0 12296
 

A4 Issue Four
Posted on 28th October 2023 by pj

If you prefer you can download the pdf here.

My unending gratitude to Matt and John Yuan (deputy publishers of 1First Comics) who volunteered way back on issue 1 to proofread (off the back of a plaintive twitter plea) and ending up both being great proofreaders and even better editors - constantly encouraging and giving little notes that never alter the fabric of the story but always help.

Stories this issue:

Notifications, Memories of War, Cold Caller, The Civil War, The Monster, Sign Unseen, Ghosts.

A4 Issue Four Notes!

Gah, two stories with War in the title. So annoying. Hadn't spotted it until now, but there it is. It will be my eternal shame.

There were two things drilled in to me from English lessons in secondary school (which I did rather enjoy, I loved writing, and was told to apply for O-Levels early, so I did, and then I didn't do any work because I was fundamentally lazy - so failed it) anyway, the two things: never use the word got/gotten (I think this was my teachers personal bugbear, with teenagers writing "I got given a book then got a clip round the there and got out of there, before he got me" even I'm uncomfortable seeing the word "got" in anything I write) and never repeat a word if you can help it (obvious "I", "and" and so on are all fine). So two wars. Not good. Am annoyed. (Should point out, this is entirely a quirk of my own making!)

From hereon in there will likely be spoilers!

I had planned on a halloween all horror special - or at least as best as I'm able, but of course, I couldn't quite come up with every single story as a horror, so let's start with the least horror like story:

Notifcations

I suppose this and Ghosts share a very common through line, rejection and knowing the person who rejected you never even thinks of you. For a full exploration of this idea, watch the amazing "The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind".

Memories of War

There's a lot going on in the world, and much of it can be traced back so far that you'll never find the beginning point (hello from Northern Ireland!) - and the question is, if everyone lost their memories would those wars still continue. (this story optimistically says we'd all stop, I have a horrible feeling we wouldn't)

Cold Caller

Phew! Lighter fair! Actually there's a different story that uses the same sort of idea (the no-hawkers caveat that many people have at their door) I've been sitting noodling as a short comic for a few years (how many? oh man, it's embarrassing to tell - but let's say I first thought of it pre-pandemic) it would be far too long to do as one of these stories, so this slightly different version of it popped in to my head.

I am pretty proud of that title though, it came late - after I'd written a bunch of the stories and I was thinking "gah, now i need a title" and ping! there it was!

I did want to do stuff that was just a smidge lighter than last issue, because I've been told some of this stuff is DARK. I think of it all in the abstract, words on paper rather than real monsters. But we're haunted by the real and the imaginary, I suppose.

The Civil War

I saw a writer (a good writer;   it'll be a good book) talking their new Zombie book and it got me thinking, that zombie stories tend to be the ultimate "yeah of course I was the assehole prepping for the end of the world, and look, I WAS RIGHT" and I thought "what if instead of it being zombies, it's that everyone was just really really nice to each other ... oh... those asseholes wouldn't change..."

The Monster

I'll be honest, andI bet readers can tell, I shoehorned frankenstien in too this (because I wanted monsters, dammit)

Here's my orginal story idea from the apple notes app:

He had fragmented himself, Pumping his entire written and audio corpus through AI Large Language Models, and created an army of bots, one for each of the balkanised social media platforms. And he was finally free. Free to get on with work.

Is it better? it might be.

Sight Unseen

This could be policitical satire, I suppose. In the hands of a better writer. Instead it's simply a piece of fiction.

Ghosts

Gotta be honest, I just loved the shape and sound of the story. I love that it works on a couple of levels.  It pretty much came out fully formed, and so short. Honestly this is the joy of these shorts, there's not an ounce of fat on the idea, there's no point trying to extend it, and there's a sort of poetic quality to it. Anyway, might be one of my favs.

 

Hope you enjoy it, I would love to know what you think - you can fire me off an email to pjholden at gmail dot com if you like!

Folklore Thursday: Chronos

Posted on 10th October 2019 by pj

Chronos was the Ancient Greek word for time, Cronos their sickle carrying God of Agriculture. Romans related Cronos to their own Saturn, and made him an old man. His sickle became a scythe, and Cronos became Old Father Time who, in turn, became The Grim Reaper. #FolkloreThursday

John Reppion

As befitting a strip about time, my time has not been my own the past few weeks, so the resulting strip isn’t quite what I wanted, but it’s good enough for government work (as they say)

One thing I like doing is a little bit of research, and panel one, the first sentence was an opportunity to ask yourself some questions – like “wait, what DOES and ancient greek time keeping device look like”. So I googled it and got this odd looking sundial. Now I have a new friend on twitter, Dr Rena, an archeologist and expert in this time period and she pointed out that this isn’t wrong, BUT more common would’ve been a water timer – but I’d already drawn the damn thing, and that at least looked like a thing I’d recognise as a time keeping device, whereas the water timer just looked like two pots.

I wanted, in the strip, to get across how simple and obvious the transition from Cronos, to Saturn to Old Father Time and then the Grim Reaper. I think I did that, but it’s clumsy and not at all subtle, but I am pretty happy with how that last grim reaper panel turned out.

I’m always making decisions about the rhythm of the strip, and these one pagers are interesting exercises in that. The tweet informs the panel layouts, but the panel layouts also inform how I’ll handle the tweet’s breakdown – in a neat little feedback loop.

I’ve always been interested in panel layouts, I used to keep a notebook that had a bunch of interesting panel arrangements, I’ve always preferred simple, straightforward reading experiences, but even with that limit (a zig zag panel layout) there’s a billion ways to slice it. But some panel layouts work great at the start of a book and some work better at the end. Middle is more open, unless there’s a scene transition in there.

It’s a fascinating exercise to open up a favourite book and just draw out the panel layouts. (For a certain level of fascinating, that is…)

Anyway, that’s your lot. Tempus fugit!

Related posts:

  1. Folklore Thursday: Woodwose
  2. Folklore Thursday: Lindwurm
  3. Folklore Thursday: Boudicca
  4. Folklore Thursday: Labyrinth

Schedule

Posted on 28th September 2019 by pj

“How long does it take you to do a page?”

Every comic artist has had to answer that one at some point (and more often than not, they have to answer that one over and over again, both to fans at conventions, to family and friends who’ve no idea and to other working professionals, and finally, most hauntingly, to editors…)

For me, the answer is and will always be: a page a day. (it’s also reassuringly definite)

I mean, it’s a lie. Sometimes I can do two (sometimes three!) pages per day (3-4 hours of solid work can get a page done depending on what’s on it) and sometimes a page refuses to cooperate and can take a week or more (I mean, only when the deadline has the slack built in, otherwise you’re shooting yourself in the head doing that).

There’s a good blog post here about schedules and working within deadlines. They talk a lot about 200 page graphic novels (longest I’ve ever done is 174 pages, and it took a year – longer than I’d anticipated owing to family illnesses)

To help me work through deadlines and jobs, I sometimes use my “comics calendar” – it has 25 boxes – representing 25 pages for each month.

If I can get through each month and tick each of those 25 pages then I know I’m on schedule.

Sometimes I’ll adjust that up or down, for me 25 pages is doable (I’ve done 50 page months before… they were pretty good pages, but it is hard work)

I’ll combine this comics calendar with a proper big wall chart calendar, so I can keep track of when I’m doing work and how much. Subscribing to the Seinfeld joke writing method – essentially put an X on every day that you draw a page, and keey going til all the Xs join up.

And if you work full time and a page a day is just an absolute impossibility (and I sympathise, I worked part time for the first decade of my professional comic drawing career)-then divide the page down into chunks you know you can do – half a page, a quarter of a page, the pencils – single panels, then everytime you do a chunk put and X and move on to the next. Even if you imagine you can do a quarter of a page everyday with a full time job, and you do that every day, that’s still 90 full pages of comics per year…

Here’s my comic progress chart – I mark each project with a different highlighter colour and mark it off through the month – if I only do pencils, then I’ll mark half the box in that colour, and then fill the box when the page is completed.

Comic ScheduleDownload

Oh, and one last thing, I’ve blogged about it and talked about it before, but the pomodoro method is an incredible useful tool to get stuff done. It breaks work into 25 minute highly focused chunks with a 5 minute break with every fourth 25 minute break followed by a 25 minute break. Even if you can only get two of those 25 minute chunk in a day and you do it every day (al Seinfeld method) then you’ll be amazed at how much work you can get done.

There’s apps to make it easier, but you can do the same with a kitchen timer – the app I use is called focus keeper and it’s on the iphone or ipad.

Anyway, all said and down the big, horribly obvious advice is, knuckle down, do the work, don’t get distracted by writing a massive blog post, like I just did. Keep drawing!

-pj

Related posts:

  1. Pomodoro
  2. Folklore Thursday: Hawthorne
  3. Folklore Thursday: Labyrinth
  4. Journal

Folklore Thursday: Locker

Posted on 26th September 2019 by pj

Oh man, we messed up.

Well, we didn’t really, we work from a list in advance of what the next Folklore Thursday is gonna be. The list is pretty far in advance, and, apparently, this week, changed. So instead of whatever-this-weeks-topic was it became insects. BUT THIS WAS THE FIRST WEEK I WAS ACTUALLY AHEAD! so, poop. Instead you’re getting too Folklore strips. Locker, was my new fav.

Davy Jones’ Locker. The deep-sea Hell of the drowned, according to pirate-lore and later nautical-lore. Davy Jones a diabolical figure, sometimes said to be glimpsed among the rigging during a storm. More often than not though, the sea-devil simply waits below.

John Reppion via Twitter

I love stuff like this, instantly I could see it all – deep-sear Hell of the drowned. Class! Trying to get something of a narrative in there – the sailer with the red scarf, drowned in the waters. And shifting to a symbolic skull in the water, was fun in the last panel.

I enjoy drawing gruesome faces, so that much is fun for me.

Related posts:

  1. Folklore Thursday: Mandrake
  2. Folklore Thursday: Mushroom
  3. Folklore Thursday: Labyrinth
  4. Folklore Thursday: Boudicca

Uniform

Posted on 19th September 2019 by pj

I cobbled my version of dredd together over 15 or so years of lifting and removing the bits of his uniform I liked and didn’t like.

The Stallone movie (*spit*) added a couple of things to my Dredd armour – notably a neat tidy collar and tiny little judicial badges (which I only give to fairly senior judges) and a lip or rim around the red part of the helmet…(and my Dredd helmet probably owes more to Steve Dillon than anyone)

(er.. collar badge missing in this picture).

I’m still working on how my eagle looks, but, for the most part it works like this…


Made up of two parts, the lower/inner part acts as the support for the arm, and the eagle – and then the eagle pivots/rests on top of it. Frequently colourists will colour both the same, but my preference is for the inner part to be a dark blue (darker than the uniform even)

I’m still playing with the gloves, but I tend to favour this style (Jock’s design is so strong that even for the brief window he drew Dredd some of his improvements to Dredd’s uniform rippled down through the years)

I imagine they’re velcro fastners. I’ve no idea what the hell they’d keep in those glove pockets -I mean two per glove is a silly size – maybe some bullets?

Belt pouches are fairly classic standard, button with a central ribbing…


Which I think are largely McMahon design.

I don’t think there’s much remarkable about my elbow or knee pads or boots – it’s all big chunky shapes, that look like they’ve been battered about – that’s my preference.

On last thing, and the reason for the blog post… I think – though I may be wrong – I just invented a new way to do one part of the uniform that.. well.. I’ve never been happy about.

The respirator – I’ve seen this done where the badge slides down and covers the mouth and where the entire bulged part where the badge is attached comes down. Which seems marginally more likely (while explaining why it has that bulge)

My new innovation… ta da! is to add pop out fins – now these pop out either side of the respirator when activated, and form a vacum seal around the face (and in fact, possibly they inflate a little – and may – if animated – look like they’re breathing with you).

It looks like this:

(NOT ACTUALLY Judge Dredd… this is another Judge)

I doubt anyone else will ever steal them from me, but even so, I’m happy knowing I adding something totally new to Dredd.

Related posts:

  1. Dredd Chrysalids Page 2
  2. Dredd Chrysalids Page 3
  3. Dredd Chrysalids page 4
  4. Dredd Chrysalids page 5

Folklore Thursday Celestial

Posted on 19th September 2019 by pj

Originally published at https://www.patreon.com/holdenreppion

Unusually this particular folklore thursday tweet went through a rewrite… I’ll start with the finished article, here it is:

On the 23rd of September the Sun will cross the Celestial Equator, marking the Northern Hemisphere’s Autumn Equinox. As Earth enters the final quarter of its year, celebrations like Mabon and Harvest Festival are held in thanks for all that Summer has bestowed. #FolkloreThursday

We’re constantly fighting a number of limitations of time and space (not being timelords, this will always be the case)

John’s original tweet read

On Monday 23rd of September the Sun will cross the Celestial Equator, marking the Northern Hemispheres Autumn Equinox. Thanks Giving festivals take place around the Equinox, including the CofE Harvest Festival (est. 1843) and the Modern Pagan Mabon (est. 1970) #FolkloreThursday

Altered because, as John says “[the edited version] It still sounds a bit like the voice-over in a planetarium, or the start of a BBC documentary, but I think it’s a bit more poetic and interesting (hopefully) “

All drawing is disappointment. You learn to live with the limits you’ve set for yourself. I had a few hours to do this and lacked time to dig in as much as I wanted – ideally the wall of space behind the earth would’ve included an accurate starmap, and an earth that was more realisticly inked/coloured and maybe more of a crowd. But you have to get-it-done. 

So Google Earth to the rescue, and a quick search fo 3d stonehenge and a photo of a horn of plenty for some ideas and that was the pencils…

No related posts.

Holden and Reppion are Making Comics (on Patreon)

Posted on 18th September 2019 by pj

So, been chatting to John about our next moves, and we’ve set up a patreon. If you’ve enjoyed the weekly folklore comics, and want to help us justify to ourselves why we’re doing it, you can sign up to our patreon at patreon.com/holdenreppion

If you sign up, for $5 you’ll help support us and for $10 you’ll get to see things early, I’m usually a day or two ahead of the deadline for art, so you’ll see that.

The back room details and blog posts for everything will all migrate over there too, I’m afraid. But will try and keep it alive here too.

No related posts.

Serves you right

Posted on 18th September 2019 by pj

For many years I ran a wordpress blog off a server on phpwebhosting, I started it so long ago that I don’t think there were that many options for self hosted wordpress blogs.

It was always a little slow, but inexpensive with unlimited storage. And it was dirt cheap since – at the time, the dollar to sterling exchange rate was well in my favour.

But times change.

Last year or so I moved over to wordpress. I didn’t really need a php server, I didn’t need the ability to add new websites, I didn’t need infinite storage, but I did want speed and to not have any hassle at all (not that there was much, but even looking after a wordpress blog behind the scenes was more hassle than it’s worth, sometimes)

But… it was more expensive, and, ultimately, was too restrictive. So I went crawling back to phpwebhosting. It felt like a safer option.

But it was still laggy, still a little prone to breaking (for me) and the final straw was, I think, I somehow got flagged in their servers firewall so I couldn’t even access my own site from home (it would work via my iphone – which was on 3g and had a different IP).

So I gave up and started the move to a new server. Thanks to Ben at https://www.stratagem.host who transferred my old wordpress over and sorted me out, I’m back up and running on a faster server at a cheaper price.

Anyway, that’s all very dull for you, but super interesting for me, and hopefully will make adding updates to the blog that much easier.

-pj

No related posts.

Folklore Thursday: Boudicca

Posted on 12th September 2019 by pj

Oh man, let’s start with the Tweet. I admit, on first read of this, I got very excited, I knew EXACTLY what I was gonna do. Which sounds great, but it’s inevitably crushingly disappointing as your abilities fail to meet your ambitions (and even worse when the failing is one of laziness more than anything)

60AD. Britain 18 years into a Roman occupation lasting nearly 400. Boudicca, Queen of the Iceni – widowed, whipped, her daughters dishonoured – fought back. 70,000 fell before her. A layer of ash in London’s soil still marks the day she burned it to the ground. #FolkloreThursday

– John Reppion

Straight off the bat, I knew we’d see Britain (grabbed here from an internet search of Roman Britain, just used as a placeholder graphic for inking over), then a single strong image of Boudicca killing thousands of romans (ambition) because of the nature of these things you don’t get too bogged down in realism, it’ll slow you down (if she was in the midst of the murderous revenge rampage, you’d probably not even see her at any angle, buried as she would be by roman bodies). So her leaping over a bunch of shields to get to the next tranche. Ideally I’d’ve drawn literally thousands, but (abilities) couldn’t (lazy) do (time) it.

Sent John pencils cus I actually thought this would be a winner of a strip and I wanted that early Dopamine hit of the writer seeing it and going “Awesome”

Pencils

The last panel would be a transition from the battle to modern day london, I thought that would be suitably poetic. The caption in the pencils was, though, destroying the transition – so I ended up moving it for colour.

Boudicca I drew as an older woman out for horrific revenge, coated in Blue Woad, unfettered by clothing (apart from some trousers – I mean my thinking was she would start fully clothed and shed it as the battle continues over days, untroubled by modesty)

Strongly muscular, and I tied the hair into a single braid – there is a historical description of Boedicca by Dio (not Ronnie James)

“In stature she was very tall, in appearance most terrifying, in the glance of her eye most fierce, and her voice was harsh; a great mass of the tawniest hair fell to her hips; around her neck was a large golden necklace; and she wore a tunic of divers colours over which a thick mantle was fastened with a brooch. This was her invariable attire …” 

Dio, Roman History (LXII.1-2)

I’m willing to bet money he never set eyes on her (I mean, given she is reckoned to have died around 60/61AD and he wasn’t born until c155Ad, it’s a safe bet).

That said, the way these things work (and the way they HAVE to work to make them viable) is John sends me a tweet (which is always smart, well researched and based on extant folklore myths or legends) and I use that as a basis for an inspiration that I do WITHOUT RECOURSE TO RESEARCH. I literally don’t have time to do that. Plus, it’s more fun.

Now, having read the description, I’d’ve probably kept the single mohawk braid, but made it a lot longer (down to her hips) and definitely given her a gold torc around her neck. But, that aside, it’s been interesting watching the reaction to the strip (there’s been some negative reaction which seems to come from certain people who reckon I’ve drawn her as a strong feminist and “ugly” – though they don’t seem to give two hoots about the diabolical liberties I’ve taken with the roman uniforms, so I’m choosing to ignore them)

Anyway, here’s the final, hope you like it!

And, finally, John wrote a really interesting article on Boedicca and it’s worth a read here.

Related posts:

  1. Folklore Thursday: Mandrake
  2. Folklore Thursday: Woodwose
  3. Folklore Thursday: Lindwurm
  4. Folklore Thursday: Hawthorne

Folklore Thursday: Labyrinth

Posted on 5th September 2019 by pj

Ok, I admit, this one got shorter shrift than some of the others. Totally on me, John gave me plenty of time (and a great bit of inspiration)

The labyrinth is an ancient symbol. Painted and carved across the world for millennia. Compared to the course of the stars, ripples upon water, the ridges on our fingertips. Perfecting and mastering the labyrinth may be one of humanity’s oldest magical acts. #FolkloreThursday

John Reppion

Time was short, on first read, I knew I wanted to play with a spiral shape – setting the panels in such a way that you’d have to read it in a spiral. I *think* it works, but not 100% sure. And then the final panel – totally on me – I thought it would be a funny undercutting of the building seriousness of the strip (and the dialogue here is mine rather than John’s).

Now, my original plan was to have John walk through a labyrinth as he talked you through of all these things and ending with him facing something? Unsure what.

But I didn’t have the time, so, instead, it was large images. Which meant grabbing stuff from wikipedia. It looked like this:

Images from wikipedia

I did toy with expanding the images out to make our first photo comic, but figured I should put some effort in.

Next week’s will be better.

(Oh, and have you ever tried to reset a pokemon trainer club password? INSANE)

Related posts:

  1. Folklore Thursday: Woodwose
  2. Folklore Thursday: Lindwurm
  3. Folklore Thursday: Mandrake
  4. Folklore Thursday: Boudicca