Con Artists #06 – Tickets & Tables

Dec14
by on 14 December 2020

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As the pandemic rages on, more and more independent artists are left figuring out how to manage their careers in the absence of in-person events, specifically exhibiting at conventions.

The pandemic is also a time for reflection. As the big conventions struggle to give fans some semblance of the con experience through digital-only replacements, independent comickers D. Bethel (of the webcomic, Long John) and Kyrun Silva (of Taurus Comics) come together to discuss the difference in experiences, expectations, and realities of what going to a convention means for fans versus what it means to creators and how the chasm between the two experiences may be larger than they thought.

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Quick Shots #4: “Dead Words”

Dec11
by on 11 December 2020
Chapter 4, Page 16 – “Dead Words” (click image to go to the full page)

Chapter 4, Page 16 – “Dead Words”

This is a fairly simple page, but I really like how it captures the mundane: a busy bar on a rainy night. There’s a lot of importance to this page; it’s the title drop, of course, but it’s also the start of some of the deepest (implied) backstory we get to our title character so far in the series (the writing––and holding back––of which, I write about more on the notes for this page).

The line art from this page. Click image for a larger look.

What I like most about it is that I feel the atmosphere of a warm, lively, but welcoming room is captured pretty well in the first two panels, something that needed to be nailed after the very menacing tone of the previous scene.

Fun fact: the two folks in the extreme foreground of the second panel are the same drunk buddies seen walking around Lundy at the beginning of chapter two.

The two laughing friends in the foreground of the second panel are seen at the beginning of Chapter two walking around Lundy while a bit intoxicated as well.
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Quick Shots #3: “Living Dogs & Dead Lions”

Dec04
by on 4 December 2020
Chapter 3, Page 31 – “Living Dogs & Dead Lions” (click image to go to the full page)

Chapter 3, Page 31 – “Living Dogs & Dead Lions“

Early in the development of Chapter 1, there were a few strict visual symbols I made sure to regularly work in to the book because they represented something important to the character of Long John. At least, important to how I understood him at that time. In many shots of the first two chapters, for example, Long John is framed between two strong verticals, representing how trapped he is in his own mind and past.

Obviously, as the work went forward and became more concrete and the story more detailed and the characters more nuanced, the abstract and, ultimately, uninformed ideas floated away for a more subtle approach to theme and storytelling.

The line art for this page.

Chapters 2 and 3 are really two parts of the same story, and knowing how much time it takes to make one of these books, the end of Chapter 3 had a long runway for planning. Of course, I knew what would happen in terms of plot, but the realization that Chapter 3 would literally end where Chapter 2 began––at Lady May’s storefront––and do so with the main character in a very different place than before felt almost poetic and classic (in the sense of a chiastic or ring narrative structure found as far back as Homer’s work in The Iliad and The Odyssey) and made the two chapter arc feel much more complete and literary than before. So, of course, I couldn’t help myself to try to have the story––once it hit a thematic middle point––move in reverse order while still moving the plot forward. That’s what two English degrees gets you, I guess.

So I formatted this page to broadly mirror the last time May went out back to find Long John waiting for her in the dark. Doing that––and being the English nerd that I am––really made this part of the story feel like a cohesive unit to me and that this story I was telling had all the narrative and thematic weight I hoped it would have, at least with the ability I had at the time.

Chapter 2, Page 5 – “A Light in the Dark” (click image to go to the page). The chiastic “mirror” page to Chapter 3, Page 31.

While the scenario may be similar, it’s clear a lot has changed in the interim. Long John has gone from a tired, broken, confused man to a confident, angry, man with a plan, setting up the back half of the rest of the comic. So, in a lot of ways, it’s a page that I’m really proud of because of how it culminates the story of Chapters 2 & 3, but I’m also very proud of the page itself. On a superficial level, I am please with how good the page looks on its own, which––after all of this deep thought––is a nice bonus on top of it all.

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