Black Snow Comics

Here we have the end to the scene. And what a scene it was. High drama amongst villains.

And the real star of this page, though he has no lines, is Alex’s old tie for favorite character, Calhoun (The other was the Fisherman, who made a cameo in the bar scene earlier, but I doubt will be back in full. We even had a Bizzaro Fisherman in the works for issue 7.).

If you recall Calhoun from the original comic he was supposed to be an impressive warrior and the leader of a gang (we planned to have more Van Buren Boys later). He also had some fire powers.

Despite Alex’s love of the character, I don’t think he ever lived up to his hype. He spoke and looked like a stocky old time thug, but wasn’t all that imposing. I think things have been fixed this time around. Just look at that monster!

I think drawing the characters of Van Buren and Calhoun like their historical namesakes was a stroke of brilliance. They are scary looking dudes. And as Alex told me, it adds some kind of whole new level of strangeness to the story. And if you’re patient, you might even get a reason for why they look just like their real world counterparts.

But what a crew we have here! I’m excited to see them in action! Between Redemption and Calhoun, things are going to get crazy real quickly. And this time we’ll finally get our long planned payoff with Van Buren.

So it’s on to the next scene, which will be something we’ve never done before, but I’ve always wanted to. Look forward to that!

We’ve just released our first book to be available for sale online, Black Snow: The Complete Original Comic Book Series. You can order it from our online store or on Amazon. We make more money if you buy it from us.

So what’s in the book. All six of the original comic books, brought together for the first time. It also contains a forward and epilogue from me. And a super snazzy cover!

It’s 198 pages for only $17.99. I digitally enhanced the resolution and contrast of every page from issues 1-5 (6 didn’t need it), cleaned up some of the dialogue, redid the credits for issue 1, and several other small things to improve the overall quality.

So what you get is the complete original saga, as it’s never been seen before. All the goofiness, the ridiculous characters, the drama, the romance, the intrigue, the movie and comic book references…it’s all there.

So if you love Anti-Nazis, evil clowns, pompous super heroes, apes, cannibal car salesmen, elemental powered villains, voodoo, smoking, Detroit, Fargo, drinking, lazy super heroes, Mystery Men, old fashioned bartenders, Native Americans, fishermen, cops, humans with dog heads, brutal fights, corrupt doctors, mysterious villains, annoying sidekicks and anti-heroes…well, this might just be the book you’ve been waiting for.

So take a chance and order an underground masterpiece that is sure to leave you with a smile.

So this was a pretty wild page, and one that did some things we don’t do a lot of. For instance having a character’s dialogue displayed over another character’s (or in this case several characters’) reaction. I think that top row is pretty cool with Redemption weighing the option to continue with Van Buren or just try to kill them all. I got to draw someone reaching for their sword hilt!

Along those same lines this page has a lot of highly intense drama and a character with a deep internal struggle. It also makes vague illusions to a character’s back story. I think this scene, and this page in particular, is probably the most dramatic we’ve done. I really wanted to play that up with the moody shadows and dark brooding silence (not funny awkward for a change). And as far as back story, well that’s not something I think we’ve ever spent too much time coming up with, let alone explaining. Redemption has a good one though!

There’s a subtle new effect I did on some of the panels that you may have noticed where I gave the characters more texture, as opposed to the normally smooth shading. I tried to be low key with it, so it would be something that effected the look without standing out as too different and distracting. It’s something I think I’ll keep playing with.

And how about that close-up of Van Buren in the lower left?! Pretty sweet. As Alex put said “It looks like it’s straight off the dollar bill he was never on.” So I take that as a nice compliment, though I hope he also looks a bit too sinister to be on money (although he is trying to be sympathetic in that moment, and some of those dead presidents on our cash look pretty stern).

So yeah, bad guy scenes are very different and fun to work on. And I like these bad guys, which I think are several steps above our original crew from the comic books. Especially on the menacing scale (though the old win on the stupid funny scale).

Now to address that money part of this post’s title. Regular readers may have noticed a recurring theme in my blog, that I’m cheap and fairly poor (as is Alex, though he is considerably less frugal). Well, things are a bit scary at the moment as our current job situation (and I mean the day job that pays the bills) is pretty unstable. It’s a rough time for the economy in America, and we’re feeling those effects more strongly now.

So what are we doing about it? Trying to keep our jobs alive, for one. Trying to create new jobs and sources of revenue, for two. And part of that is trying to finally monetize these comics, and that’s something you’ll see in a couple of ways.

Firstly, you’re going to start seeing (or may have already seen) advertising on this site. It’s not something I ever really wanted to do from a image and creative standpoint, but something that is probably long overdue from a business standpoint. I will try not to go overboard with the ads, but you will be seeing them from several sources. Got to capitalize on all our web traffic somehow. If you are interested in being a featured advertiser contact me.

Next, we are going to start selling some print versions of the comic online. We’ll be staring with two books, I’m Famous! Volume 1 and Black Snow: The Complete Original Comic Book Series. I’m Famous! will contain our first 106 strips in full, glorious color. I just saw the first proof and it looks awesome. Black Snow will contain all six issues in their new digitally enhanced black and white glory, and a nice intro and outtro from yours truly. They’re going to be top notch quality books, at pretty reasonable prices.

So hopefully we can sell some of those from our online store (where we’ll make the highest profit) or on Amazon. Maybe we’ll even find some offline retailers who will want to sell them. Alex had a pretty cool idea about donating some to the library (we are givers, after all).

If you are wondering, no we did not accept any publishing offer (though there are still some on the table). We’ll be working with a cool company called Create Space to “self” publish these books in a non-exclusive deal.

So if you like the comics, want to see them continue (or even pick up in pace and become our full time day jobs!), care about Alex and I’s financial well being (I have a family to feed!), or are just a nice giving person then please show your support by purchasing one (or both! save on shipping costs!) books or advertise with us (we also accept donations, usually from my dad ). Hell, we’d love it if you just spread the word and tell people about us.

In closing, yes we are poor, and no we are not too proud. Hopefully this will be the beginning of the end of our poverty.

It’s that time again…

No not for the Wheel of Morality (more like the Wheel of Immorality in this comic), but for another blogging about an I’m Famous in Japan page. <The Wheel is reference to Animanics. In case you are too young to know that.>

This is a sort-of continuation from the last page, as you’ll have probably noticed Lone Wolf’s injuries have not healed yet. This time round, we’re making fun of Japanese TV. Oh…there so much in there to make fun of, but alas there’s only so much page-space to put it on. So I only choose to keep 3 of the 4 different shows Alex wrote into this page’s script. I had to omit a goofy Japanese game-show, which is something I regret, since they really can be outlandishly cruel.

Instead I treat you to, a Crazy Anime (‘Supaa Mega Sprout Battle Princess’ – featuring her sidekick ‘Whale Dumpling – the Cat’), a Busty Weathergirl (who’s arm-gesture is disturbingly similar to something else…just realized that now), and finally…a Hentai.

Ah Hentai…a lot of misconceptions regarding Anime is thanks to this pornographic older-sister of the genre. Although mainstream Anime can be fairly candid regarding things such as nudity, it rarely ever goes as far as Hentai would. In a vain attempt to keep this blog article clean, I won’t go into too much detail, but needless to say, when it comes to content in Hentai anything goes…

Thus we get tentacle rape. It’s a culmination of three things you’ll find in Japanese porn: monsters, bondage, and unfortunately….rape. Why are they so into that? God only knows, and he’s not saying. So, just a word of warning; if you are ever watching a random anime and notice a tenticle growing near a girl…know that it’s not there to get some Plant Food.

We finish off the page with Lone Wolf throwing Wolf Pack out of the room, for the next 40 minutes. He no doubt plans to use that time to write a strongly worded complaint letter to the Network. (I hope they read English!).

Kidding aside, it was interesting to try out this type of scene, since my other comics wouldn’t normally go into this ‘territory’. That’s one of the big bonuses of drawing this comic I feel.

Bata Neart

I also feel that I do need to address to readers, why I haven’t been updating as much lately. It’s been crazy busy over at RAWRtacular lately. I have just launched my second comic, which like Back Office is on a weekly rotation. Despite that, I will be continuing with I’m Famous in Japan, with as regular a schedule I can muster. I just hope that gaps between pages won’t be as big as the one before this page.

If you are curious about my newest comic, head over to RAWRtacular, or link to:

www.rawrtacular.com/bataneart

Until next time, keep turning Japan-ese-a.

-RAWR

It’s true. Believe it or not just about this time one decade ago Alex and I wrote the now much maligned Black Snow issue 1 and I started drawing it. I’ll give you a moment to let that sink in.

I’ve been drawing Black Snow for ten years. The character is that old. Hard to believe? Or perhaps just sad to believe. I’d hoped to have achieved more in 10 years.

At least we can honestly say that we were one of the first webcomics, especially one of, if not the very first to be doing webcomics in the full comic book issue style. So we have our spot in history, even if the world at large doesn’t know it.

Well, actually Alex and I wrote Black Snow issue 1 in late 1999, after being inspired by the film Mystery Men. Then we did nothing with it and forgot about it.

Then in late 2001 I was inspired after watching the Tick’s short lived live action TV series and making a short student film that was a comedy about super heroes (search YouTube for SUPERiority complex HEROES to see my teenage writing and acting). I read my How To Draw Comics the Marvel Way book, remembered Black Snow and drew some of the characters I recalled. Here, for the very first time, I’ll show you those original drawings from my sketchbook, complete with notes on my ideas for the characters (most of which changed or were not used).

I also drew a few curves for Angel, and half a Barkeep. As you can see from my notes I had forgotten a lot of the original ideas and concepts, and had a much more lighthearted Tick-esque (it was the only comic book I had read at the time) style of stories I wanted to tell with no overall arch. Some I still think sound fun.

So I drew these and showed them to Alex. He was excited. He remembered a lot more about the original issue 1 than I did, so we modified things based on that. One of the first things he said was Black Snow looked too placid, not like the bad attitude character we had apparently written. So I did my best to fix that and here you see my second and third drawing of Black Snow and my first idea for a logo.

We saw that top drawing and knew we were on to something. That’s when we rewrote issue 1 (the original had been lost on an old computer of Alex’s, and it would be some time later before we found it, and saw how bad it was).

We finished writing it really quickly from what I recall, I started drawing it and I believe I had it finished by Alex’s birthday the following March.

So that’s how we started this drunken super hero comic so many years ago.

What have we done in that ten years? Completed 6 issues of Black Snow
(out of the planned 25). We put them all on the web (originally on GeoCities, then our own site which has been redone more times than I can count), letting people see the progress page by page, and eventually printed them all as well (and got rejected by several publishers). It took about 6 and a half or seven years to do those six issues, due to a number of reasons (mostly my slow drawing, and Alex’s slow writing).

In 2003 Black Snow had a brief, but memorable run as a comic strip in my college newspaper. Around this time we also got Black Snow advertized on the back of an unrelated comic strip I did for a company about mini-bike safety that was published in a magazine (the strip was Jonny Freestyle and it appeared in something like Motorcycle Industry Magazine (I’m too lazy to look at my archives)).

In 2009 we started our semi autobiographical comic strip Day Camp, which I think helped us move forward a lot creatively, because we weren’t locked into our rigid plans for Black Snow. It never really ended, we just stopped, but it could come back some day as it was a fan favorite. We also got our first critical review from ArtPatient.com and it was quite positive. We also got our second “review” from Something Awful and gained an enemy, which would later become an ally that I ended up doing some art for.

In 2010 We started the much beloved Black Snow spin off comic strip, I’m Famous!, which quickly surpassed our other comics in popularity. We had our first public appearance at APE, and got some advice from Larry Marder. Based on that we decided to halt work on Black Snow issue 7 (and issue 0 for that matter) and start on a graphic novel follow up titled Last Call. I even drew a nice cover. But mostly we just kept cranking out I’m Famous!

This year, 2011 in case you didn’t know, we continued I’m Famous! We created two new comic strips and some illustrative artwork for Urban Image Magazine, which appeared in a few issues. We had a larger presence on other comic sites, winning numerous contests and gaining new comic friends (many of whom we exchanged art and banners with). We were approached by several publishers (in fact we are still talking to some) but chose not to take any of the deals offered. We were also approached by people who wanted to collaborate or have us work on their comics, or even help them publish their comics, none of which excited us too much. After much soul searching we made the tough decision to cancel Last Call and start Black Snow over from scratch as the graphic novel Two Drink Minimum. We gained a friend in Mark “Rawr” Egan, whom we came to consider our third member and created the I’m Famous! manga spin-off I’m Famous in Japan!
We also went back to APE and had more of an impact, even making an impression on Daniel Clowes.

So things have greatly picked up as the years went on and as we took things more seriously. And I can only see them getting busier and better (we may not be to far off from selling print comics online!).

So that’s a somewhat brief history of Black Snow Comics (which became Black Snow Comics in 2009, once we had a second comic) that gives you some idea of where we’ve been and what we’ve been doing. Not mentioned, but obviously a factor is that I’ve steadily read more comics, books about making comics, improved my drawing, went from scanning fully inked drawings to scanning lined drawings that I digitally inked, to now drawing fully digitally on a tablet and have just gotten better overall. As has Alex and his writing.

I mentioned that I hoped we’d have succeeded more by now, and I meant it. I dream of national publication, a strong fan following and earning a living. I don’t dream of fame and fortune like I once did, just some moderate success really.

I know this post has been a bit all over the place as I wasn’t sure if I wanted to focus on talking about 10 years of Black Snow the character, the comic or the company, so I tried a bit of all. Hopefully you found it enjoyable. I don’t have any big fun anniversary plans like I did for one year of I’m Famous! earlier this year. In a way that’s fitting, as the spirit of I’m Famous! is so over the top, while Black Snow has always been more low key. Also, I’m Famous! was basically a year of fun, while Black Snow has been ten tough years of persistence and self doubt (I often thought of giving up).

I’ll just leave you with a few closing thoughts. The character of Black Snow (and much of the supporting cast) have really become part of my life over the years, so much so that I can almost picture them like real people, friends even. I’ve always felt that Black Snow represented the everyman, often the worst parts of him, but the everyman none the less. I believe anyone can relate to him on some level, and know I see a lot of myself in him.

The comic has become a major part of my life. I’ve never dedicated myself to anything for such a long period of time (except my wife!) and it is something I believe in. I can’t really see my life without it at this point. There’s something to be said about sticking with something for so long. Beyond just dedication or having a goal. I think it’s having a passion.

So while Black Snow may never see the light of publication and that success that I dream of, at least I’ll always know I tried. I don’t plan on ever giving up my dream, and really just being able to create something I love with my best friend is a dream in itself. So I’ll keep drawing, and Black Snow will always be there for me, and more importantly, he’ll be there for you.