Crocker Con 2025 – Sunday, 9/21

Sep17
by on 17 September 2025
The poster for Crocker Con 2025 (art by Matt Crouch)

Crocker Con returns and this time it’s bigger and better!

For the first time, the show has been moved out of the ArtMix program the Crocker Art Museum holds every month. What this means is that instead of being a four hour show on a Thursday evening, it is now and all day event that will be held at the Crocker this Sunday, 9/21, from 10 to 4pm. The other thing that this brings with it is that Crocker Con 2025 is FREE to enter. So, there’s NO reason not to go and check out all the costumes, games, activities, and––of course––local talent that will be there.

From what I’ve heard from behind the scenes, it’s already on pace to be the biggest Crocker Con ever, so I’m really excited for the sheer amount of people that will not only be introduced to the talent of Sacramento, but also the Crocker as a museum in its own right.

Unfortunately, I won’t have Volume 6 of Long John at the show, though I’m very close to wrapping up the art on it and will likely start posting to the website soon.

However, I will have all my normal wares and, more than anything, I am up for discussing art and comics as always since the crowd the show brings in is always so diverse and eclectic.

I hope to see you there!

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Chapter 6 Update #5 – 50% of the Final Step

Aug08
by on 8 August 2025
WARNING: There is food in Long John, Chapter 6

As of today, I have crossed the halfway point of the final stage of book creation: shading/lighting.

Just as a recap, my basic stages of comic creation are as follows:

  • Outlining
  • Thumbnailing/Scripting
  • Pencilling
  • Inking
  • Flatting
  • Lettering
  • Shading/lighting

So, when I say I’m halfway, I don’t mean I’m halfway through the overall process; I’m halfway through the final stage of the process which, in my mind, means I’m very close to being done. When I stop to think about it, I freak out a bit, to be honest.

I freak out not only because the gestation period of this book has been uncommonly long, but because it’s the last book of Long John’s story. While I’ve always known that the story would end, it’s kind of weird to 1. not only realize it’s here but that 2. I’ve actually gotten to the finish line.

It’s the end of an eleven-year process that I didn’t expect to take this long, but I wouldn’t have sacrificed any time if it meant compromising the quality of the books I have been making. With that in mind, the satisfying aspect of this last stage of the process is that the finished pages are looking as good as I expected them to look when I drew them.

Even though it’s the last chapter, I’m trying new stuff in these pages.

While that might not sound like a surprise, even if I have an idea of what they should look like when I lay down pencils and inks, it’s still just an idea. Once they’re scanned and flatted, I approach each panel rather individually and it’s only when I finish adding shading and lighting to the page do I step back to see how it all fits together. More than previous chapters, I have looked over the completed pages of Chapter 6 with surprise when I see that they are working as intended with little tweaking or revision needed. As I said to Kyrun Silva (of Taurus Comics) earlier this week, “It’s like I’ve actually learned something over the last 11 years.”

So, I’m eager to keep pushing through these pages (genuinely, I think the hardest pages are behind me) so I can put the final stamp on not only Chapter 6, but on Long John as a whole.

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Chapter 6 Update – Done Lettering

Jul18
by on 18 July 2025
Long John says it best.

It’s true; we’re one step closer to wrapping up not only Chapter 6 but all of Long John! We hit another huge milestone this week by completing a lettering pass on the entire chapter.

What that means is that all dialogue and captions have been placed on the pages complete with word balloons and caption boxes as suits the scene. That doesn’t mean it’s final––that doesn’t happen until it’s published––but the script has already had a handful of passes with another pass done as the pages were getting lettered.

Undoubtedly, as I work through the final stage––adding shadows and highlights to the art––I will tweak some dialogue as I go. However, the story is there; the characters are there. For all intents and purposes, it’s a comic and all we’re really doing from this point forward is adding polish.

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