I'll be at Lexing-Con on Saturday, April 29!

I'll have a booth at Lexing-Con on Saturday, April 29, at Bull City Ciderworks, 599 S. Railroad Street, in Lexington. General admission  is $5, children 10 and under get in free. There will be no new material there. Working on Issue 5 is on the backburner for now, but I'm hoping to expose some new folks to the comic and move the many copies I have of Issues 1-4. It's my first time at this convention but I've heard great things about it.

I won't be attending next weekend's Winston-Salem Comic-Con. I just had too much financial uncertainty to commit to the vendor fee for the April convention. I'll probably stop by as an attendee (mainly to browse).

I'll be at Winston-Salem Comic-Con this Saturday, now at The Annex!

On Saturday, September 3, I'll be at the Winston-Salem Comic Con at the Winston-Salem Fairgrounds Annex, 421 W. 27th Street. It runs from 11 a.m.- 5 p.m. and admission is $5.

This is a new, way bigger location. The lighting will no longer be dungeon-like. The tables will be bigger. I'll have a dollar-off sale on all College Follies issues, and will also have a box of 50 cent comics from my own personal collection I'm trying to get rid. Come buy something so I can afford the increased cost of renting a table!

Winston-Salem Comic Con: The Con Awakens

So Winston-Salem Comic Con was yesterday. Sold a few comics, talked with a handful of humans and even had a visit from my parents. But mostly I was amazed at how many people could cram into the relatively narrow aisles. Half the convention was like watching zombie hordes pass by. I had my screen set up so people could watch me work, but people rarely noticed. They seemed to be generally in too much of a hurry to get down the aisle.

Travis Tomblin with Canada Jack, eh?

The con has grown over the years. When you see Newsroom cosplay at a convention, you know it's definitely reached the next level. In September, it's going to move to the Fairgrounds Annex, which is a much bigger venue more suited for the size of the event.

I had some nice folks selling art on one side of me and to the other I had Travis Tomblin, a comic creator/writer from West Virginia who does a superhero comedy series called Canada Jack. Amazingly, Canada Jack is a public domain character from the 1940s. In Tomblin's absolutely hilarious modern take on it, we find out not all Canadians are polite. Why? Reasons, Johnson,
reasons!

I practically finished page four of issue five at the con. I put the final polish on it just now. At the very least, it's great the con got me to do another page. 

I'll post some panels from it soon and hopefully start on page five  this week.

And one sad, extremely random casualty of the con was my custom Lavender Ranger figure. One of his spikes fell out when I took him out of my convention supply box. I'll try to super glue it back on and see if it holds

Man down! Man down!

Working on page four...Psychoboy meets Obama!

So here's page four of issue five where Psychoboy meets Obama, I've been working on it for today's Winston-Salem Comic Con. I'll have my laptop and monitor with me so attendees can watch me finish it up!

I'll be at Winston-Salem Comic Con Saturday!

On Saturday April 23, I'll be at the Winston-Salem Comic Con at the Winston-Salem Fairgrounds Annex, 421 W. 27th Street, Gate 9. It runs from 11 a.m.- 5 p.m. and admission is $2.  I haven't worked on the comic in awhile. I'll see if I can get a page (or two) going that I can work on at the con. Psychoboy sends his best!

Title page done! A letter from the office of Psychoboy!

Alright so here's the title page or inside cover for issue five...

So it's a combo of photos, a scan of my writing (for the signature) and a congressional letterhead I found online with some type superimposed on it. Since every issue is self contained up until now, I haven't needed to do recaps, but since this issue five is a follow up for issue four, well I had to do one. I don't think it's needed necessarily, there's enough to orient the reader in the story, but I couldn't resist Stickboy showing his exasperation over the voters'...eccentric tastes.

Title pages are fun and quick ways to feel like you've accomplished something (maybe I should just fill an entire issue with them at some point) but I am also currently working on the fourth page in which Psychoboy meets a certain President of United States. More on that soon...

Page Three Complete! Psychoboy meets Washington!

Okay, so first a correction. I actually left out Stickboy's final line from the final panel of page two....

And now without further ado, page three with commentary below...

So tons of cameos here: Vice President Joe Biden, Senate Majority leader Mitch McConnell (who I picked because his turtle-like features would be fun to draw), a custodian who looks suspiciously like Stan the Janitor from Ultimate Spider-man (it's a Stan Lee cameo) and a generic dog and fire hydrant.

I actually completed this page last weekend but am just now posting it because of a bit of drama this week. Life is...difficult at the moment, so that's going to slow production down. But it won't stop it. I'm tied of being stopped. I'm going to keep working on this issue as much as I can as long as I can keep my lights on.  

Page three inked: Psychoboy and his amazing one panel acquaintances!

Drew page three during the week and inked it yesterday. I drew/inked Psychoboy one time and will be duplicating him in the other panels talking to the people (or dog or fire hydrant) in the panel. Drawing cameos is fun, hopefully even without the colors they'll look familiar to you. Excelsior!

About those delays....

First off, let me apologize for the delay on the series. Issue five should've been done months ago and instead I've only just begun on the issue. I'm backed up by nearly a year, so the earliest I'll have all 16 pages done would be next year.

Comics, like anything else in life, get delayed for many reasons. Big companies might have logistical train wrecks that cause production delays. But oftentimes they can find pinch hitters to fill-in for the weak links in the chain and get the series back on track quickly.

For comics that come revolve around one person, usually it's something more personal. Maybe something happened in their lives. Maybe another job came up that tied up all their time. Maybe the demand just wasn't there and they had to do other things to pay their rent, after all, art  is wonderful but it won't keep your lights on if no one buys it.

For me it's all the above. And unlike a company, I have no pinch hitters to help. It's just me putting out a full color comic by myself. This took up all my free time during a relatively stable time in my life. The last year however, has been anything but stable.

So when the poo hit the fan for me in January, just as I was supposed to start work on the series again after a much needed holiday break, it really made it tough to get back into it. The time I usually worked on the series was gone. Work was taking up everything I had and then some. 

Sometimes your daily life just takes up everything you got, emotionally and physically. Sometimes it takes all the hope you muster just to get up and get through the day.

So I rarely worked on the comic. The reaction to the series has been minimal to say the least. I love each and every one of you who've bought it or had kind words to say about the series, but I can fit all of you in my living room, and my living room ain't that big. There's just a handful of people who could possibly be waiting for the conclusion of "Psychoboy Goes to Washington."

So this has pretty been demoted to a hobby for me. I can't make any money off it. I want to finish the story for myself and for the couple people who might actually be wondering what did happen to dear old Psychoboy.  And it's a great story that deserves to be told. It's amazing what you say about the country in just 16 pages.

So with that in mind, I took advantage of a lull between instances of feces flying towards fans in my life to start working on the comic again. I'm going to try my darndest to work on it in some way, no matter what happens, no matter how many turd storms are in the forecast. I can't promise anything, but I'm going to try. The issue will be completed at some point. 

Both Kevin Smith and J. Michael Straczynski came back and finished comic series that had been delayed for years. Rob Schrab had everything fall apart in the 90s and came back 10 years later to finish Scud the Disposable Assassin. And none of their works were any worse for the delays, once they were completed.

The point of me typing all this isn't to say it's okay to give up on your dream, but to know that if it gets put on pause or gets set back, that it's not the end. You own that story you want to tell. It's not going anywhere. It'll be waiting for you when you're ready to tell it. Never give up. There's always going to be another chance. 

Creativity isn't a race. It took Da Vinci years to finish the Mona Lisa. It's the creation that exists at the end that's what matters. Make it good no matter how long it takes.

Hail Hydra! Page two is done!

Alright, here's page two of issue five with commentary below...

So of course, if Psychoboy went to Washington, he'd go around seeing if anyone was a member of Hydra. Duh. It's, of course, a play on the viral Hail Hydra stuff from Captain America: Winter Soldier. I know there was a jogger who may or my not have been Steve Rogers on the first page, but I tend to lean on the "may not" end of that spectrum. On the other hand, maybe it was Steve, Hydra is real and Psychoboy is a genius. You never know.

For John Boehner's tan, that is actually a color I sampled from a photo of him. Fun fact, his skin really is on the orange spectrum. But if you push the color too far towards orange, he starts looking like an Oompa Lumpa, so I decided to stick with  his real-life skin tone.

I'm having to letter this issue in Photoshop. My best advice on lettering in Photoshop is to buy Illustrator and use that instead. Unfortunately, I no longer have that option. It got a little easier once I got past the first panel with it's wondrous exposition dump, but it's still a long process with Photoshop, even when using old word balloon shapes I created in illustrator. You don't have the precise control over the shape of the balloons in Photoshop like you do in Illustrator, but I made it work.

So next up is page three where we see some of the other folks Psycho been testing his Hydra theory on. It'll be fun. And until then, remember to hail Hydra early and often.