (for books with me as sole artists I do 50% for books where I’ve contributed a portion, I calculate it pro rata and do that percentage).

Now not every book will make much money, but Bad Magic, the book did a couple of years ago seems to be very popular in the library – at least according to the statement I’ve just received. Now, it’s not enough money to buy a kindly. BUT it is enough to pay for a reasonable lunch for two. You should go sign up here.

Yesterday in Social Media

Oh, speaking of great films, Excaliber! What a flick – here’s a great article I stumbled across on the Socials by Tin Phelan (I mean absoloutly worth it even just to see that high res poster in all its glory!)

And er.. that’s it. But, it was Cary Grant’s birthday yesterday (he of An Affair To Remember – wait… it’s like my subconcious is making connections!) and WaltyDunlop over on bluesky posted this delightful photo.

Stand by for Action

When I started doing Terran Omega, there were a couple of things I really wanted to do, quite apart from write/draw my own comic.

I wanted to really experiment with how I bring an audience to it. As an artist, I often defer to the writer/publisher when it comes to chasing an audience. I’m conscious that sometimes I can be obnoxious, and irratating and general worried that I’ll mess up, and so I tend to sit back, get on with drawing and allow others to organise PR.

I mean, I probably shouldn’t. I probably should pursue that stuff to, but it’s so much easier if a publisher is the single point for that stuff. Besides I have limited access to venues, and all I can do is ask those places based on what I know.

So usually I say yes to every interview that’s organised and hope.

Way back when we were talking about doing a collection of the Folklore stories, having built some sort of audience for it on twitter by posting it weekly, I wanted the publisher to offer a kickstarter – not so much to pay for it, but to actually build excitement round the book, and try and get that twitter audience that I’d been building to buy in to the kickstarter. I think that’s where something like kickstarter can be good. I mean it would also help fund the book, but really the book cost a lot of money to produce and it’s unlikely the kickstarter would’ve funded it. BUT! It would have then gone on to do what the publisher originally wanted anyway selling how they expected. Sadly, I couldn’t really convince anyone of the value of that, and the book while it is beuatiful and produced to an incredibly high standard by the publisher ultimately hasn’t really had much of an impact.

(You can still buy it from John Reppion’s website!)

So Terran Omega is allowing me to try all of the things. One of the things I’ve been doing is dropping the comic strip weekly into various reddit forums:

r/comics is the most obvious (as long as your comic is marked as [OC] – meaning Original Content – you can do that any day) it averages 1.6m weekly visitors, my strips get an average of around 1.5k views with 4-5 upvotes.
r/indiecomics ([OC] required, but you can only do this on a Thursday) 445 weekly visitors, 217 views, 4-6 upvotes
r/webcomics (no need to tag it, though if you’re crossposting – posting in one forum and then using that post to post in other forums, you’re better just leaving [OC] in the title, for clarity) 134k weekly visitors, 410 views, 2-3 upvotes
r/2000ad – because I’m best known as a Dredd artist, I figure it’s ok to post this scifi comic there, I mark it as [OC] 4.3k weekly, 638 views, 4-5 upvotes.
r/scifi – this is the major scifi topic in reddit, and allows original content (Marked [OC] BUT only on a Saturday!), but I get the impression there’s a few in there that maybe aren’t keen on comics because I’ll see upvotes that then become downvotes. BUT the readership makes it worth persevering! The average visitor count is 364k, and the strips tend to get around 4k views, with upvotes about 1 or 2. With the caveat that I’m convinced at least one or two people have been downvoting it (possibly paranoia!)

In the my latest post of the strip in r/scifi I decided to try a little upvoting experiment and asked anyone who was following me on bluesky to nip over and click the upvote – and howboy did that make a massive difference. My average upvotes went from 1/2 quickly skyrocketed to 32!) Making it the #6 most popular post on that subforum today.

So I might try and do that.

One thing I’ve done each time I post in the forums is ask people to head on over to my patreon and sign up, but I’ve also posted about signing up to the newsletter and coming on over to the blog. I think I’m sending very mixed messages.

I’m not sure how many are doing it. I do have some stats, a very crudely built utility that counts where someone has come from as it sends them on to my patreon page. Based on that, in the entire time I’ve been doing this (about 18 weeks) there’s been about 510 uses of the link. Now, that might be miscounted, over counted a little because sometimes the links are followed by bots (and ai bots). So let’s call it say 1/5 of that total. 100 real uses of the link. Well, my patreon following is about 243 right now, but for a large part many of those people are coming from bluesky. In other words, I don’t think reddit is doing a heck of a lot.

I think I need to start to refine my call to action (see, now the blog title makes sense!) simply to send them to the patreon.

I should add as well as posting the comic in reddit I’ve also put in an effort to be a good reddit citizen and tried to contribute to as many topics as I can (where my contribution is useful or interesting, and avoiding where I’d just post a zinger – which is terribly tempting sometimes)

I start firming up ideas about a kickstarter I hopefully will be able to take the passive audience that exists and convert it into a kickstarter audience. I’m conscious that not everyone buys in to patreon (and patreon has made it a little difficult to see how to follow people for free sometimes).

That will allow me to post in r/kickstarter and kickstarter itself, all with a simple call to action.

Anyway, that’s it. I’d intended to talk about making sure you keep one simple call to action ask in any post, otherwise you risk people having to make decisions and people don’t want to do that when they’re passively reading stuff. Instead it’s been about my adventures in reddit.

Yesterday on Social Media

Well, flip, for whatever reason I didn’t actually post a lot on bluesky yesterday! I know! I’m as shocked as anyone!

I dunno if you’ve been following the traitors, but I have – it’s such low stakes/high camp/drama, it’s a delight.

Anyway, I made this observation

Jessie from the Traitors is like if Harley Quinn was a good guy. (Gal)

Here’s Jessie’s reaction to that:

Oh, thought this was funny! (my qt on John Wiswell’s slightly weird trending topics)

And I guess that was it! (Ok, I also got annoyed about the state of the world, but if I’m honest, the stuff I’d rather hold on to now are funny jokes about the famine than the possibility of wwiii starting with Trump invading Greenland)

And I’ll let the final word fall to Nick Stone‘s great little Project diagram.

The unbearable lightness of boredom

I’ve long contended that any creative needs boredom, and we’ve largely robbed ourselves of it. When my kids where young, I’d call the iPhone “daddy’s little helper” because I would so frequently turn to it when the kids were playing, and waiting at the doctors or shopping, or something where … well, your mind needed to escape.

Now, in those situations what it was escaping was often noise and over-stimulation. In those situations, whipping out the iPhone to sit on twitter while the kids were screaming and leaping around a play area with a dozen other kids was the only way to quieten your head down a bit.

(Of course, show me a parent that later in life doesn’t think “I’d give anything to go back and see my kids running around like maniacs in a play park for one day” – but that’s because we’re very good at blocking out the day after day monotony of this as it happens – but also, I would give anything, etc.)

But then, when the kids are older and you’re no longer needing to escape a cacophony of sound and bright lights, but just you know now you’re a little bored, so you whip out the phone and spend that time hitting up twitter/bluesky/facebook/instgram/discord/twitter/bluesky/…[repeats forever]

And boredom vanishes. But, I think, for a creative, boredom is easily our most powerful motivator (second possibly only to “oh my god, my bank account is crying”) but I think it’s a better motivator. Because it’s one where your brain will start to make it’s own noise, and that noise will form into thoughts and ideas that you may never have had the space or patience for before.

I think we all probably have our own thresholds for boredom, I often suggest three hours minimum. But really three hours is my minimum for getting stuff done – one hour to faff about, one hour to stare vacantly in to space, and one hour to go “well, I suppose I could try drawing”. I mean, once you’ve got over that start up time then the next three hours is all drawing. The problem is the speed bumps. Each speed bump doesn’t interrupt the drawing (for me) it simply resets the minimum three hour window.

Which is no way to ease the pain of a bank balance.

With my wife starting full time work this week, I’ve largely had a week free of speed bumps (wait, this sounds terrible, I love my wife, she is not a speed bump, but you know, she’s started work at the same time my son is working and my other son is at college so it’s been a dramatically different week than the weeks/years leading up to it).

Suddenly, I’ve got wide open spaces to just let myself think. And I did. (Only downside, didn’t quite do as much work as I’d intended)

One thing I also did was I sent a cold pitch to a publisher, and while it’s a long way from something actually happening, it was a fast reply asking if there’s more. So that’s good. I’m sure I wouldn’t have sent that cold pitch if I hadn’t had the wide open time and was avoiding drawing. (This is how I avoid work, crazy reach for the moon stretches)

So find some time for boredom, see what it does.

Animates

Last year I came to the realisation that almost every one I knew I knew from social media, having very few friends in real life. And with the implosion of twitter in to X I lost many of those connections, writ, as they were in mist.

So I decided to make a pointed effort in doing stuff in the real world, comics unfortunately was too dispersed (and as a professional you’re viewed differently than if you were a fan) so I wanted to do something where I had equal standing with everyone so I started Improv.

In a similar funk of existential drama I was mulling over my comics career and thinking, actually I need to explore where my skillset can be used outside of comics, and Northern Ireland (and certainly the Republic of Ireland) has become home to a number of animation companies. And I figure, well I’ve done storyboarding.

So casting around for who is here, I discovered that there’s a regular animators meet up called Animates, and while I couldn’t quite book a ticket for the next one I saw, I kept it in the back of my mind for the next time.

In the meantime, I’d been writing and drawing Terran Omega.

So yesterday Animates happened in Belfast and I popped along. I am a weird cat when it comes to social stuff. If I’m introduced, I can talk your leg off (in fact you might want to inch away slowly from me) but if I’m not introduced I can sort of stand there staring vacantly in to space. I’m like a pilot that is crap at landing and take off but amazing in the air. (No one wants to fly with that pilot)

Luckily, prior to this,I’d met a guy called Sree who worked in animation, through a mutual friend – and we met through doing Improv. Sree is also a comics but and knew enough people in the industry that I thought “well, I cam glom on to Sree”. And that’s what I did.

And it went great. I don’t know what will come from it long term (and I’m not going to talk about it because, well, right now it’s nothing), but certainly making sure people know I exist is one important aspect to the kind of work I do and I don’t regret going (and thank god Sree was there otherwise I would definiatly have been stood staring vacantly in to space wondering why I thought this was a good idea.

I will have to work on hellos and goodbyes, though, but I think I do a good pitch.

Anyway, been something of an exciting weekend, and these things are at the very early you-need-to-hold-this-flame-gently-in-your-hand-in-case-the-wind-blows-it-away stage, but I think it vindicates the decision I made some time ago which is that you have more control over your career as a writer than as an artist. (And more again if you can do both)

Yesterday On Social Media

(I’ve renamed this section, because, well, there’s more than bluesky and in a few years we may all be talking about bluesky like it’s myspace, who knows – the internet is in the cloud, and we all know what bastards clouds are for disappearing)

Yesterday on Instagram, I got what must be the funniest message I’ve ever received. The context for this is they were replying to some photos I’d posted of me shaving off my beard from doing the play The Ghost Train. Now, here’s the best most entertaining way to read this, do it in this order:

Look at the photo. Soak it in. Read the reply to the photo. IMPORTANT: Go and look at the photo again.

It’s a rare thing that the reply to the photo is also the photo.

Now, I thought, wait, Paul, surely this smart young lady is looking at the OTHER photos in this series of photos, and your after photo might actually be amazing, you must look very handsome and lively.

Readers, here are the other photos (don’t bother clicking the arrows, these are screen grabs so the arrows on the image are non functional)

First – a MID POINT!

Ok, maybe not that one, oh wait this one…?

Ah yes! Lively and wise!

Anyway, I showed this to my kids who wet themselves laughing. (I wish I could show my mum this she’d have loved it)

I hope when he dies, like ancient Egyptians leaders who subsequent rulers no longer favour they scratch his name off everything they deface his likenesses and we never say his name again.

Isn’t it weird that we all know who I’m talking about?

For fact fans, on bluesky, ‪eviŁrooster‬ ‪@evilrooster.bsky.social‬ added:

Romans did that too. Technical term is damnatio memoriae.

Oh, I stumbled across this great bit of telly, two of a britains finest comedian / sketch -Sally Phillips talking about Bob mortimer’s favourite sketches in a tv show called “My Favourite Sketch”. I have become entranced with Bob’s turn from dada-esque absurdity that my parents just didn’t get, to gently funny absurdity that I think I could sit down with my dad and watch gone fishing with.

Anyway this is great. Link because embedding doesn’t seem to be working.

And a final word from ‪Loui Stonehill‬ ‪@louistonehill.bsky.social‬

2026 is the year we should all start reading books again Books are lovely. Libraries are wonderful places. Second hand book shops are mysterious and magical. Markets and fairs always contain surprise gems. And there are even cafes in forgotten street corners with excellent coffee and reading nooks

This blog intentionally left blank

Woke up a little late for a blog post, and yesterday… Well, hopefully you’ll hear all about yesterday at some point. If you don’t hear it’s because it has like so many things piffled away to nothing. But we’ll see.

Also woke up to an invite to a convention to a country I’ve been to before, and I am absolutely going to go. So everything is turning up PJ (at least for today)

AI and I

Ai has rather swept across the arts like a plague of locusts, swallowing up everything useful and leaving nothing in its wake. So in a recent pitch I added in the first few pararaphs of the pitch “for the avoidance of doubt, there’s no ai used in any stage of the creation of this comic, not script, art, nor any other area“

I think that’s a useful and practical thing to throw in to a pitch document.

It can be hard to avoid though, I mean wordpress has added ai features (this website is wordpress, though I don’t think it’s using any ai nonsense) and the apple mac I’m running has “Apple Intelligence” (AI with a slightly appley flavoured name) and will sometimes try and suggest stuff (though I’ve turned it off).

It’s everywhere, like microplastics.

So many of the comics I see on reddit now are Ai generated slop, and sure from a distance, if you squint they look impressive (I mean the impressiveness soon vanishes when you’ve seen a few and you start thinking “wait, why do these all look the same?”). And it only gets worse when you begin to read one and the art – in isolation looks terrible – but combined into a comic, somehow strives to be worse than the sum of its parts.

I look forward to this phase of the IT cycle ending and we can go back to ignoring AI.

Yesterday on Bluesky

Can I just say, as someone born in 1969 that the astronaut space suits are really rubbish looking now.

I mean, come on. Yes, for practical reasons they’re useful and less bulky and just generally not the full life support system of a proper apollo style space suit, but lordy lordy, so dull looking.

Look at them. They look like two chefs about to open slightly too hot oven.

Give me this, or give me death!

I mean you can’t beat a classic.

Well broke my chocolate blockage by eating two squares of dark chocolate. Though more out of hunger than dire need for chocolate. But since it’s milk chocolate I’m trying to avoid, that’s not terrible.

Nobody in my house eats a lot of chocolate except me and my youngest son. And even he doesn’t eat much of it. I’ve always had a real bad chocolate habit, which probably explains why ultimately it’ll be my teeth that bankrupt me.

But I can sometimes feel chocolate not sit right in my stomach and I’ve been suspicious of it as an IBS trigger for me for a while. So that’s it. I’m done. Except maybe the odd bit of dark chocolate.

Cheese is a real weakness for me too. Man, I love cheese. I don’t think it’s a tummy troubler, but I do think come 9-10 o’clock at night I feel a bit peckish and I go and eat a big chunk of cheese on its own with a glass of orange (cheese+orange juice is as wonderful as chocolate+milk – two combinations that I am now trying to avoid)

As it happens this is having a slow impact on my weight, this morning I was the lightest I’ve been for years – 14st 4.2lbs – yes, at my height my BMI puts me at obese, but it’s only been a few days, so hoping I can stick with it.

Anyway, that’s for today. See you on the flipside

Building Castles in the Sand

Everything changes. Sometimes those changes are slow and gtadual, and sneak up on you and sometimes the change is wrenching and rapid and happens so quickly you’re left breathless.

And when you have kids, sometimes those two kinds of changes happen at the same time.

Our kids (ages 17 and 21) have started making plans for the summer. The older one has done this before, gone off with his mates on summer holidays. A thing I’ve never done. And this summer him and his girlfriend have decided they ‘re going to Japan for three weeks. I’m so proud of him. If you’ve been a reader of the blog for as long as I’ve posted on it, you’ll probably have an idea of why, but he’s such a smart, independent, utterly useless at the same time, but good man I’m proud of him and us for raising him.

The youngest has announced plans to go to London to see Bruno Mars with his mates. This is big for him (and us) and will happen after he turns 18.

Since this is happening at the same time as our eldest going to Japan, this means, for the first time since before we had kids we will in effect have an empty nest. Granted, for a couple of days. But still. It’s the start, isn’t it.

It’s real “Oh, we’ve hit some sort of milestone here, haven’t we” territory.

Because we now live in the house that I grew up in in my later teenage years, I can’t help but see echoes of my own past in all of this. My mum and dad had more kids, but I remember us all starting to feel our way in the world, I guess I never really appreciated how much of a wrench it was for my mum. Talking to my aunt about my mum and she said “Your mum was the only person I ever knew who loved the school holidays” – mum loved kids, loved being surrounded by kids and I’m not sure she was ever not looking after first us, and then other peoples kids.

There’s a silence that comes when kids grow up, when we lived in a flat, one of our neighbours would often talk about the noise of our kids when they were young and would burst out of the flat at school time, the cacopony of giggling, shouting, feet slamming on ground, doors being wildly flung open with abandon. And he’ll often say how he misses that noise.

I’m going to miss that noise.

Irish Stew in the Name of the Law

I honestly can’t tell you if my mum was a good or bad cook, I remember every meal was accompanied by bread and butter and most meals had chips. But, she was cooking for an army so you filled out with whatever you could. One thing I do remember though is her irish stew which is funny cus mum was English.

I’ve been chasing that stew for decades. Mum never taught me to cook (I was too busy being an idiot to ever want to learn). So all I can remember about it is some of the key ingredients and the taste of it and just how incredibly thick it was. As the eldest in my house I’d often do some nonsense with food and declare that I’d invented an entirely new way to consume it. With mum’s stew I remember dolloping it between two slices of bread and declaring it a stew sandwhich. That’s how thick it was.

Here’s how I do stew. Veggies (I mean the usual things here, but you can buy a mix – cube them all up). Potatoes(cubed). Meat – I like chunks of stewing steak (mum used mince meat, which I assume was cheaper – we were not rich – that said mince steak is an insane price now) and tomato ketchup big dollop, gluten free Worcestershire sauce. Some sort of beef stock. Now, lots of recipes suggest floury potatoes, and they’re probably right, but in a pinch I just make a slurry of cornflower and water and mix it in. Now, the problem I discovered with this is if you do the slurry late in the cooking (I cook a slow on a slow cooker all day) then the slurry will not cook in and will just sit – you can tell because the stew will go a sickly pale. You’re gonna need to either slowcook that longer or add that slurry right at the start. But man, give it a day before eating. And it’s amazing.

Still not as thick as my mums though.

Yesterday in Bluesky

(A selection of bluesky posts along with the occasional deeper dive in to them)

BUT FIRST! A Plug!

Over on patreon, it’s page 21 of Terran Omega The Ghosts of War!

21 pages of free comics. Read it from the start here:

www.pauljholden.com/patreon.php

(and if you want to support me making more free comics From as little as $1 per month you get access to the full colour version!)

—

I went to do some edits on page one of Terran Omega and discovered this idiotic selection of folder names

Also actually, I don’t think any of them are right –

—

Imagine making 2k on patreon a month. Oh man, the free comics I would just be doing every single day…! (I make $100 per month on patreon, which is a tiny miracle as is!)

Here’s the thing, it’s an achievable goal. It’s about building an audience and doing work that is consistent and is good. Sarah Burrni replied and said “I was once there. It was the most ideal form of work which I ever had. Of course it didn’t last […] but I realize that time was special”

I think there’s a massive drawback to, in essence, making patreon your only income. That’s a real danger point, on the other hand, that independence to do whatever work you want to – Simon Roy (https://www.patreon.com/simonroy?utm_campaign=creatorshare_fan ) just does whatever fanciful space stories he wants, as does “Bad Space Comics” https://www.patreon.com/badspacecomics?utm_campaign=creatorshare_fan

They both have around 1200-1300 followers and an unknown number of paying patreons (but notably they start their payment tiers at $3-$7 for comics.

Anyway, a man can dream, but until they bring back the little weird hovels at the bottom of rich peoples gardens for artists, this is my platonic ideal of an artist life.

—

An observation:

I don’t think the problem is that Bluesky is a bubble I think the problem is my personal bubble isn’t small enough. My personal bubble sometimes needs to shrink to just my head and let nothing else in. So I can sit and think in peace. Instead of the old superman canard of too many voices at once.

So I think we all live in bubbles, no matter how much of the world you think you’re paying attention to there’s always stuff you’re missing. I mean my news consumption is limited to english language, that means the UK and the the US are where my attention sits in the day to day. But the UK and the US aren’t everything. And I can tell you now, I know far more about American politics than I do about Welsh politics (or Scottish, or Irish). So, sure, Bluesky is a bubble but the idea that anywhere else isn’t is laughable.

I do think too, if you can do it (and not all of us are in the kind of position where they can) it’s good to spend time away from the news. It’s certainly not healthy to wake up at 6 and spin out from doomscrolling on bluesky and then hit up the news for a palete cleanser.

This is why the blog has been good for me, I think. I wake up, look at bluesky, become despondent (I used to need to go look for the doom but now it comes to me), and then sit on the blog and think of whatever it is I want to talk about – which is grounding. It actually has been a great way to control that spiral. Yes, the world is important, yes, the stuff going on in the states is awful, and Ukraine, and politics in the uk, and sheesh the never ending list of terrible terrible stuff is hard to fathom. But there’s only so much of that I can control. Only so much I can actually do something about. The stakes are too high and I’m too powerless, and you feel like one person in a dinghy cosseted by heavy seas. Blogging, by contrast, I have complete control over, and the stakes are so low. SO LOW. It’s like sitting in the same dingy, in the paddling pool of a local leisure centre.

I do feel guilt for saying “Look, I can’t do anything about this crap fire that’s going on in the world, so I’m going to ignore it”. And when given a chance to perform an action that might help, I try and make the right choice. But my world is here, my family are here, my life is here, and the choices I make here are the choices that can make a difference every day and I think that’s probably true of every one every where and all at once.

Thats your lot! Bye!

Biting off a chewable Amount

I’ve been on reddit for around a decade but, to be honest, it’s not a place I’ve really used much. This past year though, in order to build the readership for Terran Omega, I’ve been posting the comic in there, and tried to be a useful Reddit citizen by contributing to topics that I think I can help in (this largely means comic art forums and clip studio, outside of that I’m on shakier ground so try and be careful about limiting my interactions)

There’s a forum – r/ComicBookCollabs which is largely for people looking for creative collaborators (hence the name), and honestly, id’ve loved something like that at the start of my interest in drawing comics- my first comics collabs (beyond working with friends) were found in the back of the old Comics International personal ad section – because I’ve 12 million years old (and much later than that the old Comic Book Resources forums).

Even in the short time span I’ve been contributing though I’ve noticed a repeated pattern that amounts to “hi guys. I’m building a massive fantasy series, I’ve the series bible locked and the first twelve episodes plotted and I’m really looking for someone who can join me on a long journey to getting the comic done. Back end split 50/50”. And look, I understand, in your first steps you’re ready to do your own scifi lord of the rings and, even now, at 56 years old, I’d love that to find that mate you had as a teenager that was willing to travel to the end of the earth with you. So I can feel the pull of this.

What’s odd to me, in the Reddit forums is these requests are not met with blank stares but with dozens of people responding saying “heres my portfolio”. Now maybe these are all genuinely people who are willing and want to get on board what amounts to a multi year commitment with no money and no way for it to make money. Maybe.

But I suspect the truth is, they’re hoping some money will come (many of the artists are posting internationally from countries where $30 a page would actually make a liveable wage)

In the end these are very much the first saplings of most comics people, genuine excitment and ambition that vastly exceeds your reach.

My standard advice is, if you’re a writer and dead set on a series bible then start finding short stories. Personally I think if your world is so interesting it warrants a bible there should be fodder for dozens of short stories (Dredd’s world of mega city 1 is exactly like that, though even then the strength of Dredd’s world is there IS no Bible – that world is elastic and arguably the best worlds are). Short stories allow you to practice scripting, and find a collaborator – if you’re paying it won’t break the bank and if you’re not paying, it’s so much easier to get a commitment for one/two pages than it is for a six issue x 22 page miniseries. (Which if you’re not paying for is a bit like saying “oh yeah, this isn’t happening”)

Keep it simple. Keep it small. Build it out. Rory McConville used to pay people to draw one page strips, he’s currently writing Spawn. AL Ewing used to write and draw short mini comics. Al’s career took off very nicely.

And don’t put all your eggs in one basket. Even if you’re paying, without a publisher, you could find yourself paying for a long term project with an artist who could flake on you the first time they get an offer form s professional publisher.

Spread your bets. Is what I’m saying.

Isolation

This week has been the start of the real world, wife working full time in new job. Eldest son out at day job (Uni placement for a year) and youngest son at work. So it’s been me on my own in the house. Now the last time this was the norm was… uhm… prior to covid (everything changed then of course) and then my wife was at home 2 days out of five, but really the last time I had a full day an empty house was probably back in 2008 before my eldest was born. And even then I worked three days a week in an office (my comics career started in 2001, but it took another few years before I felt secure enough that I could leave the day job, a decision even now I sometimes regret).

So this, this is the first time the platonic ideal of being alone is nearly there (I mean the only soul wandering the house occasionally is now my son’s girlfriend who lives with us)

Anyway, oh my god, guys, can I tell you. I love it. Got a full page finished on Monday along with some invoicing and yesterday did a lot of things – house stuff, and just generally thinking about the future for work – felt optimistic! I mean no actual work, but that’s for today. I’ve got my work plans all laid out. Finish some inks, do 20 pages of layouts. Just to have that wide expanse of empty time. Sometimes my day at the table doesn’t even begin until 12 because stuff has to happen around the house, then it’s lunch time then other family stuff, then your now into 3 and then … you know, being freelance means never being able to say “uhm, actually no, I can’t do that because I’m at work”.

I’ve joked in the past that I’m probably well suited to prison life and possible solitary confinement, as long as I have a pencil and some paper. now I guess we get to see how true that is before I go mad.

Yesterday on bluesky

Over on my Patreon I’ve grouped all my old folklore Thursday posts in to a collection, it’s all free to view (and if you enjoy it you could consider buying the collection from John Reppion at his online store.

Moody red/blue image of a characters face, with the tagline "How do you rob a casino without robbing casino? You go after... the Skim."

My pal Matt Garvey’s new kickstarter The Skim – a fun, smart heist comic with amazing art (ive read it!) – is launching soon and you sign up early! here!

Me phoning everyone I know to say “yeah! No-I’m on my own! Everyone is at school or at work! House is empty! It’s amazing”

So if I’m murdered by a jealous freelancer check my recent calls.

That’s it! that’s your lot! Bye!

Kicking the tyres on a Kickstarter for Terran Omega

I’m starting to mull over my kickstart options and so I phoned Matt Garvey, since there’s few people know more about publishing comics on Kickstarter than matt (who, coincidentally, has a new kickstarter about to launch – The Skim, a casino heist comic with some amazing artwork – great big juicy double page spreads that you’ll want to see in print)

So here’s the shape of it, it’s nebulous and foggy and I’m doing some thinking on the page as I type it, but the more I concentrate the more I can see it forming up…

I’m going to do a kickstarter for Terran Omega The Ghosts of War. Single issue comics for part one and part two.

Issue One, right now, I’m looking at March launch date. Soon, right! TERRIFYINGLY SOON! (so it might move)

Launch issue 1 on kickstarter, with some tiers:

PDF File / colour & B&W&Green
B&W Copy (why no green, you ask? Price, I reply!)
Full Colour
Full Colour with Alt Cover

Pages 1-25 with front and back cover, should come to 32 pages in total.

There will also be add ons to get PDFs of the Artist Edition – same comic with big super high res versions of the images!

I think the comic price will be about £8? (pricer than I’d like, but I am really figuring things out here and don’t want to go too low and burn my fingers) and I’m two minds about doing an alt cover. I suspect some people might want both copies and there’s a part of me hates that for them (maybe I can work out a two edition price?)

I anticipate there being 100 printed and sales hitting 50 or so. Maybe.

Haven’t looked in to postage yet, but will do.

Then when issue 2 is complete, I’ll do the same (or similar, or take all the lessons I’ve learned and try and apply them and so it may be completely different).

Issue 2 will have a slightly different page count, which could mean a slightly different page count for the comic (there’s two pages less, which means you can nearly print four pages less of book, but I could also just use that for fun backwater, so probably the same page count – I told you I’m thinking this through as I do it!)

THIS WILL ALL BE A PRELUDE TO A HARDBACK/PAPERBACK edition. I have no idea what they will be priced like. But certainly, I’ll be limiting the hardback numbers because oh boy does that look expensive to do! (I mean I might limit them to ONE copy for me…)

My ideal hardback is oversized, and stuffed with two versions of the comic (colour and black / white / green ) and maybe an artist edition at the back. That is wildly unlikely – because it would push the page count to uhm … 148+ pages and er.. yes. That gets costly quickly. I mean if the kickstarters go well, who knows maybe…

I think you’ll not see the hard back until about a year after the kickstarter of issue 2 but it’ll contain new material(I hope!) and sketches and all sorts that I can fit in.

Anyway, news of this as I build up what I’m doing.

run fat boy run

About two years ago I started the couch to 5k running thing with a friend of mine. I’d previously bounced off it innumerable times, “Running”, I thought, “wasnt for me”.

Well turns out running on my own wasn’t for me, and if I’m honest, neither is running with a pal. I just don’t like it. At least misery loves company. Anyway we started it about two years ago, and ended up doing the full thing and running (to my own amazement) a number of 5ks. But then we took our foot off the gas a bit, and missed a few and dropped a few and now we’re hovering around the halfway point. Now, to be honest, I’m not bothered, the main thing I’m getting out of it is largely I’m going for two-three runs per week (schedule permitting) and I’m no longer so deeply unfit that a short walk is killing my legs (seriously, just before we started running we went walking and 1k in my calves were killing me)

Now the thing is I’m a little fitter. Which is great. But I’m not much slimmer. I still eat like a horse, my wife has recently lost a stone and a half and I’m a little jealous. I’m a short man, with a wide stomach. Now I’ve also been suffering more ibs attacks lately, and so I’ve decided I’d try and alter my diet a bit to see if that helps. So yesterday cut out sweets/chocolate and tried to limit my eating hiours. So one day clean of chocolate. (god I love chocolate). I’ll let you know how I get on. I weighed 14st 6lbs today.

Focus

I’ve decided this year I’m going to fucs my attention on work. That means, sadly, no improv and no acting, no goofing off doing outside stuff. That extra time and focus, I hope will get me back on track. Especially since I want to make a concerted effort to write more this year.

Yesterday on bluesky.

I posted up a status report on Terran Omega. Look! Look! This is why I love Clip Studio Ex’s story mode, you can just watch your pages as they form right before your eyes (very slowly…)

21 Pages in!

I also set up an Affinity Publisher file with the pages so far in a mock up of the first issue of the comic. Why? Because I think I might print 100 up and either try out kickstarter or see if I can sell them directly.

Over on my Patreon I’ve grouped all my old folklore Thursday posts in to a collection, it’s all free to view (and if you enjoy it you could consider buying the collection from @johnreppion.bsky.social at John’s online store… )

I suddenly¹ had an urge to listen to Enya’s debut album “Watermark” (which my memory remembered being called Orinocco Flow, but that’s cus thats the first song released from it. I bought this when it came out, I was 18 and certainly this was when I was discovering what my taste in music was. I loved it.

From that I largely sat on spotify listening to whatever it threw at me, and finally I heard this – song -Chimacum Rain by Linda Perhacs and it was transfixing, sounding like an unreleased song from the amazing Silent Running. It’s a real delight if you’re listening with headphones or have a good stereo system set up. When you listen to it you should read about it too, fascinating. I’m somewhat taken by stories of people who produce something once then go off and have normal lives only to discover decades later that they have a fanbase for this one dazzling creative moment in their life. (here’s an interview with her from 2015 – to sum up, was a dental hygensist, released the album in 1970 it was barely noticed, she went back to the day job, the album was “rediscovered” in the late 90s, then in 2014 she released a second album.)

Well,not that sudden – I spotted on the BBC Sounds app a programme about the release of the album which spurred on a relisten. ↩︎

Doing lines…

One of the dullest and yet something you do multiple times per page job is drawing panel borders.

There’s no right or wrong on any of this, it’s all entirely subjective, and I’d argue all that’s important is consistency (in terms of style rather than say line width)

So panel¹ borders (the black lines that go around panels) are a very established part of comics grammar. Even if people don’t really know what they are or contain.

When I started drawing comics, aged 18 – long before I had any chance of a freelance career, I started drawing with Rotring Rapidograph pens. A mechanical pen the draws lines in a fixed width with the caveat you have to hold them in a very particular way (pretty much vertically straight). I used .25 for drawing and 1.4 for lovely thick panel borders. It stood me very well. For a bit.

I inked panel borders like that, using the rapidograph for decades. Until I figured out I could actually get away with drawing the panel borders on computer. Then my process changed, sometime around a decade or more ago… I’d loosely pencil the panel borders, scan the pencils in, draw panel borders in Clip Studio and then convert the pencils to blue line, print the resulting page out – blue line pencils with black panel borders and then just ink! no more panel rules!

Such a relief.

The rapidograph is perfect except… it’s so fiddly… so bloody fiddly. And needs constant care and attention (see the featured image – every time I use it now, I have to wash it out, because the ink dries in it’s channels causing it to block)

After deciding, last year, that I wanted to make a break from the computer a bit (at this point I was pencilling and inking on the computer, and had put away all the tools of the trade) I didn’t want to start up with the rapidograph. I’d added some new tools to my arsenal, namely posca markers – black and white. The black at various thicknesses were great for doing panel borders! nice solid blacks. But a little inconsistent and a bit of a pain to use against a ruler (never a problem with the rapidograph) in exchange they were extremely low maintenance- I mean, open them and they worked – and importantly they were water proof, a thing the rapidograh ink never was, which meant using acrylic white paint to correct mistakes would often result in a smear of grey when the rapidograph ink mixed with the white acrylic. Such a pain.

BUT … the black poscas would often leave ink on the ruler when used and that would inevitably transfer to my arm which would then find its way back to the page, leaving more smears.

Just… ugh. Look my love of digital comes down to just how clean it all is. Ink and me, we never managed to get through a day without clashing with each other and the resulting mess being left on the page somewhere.

The posca ink transfer problem proved insourmantable, so I moved back to the rapidograph, at this point it had spent a good 10 years unused and the ink had gone … very … very bad. It smelt, weirdly, of vanilla. So a thorough cleaning later and the slightly sickly vanilla smell still present at least it worked.

But again the white+black = grey. Gah,

So I moved again to using a rule and a brush – not a bad idea, the brush is almost the perfect tool for inking lines, it’s useable instantly, easy to clean, doesn’t transfer if you’re careful, and you can use standard black ink, so waterproof! Ah, but now the problem is… holding a ruler in the right way to get the line perfect is a pain.

You hold the ruler at about 30-45deg from the page and using the raised edge you draw the brush along it creating a simple smooth line. A bit of practice and this line proves to be both lively, and interesting even when you’re trying to give a perfectly straight dull line.

But it’s still bloody fiddly, and my hand and eye aren’t the steady laser like stillness of my youth, so I think I’m going to have to clean the gunk out of the old inkjet and go back to drawing panel borders on the computer. Nothing else. Just borders. And honestly, I think that might be the right decision.

Clip Studio calls them frames, I call them panels, and I’ve heard them referred to as Cells. There may be more names, but for simplicity I’ll refer to them as Panels. ↩︎

The New Normal

My wife is starting a new job today, moving from part time to full time employment. And, for at least the first six months, will be in an office for five days of the week. This is the first significant change in how things are around here since the birth of our now 21 year old son. (these younger than the blog! Holy crap!)

What this means is I’ve a chance to block out a brand new daily routine, with scope to do some of the slightly barmier things I might want to do, like micro podcasts. I’ve been obsessed with making things for a long long time. And I’ve always wanted to do more media things, but there’s always someone in the house (couple of years ago I bought my dads house and went from a roomy flat – albeit one that shrank over the years – to a small house which came pre shrunk. Moving my studio to a much smaller space)

I’ve a new microphone and a patreon, and I’m not afraid to use it.

right now, I need to get back to the “Two things per day” system. Two pages of pencils or two pages of inks. I’ve slowed way down on that front, unsure why. But sure of the results: slight financial disaster. I only get paid when I work.

Yesterday on bluesky

(a new feature where in I highlight whatever the previous nonsense in Bluesky was)

one of those “show me a thing that describes a personal thing about you so I can reverse engineer it to figure out your date of birth and PIN number” started… somewhere… this one was

“Show me a comic you loved when you were 13, that’s all I need to know about you” – Brad Meltzer

And, look I knew it would be 2000ad, so I just googled 2000ad for the year and … ok. This wasn’t the first one to turn up… but I mean…

an absolute stunner of a cover, and a back issue of 2000ad that is just overflowing with classic stuff.

The Starborn Thing, Dredd meets alien/The Thing. Wagner and Carlos Ezquerra. Classic.

Fort Neuro. Rogue Trooper Stumbles in to Fort Neuro where madness has taken hold. Stone cold classic by Brett Ewins and Gerry Finlay-Day

Skizz – SKIZZ! Alan Moore, Jim Baikie – Boys from the Black Stuff meets ET. I mean!

Invasion of the Thrill Snatchers. Tharg has his detractors, but actually I always loved when there was a Tharg centric story – this one written by “Tharg” and drawn by Massimo Bellardinelli, so looks alien as all get out.

AND finally…

Chrono Cops – Alan Moore and Dave Gibbon’s delivering the greatest comedy time travel story to have ever or will ever exist.

I mean, what a thing for a 13 year old boy to read in one week, it’s really not much wonder my life turned out the way it did.

Somewhere I have this issue in the house. Buried, I’m sure under a million things, but it’s in there, it’s thrill circuits, gently thrumming and powering my brain even now.

As it happened, decades later, drawing a fun Dredd story about an alien wig monster trying to take over Mega City 1 I got to do a homage to this cover.

Literally the only piece of my work I’d consider hanging in my studio (if I can find it, because it too is buried somewhere…)

Brandon Peterson posted this over on bluesky

The story you’re carrying around in your head. The one with the twists you can’t wait to drop on the audience doesn’t exist. You gotta get it “down on paper” in some form. As soon as you do it begins to change, and you begin to react to it as you solidify choices. (This is a self criticism)

Man, I feel that.

It hit particularly yesterday because – on the drive up to my mother-in-laws (a good solid hour long drive) I was thinking about a new Terran Omega story, and how to start it and i found my hook in to the story, and having done this before where I’d conjure up a story but not write or draw it, I’m aware those ideas are just… gone.

Anyway that terran omega story has started as a note in my notes app. And let’s see how it grows.

And finally, Will McMillen posted this on bluesky… and frankly in this Pilots and Comic Artists are united…