check out the little bio post on the side!

Click for manly size

This was pretty fun to draw. I'm pretty backwards some times, this post should have been one of the very first on the blog, don't know how my mind made sense of avoiding it for a year.

I also wonder if I should directly link to a few 'choice cuts' of comics as we discussed, straight on that neat little contact.html . Robotboy, Memorybot, Europe after the Rain, Metal Gear Mike, I guess. I think just the 'comics' full tag would work for potential employers, seeing how the ZX pages (which I'm most proud of) will be on the top when sorted like that.

If you want to link me to someone that wants commission work or something else, you now can!

-Helm
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ZX Page 20: These points make up a path.

I finished page 24 last night, I'm officially more than halfway done. Making this comic has become part of my everyday routine and though I don't feel oppressed, I need to keep reminding my brain to get into creative mode when I sit to draw, not work mode.

Another interesting thing about having the comic on my mind a lot is that I find my awareness of how to draw and convey things is improving, not so much due to practice but because of constantly replaying 24 pages worth of artistic choices in my head all day long. I see simple, deceptively simple solutions to a lot of errors I've made in these pages and I kinda look forward to when I'm done with the other 20 and I can go back and retouch, get everything up to my current vision. The end result will be something to be proud of, I hope, condensed vision and also hopefully, a degree of pathos.

When this is done I'll have to think about what more I can do with this blog. I'm torn between strangely disparate options. Either I let the blog mostly rest and update very sporadically with whatever minor (or major?) comic-related pieces I do in the future, or I take the opposite approach and update every single day with creative results on all the fields I maintain an interest in: comics, music, pixel art, videogames, philosophy & science. I wonder which of the two approaches I'll find myself committing to, because I am an extreme person and the middle road of 'post once a week with whatever, meh' will not work for me.

I want to engage in dialogue about a wider scope of items than I am currently, with this blog. As I am in the middle of making a long comic, I don't have time to worry about this too much yet, but when it's done, I'll have to tackle this and hopefully you readers will help me make it into something with a wider focus but not diluted essence. The reason I'm thinking about this is because I do a lot of posting on various forums and blogs about a lot of things, and I put a lot of myself into them. I'd rather have all my thoughts collected here because - besides the obvious benefit of condensed retrospection - I enjoy, how to put it? I'd prefer not being a guest at someone else's house, when it comes to exclaiming opinions in the lengths I usually do. I am an explainer by nature, brevity eludes me, I find facetious one-liners to belong with internet crowds completely outside of my scope and I feel the need to build into even the simplest point I'm trying to make, a number of failsafes and preemptions towards what I feel are easy ways to be construed. So I often write and write and write and I break comment limits on other blogs and I always get this uneasy feeling that this is actually an *abuse* of their comment space, that this is not what is supposed to be going on there, that it's not actually promoting a dialogue to post a novel in the comments, even if I can't help myself but write it every time.

So I want to pull all my writing somehow in a single place, so I am not a guest, so there is no abuse of a function and so I do not feel unwelcome. I don't know how well the diverse amount of stuff I'm into would cohere on the same blog but hey, there'll always be 'sorting by tag' if you've got absolutely no interest in pixel art, or video games, or heavy metal, or biodeterminism or whatever. However I hold this hope that in the end if someone is interested in my comics, they're not just 'interested in my comics'.

Anyway, I'll remember to return to this issue the months from now it will take to finish the comic (I am aiming for March the latest for absolutely everything to be finished and printed).

This is I think, blog post number 98. The blog has been up and running for 13 months. I forgot about the one year flip, so let's pretend hitting blog post 100 is more important. 100 posts in 400 days, 1 post per 4 days average, many comics, myriad thoughts, countless words. Keep reading...

-Helm

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This House (Part 2: Higher Sphere)

Page 2 of 4.

Heh, not much to say about this now. When it's all complete perhaps.

On other news, Greek denizens that desire to buy the book can now go to the Vavel, Solaris, Tilt or Comicon bookstores to get theirs. I'm working on finalizing an arrangement with catchthesoap for non-Athens and/or international shipping too. I've got about 10 orders pending and I'm sorry to dally, within the next week it'll be set up and explained here.

-Helm

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This House (Part 1: Outer Shell)

This is the first page out of 4.

It was made for the last year's Vavel festival (if memory serves). It is another experiment in 'comics as artifacts' and as such it's difficult for me to convey the full impression to you on the internet. You'll understand what I'm talking about when I've posted the whole thing.

This page echoes the Son of Regional Dimensions and really, this sort of gentle reminder of an attempt at continuity is as much as I think I'll ever be interested in the form. Watch a tv show for more of that. My mind skips around from idea to idea too much to settle on a recurring cast of characters. But my newest comic will be a long-running one so I'm trying to think of ways to tie smaller stories together holistically.


On other news, tomorrow I go around Athens to drop off copies of the book at the comic stores and also to meet up with a friend that runs this distro, called Catch the Soap which will help me tremendously in shipping outside of Athens and/or Greece. So if you've placed an order with me don't worry, soon steps will be taken that will circumvent my laziness to go to the post office. Check out the distro if you're interested in good music, also, as that is its primary function. I'll post a post about ordering again once the situation is finalized.

Expect updates every 3-4 days as usual until this comic is done. Then we shall go back. BACK IN TIME. To when a younger Helm -2 thought it more honest to not attempt to communicate though his comics in any sort of standard storytelling, but rather focus on cryptic self-expression as an end in itself. You know... the teenage diary sort of thing! The very first comics I really made!

(They were pretty bad)






(I still like them)

-Helm
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So you want to order a book!

Why would you? It's all in crazy moon language (Greek)!

Well if you insist, we can at least talk about it.

It would cost you 5 euros plus shipping to whichever crazy part of the world you're at. We'll have to sort this out between the two of us. I'm a virgin when it comes to shipping costs. Will you teach me?

You would pay me through paypal, optimally. Or you could entice me through promises of sexual favors that you'd think would never have to be acted upon to forgo currency for a time. But what if we perchance meet in the future?! Would you deny me then?

It's 60 pages. The full-page comics are from this blog (though delicately printed in their original resolution!) and there's a boatload of comic-strips I haven't posted here. The page-setting and graphic design has been handled by the wonderfully resilient and beautiful Anny (though you'd have to take my word for it) and the cover has been painted by the formidable German mountain of talent that is Ptoing (Sven Ruthner to his enemies) and you don't have to take my word for that, you can go over there and see for yourself! Lino-cuts now! There's even a professionally shot photo of me in there by Dominika Dzikowska (some of her work here). I find the photo to be wonderful, though some guys made fun of me for it in the festival. The women liked it though, I uh.. hope.

You may see its dimensions - for they are hefty and inconvenient for any but the most spacious bookcases - below:

Amebix + Bolt Thrower = B.F.F.E.

People tell me it's great. They have to, otherwise the charming person above in the photo with me breaks their kneecaps. Yes, while wearing that on his head.

I don't expect to sell more than 5-10 internationally since it's in Greek so I feel pretty alright with the idea of going to the post office these few times. Uh, actually I don't, that sounds really boring. That at the idea of shipping stuff I feel bored my true lack of ambition for success shows. Hey, you might have to wait a few days to get your order, actually. A week? If the weather is good, less because I go cycling with my dearest friend, Nick, towards the post-office when the weather is good.

But why would you want this anyway? Perhaps you should reconsider.

If you are dead-set about this you may leave me a message through e-mail. You can find my e-mail if you're reasonably crafty.

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A Festival Occured

(click on all images for manly sizes)

One day, the Yus bird decided to go to the Vavel Festival. So he packed up and went. There he met up with the rest of us and set upon the table the new comic book in which he features!

(This is not my coat. This is not my hat. I don't even smoke)

Although things seemed to have started slow...



The place was eventually packed. The book seemed to have gone down well with the natives.



In the next photo you may see the specially designed Culture Ovens the government has issued to churn out new comic artists when the ones manning the tables have died from exhaustion



The atmosphere in our little fanzine oven corner was wonderful, with old friends making return visits and new friends debuting. Next to my spot were the wonderful people of Schizoid mag with whom I established pleasant retort and company and here I will thank them again very much for it. I sold about 120 books, which is about 1/3rd of the way towards paying off the debt from having printed it. I estimate that in the next 3 to 4 months I will be out of the hole on that respect.

I met many people from my little corner and I asked them kindly to when they've read the book leave me comments on the blog or by e-mail to tell me what they thought of it. The comment-space for this post is the place to do so then, kind customers, readers and foremost humans. I appreciate the communication more than I appreciate the patronage, and I already appreciate the patronage quite a bit so, there you go! Let me know what you think!

It was four days of sitting, bad eating, one-upping each others extravagant claims absurdly (something of an inside joke with the Schizoid folks after a while, memorable quotes include myself saying "I never tell lies" and being replied with "well I never tell lies TWICE") selling fanzines, being surrounded by beautiful women (seriously, kinda surreal! beauty to my left, beauty to my right, what is to become of me!) and of course, patiently and futilely drawing on the counter. Here are some assembled shots:
















I stress that these are not my drawings (well some of them are) but a communal effort of friends sharing the common bond of being bored out of their gourds. All of the Free Your Line people and all the Schizoid people along with their assorted friends (about 12 people all together) contributed to beautifying a tabletop that as we speak is being painted over to be used again next year.

Also I should mention that none of these were my own photos, they've been kindly donated by a friend who for nebulous reasons would rather remain nameless. There's much yet to teach this friend about abandoning all shame, I feel. I'd have posted more photos of the other rooms of the festival but I spent 4 days pretty much in that space so I think it's more honest to communicate my personal experience. It involved a lot of sitting down, a lot of calculating change to give to customers and a lot of friendly conversation. It was good times, for me. Good things happened in this festival to me and to people I love so hey, good karma all around!

If you have any questions about the festival or anything else you'd like to know about me and my deepest dreams and sexual fantasies, don't hesitate to ask.

After all of that four-day constant commotion the Yus bird was a bit grumpy and tired so I took him home for rest and recuperation.




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A 24hour comic! (Page 5)

Page 5 of 5.

Oh my, the yellow page. Everything happened (down to the Super Mario stand-in taxi driver) like in the comic. The actual drawing here is a bit rushed in places but I... was in a rush. To feed, to clean up and finally to sleep were incandescent bright priorities at this point, not a silly comic. You're not supposed to make a full story in a single day now I know.

I'm not aware if it's customary in heathen lands for taxi drivers, especially when they pick up people from commute stations, to try to fit in as many people as possible and then entertain their brains by trying to figure out the optimal route that hits all the drop points, but in Greece it's something of a high art. Although of course, completely illegal. I have sheldom taken taxis when I travel abroad because as I've found, they're too expensive. Your savage, heathen lands happen to have developed and trustworthy public transportation systems in place that suit the populance and therefore you don't resort to taxis a lot. In the highly magnificent pillar of civilization that is Greece, if after the train ride (which is dependable but smelly) I wait for the bus to take me home, I might be waiting anything from 30 minutes to three times that. Completely up to the drivers whim. I dislike that position so I customarily spend the 5 euros for the cab ride from Kyfisia to Drosia (which is "wherever the hell home is").

And yeah, the dude in the front got of literally 100 meters later from where he got in. I guess the slight rain and his expensive suit wouldn't mix. This should have been an observation panel in itself really, but, much like a panel needed between 'I headed home' and the fucking toilet that would establish what 'home' was, I was too tired and cut corners. Perhaps a few more panels of the small-talk that occurred between me and flirty mcsexy eyes over there would be prudent because it was interesting how I assumed the role of THE GREAT OBSERVATOR. I noted everything she said with her friend, her bag, her clothing, how she laughed. I judged and spared with the kindness reserved for heart-struck fools. I wondered how our love would be and her body's contour on my satin sheets high in my castle of solitude soon to be renamed. All in all, I should have made another page. But. 24 hours. Tired. Not a robot - sadly. No, wait, not sadly! I'm happy to be a human being, to have tender fleshy meat-thing emotions that when upset can send me spiralling out of daily control and into patters on slow but assured psychological self-destruction.

:(

I hope you liked the comic and you don't feel too irritated by proxy. It was a turning point of me definitely towards the better, so it's an experience that - besides the occasional milking for comics and party conversation - is actually pretty important to me, in all its mundanity. Honestly, I could have gone on narrating from that point onwards to today (it would take about 3,000 pages of comics, I think) and it would be a consistent call-and-response model. Echoes of the choices I made during that time resonate to everything that happens to me today. I wouldn't make that comic because I don't think that when I die and St. Peter asked me what I did with my life I should answer 'oh I made an existentialist comic starring myself working through adolescence to maturity'. It's just not the right thing to say. The right answer is:

"I did everything I desired.
I became a human being.
I live forever."

So, yes, still working on that.


P.S. My friend Esseb (yes I know, what an informative website!) also attempted this, and it turns out I didn't mess up as much as I thought! Some of the outfits are ridiculous but I needed them to be different from each other!


P.S.2 Tomorrow I will have at least 100 of the 500 books I'm printing. If those run out during the festival (which, here's hoping, will happen) I am sure from the 21st to the 23rd or 24th, I can run back and get more. Excited about the festival, excited about everything. Yet another good day with brilliant and kind sunlight. I hope everything is well in your life too, reader.


-Helm

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A 24hour comic! (Page 4)

Page 4 of 5.

The whites here were put in photoshop after the fact, as while I was drawing this the deadline was looming and I decided to just finish the story and do the highlight work later. It didn't take more than half an hour later on at home with photoshop, but you'd be surprised what strange judgment calls you make on what is worth doing after 20 hours of drawing or so.

If you notice this page is generally more discreetly drawn, it is because I switched mostly from the pentel brush to a regular 0.2 and 0.1 pigment marker. This is my usual style really, the brush is something of a new thing. So when I revert to markers, there's instantly more control. I still used the pentel for the SEAS OF UNCOMFORT and the EMOTIONAL RAIN effect. A half-empty pentel + textured paper = lots of interesting dry brush effects one can try.

I am really fond of the 'longing stare' panel. The little Beholder thought bubbles are a nice visual trick I think that really explain the mentality in question.

Sadly for anyone who might to reassemble the girls in photoshop, I think I kinda confused myself at some point so it might not work out completely. Still the point carries through, I hope.

Kyfisia is just an Athenian suburb, 'high-class'. It is my stepping stone from downtown Athens to home (I live in Drosia, even further out, "with the wolves" as we say). It takes me about 30 minutes to get from Athens to Kyfisia with the train, spanning about 15 stops along the way. I didn't think it would be possible to meet her again given that she'd probably get off at any point between these 15 stops, so this is why the inner conflict quickly turned academic. I should have explained this point a bit more clearly in the comic but I was getting tired and my storytelling was deteriorating. I hope it still makes sense without the extra knowledge of how the Greek train communication system works.

Robert Mitchum is a bit of an inside joke between myself and Thanos in that he encapsulates all there is about being a man. I made this once and it sorta stuck.

On other news, as far as I know book is being printed (will call to be certain tomorrow), I am planning a NEW COMIC (it's basically subverted pornography). I found out Manga Studio 4 EX was out and successfully stole it (I swear if I ever become rich enough I will pay you the 300 dollars, SmithMicro software) and it has a very really really interesting new features I'm going to try in the next few days. I'll wrap up this comic in a couple of days from now and then Vavel festival is going to happen so expect a stopgap post with pictures and reflections on the event (I hope you don't mind). Then it'll be back to posting comics and also perhaps a few comic theory posts about the comic I'm going to make next. Actually, this is something I want to discuss with you... usually I don't really talk about the comic I'm making in detail until it's done. Would you be interested in following and providing feedback to the process of creation before it is finalized? Keep in mind that this is a cost/benefit thing. On one hand the mechanics of the comic are laid bare and you won't be 'surprised' by it when you read it in the end. On the other hand, the mechanics of the comic are laid bare and you will get a good glimpse at how they work. Also you will be implicated quite directly through feedback with making a comic better. How's that sound? Let me know in the comments, along with any questions or observations about the page above.

I am in good spirits today. The weather outside is beautiful too.

-Helm

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A 24hour comic! (Page 3)

Page 3 of 5.

Well the book is being printed so everything is fine on that end. I will have it in my hands on the 21st, it seems. That's fortuitous because the Babel comics festival starts on the 22nd. Kinda excited.

About the comic, this is where the paneling starts to become a bit more sedate because the brain didn't feel up to fancy designs anymore. The band that formulated after the demise of Nick's earlier effort still exists and plays and records today though by design its material is not something to share publicly. That band however is pretty much the 'other half' of my artistry and it takes a similar amount of my time as do the comics. It being very private is a different sort of experiment to what I'm trying to do with my public art. I think a lot of artists have a more private and a more open side even if they don't strictly differentiate the two by different art forms. It's kinda strange when an artist dies and slowly the work which for whichever personal reason they had deemed unfit for publication, slowly leaks out there. Kavafis, a Greek poet comes to mind. Do people feel a degree of shame when they peruse something that wasn't intended for them? I certainly do.

As before, ask questions and you will receive honest answers.

Also, since I guess most readers don't follow all the comments I'll state it clearly here: Due to a recent adverse situation, I would please advise commentators-to-be to not abuse their anonymity. A great way to do this would be to register with blogger to begin with, and make your profile link to something of yours. I really enjoy wondering through the links found thusly and this sort of communication is imperative to what I'm trying to do.

- Helm

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A 24hour comic! (Page 2)

Page 2 of 5.

The printer dude was supposed to call me today to let me know he made a test scrap print of the Asides-Bsides book so I would travel to his office and check it out and give him the okay along with a down-payment, but he never did. I like Greece a lot, but this sort of stuff I really don't understand. You're a professional, and you want my money and you said you'd call and then you didn't. Although you know there's a very very tight deadline (21st of this month). What am I supposed to infer? I'll never understand what causes this sort of negligence. Well, I'll call myself (I mean, I'll call the printer dude myself, not I will call myself on the phone, I set a hard limit to my solipsism right before that) tomorrow and have it sorted out. The book will be printed even if it's the last thing I do (this week).

On the comic, this is the first 'good page' of the five in my opinion, I reigned in the highlights (applied white guache with a little brush directly on the colored paper -- no undos!) and generally started drawing a bit better (also this page is funnier I think!). It was a pain in the ass to clone-brush all that text away in photoshop to re-letter it for you heathens, but at least having reread it now I remember the very pleasant feeling at the table with the other artists working on their own 24hr comics. On my left there was Thanos and on my right there was Panpan. It was really good times. I would do it again given a similar symmetry.

I find the turtleneck + expression hilarious. I hope I'm not the only one.

Let's keep going with you asking me questions instead of me preempting them like usual because I'm still a bit busy with the printing stuff to ramble on for hours.

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A 24hour comic! (Page 1)

Alright alright. Page one of five. I don't have much time I gotta go out to pick up my black cat from the doctor (his masculinity, it has been destroyed!) and then I have to bumrush the printer dude to get my book on its way to being done so we'll talk more about what's going on here later. Here, let's try a different idea! If you want some clarification on anything that's going on in this page, why don't you ask me in the comments and I'll be back later tonight to explain? Yes! Reader participation! Yes!

-Helm

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Enter Vast Dominions, Welcome to My Dream (part the last)

That's it, then. I don't have much to say about the story closing... well, actually I do but everyone should be free to read this in their own way. I got quite a variation of explanatory remarks by people at the festival and although some made me wonder about my capability to convey a clear and linear story, others were delightful, so I won't try to channel the commentary.

Aesthetically I'm pretty happy with it, I guess... I should have paid more attention - this is a recurring gripe with my own old art - to proper facial construction and less on characterization, but as it seems most people don't notice the wonkyness so this mostly hurts my art in the eyes of other trained artists, heh. Still, more drawing from life would have benefited me then and it would benefit me now. I guess I'm a bit impatient, I want to get to the guts of it. Women tell me this all the time.

Well perhaps we will discuss the metaphysics of the comic in the comment space after you guys and girls have let me know of your own take on things.

I think next I will translate and post the recent 5-page 24hour comic I did, yes.

-Helm

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Enter Vast Dominions, Welcome to My Dream (part the third)

Page four out of five.

Yes that's what my dreamself asked the other, I can't account for how stupid it is... it sorta makes sense in dreamlogic, I think. How can you and I be here together? Perhaps this is subconscious residue from when I had watched early in life the Back to the Future movies and where if you occupied the same space with your older/future self, the universe exploded or something. I guess the child Helm took this bit of the cautionary tale very seriously to the degree that this was my first concern in my dream, when meeting my other.

But his answer, his answer. What a strange answer. Who is he keeping company to - or perhaps, supporting, urging on? What is he feeding? And where is here, exactly?

You might notice that paper cut over the name of the person whom the other is talking about. The purpose of it is twofold: The most important thing is that I woke up with a very vivid recollection of the whole dream, but I couldn't remember for the life of me the name he told me. I think it was a woman's name but that is as far as I go. I cut that bit of paper out of the page not only because I couldn't remember but because it is a valuable communicational device here. When I make art that predominantly talks to myself (usually it is music, but sometimes it is comics. And a dream comic, after all, is psychoanalysis) I attempt to shape it in such a way that it might serve me, serve my evolution as a human being further. I have figured since an earlier age that if I am going to talk to myself through art, it might as well be a worthwhile conversation. In a way I infuse my super-ego aspirations through my art, a perfect, final Helm is talking to the mundane, faulty real Helm and trying to urge him on the right path through existence. Nobody else's art is as useful to me as my own, because if I do a honest job of it I can look at it again years down the line and it's still relevant, still urges me in the right directions and it still makes me feel and remember. I can't ask more from art, much less my own.

Following this line of thinking, the creepiest thing about this comic is the super-ego/id merge going on. If I use my comics as chambers for self-betterment some times, what does it mean to meet this... thing, in my dream, and to have it tell me this unsettling declaration? I have interpreted this dream in many ways since I made the comic and I will spare you because nothing is more tedious than people explaining their own dreams. Recounting them is fine if they're interesting, explaining is another. My hope of future understanding what it meant is captured through the harrowing bottom four panels where the dreamspace Helm 'remembers' what id-machine wants him to remember. At the time this seemed more like an excuse to draw the pretty pictures, but for me nowdays that part is the most courageous of the comic. Dream of death, yet awake, that sort of thing. The carved out spot has been filled with different names in the last 2 years.

The further choices made in the comic stem from this remembrance and understanding. We will talk about that tomorrow.

Oh, yes, the second reason for the tear in the page was this: I wanted the actual artifact on show, the pieces of paper on which the comic is made, to accentuate their role as artifacts, I wanted a harsh metaphysical break from the story so the reader would be shocked out of narrative. I wanted him to be curious and I wanted him to be reminded that that is a piece of paper with lines of ink on it, what is behind of it? Why would someone do that? What is he missing and what is the reader reading missing? That sort of thing.

The funny byproduct of my doing so is that when I delivered the piece in an envelope to the Babel people, a week later a person in mid-panic called me to tell me that my art has been damaged. When I let him know that I did that and it was intentional, he let out this huge sigh of relief. In a way this was the most feedback I got for these artistic choices because as far as I can tell nobody that saw or read the comic decided to let me know how that little gimmick worked for them while I was on the festival.

Tomorrow this story ends.

-Helm

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Enter Vast Dominions, Welcome to My Dream (part the second)

Carrying on, page 3. As it happened in the dream.

I think I saw the wide mouth grin in my sleep because in conversation with Blazej Dzikowski some years ago he had conveyed to me this scene I think from an amateur and/or small budget horror film where this man falls asleep and finds himself in strange positions when he comes to. So he films himself while he's sleepwalking, and one of the things his body does is look to the mirror and make the sort of grin that a face would make if they didn't know, or care, what humans use their faces to convey emotionally. I haven't seen the film but I guess the startling part of that description stayed with me because that's what I saw in the dream and what I tried to capture in the drawing.

I don't know why my dreamself thought that if he averted his gaze and then looked again the other would have disappeared. Dream logic. He tries a slightly more direct attempt later on in the comic. Two pages left.

-Helm

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Enter Vast Dominions, Welcome to My Dream (part the first)

Sorry for the pompous post title, I enjoyed the synchronicity of listening to Savior Machine while writing this post. Perhaps you could listen to them while you read it also, wouldn't that be nice? We are not the same person and we will never know the inside of another but here, let's pretend!

This is material made originally for the 2006 Babel comic art festival here in Greece. This is an annual festival organized by the people who put out the same-named comic magazine. Both the festival and the magazine enjoy a rich history and culture and they've been absolutely fundamental at increasing awareness of 'comics for adults' in Greece. It was the first time I was asked to participate and participate I did. The theme for the show was 'Dream, Perhaps?' (a reference in a collected work by M. Manara when we was still making amazing, beautiful, insightful pieces of art and not just ass comics). My entry is emphatically a dream (as stated in the introductory page). I took a few liberties which I'll discuss further on, but on the whole the dream experience is unaltered.

Exactly because this is a dream, there are some visual language tricks that I try to recur a lot so they become familiar though always odd and (hopefully) unsettling, what with the squiggly lines that signify beat pauses... and also I am trying to make the textual elements become textural as well, much like G.P.Russell, whom I respect very much (check how in the first panel they obey perspective). Also the hard black line for the stare at the last panel.

I've been discreetly placing these curvy lines in so many comics of mine since we put out the 'Free Your Line' magazine (on the third issue of which I also put this story) as a bit of an inward homage. The name of the fanzine might have come to us as a jest but I tried to take it as a lateral concept, the idea that one 'frees his line', that he doesn't define his work by the standard of others. I place the squiggly line a lot by my signature even when I'm not using it as a visual language piece as a little respect to that circle of friends and what they mean to me.

When this went to the festival some snide comments by other artists were conveyed to me about the quality of the paper I had used. You cannot see here but the original (which I gave to the show as opposed to photocopies) was inked on very cheap paper with the result of the big black border in the intro page - which was hand-inked, there's no floodfill bucket in real life, as sadly, there's no undo - had visibly 'scarred' the paper. The black in places and was generally not completely opaque, the handwork was visible. In the version you are looking at of course I have ran sharp Levels in photoshop so the black is black black, but this is not because I agreed with these comments and was ashamed by the paper or the 'hand-doodled' effect. I believe a piece for a festival should be shown in the format it was made, imperfections and all, it's not just a comic story to be read, it's an artifact to be examined. The Idea Space comic can wait for when it's publicised in print, I see no reason to pretty up the original when I'm showing the original, nor do I really see the reason to buy fancy expensive paper for work that'll be harshly thresholded for final print anyway. What, will better paper make the comic better? That sort of 'professionalism' makes me wary of professionals. The sort of people that keep their doodles and serious work alike in perfect carefully plasticized folders named after each month of each year. Just make the thing and it's done, it's made, you can move on.

Oh well! I will return with page 3 (of 5) in a couple of days.

Also, it is now 2009. I have made some resolutions of my own that aren't very easy to explain... it's perhaps because I don't usually make resolutions that when I've decided to do so they became quite involved and multi-layered... the gist of it is that I'm leaving behind the shames that I've got left, slowly but surely. I will try to stand more bare until I am naked, slowly but surely. I will take what I desire because this life is mine and I owe no shame to anyone man or institution or belief. That sort of thing, it might sound abstract and distant but it's not, it has to do with every single day that'll come. It'll be interesting therefore, this year, the 25th year of my life. I can't tell if it will be a good year for it but I can hope. I hope for me and I hope for you.

We could obviously not start then in any other way than with a short story about what makes simple things worth it, by a suspiciously monosyllabic faux-prehistoric giant bird.



-Helm

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PAY NO ATTENTION TO MY SUPERFICIAL WOUND, HU-MAN

I'm done with the Vavel comic for this years' expo! (the above image is a teaser for the artist catalog).



...and I'll be leaving for Poland to meet wonderful friends. Back at the twenty-second of December. There's no reason to check the blog at all between now and then! Leave! Shoo!


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Memorybot Part 4: THE REVENGE

Here's the last page.

I'm proud of the visual communication here of the mindwipe, it's not exactly the easiest thing to convey without a stupid-ass panel reading "and this is how the robot got the relevant part of his brain erased". This isn't the golden age anymore, thankfully, we can trust the viewer to understand the action just by showing it, right? Right?

I guess it would have been easier if the screen read something silly like 'R U SURE U WATN FULL MEMORY WIPE Y / N ?' but nerds will be nerds and I had my nerd friend Ghormak write me some c64-like BASIC code that would theoretically clear some memory. Well... all the memory, really. Let's pretend ZX is running on 20 internal c64 chips in parallel and has different memories stored on different ones. Also the irony of a robot named ZX64 running on c64 processors. I will have none of it on the ongoing vendetta between Spectrum and Commodore users, both machines have their strengths. It's just a shame the c64 has many, many more of them. That's the final word on this, now, you hear?

I think this page works and I wouldn't really change much about it. This is also a byproduct of this art being closer to today than some of the other stuff I've posted so it's not that I've changed radically as an artist since.

Here's some more Ptoing slave comments on the coloring:

Page four was frustrating as I accidentally saved the resized .jpg into the photoshop file when I was almost done, and that would have been of course totally useless for print, so I had to start over. Still I am happy with the outcome especially the psychedelic colours in the middle panel as well as the three last ones, which in a way echo the colours of page three.

The only rationalization going on here is how I colored the last panel as well as the background in the last three panels, which I did in a way to guide the eyes as well as focus on where important stuff was. If you look at how ZX is shaded in the last panel and think a bit about it, it makes no sense whatsoever as far as realism goes, but at this point Helm has indoctrinated me with his "Screw Realism" credo, that my compulsions never stood a chance.

On a side note, the text of the pseudo code in the first panel is made with the C64 charset. I actually fired up WINVice (a C64 emulator) and typed the stuff in there and then printscreened it and adjusted it for the comic as needed. So many interesting facts, no?

Very notable is that Helm did not do any adjustments to the last two pages, he saw them and was happy. (The last 3 panels are a very good example of his inconsistencies. Note the eye positions of ZX)

In closing I have to say I really enjoyed colouring this comic and I am looking forward to colour more of Helm's comics in the future. Tho one thing I learned is that I never want to colour comics professionally unless I really have to.
Thank you for bearing with me and my ramblings. You are released now.

Hehe, c64 charset... nerds will be nerds.

An interesting point to note is that the comic has some internal symmetry. Page 1 ends with a 'hello' and an embrace, page 4 ends with a 'hello' and a handshake :(

Oh about handshakes, I guess I should say that whereas most people think them old-fashioned I am a firm believer in a firm handshake upon meeting someone. ZX takes from his artist in this amongst other superficial character traits (like being AWESOME ALL THE TIME).

Page 2 is all words words words and panels panels panels and page 3 is all about silence and few panels, that's a contrast bookended by symmetrical pages more or less (for instance page 1 and 4 all end on three vertical panels of close action, so on). I like playing up the forms of comics, I hope I don't constrict the actual happenings inside them with my such concerns.

Closing thoughts on the comic's abstract: "Man, imagine how harsh digital, perfect memory would be if you were a heartachey robot" was the initial thought that came to me while I was taking a shower/touching myself. I stepped out and kept a single doodle note of ZX running a big cartoon magnet all over his forehead and saying "fuck you, bitch" and the idea stewed from there to something a bit more human, heh.

Whereas I don't think it mirrors anything real very completely, what with none of us being robots, it does have something to it if you ever have been in love and you acutely remember parts of that relationship. For a long time you think you'll never forget, that there won't pass a single day that you won't think about that person and nothing anybody else tells you makes you change your mind. Eventually you forget, but this comic is about tough choices and the very blurry line between bravery and cowardice in interpersonal relationships. There is also the sad suggestion of the deterministic repeat, of something having happened just to happen again and again, ourselves looking at ourselves making the very same mistakes, kicking and screaming and crying but still saying 'yes' at the right times and 'no' hardly if ever. I mean, who knows what happens after the last panel, here? Perhaps she never explains what just happened, perhaps she pretends she was 'fixing him' and they meet all over again all the time she's secretly hoping, yearning that things won't play out as they did last time. For all we know... this has happened many times before. Always the same pseudocode, always the same last words

I love you so much.



-Helm

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Memorybot Part 1

More ZX romantic adventures! Page 1 out of 4.

I made this for the 'Free Your Line' fanzine, for its third - and best, in my opinion - issue. It was done in very late 06, in fact around new years eve if memory serves. Ptoing was around, as were other friends, I was visiting Germany I think. God, how can my memory of things be so much like an old man's?

If you note something different about this comic, something vibrant and rich in hue, that's Ptoing's fault. He did the colors. I really like them, most people seem to too.

As I had 4 pages to tell a story that could possibly be told in a single page like those of the newspaper, and as a sort of cleansing from that sort of format, I took it very slow here, mostly establishing setting and mood, letting smaller things do the talking than my usual verbose narrator who is sadly a necessity if you want to tell a story with a lot of plot in very small space. Therefore the pacing is very deliberately slow. Note how I use the right wall in the first panel as space to place a story title and such, luxuries one doesn't usually enjoy in single-page format due to space. The eye traverses lazily through the opening shot, playfully diverted by the separate-perspective point cobblestone. A vague sense of futurist Europe somewhere (in fact half-way inspired by Stockholm and Thesaloniki). I never understood why the near future needs to be all SUPERPIPES AND FLYING CARS... well, the flying cars I can understand, what I don't see is why when the 'FUTURE' is here, everything old is to be immediately discarded. So I didn't. This comic might take place in the future sometime but I still left in streetlights and free press vending machines and the tired stones of an 'old city center'.

Furthermore, as before, I do not treat the abilities a robot very much like a robot... somewhat half-way. He has an internal clock... but he has to roll up his sleeve to know what time it is, heh. I like that middle space between magical realism and just flat out nonsensicalness. I'll get Ptoing at the end of the comic to talk about his color choices and such. Let's look at the black and white one as well:



First of all I made the mistake of inking this on hard bristol board (because that is what I took with me in Germany. I am really ghetto as far as tools and means go, as I've mentioned before). So all the lines I've put down are with generally bigger tipped markers than I enjoy just so I didn't get lots of break up. It turned out to befit the color a lot more than my usual more flimsy lines.

Note on panel 3 and 4 how I use guiding arrows to help the reader along. Most experimental comic artists would scoff at such'medium breaking immersion' tricks as naive but I kinda like comics going 'hi, we're comics! :D' a little sometimes, if they're kind about it. I could have used some other visual clue as to how to read such a panel configuration (usually with word balloons or the actual things in the panels being drawn in such a way as to visually flow up and then downwards) but I had to juggle a few other considerations that kept me from this. Namely, I wanted the fast motion. I wanted the first two panels to appear to take a considerable amount of time between them but then when he checks the time to see if his date is late (she is, by 8 minutes) I wanted the action to be abrupt. This works by keeping the art in the repeated panel pretty much the same (eye discards same information and just reads the different parts, much faster than the whole scene changing. Combine this effect with small panels and you can have a comic where the reader feels compelled to read 3 panels a second). So the pacing is sloooow and then an abrupt peak, and then again slow on the fifth panel (low shot always seems to take more time than eye-level because the reader has to visualize the pan that got the 'camera' that low, and how it'll also take some time to reposition. We think spatially, like ground animals) and the last two panels are again, fast after that bit of hesitation. These are pretty much cinematography tricks, but hey, comics are a smart medium and should take whatever becomes them from elsewhere without having delusions of being anything they're not. Vague line there but I'll pretend I'm safe from making 'movie comics' for now.

I'll post the next page in 3 days or so. Take the intermediate time to praise Ptoing for his wonderful coloring work.

- Helm


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Oh No, Pornography!

Alright before the comic here for you non-Greeks a bit of contextualization is required.

In Greece, the newspaper medium is in deep crisis. People just don't seem to read papers as much as they used to and regardless of the whys, the way papers have deemed it practical to respond is to bundle with their edition various 'gifts' for the reader, to entice them to buy the thing for the other thing. One can spot the various problems in this practice pretty much instantly (and how they will eventually result to complete disassembly of the newspaper form), but I'm not here to discuss that right now, I'm here to discuss a penis.

When I went to work for this paper where the material of this blog was originally printed in, they were bundling pretty mundane v-cds and dvds of old movies (Godzilla Versus Killer Pollution, yes)or tv-shows (Bonanza... seriously) and indeed, the temperamental success the newspaper had experienced at times was directly relative to the quality of the bundled-in material.

So at some point it seems readership was lower than usual and they decided to put some soft-core porno in with the paper and see how that goes. I guess it went well? I'm not sure, I did not follow the print run numbers. I was beginning to feel a bit uneasy even then for the reasons you'll see in the comic below, but hey, it's just soft-core, it's people pretending to have sex, more hilarious than vulgar. A few months later they started giving hardcore porn with the paper, stuck a "forbidden to minors" sticker in the front of the paper as a point of 'edginess' and then it sorta became a real issue for me. If I were some sort of established entity in the print media where my name would not be associated with the various transgressions of a publisher it would be a non-issue, but this was my first wide public work and a statement seemed required from my point of view. The statement is below:



Now, had this piece seen print, I would have continued to work with this paper - though perhaps things would have gone south sooner rather than later - judging my opinion clearly voiced. However this page didn't see print. They ran something awful by an in-house graphic designer playing comic artist for that day I guess and in the awfulness of that specific page (a pastiche of 'political commentary' ridiculousness, imagine a caricature of a wealthy man with the words 'government' written on his hat pocketing a symbolic bag of money, seriously) I saw exactly how little my work was understood or appreciated and what instead was expected from me. I received no phone call before the page was pulled nor was I immediately let go. I suspect that had I sent a different page next week (with more people with 'government' written on their hats) I'd have gotten paid as usual. However I did not send anything nor did I deem it fit to discuss the issue since they would not discuss it with me and in that way my run with that paper ended.

It seems I was correct to think comics ware unappreciated to begin with at the paper because a week or so after I stopped working there they let go the two other comic artists doing work there for them and I felt sad and responsible, especially for my friend Mike who needed financial stability at the time more than I did. However responsibility lies with the employer who chooses in the end what he wants to run in his paper. If they wanted to pretend to be a classy paper and then bundle porn along with it to desperately try to sell it somehow, then they dug their own grave as far as I'm concerned. The whole premise of ethical responsibility is that you can't have your cake and eat it too. And in any case I'd rather not be done the 'favor' being printed if it is without the understanding and support of my employer.

After I left the paper I didn't feel like making comics for nearly 6 months. Dry spell ended when Vavel festival came about and I did some pieces for them and for our fanzine (Free Your Line) but generally since then my rate of production of pages has drastically slowed. On one part, I am not being paid to make comics anymore and that does have its effect, believe me, especially when you've just grown used to considering yourself a 'professional' and then the rug is pulled under you and you realize that not only you're not considered such by your employer but they don't consider you worth basic human decency.

A big reason I took two years to get this blog together is because I believed the material to be worthless. It's been a slow climb back to being reasonably happy with it and of course it's due to the feedback I've gotten by you, dear readers and humans. Thanks! I am still very adverse to putting myself in a situation where I have to justify why my work is good or what exactly it is that I am doing because of the newspaper experience. Sadly, international readers, this happens more than you'd expect because Greece is a culturally retarded country, where any humanist venture one attempts has to battle against deeply ingrained inertia in the distrustful public. Greece has fallen to a self-fulfilling prophecy: we have been systematically robbed of decency by demagogues and thieves, liars and marketers, in every aspect of our every day lives. Professional domains, personal, political, emotional all jeopardized. The Greek has been degraded and conditioned to accept his degradation as stable truth and 'nobody is better than the worst'. Nothing good can happen here and nothing good we will allow to happen here but we will still complain how nothing vital and positive, happens although we ourselves do not allow for decency and humanity in any aspect of our daily lives. But we mock. We mock everything, we mock the good with the bad and to hell with everything. Our country is our dumpster, our internet is our dumpster, our inside is filled with garbage and nothing. I'm kinda rambling, but this is on my mind a lot lately.

Anyway.

The material you've read so far along with a boatload of comic strips also done for the paper (of varying quality! I'm not much of a strip artist, I find) is slowly being compiled in a print version which I'll shop around to various publishing houses here in Greece. I'm going to see my last page printed at least. I don't look forward to being treated like a visitor from outer space by most publishers I'll meet, but eh, I'll deal.


So, the bigger reason for making this blog has been fulfilled. Now I'll go even deeper back in time and start posting my very first comics made during comics school, where I met the wonderful people with whom I were to start the 'Free Your Line' fanzine. An altogether different part of my life, one which doesn't terminate at 2006 but instead is vital and ongoing to this day. More on this soon. Who knows, perhaps we'll even reach the material I'm doing RIGHT NOW! Such futurism, such promise! We shall raise our dream machines into the sky!

Well, soon. It might be a week or more because I'm still making my new page for the Vavel festival. I'm 35% done, heh. It's taking forever. I think it's good, I can tell because it's one of the few times I'm actually having fun making a comic (it's usually pretty tortuous!).

- Helm

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What's the best way to know what's going on inside the earth?!

One of the benefits of having a website is looking at the keyword hits you get off of Google. The above illustration conveys the worries expounded in the title of this post. While a lot are funny I also feel some sort of obligation to answer these queries since they landed someone here:

Sad Robot Boy - you're in the right place dude.
Steve Vahaviolos - Oh god I'm so sorry!
Three letter greek word for love - ΓΠΩ!
Ferrero rocher commercial greek gods - Oh man, that guy
How to get into the Royal Ballet School - Lots of practise and some innate talent I'd guess :/
Explain Europe After the Rain - This dude stayed around on the blog for 3 minutes so I guess some explanation did occur.
Meaning of Regional Dimensions - Still unnamed, sorry.
Octopus Puns - At least I can say I delivered on that front.

So yes, this is a stopgap post. I've been busy doing a very ambitious page for this year's Vavel festival and it'll be a week or so until I'm done. I will resume posting after that, but I should also let you know (since I gathered all of you here so we could laugh at google results) that the material from the paper has all but exhausted itself (last page left). I do not intend to stop the blog here, so we'll readily go into 'b sides' material. Most of it is not single-page comics but rather 3-5 pager stories I was doing before around and after my time at the paper. This is good because some material is absurdly old and you'll get to see really how less of a fuck I gave about my comics being understandable by third parties in the beginning. Also it's nice because I'll get to post more recent comics which I personally feel look better because I'm a better draftsman now that I was 2 years ago, heh.

The question I want to put to you dear readers and humans is this: should I post more infrequently but with the whole story at a time, or should I post every 2-3 days with a single page from an ongoing story? This is pretty important because for example I have an 18 page 24hr comic with lots of WORDS WORDS WORDS and it really might take a while to translate such a thing. Looking at the google results it seems some 40-50 hits a day occur and I'd hate to have built up that loyalty in some of you and then just come up and switch my posting habits from eight times a month to twice a month. I know first-hand that there occurs some feeling of betrayal when an artist just stops updating their blog frequently. Regardless of the inherent pathology in that sort of consumerist mindset (shame on all of us!), I'd hate to upset anyone like that!

Keep in mind when answering - for I do want you dear readers and humans, to answer me - that if I post bigger stories page-by-page then I will also have the chance to wax theoretical on them a lot more than I would if I posted them all together, where final remarks would have to be condensed to the issues of the story as a whole. So according to your tastes for theory this should factor in.

Also after Vavel I might post the comic I'm making now and all the preparation I did for it for another process post which will go into finer details on why and how I make my artistic choices and how exactly my subconscious undermines me constantly.

-Helm

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