Building the Battle Jacket (Part 3)

I’ve been slowly writing and testing out my own OSR Roleplaying Game I call Battle Jacket. This is its development blog. [Part 1 Here] [Part 2 Here]

Recap: I set out to make my own OSR game by stealing the Mörk Borg rules-set and adding a touch of homebrew to it. I was going to design a small zine, sell a few copies to my friends, and then be done with it. Then the project began to take on a life of its own…

One of the suckiest things about being a creative is that the best thoughts come at the worst times. I had a long day at work. The drawing board fought me all day. My domestic duties at home took up the remainder of my time and energy. I lay in my bed positively whooped when inspiration struck suddenly and angrily. I pulled out my phone and sleepily scrawled the following note:

For those not in a position to read the image, I typed out:
Demon Gods:
Quantaar
Cephelogaar
Chammakkaar
Shamrazhnagaar
and
Timothy

It was one of those moments where the joke comes almost fully formed. It is an old old joke format, but I find it tried and true, and furthermore it makes me laugh every time. Six Demon Gods, all with very demony sounding names, except for one painfully generic name. And who is the worst of all of these Demon Gods? I’m sure you can guess.

Also, these names constitute the first lines to an official style-guide.

What is a “Style Guide”?

An indispensable document that can take many forms. I am most familiar with style-guides used in animation, comics, and writing (usually for TV). They exist to keep all the creatives of a project working on the same page, and more importantly, to keep the internal world of the creative work consistent. In animation, style-guides are usually created by character designers and animation directors so that story-boarders and animators know what creative decisions have been made, and how to keep them consistent.

Style guides for writing include notes about characters, motivations, over-arching plot, what the story is actually about, and most importantly, the rules of the world.

Even when working alone, a style-guide is hugely important both visually and writing-wise. Ever read a comic, a novel, or watch a show and a main character does something very out of character? Hate it when you think you have a horror mystery figured out, but the main creator seems to keep changing things up? The lore gets bigger and bigger, the plot gets more convoluted and makes less sense? That’s what happens when a writer does not create or adhere to their own style-guide. The work ultimately devolves from an interesting/compelling story into schlock. The creator is no longer telling you a story, they’re just holding your attention, and they’ll continue making things up just to keep it. (Think Five Nights at Freddy’s, the Walking Dead, or Lost.)

For writing, style guides are usually a short bullet pointed list of rules. In general, the bigger work, the fewer the rules, but the more rigidly the rules must be adhered to. One of the most famous examples comes from the legendary Chuck Jones’s guide on Wile E. Coyote. Chuck was one of the best animators, designers, and directors of his day, but it was his discipline that made him a timeless legend.

The initial power of any creative work comes from a compelling concept, but the staying power and most true gauge of quality comes from the discipline of sticking to the style-guide.

As a brief aside, comics and illustration have a bit of wiggle-room in how closely the first design is adhered to. It is expected that the shapes will mature as the artist continues to draw the characters more. In animation, the character design is law and no deviations can be tolerated. Deviating from the character design in animation is very risky and called “breaking model.” Tex Avery, the creator of Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, and more, was the master of breaking model, but his mastery was in choosing his moments.

Before we begin:
Always adhere to the Golden rule of gaming.

The rules of any game are but guidelines. When the game is in the players’ hands, it is their game. Players and GMs are encouraged to take any and every liberty to maximize the fun for all at the table.

With the demon-god names written, the guide begins to write itself. The existence of these quasi-deities suggests a great deal about the world. There are 6 rulers of an Underworld, which means players exist in a corporeal world above it, which then suggests the existence of an Overworld above the players.

Rule #1: The demon gods are selfish, petty, secretive, and vain. They are always thwarted by their own in-fighting more-so than anything else. True for their followers as well. (PCs and NPCs alike)

The Living World is huge and full of monsters, mystery, and magic. It is not always hopeless, but it is always horrible.

Rule #2: There are no dedicated healers in this game.

There is an Overworld. A single deity who is also many dwells there. This deity is peace, love, joy, and kindness. The people of the Living World call it: The Kind One.

Rule #3: Nobody likes The Kind One. Followers of The Kind One (called “Kind Fellows”) are cheery and wholly insufferable nerds! (They are the only characters who are capable of doing any healing.)

Rule #2 comes with a caveat. There are some players out there who really want to play a healer, or perhaps need someone in the party to play the healer for whatever reason. If this makes the game more fun for the people at the table, Gaming Golden Rule applies.

I don’t want to force players, or worse the GM, to come up with healer lore and rules on the fly. So while no one in the game is a dedicated healer, I have provided a method by which an NPC can fulfill the role. To cling closer to the GGR, I decided, to include rules for playing as a Kind Fellow, but to stick to my “No Healers” rule, I decided to disguise these rules as bits of world lore and hide them away from the character creation section. The rules/guidelines to include a healer for the players that want one are present if they are wanted, but ignorable if they are not wanted. Needle threaded.

The rule of having no healers in the game put me at a cross-roads of sorts. I wrote the rule instinctively as it came to me, but I had such trouble justifying why. In wrestling with the justification, I came up with the most important style rule that will decide how the rest of the game is written, and what reality the rule mechanics must reinforce.

In this world there is much violence, death, and destruction, but there is also some hope. While the players will not be great heroic figures like in DnD, they will not be as wretched and hopeless as the player characters in Mörk Borg. In this game, players will be the outcasts of their society without enough resources or friends to live for very long. However, they will be strong enough to be dangerous to their enemies, and lucky enough to bring at least some of that danger to bear. Therefore:

Rule #4: Every cool thing in this game will be awesome and awful in equal measure.

Cool-ass character classes to save the day

At this point, I now have some interesting style rules, and a game I might be interested to try, but it remained a Mörk Borg plagiarism save for a different supernatural pantheon and a bit of homebrew rules. It hadn’t yet clicked that I am trying to make GWAR or Dethklok in game form. That came when it was time to write out Character Classes.

What would set this apart? What would give me the cartoonish ultra-violent, yet joyful (for the players) world I am trying to make? What does it need to look different from most the other dark fantasy worlds? I asked myself this while drawing my comic and listening to the original Conan the Barbarian stories by Robert E. Howard.

That’s it! Not so much dark fantasy, but more Sword and Sorcery. Magic is ever present and powerful, but few know how to really use it to great effect. Well developed nation-states or similar are not a thing yet, but Duchies, Small Kingdoms, and Tribal Chiefs dot every landscape. Technologically, I want to steer away from the High Medieval Period where Lord of the Rings, Game of Thrones, and DnD seem to live. Dark Age kingdoms like the ones of Saxon England (think post romans, but pre-conqueror).

Alas! That is how I always envisioned Mörk Borg to be. Did I just plagiarize some more?! DAMN IT! Back to square one I suppose… …How is this world supposed to look?!

I want monsters. I want demons. I want evil sorcerers and mysterious witches of every stripe. I want funny and violent anti-heroes. I want a low-technology , but high magic with terrible consequences. I want a world that can look like any savage land the players want to play in.

I went on the hunt for some inspiration, and came up with these:

He-Man reimagining by Jerzy Drozd.

Bits of the Heavy Metal movie.

I discovered that I really like futuristic stuff stuck into fantastical backgrounds.

I really appreciate crazy nonsense for sake of fun. I think that may be the very reason I am here and making a game. The relentless pursuit of fun. The unbridled imagination of an adolescent child!

But, again, low technology world… …Also, how would I square futuristic laser guns and crap into a low medieval world?

Ya know, things are kinda the future now aren’t they? I mean The Neuromancer was a hugely forward thinking and relevant novel for decades. Now, parts of that reality are here, the rest is just around the corner, and we are already bored with it. So, what if our modern day is a far flung past for the players?

A great cataclysm befell the whole earth at once restarting all of human civilization. The “Modern Day” for the players is 1,000 years in our future. Society has returned to a mostly medieval period, but the whole world is all mixed up so players can play in an Egyptian style empire in one session, fight bad guys on something like the Mongolian Steppe in the next, and then kill a lesser demon in an approximation of Saxon England to end the campaign!

What was the great cataclysm that wrecked the whole earth at once in the 21st century?

What would GWAR do?

Someone finally broke the 7th seal or some damn thing, the earth cracked open and demons of the underworld came pouring out plunging the world into darknessssssss! Oh, also, all the demon magic and stuff spilling out into the earth mutates people. We’ll steal a cool name for these people. We’ll call them “Morlocks.” METAL!!!

So, our futuristic modern day devices will be ancient relics to the player characters. How will they still work? When the earth cracked, magic became real and all of the objects and devices of the “Before Times” became enchanted. Yeah, I can dig that. Sends a message. We are here for fun, and a lot of it. This is a game world where good sense will go to die.

Won’t all the old relics be all busted up? I mean, the tech things existing at all is awesome, but how is it also awful? (Rule #4) The tech is all busted up. Some of it is found intact and in immaculate shape, but these are like the Excaliburs of the Ancient Relics. The rest are all busted up, but repairable. However, they still break all the time. Whose job is it to find, fix, and figure out these ancient technologies?

My first character class: The Technomancer - Wizard of all things Tech
Fixer of things, knower of things, and entirely clueless about people in general. If this was a character class, what kind of tech would they fight with? Old recovered VideoGame Consoles! They can wield their controllers like wizards with wands.

What other bits of tech get a lot of use. What other kind of player am I looking for?

When I listen to some of my most favorite heavy metal riffs, sometimes they feel punishing. As though I am being beaten, but I’m not getting beat. What if musical instruments actually had the power to lierally beat down a room full of people? It would have to be wielded by someone with great skill, talent, or both. Aren’t electric guitars bits of tech? Wouldn’t the cataclysm have enchanted them as well?

Enter my second character class: The Musicanist or “Musomancer”
Magic user that can only cast using their instrument, but whose instrument is nearly worthless without a musicanist. It takes an hour of practice per day to recharge all musicanist spells.

What about drums? They’re literally the lowest tech thing in civilization. Peoples develop drum music before they learn to sing. In fact, in eastern cultures, the drums were considered the only instrument to have their own discreet spirit, because that is what the empty chamber inside the drum constituted blah blah blah… …Any and all drums are enchanted too. In fact, because drums are usually the loudest damn things on stage, spells cast on a drum or drums will be even more powerful. That’s awesome, but how is it also awful? (Rule #4) I know from experience that if I am getting practice at my drums, no one in my neighborhood is getting rest. Therefore, if the party’s musicanist is a drummer, they can rest, but their practice makes it impossible for their party-mates to take a rest. Everybody hates you because you’re a loud obnoxious drummer who won’t stop tapping on all the things!

Yeah, this isn’t hitting close to home at all…

That’s it for now. Scroll down to see some of the other notes I made. They are rough and out of context. Enjoy!

Next Time: Art, graphic design, and a downloadable copy of my first draft!

Thanks for reading,
-Gabe D.

Building the Battle Jacket (Part 2)

I’ve been slowly writing and testing out my own OSR Roleplaying Game I call Battle Jacket. This is its development blog. [Part 1 Here]

Recap: I have been playing roleplaying games since I was eight years old. I love the concept. D&D is too much math for me to wrap my head around. I was introduced to Mörk Borg and the rest of the OSR which really inspired me. Now to begin work on my own game, but where do I start?

In philosophy we ask, “what came first, the chicken or the egg?”
In RPG’s we ask, “what comes first, the rules or the world?”

I’m a very artsy creative guy who is big on story and very weak on mathematical systems, so it is surprising that I actually began my writing of Battle Jacket with the rules-set before the world-lore.

Originally, this was not conceived of as a long term project to pour my heart into. My idea was to straight-up cannibalize the Mörk Borg rules-set and re-skin it in a strictly lip-stick job. It was going to be a quick fun little zine thing that I knock out for fun and move on. The only problem I had with the Mörk Borg rules were that they were slightly too stripped down. There are only 4 stats in the character sheet. I love the bare bones nature, but this is stripped one too far for me. 

The Presence stat, I think, is too prominent. It makes up about half the rolls in almost any game I run. Furthermore, I believe in a fundamental difference between Intelligence and Wisdom both in-game and in life. Thus in the games I ran, I tested out changing Presence to Intelligence, and adding a Wisdom stat to the character sheet. The thought being, this would open up a new area of strengths and weaknesses in the party making the players more dependent on one another, and making the game more flavorful. Failing a Wis roll even though a character has a high Int is always funny. The reverse is equally funny. My players seem to enjoy it as well.

Wisdom vs. Intelligence; What’s the diff?
(Because you are in such a hurry.)

The way I understood this in life as a youngster was:

Intelligence describes the things you know. High intelligence means you know more things, and you learn them faster than other people.

Wisdom describes how well you use the knowledge you already have to your advantage. Or how well you recognize luck, and take advantage of it.

Forest Gump is an example of high Wis and low Int.

Almost every “Genius” doctor in a medical show is an example of high Int and low Wis.
Also German Shepherds. Smartest dogs in the world, but somehow still dumb as hell!

In game terms the distinction serves two purposes: Game Mechanics and Character Development. Mechanically, Int describes a character’s ability to know things. Wis describes a character’s ability to know people. In terms of Character Development, is your character the oblivious, but brilliant nerd? Or the Street Smart dullard who can’t read a clock, but definitely knows what time it is.

I introduced this distinction to my players in a few one-shot sessions of Mörk Borg to see how well they worked with the players. Roll Int to observe objects, search for traps, or know languages. Roll Wis to spot a liar or size up an NPC. The results were the players understood the strengths, weaknesses, and over all make-up of the character they were playing a bit better than before. Functionally it meant rolling dice on different stats instead of relying on one stat that the players had less control over.

In short, the change worked, so I wrote it down and kept it.

My only other gripe with the rules I was plagiarizing, was that characters were too weak. In Mörk Borg the players are playing poor discarded wretches who have no chance. Even if they survive today, tomorrow they will not. Rule-wise there are two mechanics to keep players alive long enough to have a chance at a decent game. The first is an armor rule-set that automatically reduces the damage characters suffer. The second is Omens.

I like the idea of armor reducing damage as opposed to increasing an armor-class, in principle, but in practice both I and my players are CONSTANTLY forgetting the armor stat. In short, the mechanic works in terms of keeping characters alive longer, but only if they have armor at all, and then only if they remember they have it in the first place. 

I describe Omens as acting like in-game mulligans. You can use them to make re-rolls, automatically reduce damage, and a few other things. Full description in the image below.

At first, I loved Omens. They weren’t too many, and really did the trick of giving otherwise hopeless player characters a chance of living a bit longer, but they got less fun over time. My players kept forgetting that they had Omens at all. Or they would remember they had one or two, but forgot what they could do and had to constantly look up their options. They also kept forgetting how many they had. Too powerful and just slightly too complex to use without interrupting the flow of gameplay.

Hardcore gamers who read that will be flummoxed, I’m sure, that such a relatively simple mechanic is so easily forgotten and so difficult to internalize, but the thing to remember is, most players aren’t used to having a small trove of codified mulligans. I’m not used to tracking so many stats as a GM. Just one more layer of complexity standing in the way of imagination and game-play.

Role playing games only work if the stakes are right. If characters are nigh-invulnerable, the stakes are too low, because they won’t die. If characters are too weak, the stakes are too low again because characters becomes disposable.

My solution: All player characters roll and extra D4+1 and add the number to their existing hit points. This allows them to live long enough to have a fighting chance, but not so long that the player gets too precious.

These rule changes were tried verbally a few times in a few games, and I was able to test their efficacy that way, but world building is a different story. 

As a writer, I like to keep my first drafts to myself. I need to give my ideas time to percolate and bounce off each other in my thick little noggin before I can do anything about them. As an artist, it is lovely because I can allow myself to daydream, percolate, and talk to myself all day while I am working away at the drawing board. Unfortunately, nothing was coming to me too distinctly for a bit. All of my ideas were to inject more jokes into the already existing framework of ultra-grimdark fantasy. Essentially, just play the game as it is with a few home-brew rules. Not worth wasting anyone’s time with. I almost abandoned the project here. However, the idea proved persistent. I started making small notes on my phone.

The first note I wrote was the names of each of the Demon Gods. Which meant my game had nameable knowable deities of a kind as well as a mythical underworld. A mythical underworld suggests the existence of a corporeal world that player characters exist in, as well as the possibility of an Overworld. One idea begets another, as it were, and they started to coalesce into a central theme. 

All of the creatures, characters, and classes I thought of and doodled were all the sort of stuff that a metalhead in high school would doodle in his notebook when he was supposed to be paying attention in algebra class. Naturally, I was that kid, so the ideas started feeling more and more like I was returning to roots of a kind. 

Mörk Borg was described as Heavy Metal in RPG form. I was discouraged because what I was putting together could be described as the same thing, but then I thought of Army of Darkness.  The cartoonishness. The silliness. The marks that I believed Mörk Borg had missed.

Pelle and Johan had indeed made Heavy Metal Music in RPG form, but what they made was Swedish Black Metal (the best kind of Black Metal). I wanted cartoonish ultra-violence! I wanted gratuitous geysers of blood and guts. I wanted jokes woven in the very fabric. I wanted to make GWAR!

Next Time:
Actually writing out the damn thing! (Version 1.0)

Thanks for reading,
-Gabe D.

Building the Battle Jacket (Part 1)

[For the past year and change, I have been slowly writing/designing my own rules-light OSR role playing game: Battle Jacket. This is a record of its development.]

Part One: Obligatory Origin Story

My first game of D&D was when I was 8 years old. My middle brother got the Player’s Handbook. This was 1994. AD&D 2nd edition. The one with THAC0. He roped my sister and I into a game and ran us through a small encounter.

The “true concept” of what a role playing game is remains under discussion, but the concept for us at this tender age was easy: 

• Fun with friends and imagination, sharing an imaginary reality that we all shape together in real-time. 

• It is a game of Let’s Pretend using dice as arbiter and collaborator. Awesome.

• This game exists in a reality with swords, armor, magic, and monsters. More Awesome.

• You can use funny voices and really ham it up while you play. Sold! 

There was a fatal flaw for me personally, the rules. There were too many. What there was seemed too convoluted, and they required too much math for a guy like me. If I was going to play, but not constantly ask the DM for clarifications (or be able to DM it myself) I would need a rule system that was much more streamlined, less mathy, and require more imagination. Lucky for me, this desire is very prevalent in today’s TTRPG community. Enter the OSR.

OSR: Acronym that stands for “Old School Revolution,” or “Old School Revival.” 

Broadly, it means a return fantasy roleplaying games to a rule system and feel more along the lines of AD&D 1st ed. or its immediate precursors: B/X D&D. What makes this trend so invigorating for me is that with lighter rules, imagination becomes heavier. For me, that is exchanging a weakness for a strength. A more boring quality with a more fun one. Another much enjoyed side-effect of more imagination is that more game designers can design a variety of games with a new variety of mechanics, moods, and world building. Variety is indeed the spice of life!

My very first introduction to this brave old world was a spiked flail to the face in a bright yellow hardcover called Mörk Borg.

Written, designed, and illustrated by a pair of Swedes (Pelle Nilssen and Johan Nohr) Mörk Borg is described as an RPG that is “rules light and heavy everything else.” It has won multiple prestigious awards and garnered much love, attention, and fandom. Not least of which from myself.

(Fun Fact: My cousin, who introduced me to my wife, introduced me to this game as well. The dude has NEVER steered me wrong.)

Mechanically, Mörk Borg strips the rules of a typical fantasy TTRPG to the absolute bone. Only four stats in a character’s stat block. The rules for combat fit on one digest sized page with plenty of room for art. The summary of all of the game’s rules fit on two digest sized pages. A copy of the rules with all fluff, art, and lore stripped out clocks in at around 50 digest pages. In these pages are rules for the game, random items/qualities tables, character classes, and a bestiary of possible enemies. Easy to read, simple to understand, mostly intuitive, elementary math with no companion charts, and easily repeated for new players. It checks all my boxes with style!

While the rules are light, the tonality of the game is very heavy. The broad strokes are of a  typical medieval fantasy that is grimdark to the Nth degree. The world is literally ending. Everything and everyone left in it is wretched and horrible, the players included. For players, death is likely, success is not.

The way I like to describe it to new players:

“Once upon a time there were amazing heroes with cool armor, enchanted weapons, and books filled with bitchin’-ass spells. 

That time is gone!

Those heroes are dead. 

You are what is left.

The weapons they left behind are nicked, busted, improvised, or all three. The armor they left has been stripped off those heroes’ corpses. Wrecked, and mended so many times they barely resemble what they once were. The spell books wizards spent their lifetimes writing and collecting have been torn apart. The individual disparate pages have been sold, exchanged, and used as magic scrolls. Only people who can read can cast these spells, but because none of them have training, the spells have little guarantee of efficacy, and the price for magical failure is dire!”

I can not fully describe how compelling I find Mörk Borg as both a game and a concept.  A full game with potential as expansive and flavorful as any of the big ones, but in such haiku-like simplicity that it fits in a single digest book. A thing I previously thought impossible.

The book itself is an art piece that I will treasure for years to come. Johan Nohr is a graphic designer of quality with a distinct style. When it came time to put together the look and feel for this passion project, Johan took himself off the leash and ran with every one of his instincts breaking every graphic design rule pounded into me back in art school. The man knows exactly what he is doing, and is unafraid to take risks. A true artist, if I may be so pretentious. The result is a unique work in a unique style that can only be imitated, but never duplicated. (and good gravy, so many have tried!)

If there is a flaw to be found, it is that the text and world building of the game is evocative more so than explanatory. Pelle Nillson’s writing does an excellent job of describing and hinting in broad strokes about the world, but writes close to the edge of exposition without ever crossing it. It is a delicate dance for any writer to achieve, and Pelle does it with aplomb. However, for nerds like me, the evocative writing doesn’t scratch my insatiable hunger for lore. 

As a writer myself, I feel as though I have been given a lovely and elaborate writing prompt. I can launch a thousand sessions, one-shots, and even multiple campaigns based on the material provided. However as a player, a GM, or even just a casual reader, I want so much more than is given.

In an interview, Pelle and Johan stated that they tried to make Army of Darkness in TTRPG form. I distinctly remember thinking, Gents, if that was your goal, you missed the mark!

Army of Darkness is an over the top tongue in cheek comedy of errors with chainsaw antics, an army of the undead, and one-liners cheesed to perfection. In contrast, Mörk Borg is a rusty dagger and a cruel smile from rotten teeth. It’s over the top and tongue in cheek, it has jokes aplenty, but sometimes the punchline is simply, “Isn’t that awful? Bwahahahaha!” I heard once that Swedish humor is way darker than most American humor. This work seems to bear that out, but Army of Darkness is American humor to a T. 

At least that’s my crackpot theory.

This compelled me to imagine what Mörk Borg would be like if it actually was in the style of Army of Darkness. What would that look like?

The more I thought about it, the more I realized the result would look similar to, yet nothing at all like, Mörk Borg. It would be it’s own thing.

It would be easy, I thought. I can just re-skin these kickass rules with different lore, and maybe change a thing or two. I have a bunch of ink drawings in my sketch books that I can use. (I doodle heavy metal weirdness all the time.) My very own stock art. Easy-Peasy!

I started doing a lot more day-dreaming, some sporadic writing, and good bit more reading. “Maybe change a thing or two,” turned in to “maybe a few more.” Then some more…

It’s been hard work, but some of the most fun I have had as a writer/artist.

Thus, I wanted to share it in the hope that this is fun for you too.

—Next Time: What comes first? Lore, or rules system?

There's a Monster in the Bathroom (and two other poems)

Somewhere in 2011 or 2012 I got the itch to make a kids book. I didn’t have any particular stories in mind, I just knew that I was staring at photos of myself and my family almost every day for the journal comic, and I was getting sick of all of our faces. That, and my little girl was getting older and wanting bed time stories. Like all other creative dads, I wanted to make something for my adorable child.

I was drawing and updating my journal comic on the regular during this time. As such, I hadn’t written, or thought of anything to write. Mostly, I just wanted to see if I could make a kids book, and if a kids book I made would sell.

I dusted off my old “writing” file on my hard drive and sifted through what I had. It was a bunch of notes, half written scenes, and a collection of writings from my time as an English Major. They were essays upon essays, a series of short stories that were not fit for man nor beast, and all the poetry I had written for my two required poetry classes.

The poetry stood out. They were fun, they were funny, they were surprisingly kid-friendly, and they held up. All of which was surprising to me given the environment these poems were born in.

The first poetry class I took was a room full of young people who had never done anything, but yet who fancied themselves full of smarts, passions, and important things to say. (We were not). Our professor was a published poet and she was truly a dear. Looking back, she was perhaps one of the better professors I had. She showed up to class every day with a terrific attitude, a soft spoken and thoughtful nature, and a true believer’s desire to foster us on our way towards better self-expression. That being said, we were her very first class in her very first year of teaching. Mistakes were made.

Mistake number one, teaching out of a book of poetry prompts. Particularly a book written by people who had a deep love of pretension, and not much else. The other kids in the class ate it up. These young people wanted to write serious poems about important things. I wanted to be funny. I made it my mission to subvert each of these prompts as much as I possibly could. Mine were the only poems that rhymed.

There’s a Monster in the Bathroom
Prompt: Write a narrative poem about a near death experience.

When I was 8 years old, I had stripped naked for an evening shower and was about to turn the water on when a big fat scary giant centipede crawled out of the drain. One of these suckers had bitten my eldest brother the year before and gave him a fever so severe that he was hospitalized.

I freaked out. Hard.

I grabbed a towel and ran to my dad to fix it and make it all better (after all other options were exhausted of course). Upon his inspection of the shower, the foul creature was gone. Completely disappeared, and I was instructed to take my shower as thought nothing had happened. It was the most terrified shower of my life.

Harrowing and life threatening to an 8 year old, comical and relatable to anyone else. It threaded the needle perfectly between the assigned prompt and it’s own subversion.

I changed the centipede to a spider for the book because spiders are more relatable, more recognizable, and so much easier to draw.

I changed the ending to a safe and proper resolution to subvert the prompt further. No melancholy, no fears or anxieties, and no downers for the “serious” kids to hang their hat on.

It stuck out among all the other poems like a whoopee cushion in a funeral, but it went over in the classroom surprisingly well. Years later, upon rereading, I found it still fun. I set about illustrating it.

I quickly found out that plotting and illustrating for a kids book is remarkably similar to comics. Read the text. Choose the moments that will illustrate well. Thumbnail sketch them in order to work out ideas and composition. Make sure the images compliment the writing, and eliminate as many redundancies as possible. Then away you go!

The differences:

1) These images need to be larger and more elaborate than a comic panel.

2) This one has to be in color.
I’m colorblind. (For those of you who already knew, take a drink.)

To make larger more elaborate images was a snap. My local art supply store had a surplus amount of white chip board that was not unlike illustration board. Thick, large, and acid free so that it wouldn't yellow over time. The only differences was that it was so much cheaper than illustration board, but it was a very thirsty paper. The blacks I inked weren’t very black. Nothing a bit of photoshop couldn’t cure.

In order to color, I would need a method that wasn’t permanent so that I could change and edit my colors around with someone whose eyes worked. That meant flat digital colors which are not very story-book looking. To overcome this, I endeavored to ink and shade with brushes and ink-wash. (Examples above and below.)

It worked out marvelously well. The final look had an organic/whimsical nature of the wash, but the easily changeable flat colors of digital. That last bit came in super handy. Changes were made and made and made. Coloring this beast was an arduous process that I did not enjoy, but the results were good.

Your unfriendly neighborhood comic shop guy
prompt: (I don’t fully remember, but I think it was on the lines of) write a poem about a destructive figure in your life from their PERSPECTIVE.

There was a breed of nerd/geek that was so much more prevalent in my youth than is now. He wore many faces and came from many places, but it was always a He, and he was always the same. Sarcastic, elitist, exclusionary, needlessly snarky, and constantly dismissive. He was the toy dealer at the flea market. He was the card seller at the game store. He was the comic shop guy.

Being infected with various nerderies from a young age, I was well acquainted with these Old Guards of Geekdom. I was on a first name basis with several of them whilst still in my childhood. I knew who they were and I knew how to navigate them, but I had never met one so foul, so grim, so cliche, and so sad until I began shopping at the comic shop in Greenville North Carolina.

The Comic Shop Guy from the Simpsons was a delightful cartoonish satire on the character, but it was in Greenville where I met his real life counter-part. A creature more cartoon than man. Self-righteous, self-assured, certain of all of his loud opinions (which were actual facts and not opinions as he would tell you), and positively terrified of girls at any age.

I was very fortunate to have been born into a time when girls were as much a part of the nerdy landscape as I was. It was still mostly male, but there was always a few girls to share in the joy, introduce us to other bits of nerdery, and frankly to break up the sausage-fest. The Old Guard was far less lucky in this way, and it showed.

My girlfriend at the time (who is now my wife of 14+ years) had just discovered an indie comic series that really spoke to her, and she became every bit the regular that I was at the local shop. Each week we would secure our paper treasures and quietly marvel at how the local comic shop guy would shut his otherwise unstoppable mouth, and trade in his clamorous tirades for single word responses mumbled in an inaudible voice. We would also marvel at how easily he would break into a flop sweat in the dead of winter.

When time came to write to this prompt, I knew who my tragic villain would be. Absolutely zero exaggeration was required to paint his portrait.

When I wrote the poem, rhymes that followed the “I” sound flowed like water for the first 5 verses, and so I endeavored to maintain the constant single rhyme scheme to see if I could. It was a lot of fun.

Graphically, I switched to a traditional comic structure for his poem because I felt it was appropriate. How can anyone lampoon a comic shop guy without putting him into panels?

For the rendering I used the same copic gray markers as my regular comics, and pilfered a color scheme from Paul Southworth webcomics. Enough online critics sighted him for his color choices, and I figured stealing his was a fair bet.

The agony of da feet
Prompt: Write a short poem about shoes that would remind the reader of death.

This was the first prompt given to us on our first day of class. (No doubt it was a take on the shortest short story attributed to Hemingway.) My wife and I guffawed mightily. I don’t know when, why, or how depression, gloom, and nihilism became such laudable things in the halls of academia and among “serious” artists. We both found the whole thing very self-gratifying for those “serious” people in ways that I think are best kept private.

My own shoes were tattered and worn from many intense days of marching in the University Drumline. They emitted such noxious fumes that my house mates complained regularly and posted mocking comic strips on our refrigerator. I had my muse, and I could think of no better way to troll such a pretentious prompt.

One student wrote about shoes that had fallen off a hanged man. One student wrote about the shoes that belonged to a dead grandparent. I wrote a rhyming poem declaring that my stinky shoes were not at all my fault, and were instead possessed by stink-demons.

To be fair to the class…

It is important that I mention that the class I took was actually a lot of fun. A few of my self-important class mates made it difficult at times, but on the whole, it was a good room with a good group of kids and I was very happy that I was able to make friends. As “serious” as some of their poems were, those kids were very gracious and open when it came to my cartoonish antics. I came to be viewed as a consistent source of comic relief. I would be asked to present my poem when the room needed a breather.

One of those students and I are still friends to this day. She’s good people with a good eye for writing, editing, and grammar. So good, that she is my go-to gal when I need a proof-reader/editor for my Purgatory Pub Graphic Novels.

The aftermath and subsequent book

I finished the book after around 3 months or so of working. It was my first large format fully colored item and I was able to use amazon’s brand new Print on Demand Service which they called “Create Space.” At the time it was a God-send. The per-copy price to the artist was the lowest of any other service, and the quality was comparable. The book performed decently well at cons, and I was able to perform well at a few elementary schools with it. Now, 10 years later, I still get the occasional compliment on it. Sadly, being a Print on Demand book, I ran out of copies, and never reordered any. The good news is, being born of Amazon, it is still available for purchase there if your heart so desires. (Link Here)

I read it to my daughter as a bed time story once. She asked for it again and again and again. After I would read it to her, she would keep it in her crib and pretend to read it to herself until she fell asleep. The copy that she had was one of my proof copies. It is tattered and torn and all beat to hell, but I still have it. It is one of my most prized possessions.

Thanks for reading.

All my best,
-Gabe D.

Off-Panel Hero

Make comics long enough, study the art long enough, talk influences with your contemporaries, and you will hear the name Jack Kirby. It is inevitable.

The King himself. Rumor is he only ever had that one drafting table. Which means he drew everything on that same drafting table since his early days in the 30’s when he wast still living at home.

If this is your first time hearing about the man, allow me to bullet point all the things you really need to know:

• Grew up as a small jewish kid in the Brooklyn tenements during the depression.

• Never backed down from a bully. (Not even mafia goons.)

• Got beat up. A lot.

• Believed in comics as a high art form.

• Created Captain America with his comics partner, friend, and mentor Joe Simon. Revolutionized Superhero comics. (Captain America was the first comic to sell 1 Million copies.)

• Fought in Europe in WWII as an Infantryman in Patton’s army. Awarded the Bronze Star.

• Married Roz at age 21. She was 19. Went on to have 4 children together. Faithful Husband. Devoted Father. (According to his wife and kids in separate interviews held after his death.)

• Made Superhero comics for the company that would become Marvel Comics.

• Created The Fantastic Four as a last ditch effort to save the flagging company. It worked. First Superhero Team ever made. Sold 1 Million copies again. (Named the female member “Susan Storm” after his daughter Susan.)

• Went on to collaborate and create almost every Marvel superhero you’ve ever heard of (and a few DC Characters as well. (The Hulk, The X-Men, The Silver Surfer, Thor, The Avengers, Brought Captain America back, Black Panther, and there is a rumor he pitched the idea of a “Spider-Man” to Stan Lee.) (Darkseid, Orion, Caliban, and the rest of The New Gods for DC.)

• Was promised more money, his original art back, royalties, and writing/creation credits of his characters by the head of the publishing company at the time, Martin Goodman. (Stan Lee’s Uncle-in-Law.)

• Was screwed out of all of them for his entire career. (He did start getting his original pages back. Roz would help sell them.)

• Quit comics in his 60’s to work in animation for the health insurance (The first time in his life that he would have any). Had his first heart attack that year.

• Died a legend at 75 (after a 4th heart attack) with the credit and ownership of his characters still being contested in court.

• Most famous quote: “Comics will break your heart, kid.”

At the time that I read his story, I was a young father burning the candle at both ends to make my comics dreams come true, and his example really inspired me. The dispute over his characters was still being litigated as well. It was a pretty open and shut case that he shared in the creation of the characters and was entitled to credit and partial, if not total, ownership. Marvel lawyers were mostly being paid to drag the case out. If Marvel lost, more than half of their Intellectual Properties would have to be turned over to Kirby’s estate, and that would be it for the nearly bankrupt publisher.

Knowing the details of the man himself, and knowing how bad he had been screwed for his entire career, well and truly broke my heart. So much so, that I imagined an elaborate bit of wish fulfillment.

That’s where Off-Panel Hero comes from.

Sometime around year 2.5 or 3 of making the same journal comic, I wanted to branch out and try some fiction with made up characters that I had to design. The Kirby Wish Fulfillment Story that I had idly kicked around was at the top of my mind. In addition to wanting to right some wrongs, I was (and am) also a sucker for the Film Noir genre of the 1940’s and 50’s. I figured, armed with my then brand new set of 12 Copic Cool Gray Markers, I could make that happen.

I did all the stuff you’re supposed to do when you write a new thing. I wrote out the script. Polished it as best I could, and then forgot about it for a few weeks. Came back, reread, filled in plot holes, and planted a Chekov gun or two. I decided I was still into the story, and set about character designing.

You can see Simon’s character design in progress right here. Drawing with a baby in my lap is not something I had to do a whole lot, but I did have to do sometimes.

Story Notes and Fun Facts

I had fun changing the names and time period to the story. Giving subtle nods here, and not-so-subtle nods there.

Jack Kirby was born “Jacob Kurtzberg,” and was later known as The King of Comics. So it was an easy thing to draw a fair facsimile of the man and call him “Jake King.”

I was heartbroken and flummoxed that Kirby had so many friends and well wishers, but that none of them could bring any pressure to bear on the Powers that Were. For that reason, I made a friend of my fictional Kirby the hero of this story. Someone who is otherwise a peon risking everything to help a friend. A Samwise to Jack’s Frodo.

Joe and Jack. Making comics and saving the world.

Jack’s real-world mentor and comics partner was Joe-Simon. The other half of Captain America. It was a no-brainer, and a fun bit of cheese, to name the hero of the story “Simon Josephson.”

Roz was about 5’ 3”. As we can see, Jack wasn't much taller.

Roz is Roz. She will always be Roz. I tried to faithfully draw her from photos taken in the mid 40’s and 50’s. I added a bit of gray to make her older and aged up Jack to make him slightly less feisty and more feeble. (The man himself was still perfectly willing to punch a man’s face well into his 60’s.)

Jack deferred his draft while he worked like a demon getting his newspaper comics backlogged so that they could run while he was over seas. Within 6 months of his return, Roz was pregnant with their first. She was nervous about what he’d say. He was overjoyed.

Martin Goodman is an actual name. That is the real guy who was in charge of a large publishing house, of which the comics wing was a small and flagging appendix. He is the one who offered and kept promising more money, more credit, royalties, etc. to Jack Kirby. It was always a handshake arrangement. Goodman was an old school businessman, cold and calculating. Handshakes mean nothing. Contracts only mean what can be enforced. He knew he had Jack over a barrel, and he kept Jack there with more promises and an empty sack.

Martin Goodman is also the one who hired Stan Lee as a favor to his wife, who was Stan’s aunt. Everyone who worked in Marvel was a journeyman/freelancer who pushed pencils for bread and had no insurance, but Stan was family. He had a salary from day one, insurance, and later was adored as the public face of Marvel Comics.

It is fair to say that he too was owed some creator’s cash from the properties he helped to foster, but he never got any. Nor did he really seek it out. He had the credit, he had the fame, and his salary was good.

Stan Lee is only mentioned once in passing. His Given name was “Stanley Martin Leiber,” so I just called him, “Stan Martin” for the character. In real life, everyone called him “Stan.” “Stan Lee,” a lengthening of his first name, is what he used as his pen name. It sounded more comic-booky and it hid his Jewish surname.

Fun Fact: The Comics Industry was almost entirely Jewish-dominated at the time, but almost all of them used a pen name, or had their name legally changed.

The opening establishing shot is taken from the Raleigh Skyline from 2011 or so. Raleigh, being a booming town, has added several buildings since then.

If I were a better story-teller at the time, I would have either skipped this establishing page entirely, or interspersed their conversation through it. Probably should have skipped it.

The posters in the back are fun easter eggs. “Famous Five” after the “Fantastic Four,” “Tor” one letter away from “Thor,” and “Romance” as a nod to the ten years Kirby and Simon spent making romance comics in the 50’s.

I have no idea what Martin Goodman looked like, but this is a fun design. That bit about printers throwing away pages when they were done. They really did. Didn't occur to them to send them back. They were on the press, and the originals were in the way. The artists complained because the pages were the only part of what they made that they owned. The printers would send them back to the office where only Stan Lee and the rest of editorial worked. The thought being artists could pick up their old originals while they were dropping new ones off. Stan didn't get the memo about the pages belonging to the artists. He used to hand them out to delivery boys instead of tips.

Exterior of Duke Hospital in Durham. My wife started nursing there shortly after this comic was made.

To my knowledge, Jack never actually punched anybody out that worked with him, but he definitely came close more than once. Will Eisner recounted how one of his employees in the early days absolutely punched out an anti-jewish employee. Jack was working for Eisner then, but it wasn't him. A tall blond goy did the punching.

Anti-Semitism in this time was a strange thing. New York was a very Jewish place to be, but was also a very WASPy place to be. The American wing of the Nazi Party (before the U.S. joined the war) held a sold out rally in Madison Square Garden while Jack and Joe were working together. The same year, they made a comic with a literal blond haired blue eyed super man punching out Adolf Hitler on the cover. That was Captain America’s first appearance.

Jack got a phone call when the comic was on the stands. The caller said: “Look here jew-boy, if you want to know what a real aryan super man can do, we’re waiting for you downstairs in the lobby.”

Jack calmly and dutifully hung up the phone, rolled up his sleeves, and walked downstairs.

No one was there.

Charlotte Skyline. The cafe depicted was a real place there in 2010. Don’t know if it’s still there. Nick Mackey is a guy wholly made up. Simon couldn't do this alone. He needed a white knight lawyer to take the case. Thus, Nick Mackey and his (uncharacteristic for New York City at the time) white suit.

His full name is “Nicholas Mackavoy.” A play on Niccolò Machiavelli. A try at a subtle nod that Nick wasn’t in it out of the goodness of his heart. He knew the winning side, and wanted to be on it.

This panel drives me bonkers! The visual tangents are marked in red. Tangents are the bane of every comic artist in the world. An incredible and severe amount of effort is spent avoiding the drawing of tangents at every level of comic making, and here I am with 2.5 tangents in one panel. UNACCEPTABLE!

Pro Tip: The quickest way to take your comics from Amateur Hour to Promising Talent is to never allow a tangent to get inked, and (most important of all) make your lettering as absolutely invisible as possible. More indie comics than not are ruined by bad lettering. Don’t let that be you.

Martin Goodman was jewish. Why is he talking smack about someone’s “Jew friend?” Again, anti-Semitism was weird at this time. Will Eisner, a devout jew and prominent saint of comics, wrote extensively about judaism at the time. There was a certain subset of Jew who thought they could get ahead by talking down about other Jews and judaism. Not sure if it worked. The way Eisner tells it, they always came off as try-hards.

A bit of wish fulfillment here. Who hasn't wanted to hand this kind of resignation to a boss?

To Wrap Up…

It’s nearly ten years later as I type this, and I still love this little short. It has everything. Love for friends, love for family, courage born of desperation, a vile villain, and a happy ending for the good guys.

In terms of writing, it holds together well and wastes no time. The whole story introduces characters, tells you who they are pretty quickly, gets them into and out of sticky situations satisfyingly over the course of one mini-comic. For the guy I was as I was making this book, it was a terrific feat to accomplish all of that.

Art-wise I was able to stretch my wings a little bit. At this time it was all journal comics so almost anyone I drew was from life and there was very little room to draw characters I made up and enjoy their own shape-language. This book only had two people drawn from life, and I was able to take liberties with them as well. I hadn’t ever tried to color as extensively with my markers than I did at this point. It was a huge experiment to see if the markers could handle it, and if I could handle them. Clumsy in places, blotchy and streaky in others, but I’m still happy with it. Nothing so bad it took from the story.

This was also the first bit of comic that I tried inking with the Pentel Pocket Brushpen. The bristles were too soft for me in the first 10 pages, but after page 20, I was able to start laying down some good lines with it. I still use that pen to this day.

I remember that I wanted very much to knock this story out in one month, but it was not to be. It took closer to 3. I remember being disappointed at my speed then (I’m even more disappointed now!) and mentioning how guys like Rob Guillory could knock out a similar page count with colors in less time. Rob himself commented on my blog the next day:

“Don’t worry about it, man. Quality takes time, and you put a lot of quality into this comic.” -Rob

Put me on cloud 9. Been riding that high ever since.

Thanks for reading.

All my best,
-Gabe D.

Why "Coffee and Hate?" (You seem like such a Nice Guy)

In 2016, I was quite done.

With everything.

And with everyone.

I turned 30 that year, and I was full of hope. The kind of hope that can only be bought with grand plans. 2016 was going to be my year.

Purgatory Pub (book 2) had well and fully whooped my butt. The convention circuit (the only place where my books get sold outside of kickstarter) whooped even harder. I could barely sell a copy. Book 1 sold well. Sold gangbusters at a few cons. Book 2, not so much. It wasn't just me. All my indie comic friends had a rough year. The people at the cons weren’t there for us anymore. I had a shut-out at HeroesCon. The biggest convention in my year in my area. Three days. Zero sales. That had never happened before.

There was a long time pro at Heroes, Tom Lyle, who I idolized as an adolescent and a teen. He turned art professor at SCAD and went to Heroes every year to support his students, recruit more, and generally hand out good natured advice. It was my annual custom to show him my newest comics and get new advice.

“Hey, this is pretty good! Have you tried submitting to any of the indie publishers?”
”Yeah, they’ve all turned me down so far.”
”Have you tried comixology?”
”They turned me down too.”
”Tried posting this on the web?”
”I got no traffic going to that website.”

He gently handed my book back to me and said, “I’m sorry, but I think it’s time to try something else.”

[Didn’t know it then, but that was the last time I’d ever see him. Freak brain aneurism. 66 years old. Sweet guy. I’m gonna be missing him for a long time.]

I tried something else.

I planned a new business. A broadsheet sized collection of fresh new indie comics on newsprint. Self-distributed to coffee shops, free to the public, and ad subsidized. I had dropped 18 months of planning, research, number crunching, and interviewing prospective clients into making it. I had spent money on business cards, brochures, a lawyer (to draw up form contracts), and artists getting a dummy copy of issue one printed (with artist permissions). I spent a month on foot revisiting all the prospective clients, business owners who claimed they would be stoked to advertise with me.

When the day came to sign the dotted and pony up some cash (cheapest ad rates in town no less) they all became decidedly less stoked. Except for three businesses. Three businesses got excited and dropped money.

I didn't meet my break even goal. I had literal holes in all my shoes and no capital of my own to make up the shortfall. I returned the money.

All three businesses went under within 6 months.

I tried something else.

I liked making kids books a whole bunch. I had made two of my own already and I made a third that I would try to get published.

At the prodding of a trusted friend, I joined the SCBWI and dropped $300 on their local conference (my very bottom dollar). Art buyers, and job givers were supposed to descend on Charlotte to review submissions and portfolios and give critical insider information on getting published and making a living with kids books.

7 “pros” showed up.

Four out of the seven were significantly younger than me, and spoke at length, about what a pain in the ass it was to have to fly down to “Charlotte of all places” between sips of $7 coffees. Each of their “presentations” opened with two minutes of “just because I work in a Manhattan High Rise on 5th Avenue, doesn’t mean I work in some ivory tower!” The rest of the “presentations” consisted of worthless information that I found on the internet for free.

I’ll save you the time/money.

Get a current copy of “Children’s Writer and Illustrator’s Market,” research publishers looking for your kind of material and are accepting submissions. double check on their website that they’re still legit, FOLLOW THEIR SUBMISSION DIRECTIONS TO THE LETTER, and submit.

Good luck, kid.

Of the seven pros, two were book agents who told us up front that neither they nor their agency are “accepting new clients at this time, but here’s a presentation on how to get us to represent you if we were.”

One pro was an art director.

One.

The only one in a position to review portfolios and the only one in a position to offer illustration jobs. Except portfolio reviews costed a further $50. Policy of the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators.

For context, every comic pro I have ever met EVER has said, “If they charge to look at your portfolio, it’s a scam.”

They were right.

The one art director wasn’t heartless, his hands were just tied. I managed to get him alone for 5 minutes to get some pointers. ANYTHING.

“The art is alright, but your colors… they’re all off and coming from everywhere.”
”Well, there’s a reason for that,” I said. “I’m colorblind. I eye-dropper my colors from other illustrators color pallets. Any suggestions? Maybe a way to do that better?”

His eyes got wide as dinner plates and he handed my portfolio back to me. Avoiding eye contact he said, “I got nothing for you, man. I think you may need to look for something else to do.”

I tried something else.

I made what I thought was a fun kids book about cats. Written and drawn in my one voice, so I liked it okay. Clean language and lots of drawings of cats, so I figured a publisher would like it too.

One did!

We began emailing back and forth. To paraphrase the conversation:

Them: Love your book. Super funny. Very cute. Your colors are a bit… off. Can you change those?
Me: Oh sure, no sweat. I’m colorblind myself, so I can change them to any scheme you like. Here are some samples.
Them: …
Me: You still there? What color treatment do you like?
Them: Sorry. After reconsidering, we won’t be publishing your book after all.

It wasn't the first time the colorblindness costed me a job. It hasn't been the last either.

2016 was the year my heart broke several times.

On the long car ride home from Charlotte, it occurred to me that any act of creation I had made up to that point was done in the face of active discouragement from both forces seen and unseen. Certainly any more things I make after that point would be an act of defiance. A great big Middle Finger to… Someone? Everyone? Myself?

Up until then I was making things under the imprint “Fire Lights Media,” because I thought it sounded cool and it made a neat logo. When I got back home to Megan I said to her, “I’m gonna start making stuff under the banner ‘Coffee and Hate.’ They’re the only things I have left that’ll ever get stuff done.”

Megan is usually the sort who tells me to calm down and “quit being so emo.” On this occasion, without skipping a beat, she said, “Oooooh YES! You should TOTALLY do that!”

I think it sounds better than “Fire Lights Media,” and I think the logo is even cooler. Especially since it comes in so many different flavors.

I’ve been making videos, a short film, kids books, scripts for more comics, and more Purgatory Pub since then. Each with one of these happy little logos attached to it somehow. I made this website as a place to put all that stuff so I could still share it with you. With anyone.

Keep an eye here for the new stuff when it comes out. Or, better yet, Sign up for my mailing list to get notified when new stuff drops. (Just scroll down to sign up.)

AS for the new logo(s), I’m planning to make T-shirts in the near future. Anyone want one?

-Gabe D.

Idea Debt (The Citytown Crisis)

Idea Debt is an interesting term to explain a vital concept that all creatives need to know and understand, and here we go…

Idea Debt is “When you spend too much time picturing what a project is going to be like… …And way too little time actually making the thing.” - Jessica Abel. (Click here to read her full post on the subject.)

The term, was coined by graphic novelist and living legend, Kazu Kibuishi, and later expounded upon by indie comics queen and even more legendary, Jessica Abel. It is essentially a way to describe a fallacy of sunk costs inherent in creative work. Time and creative energy is spent on a concept of a work that the creator is unable to execute right away. The more time passes without the concept being executed, the larger the concept grows in scope and the larger it’s psychological significance looms in the would-be artists mind.

Both Lady Abel and Master Kibuishi recommend that the idea debt be recognized for what it is, a sunk cost, and abandoned immediately. That amazing epic a creator came up with in their adolescence would take years if not decades to execute, but now that the creator has grown into someone with better skills and know how to tackle it, the concept has aged poorly. That self-same creator has grown in maturity as well as skills, and most likely has new stories to tell. Better stories. But The Debt looms large and if it is not cast aside, if the creator does not forgive themself, the debt will eat them. Years at a time.

Great advice.

Essential.

I highly recommend it.

I didn't do that.

The Citytown Crisis is Idea Debt that I, not only held on to, but that I paid down.

Possible cover for the print version.

In 2013 I came upon the brilliant(ly naive) idea to quit my webcomic shenanigans and begin writing and drawing full graphic novels. One a year. I wrote and completed the whole script to my first full length Original Graphic Novel, “Purgatory Pub,” by the middle of that spring. At the time of this writing, that was 8 years ago. To date, I have only been able to execute 3/4 of the story. (I split the story into 4 separate books. The final book is due about 18 months from now.)

The long days and weeks of working on this one story has lead to the accumulation of back catalog of new story ideas stuck in my head and various notes around my computer. "The Citytown Crisis” was one of them.

In essence, it was my love letter to The Powerpuff Girls and all the Cartoon Network cartoons of that day that helped to shape me. Also, my daughter was almost school aged at that time, and we watched a lot of these cartoons together. I wanted to make a cool book that she would like and want to show off to her friends. I wanted to be cool dad.

I wrote out the outline and put it somewhere and that was that.

It sat there for 6 years.

Several other stories sat in the same place, but I heeded the exhortation to forgive those creative debts and abandon them there. However, that one story with the giant monster and the jokes? Can’t throw THAT one away.

In November 2019, I completed and kickstarted Purgatory Pub #3. It is the best drawn bit of comics that I have ever made, but it came a mighty cost. I was burnt out REAL hard on that book and those characters. All of its files were finalized and sent to the printer. It wasn’t due to be in my possession for shipping to backers until sometime in February, giving me a free vacation of 4 months. Ivy was in 4th grade, so time was short, but not impossible. My brilliant(ly naive) idea was to knock the book out in three months and have one left over for safety. I would finally make this fun book and present it to her and her classmates and be the coolest dad ever!!!

Two things stood in my way.

1) It took 6 months. Not 3. (WHEN WILL I LEARN?!)

2) Covid 19

All the kids went home and have not yet gone back to school in person yet. (Not mine, anyway.) At the time of this writing, my child is finishing elementary school from a distance. I have missed my window to be cool dad with cool books. Which is fine. It’s kind of a silly goal in the first place, to show off in front of a child’s classmates. Besides, SHE has my book and seems to like it okay.

Final takeaways from this long diatribe?

1) Idea Debt is bad. Forgive yourself and move on.

2) Don’t make things in order to show off. Make them to make them.

All my best,
-Gabe D.

Journal Comics (Year Three)

Year three of the journal comic was a bit on the tumultuous side. I had fully dedicated myself and the comic to the traditional webcomic format. I was following the formula to a T, was updating the website regular as clock-work, and had been for nearly three years by this point, but to very limited success.

The art continued to improve, and I continued to experiment. Using gray markers to render background elements instead of using photoshop. No longer removing all saturation from the comic. Instead allowing the warm and cool grays to interact on the screen as they always had on the paper.

What’s more, my creative bug was starting to get itchy. I had stories I wanted to write. Fictional stories. After handling my domestic duties as the at-home father, the comic’s format and update necessities left almost no time for sleep. When I was lucky enough to secure client work, there was no time for sleep at all. This didn’t go well.

For a few days at a time, I would think, “Boy, Ivy has been really a handful for this week. I guess the Terrible Two’s are upon us.” However, after a rare and blissful full night of sleep I would think, “Wow, Ivy is being really sweet today!” It took far too long to put two and two together and realize that my work schedule and lack of sleep were making me a bad dad.

Furthermore, I was growing bitter that my little webcomic was garnering such little success. What few reviews and what little press I could garner always came back positive, for which I was grateful, but they never translated into a wider readership or more books sold. In my naivety, I figured after a few years of following the formula, some measure of outward success, not matter how small, would make itself apparent.

It did not.

That’s not how it works.

In creative work, there are no guarantees.

At all.

It was a hard and heartbreaking lesson to learn, and during this time I was learning it.

I began writing stories again, and began looking at my webcomic with more and more sadness and disdain. One day I decided I’d be better off sleeping than I would making the next comic for the next update. I felt the same way for the next day, and the day after that.

The journal comic never had a conclusion or a nice bow wrapped on it to signal I was done. I just stopped making it. However, I didn't stop taking notes for more journal comic entries right away, and I always reserved the right to pick it back up again.

I still do.

In the meantime, enjoy the rest of the journal comics here.

These never made it into a book, so this is the only place to read them.

Share and enjoy!
-Gabe D.

Journal Comics (Year Two)

The journal comic was up and I scratch-built a wordpress-comicpress website to house it and give me a place to post it.

The journal comic was begun as an exercise in drawing and story-telling, but after Ivy was born it became a precious document of a very serious and pivotal moment in our lives. It also had the jokes and silliness inherent in our lives, which made it only more special. So I kept it up and, in the second year, rededicated myself to it.

I gathered photo-reference, drew from life, and experimented daily. My art and my abilities grew very quickly, and I was able to find a certain stride between the end of year one and the beginning of year two. (posted here)

Being deeply uncomfortable with the quality of my line art, and my early phobia of spot-blacks, I began to make up for the visual short-fall with marker shading. It was a tremendous revelation to me and my love affair with alcohol based markers has persisted to this very day. It was a revelation in another way as well.

As a boy, filled with adolescent fantasies, I could not shake the constant feeling that if I could simply get my hands on the “right” art supplies, I’d finally start getting good, or I’d finally be a “real artist.” In high school, the best of the best coloring implements were Prisma Colors. The colored pencils and the markers specifically. All the cool kids and really inspiring artists used them, but they were expensive, and the “cool kids” definitely came from much more liquid households than I did.

As an adult, I reached the point where I needed to experiment with them to grow. I started with only 4 of the precious Prisma things and the experiment was a resounding success! Being colorblind, I limited myself to gray markers.

By halfway through this second year of comic making, I had run through and fully killed a case’s worth of Prisma color markers. The time had come for the Super-Legit OnlySuperRealArtistsNeedThisStuff Refillable Copic Markers. I ran a small fundraiser and was barely able to afford the 12 pack of copic Cool Gray markers and their refills (things were lean in our house at this time).

I still use these markers regularly today, 10+ years later.

In rededicating myself to this comic, It became no longer an extended exercise, and instead became The Thing I was making. I began the process of trying to turn comic-making into my long term career on the back of this journal comic. An uphill battle to say the least. I began to lose even more sleep.

Experience is always the best teacher, and I learned a lot this year.

A lot happened as well. Moved back to Megan’s hometown (a stone’s throw from my own) and I lost my childhood dog. The story is in the middle of the batch and acts as a pretty severe gut-punch to most people who read it. Thus this warning.

I had to put that dog down more than ten years ago. I haven’t had a dog since. I can’t. At the time of this writing, I am a 35 year old man, and I still think of and miss that animal at least once a month. Filthy, fluffy, and dumb as a post. She was a 40 lbs. of clumsy mongrel, but yet also so sweet and loving as to give the coldest heart faith in goodness itself.

Anyhow, Enjoy this second batch of journal comics!

All my best,
-Gabe D.

Journal Comics (Year One)

It was spring 2009, and I had chosen a new course.

Two more years of school.

I was graduating with my degree in English a semester late and I had decided that I would stay in school for two more years to get another degree in Graphic Design. Seemed like a good idea at the time. I figured it would pay off in the long run. So far it really hasn’t. (Not monetarily anyway.)

I didn’t know anything about Graphic Design (didn’t really know what the term meant). I figured it would secure me some white collar work so that I could live somewhat comfortably (nope), afford me some spare time, and give me some pretty essential skills in what I did want to do: Make Comics.

That’s why I got the English degree as well. I wanted to get better at telling stories so I figured a degree in writing would help. (It did kinda.)

I was upset because two more years of school meant two more years of living in a small and not at all appealing town (sorry Greenville). It meant two more years before I could really persue my dream and “start my life” as I kept saying. I felt like I hadn’t started anything and that I was somehow holding my wife back. She assured me that I wasn’t, that I was already living, and to stop thinking of myself as stuck in some cosmic transition.

As usual, she was very right.

Taking her advice (and some of her money) I went out and bought a pad of Bristol board, some ink nibs, and some ink. Then I started drawing.

The first thing I drew is the first page in this batch of journal comics.

Actually, this was the first comic I drew with the new nibs.

Being a young writer, the fantasies of adolescence still fresh in my mind, I had no shortage of comics stories to write, but very few skills with which to draw them. Art school, up to that time, had done it’s level best to grind the comic-making bug out of me. It didn't succeed, but my art skills were none the better for it. I needed valuable practice, and I needed it right away.

Journal comics were the obvious choice. It would force me to draw from life (the quickest and most powerful way to improve) using reference material that was readily available. It would give me small short snippets of story to tell at any given time so that I could amass a body of short works quickly (second quickest way to improve). It would keep me from spinning my wheels at a word processor. The biggest part of the writing would be done for me.

The instant I began drawing was the instant my outlook on myself, my life, and my over all mood improved. I started very slowly. I would complete one comic page per week at first, but I was doing it. Finally. I was doing the thing I had said I wanted to do since I was a boy.

One page a week turned into two. Two pages turned into three. In my first year I began to post my comics online in what had become the classical webcomic format. One update at a time with a navigation bar below and an archive system. I managed to update twice a week with multiple pages, and then three times a week. Most of the webcomics at the time followed a newspaper format. Strips of 3 to 5 panels. I followed the comic book format. Pages, with establishing shots, environments (as best I could draw them) and sometimes more than one page to tell the joke/story.

My 3 updates per week goal was ambitious and I began losing sleep. Luckily this was during the time in my life where the loss of sleep was kind of invigorating. I was working hard at something I always wanted to work hard at. I was also a full time student working a minimum of two part time jobs and a maximum of four depending on marching season. (I had minored in Percussion, and I taught high school drum lines.)

Then Megan got pregnant.

It was planned, as much as these things can be planned. We had discussed that we wanted to be young parents and we were overjoyed. I was overjoyed and terrified. No dad is ready to be a dad until they are.

The implications of my humble little journal comic changed drastically at that moment. It became a contemporary document of what Megan and I were truly like as young people in the world on our own. It also became a living document of Megan’s pregnancy. Later it became the document of our daughter’s first year and my first year learning how to be a father.

Megan compliments me by saying I “took to Fatherhood like a duck to water,” but the truth is, Ivy was the world’s easiest baby. She then grew into the world’s easiest toddler, and at the time of this writing, is the world’s coolest kid. But she was still a newborn. I began to lose more sleep. It stopped being invigorating. But the comics persisted.

The first year of results is Linked Here.

Share and Enjoy!
-Gabe D.