Listen to it here!:
MY NEW PATREON PREVIEW
My new Patreon comic. It’s been up and running for a few months now and as you probably know, you have to pay to see it. That’s the idea of Patreon. Now that the first page is six months old, I feel it’s okay to post it here for free so people can at least see what to expect from Death Life and In-Between. It’s only one page because I was thinking ahead. IF…it ever became a printed book, the first page is usually not a double page spread. The comics that come after this are all two page spreads. Thus, it’s all set up nicely for the publishers when they come knocking on my door to tell me they are not interested.
Also, I can’t tell you what to expect from Death Life except that it will usually deal with dead people or the issues surrounding living and dying. Basically everything! It will NOT be a story that is continued from month to month. It is all related while not being related. What I’m trying to say is, I don’t know what I’m doing!
If you are interesting in seeing more of what is posted below, feel free to join my Patreon page. If you aren’t or you can’t afford to, no problem! We’ll still be friends! Except for that one person…
A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To Creating My Own Anthology
Way back when I decided to make Rabbit Who Fights a printed comic with a variety of my humorous and “sci-fi” comics, I was determined to make each book self-contained and not serialized. For the most part that is still the case, but as I create what will hopefully be issue six, I’m basically writing the third part of what I thought was a stand-alone story in issue four! The stories in these issues are still stand alone with a beginning, middle and end, but the action is now snow balling and building on the events from the issue before.
I created the character Magic in issue four with no clear idea of what I would do with her after that issue ended. I actually wanted to end her story in that book, but ran out of pages. Then, Jenn and Mark had a story that needed telling in the next issue while Magic’s story steam rolled around in the back of my head. These three characters ended up hijacking my anthology. Thus, issue six will be about Jenn, Mark and perhaps…Magic? I didn’t have a choice.
Speaking of Rabbit Who Fights issue six, you can see the thumbnails for the first four pages of that issue above. I sketch most of my thumbnails using pencil and black marker, and then scan them into photoshop. At that point I can arrange them and alter the size depending on how much room is needed for word balloons. As you can also see, I roughly placed the word balloons (with miss spelling and grammatical mistakes) so I can see what works and what’s a mess. It’s always the struggle between storytelling and storytelling and better storytelling! It’s a process that can drive a person insane.
Hopefully book and comic shows will be possible next year and I can be selling issue six (and back issues) in person to some of you instead of only at my on line store! Until then, stay safe!
Thanks for stopping by!
Stay safe!
Tim
UNCLE ANT
The second in my “Pandemic Insect” series. Experimenting with illustration and typography. This one…Seems like a YA novel from the 1980’s. The inside cover flap would read: Uncle Ant was just your average everyday oddball Uncle, until the day he came home riding an actual giant ant!
THINGS THAT DON’T EXIST
This book doesn’t exist. During lock down I thought I’d illustrate the covers to books I’d like to read. In this book, grasshopper warriors terrorize the planet Tenar while the catch phrase “Summer is coming” is bantered about quite a bit. But seriously… creating new illustration “looks?” or “Styles” while we sit inside avoiding Covid while mumbling about the fact that “Fall is coming!” Next up? I’m not sure…but Dung Beetle is on the list for sure!
SIMPLER CONSPIRACY TIMES
A rejected New Yorker cartoon from a “slightly” simpler time when we had no idea what was coming. For the record, Frasier was an okay show from the looks of the few episodes
I saw. It was not “must see tv” for me personally. During that time period I was
only interested in keeping up with The X-Files. I guess the truth could still out there
if it’s not… “fake news.”
My “Semi-Reliable” Diary Comics At The Comics Journal
A big thanks to Editor in Chief, Tucker Stone for allowing me to do
a week of diary comics over at The Comics Journal this week! Do
you wonder why I’m doing this? Do you have questions about
how reliable they are? Do you wonder when it will be a
Netflix series? I have answers!
I never really gave much thought to creating autobiographical comics. After all, my life has not been incredibly traumatic or
amazing. I wasn’t a kid who made the difficult move from my
country of origin to a foreign land. I didn’t survive a war. I didn’t
grow up in a funeral home. I didn’t even work as file clerk at
the Veterans Administration Hospital in Ohio! The short stories
related in my Semi-Reliable Diary Comics from the 90’s kind of
spilled out of me as I attempted to write some sort of 90’s genre
tv show review. That idea deflated as soon I typed the words,
“Night Man was a tv show…” But what was going on with
me personally while Star Trek TNG and Batman Adventures was
king seemed like a story I was more interested in telling.
These “Diaries” were a bit therapeutic for me, even if reading
them is absolutely no fun for you. Writing about past events
can cause long lost memories and emotions to bubble to the
surface, and I tried my best not to be too precious or make
poignant inspirational messages out of my memories. What
you see is mostly how it all came back to me. We all know
memories are unreliable.
Why are they “semi-reliable?” As I said above, our memories
are imperfect at best. I was a big fan of Eddie Campbell’s comics
in the 90s and often enjoyed his Alec strips. Thus, I admit taking
a page from Alec and changed names, dates and chronology
to protect the guilty and the innocent. After all, when it
becomes a Netflix show I don’t want any lawsuits.
Rabbit Who Fights issue 5! (but mostly…wash your hands)
Issue five of Rabbit Who Fights arrived at my house safe and sound! Full color and printed on wonderful non-shiny paper! That’s the good news. In fact, I know many of you are stuck inside waiting out the Coronavirus, so here are some of the “funny” comics from issue 5 for you to read for free! Free cartoons! Funny cartoons!!!
The bad news: Being that many people are not working due to their place of employment being shut down, and many businesses being
in jeopardy due to forced shutdowns, I feel less than enthusiastic about urging you to buy, buy, buy! People have more
important issues to deal with just now.
I planned to have this book at MoCCA, but MoCCA, as you may know, has been rescheduled at this point. Other shows are being cancelled as I type this. I usually get Rabbit Who Fights out to comic stores who carry it, but again, that is something that probably won’t be happening right away here in New York City.
So, for now, if you are working and have income, you can buy RWF issue five from my Gumroad site. I live in Brooklyn so, I can send them out if the Post Office remains open. Also, as I live in the NYC area, if you do buy it, wipe off the package, dump out the comics and then wash your hands again after that just to be safe. Who know who touched it as it traveled through the Postal system?
Thus, This has been a boring downbeat post to encourage you NOT to buy my comic! Hey, just be careful out there and wash your hands is all I’m saying. If you want Rabbit Who Fights issue five, I can mail it out. If you are out of work and having a hard time, don’t worry about it! I’ll see you all on the other side of this!
Tim
P.S. See a preview of issue five HERE.
MoCCA, CORONA AND A NEW BOOK
I am no longer on face book (if anyone misses me). No social media is perfect, but fb was becoming particularly troubling. Thus, I hope to be posting here more often where absolutely nobody will be seeing my ramblings! Ha! I laugh…but that is basically true.
On to the main point of this post though! I wanted to announce and show off a preview of the 5th issue of Rabbit Who Fights! Rabbit Who Fights is my one man Anthology which is basically published once a year. This issue has a wrap around cover and TWO Disciples 12 stories along with some humorous cartoons as always.
The book is at the printer now, but will premier at MoCCA…unless the Coronavirus blows up and causes all large gatherings to be cancelled.
If you can’t get to MoCCA, it will be on sale at various stores that I will post about at a later date. It will also be on sale (along with my other books) on my Gumroad site!
Wash your hands, don’t touch the hand holds on the subway
and enjoy the brief preview below! See my updates
on Instagram! (owned by fb…. I know… : (
Wrap around cover
Wednesday September 11th, 2019
I originally posted this in 2016. There is nothing particularly special about it, except to mark the date.
Fourteen years ago I worked at a pharmaceutical advertising agency in Manhattan. When I got on the G-train in Brooklyn that morning, I saw a woman I knew from Pratt. She was the first woman I remember seeing riding everywhere on a scooter. She was from Sweden, I think. After she sold her scooter, I noticed that a LOT of people were riding scooters. Businessmen were riding to work on them, and of course proto-hipsters were riding them to their favorite coffee shops.
We talked, and then we switched to different trains. I got out of the subway at 33d Street in Manhattan and noticed that the streets were mostly empty and quiet. Usually teenagers were hanging out waiting to go into the nearby school. As I walked to my work place I noticed workers hanging out in their trucks listening to the radio. I did think I heard something about an airplane hitting the World Trade Center.
By the time I got to work everyone was trying to get a TV to work. Way back in 2001 not everyone and every work place had WiFi. Rumors circulated that part of a tower fell, and maybe another plane hit the other tower. We eventually found out the reality of the situation when the one television in the office finally got a fuzzy signal.
One of the executives, an executive who usually spent his time yelling at people and who I had no respect for, told everyone to sit tight and let him know if we “needed anything.” It was easy to see he was putting on a fairly false veneer of the caring “fearless leader.” I got my bag and left the building.
I headed uptown in what was a parade of people who, like me, decided to start walking home. Buses and subways were not running. I headed across the Queensboro Bridge with a large mass of like minded people. The woman next to me was in a dress but wore no shoes. We were all fairly quiet and continually glanced back towards downtown and the large plume of smoke.
In Brooklyn the G-train was not running, but an empty bus showed up at it’s designated stop. The mass of people in the street swarmed around the bus door. The driver opened the door, stood there preventing anyone from entering and said, “I have to go use the bathroom first!” I thought moaning and complaining would ensue, but everyone just stood there quietly as she walked away.
A military jet screamed across the sky.
I didn’t know where this particular bus went, just that it was headed for my part of Brooklyn. When the driver came back from the bathroom I managed to get on. Just like the walk on the bridge, everyone remained mostly silent. When I saw familiar streets I got off, and walked another few miles in what I remember being a cool crisp day.
Now, I visit the new One World Trade Center just about every week in order to have 98 percent of my cartoon submission rejected by the New Yorker. I show my I.D. and security scans my little bag full of cartoon gags. They take a grainy picture of me that makes me look like a criminal. On the 38th floor, we get a great view from the cartoonist waiting room. We usually have a lot of laughs.