Thad Face

Detail from a panel of Symphony Number Six - this is the protagonist, Thaddeus Johnson: pianist, professor of music history, and assistant conductor of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra.

Cozy Sn6 Panel

My most favorite comics, the ones that have "stuck with me" long after I put them down, have not necessarily been the ones with the most compelling plots or the greatest characters, even though those things are really important. They've been the ones that create a real sense of mood or atmosphere. I know that's not a very original thing to say, but it's true. I'm taking my best stab at it with my new comic, "Symphony Number Six." I'm so happy that I started inking these pages right as the weather is turning cold and rainy here in Portland, OR!

First Inked Sn6 Panel

First inked panel from Symphony Number Six. I'm so excited!

Symphony Weirdness

Half a penciled page of Symphony Number Six, a preview of some of the sick s*** you'll be treated to! I'll be done penciling this week, hopefully, and will be inking through October. If this is a horror comic, it had better come out before Halloween!

You're gonna love this comic.

Doodling during bible study

Never ever ever ever ever enough time to draw - it's all I want to do these days, and it's the only thing I'm NOT doing. "I don't know, I'll never know, in the silence you don't know, you must go on, I can't go on, I'll go on." - Beckett

Character-in-motion sketch

This was a sketch I did last night while haning out with friensds. I'm playing around with some characters in an upcoming collaborative project. Rather than do straight, "orthographic" character designs that just emphasize proportion and costume, I wanted to draw characters in action and in setting - taking a cue from some of the amazing video-game concept art I've seen lately. I was drawing so rapidly and having so much fun! I wish I got to draw more these days.

You may have to tilt your monitor a little bit to see the picture clearly - I was using some really light pencils, and the scanner didn't pick them up very well.

MLK 24-Hour Zine

This past weekend, I participated in a fundraising stunt for the Portland Zine Symposium. The goal was to make a 24-page zine in 24 hours. A bunch of us holed up in the IPRC with pizza, donuts and coffee and set to work!

Because I didn't trust myself to produce coherent text after 18 hours of wakefulness, I opted to do an annotated printing of one of my favorite sermons ever: "Can A Christian be a Communist," by a guy you may have heard of named Martin L. King Jr.

I first came across a transcription of this tape-recorded sermon one night a few years ago. Wracked with anxiety from my never-ending quest to reconcile my commitment to Marxist politics with my love for Jesus Christ, I despondently turned to Google and found a sermon with my question's name as its title. Though the sermon is available online, I wanted to do a decent printing of it . . . hopefully this zine will fall into the hands of some other struggling Christian leftist, and the words of King, Amos, Isaiah, and of course Jesus will help to order his or her thoughts, as they did mine.

Allow me to summarize, briefly, King's thesis [spoilers]:

For the zine itself, I added illustrations of some of the philosophical and political figures King mentions, as well as some miscellaneous spot-art to liven up the pages.

G.W.F. Hegel

 Ludwig Feuerebach

 K-Mizzle

 Archbishop William Temple

 James Meredith

 Ross Barnett

This was really fun and enlightening to make. I've already mailed out zines to my sponsors, but if you'd like a copy for your secret commie library, try to get a hold of me - I sell them for one dollar, plus shipping if you're not in Portland.