Blatant Teaser

By Brian • 20 January 2016

Oh ho, what do we have here?

If I didn’t know any better, I’d say those are comic book artboards. But I do know better—I actually laid them out, so I can confirm that they are, in fact, comic book artboards. I have 26 pages plotted and ready for artwork to be added. My plan was to keep it at a traditional 24 pages, but I couldn’t quite fit it all in, even with some creative editing, so 26 pages it is.

I am (finally) working on a new comic book. It’s been two and a half years since Mike and the Ninja wrapped, and while I have had a lingering itch to draw more comics, I felt like a break was in order so as to avoid more serious burnout. I’ve also been pretty busy, as mentioned in my first entry of this particular blog. But now it’s time to get back to it—I can’t hide from my inner need to draw comics forever.

One of the criticisms I leveled against Mike and the Ninja was that I didn’t plan it out properly. Most of the time, I worked from the seat of my pants to try to meet a weekly deadline, so pages were frequently written and/or drawn the day they needed to be published online, without the benefit of revisions or concept art. As such, a lot of characters and story elements were not as developed as I would have liked them to be. It still turned out okay, but this lack of planning led to quite a bit of undue stress in the production of the books.

I didn’t want to make that mistake again in future projects, so here I am with a fully written, fully plotted comic book. I’m just now getting to the drawing portion of the project. Once I get some concept art down and flesh out some character and location designs, I’ll be in business. Of course, all of this pre-planning means this project likely won’t be ready in time for this year’s Cape Comic Con like I intended, but I don’t want to sacrifice quality to push it out by a certain date. That would be repeating the same mistakes made with Mike and the Ninja.

Anyway, I don’t want to reveal too much about this new project. All I can say at this point is that it’s not a Mike and the Ninja story, it will be action-packed, and fans of B-movie horror will probably get a kick out of it. Let the wild speculation commence!