Long John

We return after three years since the last book released and it’s quite a ride to the finale.

I’m writing this the day after I put the final touches on the final page of the chapter, and I’m still processing the achievement of it.

I published first page of Long John to this site on June 23, 2014. Now, eleven years later, I’m posting the beginning of the story’s final chapter. As would be expected, I did not expect it to take this long to make this story happen. It just happened to coincide with the uptick in my teaching career and getting full time work pushed any comic work to the breaks––winter breaks and summers. I was happy with the every other year clip I maintained since Chapter 2, and I really hoped to have this done last year, but I didn’t want to compromise on the quality of the ending, to make sure it felt right.

To that end, this was the toughest chapter to break down and plot out. The ending that stuck was not the ending I thought I would have, but that’s the pleasure of giving yourself time and trusting your ability––if it felt wrong, I went back to the drawing table, so to speak.

All that being said, this opening, too, was a challenge. I had difficulty figuring out where to start it. But then I landed on this image and––like it always does––I knew where to start.

At this year’s CrockerCon, I was asked by someone who came to the table what that balance is between writing and art when it comes to creating the book, and I fumbled the answer for a minute because, truly, they are notes in a chord. Drawing is writing and writing is drawing. It comes down to what makes it click. Sometimes it’s a bit of dialogue; sometimes it’s an image. Sometimes one inspires the other. What matters is that, when something clicks, all doubt flies out the window. The grace you need to give yourself is the ability to keep pushing until you hear it.

The thumbnail drawing for this page. The “X” page is the inside front cover of the book, so I didn’t need to draw anything for that.