Before there is anything

There is this.

How does it make you feel to see this, the bit before anything has happened, besides divisions of time and space?

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ZX page 10: for you to live / you have to cut off your own head

That's how I play fighters too. Stick with what works, I can't keep up with the combos. Case and point: I still play Ruy on Street Fighter II CE.

The last batch of comments on the last page are heartwarming (sorry it took me so long to validate them, I was busy with summer activities!), and I do appreciate furthermore how some of you are paying close attention. Those that do will be rewarded by the narrative.

A few words about how this comic finally found its way to pages. I've been wanting to do this story (the core, the essence of the story) for a couple of years, yet every time I approached it I felt as if I wasn't ready. I did a *lot* of preliminary work, setting up pages, counting panels, all those things you're 'supposed' to do when you're making comics. This way, when it came time to draw the very first page, I felt exhausted already, intimidated by what lay ahead and discouraged by my own lack of skill. This is how I've evaded doing the one story that means the most to me.

So why am I making it now? Well... for a dream, I guess.

A couple of months back I had this dream where I was holding some pages, expertly inked, of an engaging narrative in my hands, they were my own, of course. I felt so happy, so content in my dream. I forgot this promptly after waking up of course. But some time later I got into this conversation with my friend, Vasilis Sakkos, where I was trying to explain how comic artists are 'sci-fi nerds at heart', and then I further qualified it: they are not - well, most of them - content with just having drawn a large volume of 'funnies', like I am not content with the series of single-page comics I have done in the past (which you've seen on this blog). They're only content when they have to their name, a long, engaging and internally consistent narrative. There is this enticement of world-building. I realised as I was saying these things to Vasilis that this is what I had to do next, the dream came back to me and I told him. The very next day I did the first (well, second) page of this comic, all in a feverish dash, full 12 hours of it.

The way this works for me is that I've pondered on this story so much over the years (though it's extremely different now, superficially, at the core it remains inalienable) that I don't have to plan ahead. I have this single A3 page on which I write the thoughts that come to me, and otherwise I work only on the chapter that I am at. I write the dialogue for it first, and then describe a bit of the scenes and that's where I STOP WORRYING about the future and draw the first page of the chapter. Then the second, then the third, then sometimes there's a fourth, and that's it. Page by page, little by little, I'm moving towards the completion of my goal and the fulfillment of this 'sci-fi nerdish fantasy' that fuels some of us to try to make a containable narrative consistent and alive.

Although you wouldn't know it from page 10 here, I am at almost the middle of the story (page 18 now). It's going to be 35ish pages, not longer, but that's how long it should be and that's great. I find myself getting better at this as I go, not worse (as I feared, heh) and although I have my little annoyances with drawing that make me want to go back and retouch a few panels here and there, it's largely contained (though I will probably permit these alterations once I'm done with the whole story). I have even started working on the cover of the book. I estimate about 3 more months of work and I'm done.

About this page in particular, as I mentioned before, the consciously careful will be rewarded, those that read faster will subconsciously gather the effect as well. Those of you that are gifted with patience for scrutiny, from here on end, please, do not spoil the rest with relevant observations. I don't think much of spoilers personally, I think that a good work stands on its own merit regardless of the 'plot twists'. In fact, in ancient Greece, before a drama started at the theater, there was a designated actor that would rise to the stage and summarize the action of everything relevant that had come before, and of what will come during the plot of the drama, so as the viewers could surrender their expectations and be allowed to be swept by the pathos. This is what we want, pathos, not just 'plot twists'. That being said, I realize others do not feel the same as I do and so, don't spoil it for them :)

-Helm

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ZX page 9: Motionless

Thumbs up, everything's okay.
Sleeping a lot is okay.
Videogames forever are okay.

Is Stephan okay?

The heatwave here in Greece is mounting. I am stuck halfway in page 17 and I can't seem to power through. Might have to give it a rest for a few days cuz working from 3 in the morning until 9 in the morning constantly is going to break my brain a bit. So, a bit of process lag, but you won't feel it. Every monday, there shall be page.

-Helm

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ZX page 8: Emotional Blackmail

I'm fond of this page for a couple of reasons. One is good characterization. The other is a small bit you might not have noticed on the first read: look how the talk bubble in the third panel with the angular mouth trail cuts through the black sphere in the background, and in the next panels, gradually dissolves the blackness between them. I like that.

This is the end of chapter 2, so the page appropriately trails off towards white. Next up, videogames!!

P.S. Vacations were great :D

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ZX page 7: Better Living Through Employment

Will write more when I return from vacation in 4 days. Fast post for now! Take care!

PS. This is where I get kinda fed up with the computer lettering even for the English versions and I start hand-lettering from the next page. Probably regrettable!

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ZX page 6: Reflection Cascade

This page and the one after it were the first major hurdle in making this comic. I'm at page 15 now so looking back I can sorta see how I am struggling with writing a woman. I am not a woman, though my flowing beautiful locks befi... uh. It's difficult to write about what you don't know, and I have to constantly remind myself that we're all people in the end, made of people-stuff. And also, well I'm certain this won't win me any fans but in the spirit of no shames and all that, I *do* have to fight off an amount of misogyny when writing women, this reactionary urge to write them as if they're fundamentally shallow. I shall explain myself before my throat is spectrally cut.

To rationalize this fault I'd have to say that since romantically I've only been interested in women, I've had my emotions toyed & tampered with and ultimately abused by only by women. Amazing cruelty and crassness and often unapologetic baseness, you know how it is. I'm certain that the other half of the population gets treated similarly by men and that gender, and to degrees, social and communal status probably don't have much to do with anything. We're all half-blind, fumbling and pawing our ways through dim and brittle paths to each others psyches. Damage must occur.

So, writing Mary (Marina, in Greek) is difficult because I want to be fair to her and her concerns, but I do not want her to be an author insertion (there's plenty of that elsewhere), nor do I want her to be 'easily likable', or sexy fanservice (which sickens me as a concept to tell the truth). I want alienation and emotional convergence in equal amounts, and whereas when I write Stephan and ZX my bearings are true because this is my life I'm talking about (they basically write themselves, seriously, you should see my rambling drafts. Not much is amended or left out), Mary comes from an outside perspective:

I'm often preoccupied with the 'dull burdens' of everyday middle-class life, not so much because they're fascinating in themselves but in how we manage to extract perfect amounts of misery from them. Even though our basic needs are met, we're not starving to death, think of the children in Africa, etc... So in pondering young women I find my myind wandering around the complexities of their 'social obligations' towards family, expected communal status and so on. I haven't had to deal with this in my own life a lot because I self-identified with a concept of an 'artist' pretty early in my teenager years and I hid behind the aloofness this concept allows for for a long time (well... still, I guess). Girls are much more tormented with being what they're supposed and expected to be societally, and especially if they develop the necessary skills to cloak their own emergent teenager personalities behind those socially-pleasing, overachieving masks, they tend to not develop in a way I'd judge (sorry) as evenly paced. Namely, they seem to skip adolescence. They go straight from being children, to being adults (as least as far as the outer world is concerned). So whereas they appear much more mature, much earlier than teenage boys, after the social motiffs of schooling/higher education and the straightforward life goals that come with them effectively run out (via achievement), they're often confronted with large gaps in their personal expression. Mary is an exploration of this, I suppose, but not an intentionally cruel one. You'll see where this goes as the comic progresses.

For lovers of comic theory, check out the almost panel-by-panel visual counterpoint to the wording of the inner monologue. The theme of reflection especially, colors the morphology of this page.

Thank you for reading, as always. Comment and make the reclusive artist happy

- Helm

P.S. check out those mad torrents running overnight
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ZX page 5: Embarassing Family Photographs

Don't you feel really weird when new people come to your place and check out the family photographs?



This is a formalist variation to just a straight strip of rectangles. I feel it's pretty successful in summing up the background of Mary. We'll catch a glimpse of current motivation in Chapter 2, which is 4 pages, sadly it's mostly internal monologue, but I've tried a few tricks to keep it interesting, we'll talk about them when we get there.

Her hand in the last frame is really big and I need to fix that for the final release.

On other news, I am going to finish page 12 today. I'm lagging behind a day or so! For shame!!

Do communicate with the lonely author if you get the time, feedback is really appreciated. I'll repress the urge to urge the urge in the readers to tell their friends about this comic and this blog because judging from the google analytics, ~500 hits a week and ~5 minutes on average on site seem just about right.

You know what else? The summer is beautiful here in Greece even if it's terribly hot. It's difficult to not dream up positive futures in this country. I've travelled a bit around the world with the company of wonderful people (who are currently convening in Florida without me :( ) and I don't think I really could live anywhere without such a pleasant climate, such beautiful sky and wonderful beaches. Not that I've been at any beach yet, but I'll kidnap my girlfriend and take her somewhere... soon. "Paleflesh nerd making long-format comic, doesn't go anywhere" will have to be a cliche to combat! But it's so difficult, because a page takes 3.5 days to do right. One for conceptualizing and drafting and penciling (this REALLY should have been 2 or even 3 days if I could spare them because a lot of little errors in fundamentals are creeping in, but they're pretty negligible I hope) and 2 for inking and .5 for lettering in two languages. About 5 hours a day, man. And yes, I know, you people working real jobs are scoffing right now at my part time creative haven of an occupation but do keep in mind: a) I'm not getting paid. This creates unfortunate psychological effects, like bouts of 'who am I kidding? This isn't worth it, go get a real job' b) 5 hours of creative work a day are very taxing on the primate brain. Lots of artistic decisions every minute, and lastly c) my brother has moved out and taken black thing with him!!


He's happy with him and his girlfriend, but... but... I love him so much :(

I went to visit them at their house-warming party and he crawled on my shoulder and nuzzled around my neck, he hasn't forgotten me. He purred and purred and I asked him "do you want me to take you with me?" and he extended his claws slightly and prickled me playfully at the neck. I DON'T KNOW HOW TO TAKE THIS. And then when I left I heard him crying above in the apartment. He never cries!! :( Man, it's taking its toll on me, the lack of black thing.

At least I still have Cat!!



So... enough of that. How's the summer going for you fleshy bags of emotions?





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:( black thing :(


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