Up From Genre City

CMYK

This week's Genre City: Plan B is both over one year and less than 24 hours old.

I love it, as I love all things I've been doing recently.  Nothing is awesomer than watching my piddling drawing skills finally start to catch up to my writing chops which, come on, are sizeable.  Ongoing readers will notice the jarring change in "format" in this installment.  By that I mean, this is the first Genre City: Plan B strip in which I gave up trying to draw panel borders and word baloons.  To other long-time readers this is nothing new, as all my most recent comics (Kevin Analog, Kings Of Pop, and cetera) have all panels and word baloons appearing courtesy of Adobe Illustrator.  Which was a welcome evolution, for sure.  This is because this page of Genre City was drawn, I'm thinking, almost a year ago, but first appeared in black and white.  Now, we all know that Genre City: Plan B is a FULL COLOR COMIC in every possible fashion.  And I think you'll agree, even if you've never seen this installment before, it's the color that really kicks a page like this into gear.

Now, the dangerous part.  I finished coloring last night.  Which means the wall behind which no new comics reside is fast approaching.  And that is scary.  I will be working my ass off, as of today, pretty much for the rest of my life.  Boy am I stupid.

Desmond's Tutu

For those of you who wanted answers in tonight's Lost season premeire, look closely and you'll find, literally, all of them:

http://img384.imageshack.us/my.php?image=lostoctagon2hr.jpg

This is the logo on Desmond's jumpsuit, and his medicine cabinet, and the computer, and several places along the walls of the hatch. It's tough to make out, but some of our brighter minds have discerned that the company (as this is surely a logo) is called Dharma.

"Dharma is a cosmic principle that is difficult, if not impossible, to define. Our Dharma is our true place in the cosmic process: in time, in space, in awareness, in thought, deed and desire. The eternal principle of Dharma determines the harmonious functions of the cosmic machine. In order that we fulfil our role in the divine play we must behave within our Dharma. That is, we ought to do the right thing, at the right time, In the right way, and for the right reason. By this we attain balance. To establish balance within ourselves ensures our own welfare and the welfare of society. And opens the path prepared for us by the divine."

You can also see, in the center of what is a recreation of the I Ching circle, a swan. I don't think it's too far of a stretch to connect the dots thusly:

Desmond is a representative of a group that turns spiritual "ugly ducklings" into "swans". And there you have it, folks, the key to the entire series.

You can thank me later.

Gorilla Sparks

The latest installment of Lonely Information continues the flat out, genre mashup fun with its description of a cowboy slowly galloping through a cluster of mad scientists' labs while gorillas paw through their trash.

How is every single person on Earth not reading this. I honestly don't know what else I can offer you.

A Sad Indie Rock Song Sung By Freaks

I decided, all promotionally, to offer up the entire first Near, Mississippi short story when !Pass launched as the first installment of When Sundays Strike! I'm pretty happy that the story is now accessible to anyone who's interested, especially since maybe only twelve people on Earth have ever read it.

I'm still to this day really impressed with the story, at least as far as what I was trying to do with it. I don't know how much of it came across, but if it does connect, well, I think there's a lot there. I don't want to point every little nuance out, because that's no fun, but, for good or ill, the main gist of the story relies on something in the last page that might be a bit tough to catch on first read. So, go back, read it again, and pay more attention. I wouldn't ask you to if it wasn't worth it.

Paul Thomas Anderson's The Odd Couple

That's how kick ass my fans are, folks. One of my Engine converts took the time to drop me a line about what they thought about all the kick ass stuff I'm offering on !Pass, and, after only one three panel installment she described The Kings Of Pop as having "a definite sort of 'Paul
Thomas Anderson's THE ODD COUPLE' feeling to it at the moment." How much do you just love that?

I'll also say this about the first installment, that first image of Barry Czerniak is one of my favorite things I've ever drawn, ever. Next week? The best thing I've ever drawn after that.

Cultural Gags Now

Yes, I'm rebooting the Kid Insomnia chapter with the latest Genre City: Plan B installment. My longtime readers (hi, you two!) are most likely miffed, and I'm sorry. But, hey, I'm trying to run a daily comics site here. Cut me some mothereffing slack.

Anyway, this gag is one of my proudest moments.

The Cowboy Party

The first two proper pages of Lonely Information seem to me to be, like, such a good hook for the novel and basically Genre City in general. It's got so much oddness crammed into two pages, plenty of funked up juxtaposition, and one of my favorite hooks ever: The Day Before Retirement Is The Most Dangerous Day For Anyone Living In Genre City.

What else is there it say?

Galleys

I suppose you could call this first installment of Lonely Information preliminary footage? Either way, this was one of my favorite !Pass-related tasks thus far. Anyone familiar with my work should already know how much I love doing shit like this. I think it came out looking pretty much perfect, but my favorite touch? That the Lonely Information logo on the interior cover pages has a completely different logo than the dust jacket. Check out any hardcover closest to you and nine times out of ten, you'll notice the glaring chasm between how they decide to visualize the book on the outside and how the decide to visualize it on the inside. No one's noticed it yet, now I'm spilling the beans. Now everyone will know how deep my obsessions run. It's all for your benefit, folks.

Today Is The Day

Here's the basic boilerplate, gang. Knock yourselves out and spread the word.

The creator of Modern Tales' Mini-Masterpiece Genre City launches his long awaited multi-media juggernaut, !PASS today, Monday, September 12th.

Aside from all the cool mini-comics and merchandise you can pick up, the real meat and potatoes is the content I'll be dropping on an almost daily basis. Here's how it all shakes out:

Mondays & Fridays

Genre City: Lonely Information is a prose detective novel, scanned in page by page from an alternate dimension where it's already been published in hardcover and adored by millions. I think it's safe to say that no one has serialized a novel in quite this peculiar a fashion. It takes place, as you might have guessed, in the same locale as the Modern Tales comic, and explores the city in much greater detail than the comic ever could.

Tuesdays

Ben At Work is a weekly look "behind the scenes" at Camp Interstate !, featuring sketches, script exerpts and various other items of interest, along with some brief commentary.

Wednesdays

Genre City: Plan B is the big one. A full color graphic novel detailing the story of five protagonists who have just recently finished what most would consider to be the interesting parts of their lives. Now they have to figure out what to do next. You've thrilled to it on Modern Tales, now you can thrill to it here as well.

Thursdays

The Kings Of Pop is most likely the funniest webcomic about soda enthusiasts you're likely to read. I'm not going to say it's the only webcomic about soda enthusiasts you're likely to read because, let's face it, there are like eighteen million webcomics out there.

Sundays

When Sundays Strike! serves as repository for any and all stories and items related to my Interstate ! corner of the playground. Illustrations, short stories, one page introductory strips. They're all fair game. And I'm starting things off with an entire 10 Page short story. Because that's how highly I think of all of you.

And, since it's Premeire Week, you'll be able to take in this entire week's worth of content today. Every item is freshly updated for your enjoyment. See you next week and every week after that, pretty much every day.

It's on now.

Comics Enlargement

So, I had a slight change of heart with the postcards.  As you recently discovered, the plan was to have a doublesided postcard jimmied up to look like a TV Guide pastiche.  I took a break from coloring the "cover" to work on the "back page" which went from its original concept of a "page" of this "TV Guidesque" "magazine" and became some kind of advertisement likely to appear on the "back" of this "magazine".  I was planning on having the wear on the front side carry over to the back to really solidify the illusion.  This is what I came up with, though.

I'm pretty head over heels in love with the idea, I'll be the first to admit.  It got me thinking, maybe I should scrap the Magazine Cover idea and really run with the idea of Prescription Drug campaign.  I finished off the "fine print" on the ad (easily my favorite part) and went to bed for a few hours.

At around five in the morning I leapt out of bed and started pacing.  I was thinking mostly about things I could do with this approach at a convention.  Handing the cards out the way people hand out stuff in Times Square.  Not the sad, Brazillian Passport/Barber Shop handouts, but rather the premium, Free NutraGrain Bar hand outs.  And that led me, inevitably, to this:

It's a perfect combo, and a perfect, fun approach.  I can stand around going "Are my comics right for you?" hand out the cards, etcetera.  The only thing that's going to get hairy is, really how do you pronounce !Pass?  That was another thing I paced around about.  I was thinking for a while it could be any kind of non-verbal grunt, a personal favorite of mine being that weird "Rrr!" that Michael Bluth exchanges with Heather Graham in the Arrested Development episode "Shock And Aww".  This morning, though, I came to the temporary conclusion that I might just pronounce it "Ex Pass", which would be a necessary shorthand for the clumsy sounding "Exclamation Point Pass".  So that might work.

Basically, I'm planning on spreading the "Is !Pass Right For You" meme like a fucking virus this September.

Ask your doctor.