I have been a little lax posting art, so here goes a “dump” of some recent work. Mainly squeezed in when I had the time between other projects, but these are quite a bit of fun so I thought I’d share. Before I do, though, I wanted to add this: the world is obviously very dark right now, but there is one really great piece of news: Prabir Purkayastha, founder of NewsClick, was recently released from a prison! As Peoples Dispatch noted last month, “The Indian Supreme Court ordered the immediate release of author and journalist Prabir Purkayastha on Wednesday, May 15 terming his arrest by the Delhi Police in October last year, illegal.” While Purkayastha is not out of the woods yet, this is a significant positive step. I, for one, am very pleased. I’ve learned a lot from Purkayastha and NewsClick. Here are some recent comments from him, too.
Onwards to art!
Modern Wizard
I have long had a love affair of wizards and magic users. Dr. Strange, Gandalf, and whatnot. Long beards and pointy hats are preferred, but are not required. Hell, Bill from WIZARDS FOR HIRE — CHEAP! certainly fits that description, but his wizardly companion Butch sure as hell does not.
Speaking of wizards, if you want to read my hands down favourite version, read THE FACE IN THE FROST by John Bellairs. I’ve even read (and own!) his sadly incomplete sequel titled THE DOLPHIN CROSS that was included in the New England Science Fiction Association’s anthology MAGIC MIRRORS. John Bellairs died far far too young and I suspect many people know him mainly due to his young adult oriented series’ featuring characters like Lewis Barnavelt (and Rose Rita Pottinger!), Anthony Monday, and Johnny Dixon, but THE FACE IN THE FROST and THE DOLPHIN CROSS are amazing. That is not meant to take anything away from Bellairs’ other writing; I really love his prose and his YA books are really great with a dark gothic creepy vibe that runs through them.
Of course, for comics you can’t beat Steve Ditko and Stan Lee’s early Doctor Strange stories serialized in STRANGE TALES. I have a few of those in print but mostly in reprint form (like DOCTOR STRANGE CLASSICS and ESSENTIAL DOCTOR STRANGE).
Modern Barbarian
Barbarians are a character type I’ve not had much of an opportunity to draw. Which is a shame because barbarians are such a blast to draw. One of the great things about them is how they “cut through” the crap. There is no angst, no melodrama, no feelings, no nothing. Just violence and often murder, usually in the most over the top way possible. The great (and sadly missing) “Joesky” once built a great reaction table for when you want to know what a barbarian is thinking: roll percentile dice. There is a 1% chance that the barbarian will be “okay for now.” The other 99%? HATE. Yup! And if you want a modern version, look up the Cartoon Network’s pilot for KORGOTH OF BARBARIA (here's one on DailyMotion). Korgoth is pitch perfect, voiced by Diedrich Bader.
Dwarf Troll Slayer
As some of you know, I love fantasy dwarfs. Hell, I love sci-fi dwarfs. I just love dwarfs. I tend to like my dwarfs a little more crazy than so called “vanilla” dwarfs in a lot of high fantasy. This guy is a great example. He’s technically a Troll Slayer, a more crazy than normal type of dwarf. As Chris Hogan once noted in his terrific gaming supplement SMALL BUT VICIOUS DOG, a Troll Slayer is “a kamikaze no pants dwarf with a big orange mohawk, prison tats, a two handed axe and a burning desire to ragequit life as violently as possible.” Yes. Yes! YES!
Given the “no pants” status of this fella, I put a censored version up for all to see. For those who want to see the uncensored versions, simply click on the image below and it will open up the (glorious?) uncensored version!
Process Work
I also decided to include some “process” work, mainly because I don’t often do that and I kinda thought, “well, why not?” So here are pencils and inks of the various pieces. As always, you can click on most of these to make them bigger (and, with the Troll Slayer, see the uncensored versions, too). You’ll see some subtle differences, especially between the inks and colours; even when I ink “by hand,” I’ll still do a little bit of digital work to finish the piece off. You’ll spot that if you look!
I really had a lot of fun doing these! I hope you enjoy them, too!
I posted about doing this a few months back, but I had some free time so I did another one recently. And it was so much fun that I thought I’d work it right up to colours, but this time doing so with watercolour!
My goal is always the same: just how fast can I rough out a perspective drawing? And especially: how loose can I keep it while having “enough” drawing to be able to ink it? It can be a bit tricky, but the goal is speed, relative accuracy, and fun. Never underestimate fun!
To avoid getting too fussy with details, I do these sketches with ink, using Zebra and Tombow brush pens as well as Paper Mate Flair Fineliners. If I make a mistake, I can fix it when I actually properly ink the piece, not at this stage. In other words, if mistakes are made, I live with ‘em. Who cares?
As many know, I generally ink digitally now, but that’s not always the case and I do “bounce around” between traditional inking and digital inking. For this piece, I went digital to speed things up. I avoid any “tight” pencils or anything like that; I just scan the sketch in, set it up in Manga Studio EX 4 (yup, I still use it!), and away I go to inking.
With this piece, I thought it would be fun to throw some colour in there, too.
I didn’t keep track of total time, but it wasn’t long, which is the whole point and goal. Zip, zip, zip!
Oh! If you’ve reached this far, don’t forget: I’m starting to put out free digital copies of my comics. Head on over to my “Pirate Von” section and take a peek! It’s at https://www.vonallan.com/p/pirate-von.html.
As has become a bit of an annual tradition, I’ll be one of the exhibitors at the upcoming Vanier Artisans Christmas Craft Sale on Sunday, November 26th. This has been a really fun event in the past and the organizers (led by the amazing Charlotte Taylor) create a really great atmosphere. And the mix of artists is really neat; comics will be represented by yours truly, but there will be a wide diversity of artists and artistic practices at the show. Crafts, clothing, food, art, you name it!
One of the things I enjoy the most is the spirit of solidarity that everyone shares. In some events I’ve done in the past, that spirit has been sorely lacking. It’s hard to put into words, but I’ve certainly experienced a hostile competitive attitude in some of these other events. It’s a shame, because I strongly believe that we’re all in it together and that competition between artists should not be an element of any art show.
I was tasked to come up with a poster for this year’s event. This time I wanted to do something with Santa Claus, mainly because I don’t think I’ve ever drawn the big guy before. The problem with that is that Santa is so iconic it can be hard to “shake” other influences when approaching a design. I did what I could in that regard and came up with something that hopefully captures the ol’ elf in all his glory. With a little bit of wonder thrown in, too. I also included the final pencils ‘cuz I know that some folks like seeing the “process” from pencils to the final piece. It was a great deal of fun to do, too. And it all came together pretty quickly; literally I went from not having any firm ideas — save for the notion of including Santa — to getting in an image in my mind’s eye. That image held through right to the final colours and poster design.
The show will be at the Vanier Community Service Centre (270 Marier Avenue, Ottawa, ON K1L 7H8). And I’ll have not only comics and graphic novels (including WOLF’S HEAD!), but various art prints, cards, and whatnot, too! If you’re in town, why not drop by? It really is a lovely event!
I was tasked by the ever-wonderful Charlotte Taylor to design the latest poster for the upcoming Emond Park Craft Sale here in Ottawa, Ontario. Charlotte has been shepherding this event for a number of years now and it's always a great deal of fun to participate! And it's extra fun to do the poster art, too! This time the event will have a Halloween tone and I wanted to make sure that theme came across in the poster design! As an added bonus, I also included a quick photograph of the raw pencils and final inks. I don't always work this way, but when I do it does give me a chance to share this art process with you folks. Well, to some extent, at least!
The details of the event are on the poster, but it'll be on Sunday, October 1st from 10:00 am to 4:00 pm. Emond Park is in the heart of Vanier, a neighbourhood of Ottawa, and is very easy to find.
The Facebook page for the event just went up, so local folks (and not so local folks) can find additional details at https://www.facebook.com/events/867926031418097. It should be a lot of fun!
Barney Smith of the fantastic StoryComic site (https://www.storycomic.com/) was nice enough to have me on his show! And unlike some other radio/podcast shows, this was actually done live in front of the camera! Video! Shocking!
What is truly amazing to me is that Barney has now done 289 (!) episodes of his show. That’s 289 interviews of all kinds of writers and artists, many working in comics but certainly not everyone, and he does it with humour and grace along with a boatload of great questions, too. And since he’s based in Vermont, he’s also done a special subset of episodes that deal with creative folks that live in that state (I think about 42 episodes in that category). That is one hell of a lot of work and, as I noted to Barney, I’m not sure how he does it. A love of the medium certainly helps and he has that in spades, but still… I get tired just thinking about how I’d handle that many interviews, especially given all of the research and energy that goes into it.
And, of course, The Center for Cartoon Studies is based in White River Junction, Vermont. That’s important because the school, as they note on their website, “centers on the creation and dissemination of comics, graphic novels and other manifestations of the visual narrative” as is one of the few that do that sort of thing in North America. See? How cool is that?!
So, what do we chat about? Well, not only my background in art and comics, but also how I approach telling the stories I do. We’re talking art here (and by art I mean “art” that’s very broadly defined). In other words, there are no right and wrong answers to how one makes art. There are just tools and different approaches and a great deal of learning. Whew, boy, the learning truly never stops and that’s one of the joy (and, okay, one of the occasional pains) about art. I was delighted that Barney was interested in talking about this, mainly because I think it’s one of those things that can kinda get glossed over. In other words, how one (as a creator) thinks about and approaches the story they are trying to tell is very important. It’s very easy to confuse or otherwise lose the reader and, at least for my own work, I rarely want to do it and never want to do it by accident (for those interested, one of my most abstract stories is this older one, that really needs to be read at least twice to really “grok” what it’s about).
And, of course, we take a pretty deep dive into WOLF’S HEAD, my ongoing comics series, too. (and pssst! Don’t forget to check out the new snazzy trailer for it, too!)
I hope you enjoy it! And many thanks to Barney for having me on to talk about a medium I love so much!
Lightly-Edited Transcript
Barney
Smith: Welcome to “StoryComic Presents,” where we interview
amazing storytellers and artists. This is episode 289. I’m your
host, Barney Smith of StoryComic.com.
We’re truly excited to have with us the internationally acclaimed
artist and highly talented creator of “Wolf’s
Head”, Von Allan.
Von Allan: Hello!
Barney Smith: Von, how are you doing?
Von Allan: I am doing good. Thank you very, very much for having
me on.
Barney Smith: This is great. So I read “Wolf’s Head” and I
am really excited to talk to you about that. And so do you want to
give people a little bit of background on how you got into writing
comics and creating stories and also a little bit of your synopsis of
“Wolf’s Head” as well? Because it’s a pretty interesting
story.
Von Allan: Sure, sure. I’ll do both. I’m weird, I think, with
a lot of comic book creators, particularly artists, because I did not
draw as a kid.
Barney Smith: Wow.
Von Allan: I actually came to art very, very late in life. I
didn’t start till I was about 25. And a lot of that was, A) I was
very insecure. And I really felt, particularly as a kid, that artists
were kind of born and not made. And that you sort of knew you were an
artist from when you popped out into the world. And when you did that
you — it’s a cliche — almost being born with a crayon or a
pencil in your hand.
Barney Smith: Right.
Von Allan: I kept that sort of the stereotype that “I couldn’t
do this.” I mean, I drew a little bit as a kid, but it never went
anywhere. And I certainly didn’t grow or what have you. And I wound
up working at a bookstore
when I was around 20 years old, in my early 20s. And it was an
independent bookstore. And I met a lot of writers and some artists
through the course of that with book events and whatnot. And I talked
with them. And it sounds so naive now, but in talking with them —
I’d ask them pesky questions and stuff, because I’m nosy and I
was curious. And it was dawning on me, slowly but surely, that
writers and artists have bad days. And it is not something that
necessarily comes easy to everybody. And yeah, there are the
“Mozart’s” of the world that are geniuses and what have you,
but a lot of people struggle. And through trial and error, you get
stronger as you do this. So you have to maintain discipline, and you
have to learn, you have to have an open mind.
So I basically was starting to absorb this. And I sat down with a
copy of a book called “Drawing
on the Right Side of the Brain” by Betty Edwards, sort of a
legendary book, and literally started to learn to draw. And I found I
liked it. And I found that her book — and I still fondly remember
that book — has a really interesting way of helping you, as a
non-visual artist, start to learn how to do things in a really —
and it’s amazing because it’s a book; it’s not like you’re in
her class or anything. It’s a book — she has a really intuitive
way of helping you get over a lot of the insecurities and
frustrations that can happen with learning to draw.
So that was the starting point. And I ran into sort of a really
quick quandary after that, because I was like, “okay, I can draw a
little bit. I’m not very good yet. And I know there’s a lot I
still need to learn, like anatomy and perspective and what have you.”
But I want to do comics, because I had a love affair for comics as a
very young kid. I mean, I started getting into comics when I moved to
Ottawa when I was around eight years old. And comics for me were a
significant escape because my mom was not very well. She was dealing
with schizophrenia. There was a lot of mental illness and poverty. I
found comics when I moved to Ottawa, through meeting friends and
whatnot. And I got introduced to comic book stores and I just fell in
love with the medium. But I never… I never thought I could do this.
And when I was starting to work with “Drawing on the Right Side of
the Brain” at the bookstore, I was like, “okay, well, this book
is great, but this is… I don’t know how… I don’t even know
the vocabulary of how to do this.” In the West, I mean, not so much
in France or Japan, obviously, or anything like that. But [comics
have been] dismissed as an art form. And to do comics well, you need
to know figure drawing. You need to know colour for colour work.
Certainly, brush and ink or pen and ink work for inking. Your
perspective, colour and light theory and how that interacts. There’s
just so many things you have to learn and then be able to kind of
create a synthesis with. And that took time. That took a lot of time.
And there were a lot of false starts and whatnot before I started to
get even decent at it. And I look back and I probably showed my work
before I was really ready for prime time. And my initial work that’s
out there was pretty rough, but you learn by doing, you have to put
it out there and you fail. You fall on your face all the time, and
you get stronger and you keep going.
There was something about it. And I can never quite articulate
what it is about comics and about art that — despite the
difficulties and the frustrations and whatnot — didn’t stop me
from keeping going. It took a long time to get to a point where I
feel now, I’m a professional. The quality of the work, I think, is
pretty strong. My draftsmanship is a lot better than it ever was.
It’s just… it was a fight. It was a big fight.
So turning to “Wolf’s Head”. “Wolf’s Head” is probably
my most mature work in the sense of me as an artist. I felt I could
handle a story like this where before I don’t know if I could have.
My earlier stuff was a little bit autobiographical, though from a
fictional lens, and then some kids-oriented stuff, but I was still
struggling. And with “Wolf’s Head,” a lot of things sort of
came together where I felt I could do it. And the story is about a
young woman named Lauren, who is kind of down on her luck and she is
struggling with trying to find herself. She had decided to be a cop
and realized, to her horror, that this is not the world that she
wanted to be in, but she still wanted to help people. [Helping] as
some sort of the most aspirational versions of what policing can be.
And when she realized that [policing] wasn’t “it” for her, she
quit. Quitting meant, “Oh my God, I don’t have any money. I come
from a poor background. What am I going to do?” And just as she’s
trying to work on this stuff, it turns out that her mom — who is
working [as a] low-paid janitor — discovered, to her amazement,
that there is this new life form that she doesn’t really
understand, but what basically turns out to be an early form of an
artificial intelligence.
And one of the things I really wanted to do with the story is not
do a stereotype of [AI]. It’s funny; I started it before all of the
contemporary stuff about AI is in the news, but I wanted to do sort
of like the anti-”Terminator” or anti-”Star Trek,” where
[those stories are] like, “Oh my God, this robot is going to
replace humanity and wants to kill everything.” And I was like, “I
wanted to do a story about an AI that is a baby that’s learning and
growing and actually has a great deal of affection for human beings
and is learning.”
Barney Smith: And so you, did you kind of fall in like, you know,
basically like Asimov’s “Three Rules Of Robotics” in a way for
this AI to follow a bit?
Von Allan: No, I didn’t. I didn’t do it that way because I
started off with the AI. So basically the corporation wants to use
the AI as a war-fighting machine. And what they didn’t really
realize is that this AI has zero interest in doing that and was
already struggling against it. It’s not even to a point — the
Asimov “three laws” situation wouldn’t even apply because it
was designed — or the hope — that it would be used to kill. It
would be used to harm human beings through direct actions.
Barney Smith: Right.
Von Allan: What interested me, when I was sort of brainstorming
the story itself, was I was like, “what happens when somebody —
in this case, a machine — is put into a situation where they want
no part of that. And what do they do when the corporation, in this
case, is not willing to allow them to find their own pathway.” And
a lot of the tension of the story is Lauren’s developing awareness
that the AI actually is decent and that it’s not a trick or her mom
hasn’t made a catastrophic mistake. And Lauren starts to, slowly
but surely, develop a lot of affection for the AI and that affection
is also reciprocated back.
Barney Smith: So, for those that are listening should check out
the show notes. Go to vonallan.com — and that’s a V O N A L L A
N.com — and check out a link to the book “Wolf’s Head”,
because when we’re talking about an AI and we’re talking about
robotics, it’s not like “Iron Giant” or anything or an R2D2.
It’s not an actual physical robot. It’s almost this liquidy kind
of T-1000 situation here.
Von Allan: Yep. Yep. And that was done relatively deliberately to
sort of play with that. I debated, “am I going too far?” But I
think it works, in the context of the story, fairly well that this
thing — and I will see how far I can get with it, but it’s one of
the fun things — was I wanted a baby. To have this not fully formed
thing that you could really, as a reader, judge it too much because
the form of it itself is really indistinct. So, if I hadn’t made it
— well, “Iron Giant” is a good example or any type of classic
robot with “hard edges” or what have you — it might seem more
either malevolent or people might read into [it] more personality.
And I wanted that to be a very strongly developing aspect of the
story that what it is and what it looks like and how it manifests is
sort of fluid because it hasn’t found itself yet. It’s still
working on this thing, with the sort of the loose idea that the
corporation behind it sort of gave it these abilities that even they
themselves can’t quite understand how it happened. One of the plot
points of the book is [that] the man who nominally invented it, a guy
named Jeremy Hamilton, can’t figure out how he did it. So he can’t
replicate it. And he is frustrated to no end that he can’t figure
out why this thing does what it does and not what he programmed it —
or thought he programmed it — to do. And that’s part of the fun
of the story too.
Barney Smith: So it’s kind of like a ghost in the machine kind
of analogy on that too, as well, then?
Von Allan: Yeah, I never thought of it that way, but in some ways,
yeah. It becomes more of a subplot in the series, but this man who is
desperate to be able to recreate this thing because he was sort of,
“okay, fine. This stupid thing is on its own out there. Okay. We’re
going to work to get it back, but don’t worry, everybody, I can
replicate it. I, I, I, oh, I can’t. Oh my God. Like, what do you
mean I can’t.” And then he’s, “well, we’ve got to get that
stupid thing back. And I’m ripping out my hair trying to figure out
how did I got to get this thing work?” And he can’t. So it’s
kind of fun to do!
And what is an antagonist, but an antagonist who’s baffled by
what happened and cannot figure out to save his life. And it’s
fairly existential because he works at a corporation. He is very high
up, but he has people he still answers to. And there is sort of a
running plot is that they have expectations and they want answers.
And he can’t answer them because he doesn’t know what the hell
happened.
Barney Smith: And so talk about the world-building aspect on this.
Is this something that was kind of — almost like the shape of the
AI — was this an organic experience for you as well? Or did you
already have an outline for the full story arc ahead of time?
Von Allan: Yeah. Well, the way I write it’s, it’s a little bit
different. In a way, this is very contemporary. Like a lot of people,
I tend to write in arcs. So I had a pretty good idea of broad stroke
‘beginning, middle, and end’ of where I wanted the story to go.
Where I think I’m a little bit different — and I don’t mean
this in a good or bad way — is I really like the power of
sequential storytelling. So in a periodical comic form, I have a
strong belief that — I guess the technical phrase, a literary
phrase, would be ‘episodic closure’. For the most part, I like
having something in an individual issue have a beginning, a middle,
and an end. So that was not as a blueprinted out or clear cut for me.
I didn’t, so as I approach an issue, that is something I solve on
an issue-by-issue basis. So I had broad strokes of what Lauren’s
situation was, what her mom’s situation was, the situation with the
AI, the situation with Hamilton. But part of the fun for me with
doing the story is it’s not like I’ve scripted out — like in
the case of the first book, like the first collection, the first six
issues, which is what they were — of that story. Each story —
each issue, rather — was sort of built as its own story with enough
threads that continue to build, hopefully, so that by the end of the
book — or the end of issue six — you’re like, “wow, each
stands on its own, but something more is developing.”
I’m always hesitant. I think people sometimes will be like,
“well, if you start referencing titles you like, you can get
pigeonholed of, ‘oh, well, that’s a silver age thing, or that’s
a bronze age thing.’” And it’s not so much that. I like stories
that have episodic closure. And I actually looked back at people like
Charles Dickens for this. When Dickens was writing — people forget
this now — his work was serialized.
Barney Smith: Right, it was episodic.
Von Allan: Yeah, it was very episodic. And one of the concerns he
had — and I did a bit of research on that. It’s very similar to
contemporary serialized comics — is, “okay, I’m going to have
this ongoing thing.” I think “Pickwick” was like over 20, 20
different issues. “So, how do I make sure that people can jump on
board on any type of issue and — on top of it — get something
satisfying so they will hopefully come back.” So I didn’t want to
just look at comics, I wanted to look outside the medium of
comics and go, “okay, well, how have other creators in similar but
different art forms — like prose or literary fiction or what have
you — handle how you do episodic storytelling.” And I kept coming
back to Dickens, because I found actually a fair amount of research
actually has been done on this, where they talked about his —
scholars now talk about how — he was working on building episodic
structure with episodic closure at the same time. And it’s
fascinating to me. It’s endlessly fascinating. And I find it very
interesting that — and I don’t mean to judge them because there
are advantages, too — with the so-called decompressed storytelling,
that that aspect, particularly with modern corporate comics —
Marvel and DC and whatnot — that seems to be a bit of a lost art
form compared to previous decades, where you will often pick up an
issue of whatever and you’re in the middle of a storyline [and]
there’s nothing to orient a new or lapsed reader to help you
understand what’s happening in that story. And often the story
doesn’t have an ending. It has a “things have happened” and you
have to buy the next issue or the next series of issues to get the
resolution. That might be fine for a trade paperback or a graphic
novel collection, but I think it damages somewhat — and to what
degree is an arguable case — but I do think it damages how people
actually interact with the form of comics.
Now that doesn’t mean, and this is why I always have to be
careful and it’s a hard thing. It doesn’t mean that I’m arguing
for every single comic that’s ever done by anybody should be a
beginning, middle, end story. You can read them in any order. No, no,
no. I’m not saying that. I’m saying that there is a way to build
what I would call subplots. I’m not sure if that’s the correct
term, but longer narrative hooks that take longer to resolve, but
still give some degree of closure of a story in a particular issue.
Barney Smith: Right.
Von Allan: And that “Wolf’s Head” is really my first attempt
to put that into practice, to see what I can do to do that. It’s
hard for me to judge it, but that is definitely part of my sort of
storytelling thesis going into it. And I’m pretty happy with it,
but readers will have to be the ones that, as always, have to judge
this stuff.
Barney Smith: Where do you see the future of comics?
Von Allan: I think as a medium, it’s very healthy because I
think there is something about the medium of comics. And one thing I
always like to point to is that it is remarkably democratic as an art
form. Even with something like animation, which in some ways is a
sister to comics, it’s very difficult to do anything but very short
animations by yourself. There are software tools now that are
facilitating that — an individual person could do more — but it’s
very hard. And so I think there, there’s something about the medium
of comics. If you’re working traditionally — paper, pencil, ink,
or markers, or something of some sort, and with some type of way of
scanning it either with a camera or a scanner or whatever — you can
put your work out there. So I’m worried at all about the medium of
comics.
Barney Smith: Okay.
Von Allan: What exactly that looks like, what type of format we’re
talking — if we’re talking print or online and how the panel
arrangements work — that’s a separate issue, but comics — that
sequential nature — I’m not concerned about. The industry,
particularly in the West, is a completely different question. I mean,
there’s been so much just recently, the distribution changes with
the ending
of Diamond’s monopoly.
Barney Smith: Right.
Von Allan: You know, DC first breaking away. And then Marvel not
completely breaking away from Diamond, but going with Penguin Random
House. Image just recently going with Lunar. The industry is in a
great deal of flux. And part of it is if you ever look at the pricing
— and I did a little
essay, about a decade ago now, even a bit longer, just looking at
the prices of what were then contemporary comics against the United
States’ Federal Minimum Wage, and the ability of people
purchase periodical comics and it’s incredibly unaffordable just
from that point of view. And that’s not so much a critique of the
prices of comics; I think some people misinterpreted that. It’s
also a critique on how crappy wages are for people. They can’t
afford to buy literally all that much because I think — correct me
if I’m wrong — I think [the US Federal Minimum Wage] is still $7
and 25 cents. And that’s awful for human beings to actually
live on, let alone buying things for pleasure or what have you.
That’s been just a quantum shift in not only what gets
made, but where it’s positioned and how kids can find
them. Kids are not reliant on going into one of the 3,500 or so comic
book shops; there are a lot of other places where a kid can find a
comic. And that’s wonderful. And I think online — particularly
with platforms like WebToons, but old-school webcomics — is
probably going to do nothing but grow. And that is, I think, very
healthy for the art form.
Barney Smith: What do you enjoy most about being a comic creator?
Von Allan: Honestly, I think the biggest thing is challenging
myself often to see what will happen next. I love learning. One of
the things I find most rewarding about the art form, broadly
speaking, is I like learning as a writer and I like learning as a
visual artist. So, not that long ago I did a deep dive. I found there
was a weakness in my work with some of the way I was approaching
tones and values. And I revamped how I was approaching colour. And I
also revamped more recently — it’s not so much in those issues of
“Wolf’s Head” — how I was approaching using value,
specifically like hatching and some zip-a-tones. I was looking at
both how manga artists and then traditional artists like Wally Wood
and what have you were using it. And I tried to learn, I tried to
explore what I could do with it and how I can incorporate it into my
own style. And I find that always rewarding.
And the same with writing. I’ve learned how — hopefully — to
better approach writing a story and breaking a story and approaching
it both in an episodic way and then in a more arc-based way. The
funnest thing is seeing how an issue is going to turn out.
The best way to define this is by an example. So “Wolf’s
Head.” The first hard cover is the first six issues, [but] I’m
working on issue 18 now of the ongoing series. And those are mostly
on digital format. And where I’m at now I never thought I would be
in [this] narrative place for “Wolf’s Head” when I started
writing issue one. And that’s a lot of fun for me. Lauren has gone
places with the story and the situation with her mom. There is a dog
that’s also a main character in the story — her mom’s dog —
that plays a big role. And it’s just the story. That’s one of the
things that excites me about sequential storytelling is it’s a lot
of fun, and I’ve done it, to do a ‘beginning, middle, and end’
graphic novel that’s designed as such. But sequential
storytelling — figuring out where the story is taking you — is,
for me, always exciting. It’s a great deal of fun. And it’s that
I really think, at the end of the day, is: I wrap an issue and then
I’m like, “huh, geez, okay, I got to figure out where the hell
I’m going with this next. And what’s going to happen and how this
is going to play out. And what are the consequences?” Like, I love
asking questions like that. And that is a truly exciting part of
what, for me, makes comics comics.
And you can capture the same thing in a novel or a film or
whatever. But there’s something about the pace of comics. There’s
something exciting about that magic of how comics go. It’s such a
unique art form compared to so many others.
Barney Smith: What I love about your work is you really do well
with just having engaging conversations between characters. Talk to
us a little bit about how that process is of how you actually write
dialogue for your characters.
Von Allan: Well, the dialogue is actually — this is kind of
funny — one of the things I realized…
When I was working on “Wolf’s Head” — more so than previous
work — I kind of did a breakdown — so this goes also to learning
— I did a breakdown on both comics from the 1960s and different
eras [compared to] contemporary comics. And I did some research to
try to go, “exactly how many words — captions, speech balloons,
even thought balloons — how many words can you put on an individual
comic book page, standard form, American/Canadian-style. What becomes
too much? What doesn’t? What works? What’s the happy balance?
So I started from there and I made detailed notes. I literally
broke down every single page that I would use. Everything from a
splash page to sixteen panels. I sort of worked out, “okay, based
on an overall word count, which is around 235 240 words overall. How
does that break down on a panel-by-panel and balloon-by-balloon
basis?” This is fascinating! Something really interesting has
happened with the medium of comics. And at the same time it started
to dawn on me that artists like Steve Ditko — and even Jack Kirby
to some extent — were often using nine panel pages. Like Ditko was
renowned for it and even Kirby was using six, seven, eight, nine
panels. There’s not a hard and fast rule, but they would often use
a lot of panels. And that’s another thing that has changed
with a lot of contemporary American English-language comics. A lot of
comics are down to three or four panels. So less words, less panels.
Then, of course, one of the big ones is the way the gutter space
is defined. That wonderful space between panels that help you
actually navigate comics. The sequential storytelling of this — and
people like Scott McCloud have written about this quite a bit — is
there’s also been a weird fusion where there’s so many “design
things” and overlapping of panels and almost the elimination of the
gutter space. I would argue [that] in many ways the comics are a lot
harder to read.
Okay, that gave me some “ballparks” of what I needed to look
at. So when I write I tend to overwrite dialogue. So in the editing
process — using all the guidelines I just spoke about — I’ll
tend to bring it back down. I basically did quite a bit of research
and just sort of my own affection for certain authors and whatnot.
You know, it’s sort of the classic — “If I read out loud some
of this dialogue and close my eyes, could I tell who’s talking.”
You don’t want all the characters to sound the same. So Lauren is a
good example; she speaks in a particular way. But her mom has a
pronounced sort of French accent, particularly when it comes to
swearing. So she tends to swear in French. And the two women do not —
hopefully from my point of view — do not, at all, sound alike. And
that sort of carries on. Hamilton has a more — I don’t know if
aristocratic would be the right way — but a more privileged
language. So he tends to use bigger words, not very many contractions
and whatnot. I sort of played this game through it all. And then the
AI — because the AI is a baby and is learning — the AI actually
generally speaks in musical tones. And playing with that was sort of
interesting, too.
So the rhythm of it becomes a — how to say this. The structural
approach is “I’ve got this scene.” Okay, so I’ve written a
scene and I know how many pages I’ve got for this scene. So just to
pick something: I’ve got three pages to do this scene because, when
I broke down the issue, this is what I what I gave it. This is what
this scene has to accomplish. These are the characters that are in
this scene. And this is the thrust of what’s happening — these
are what Lauren wants to do, these are the obstacles she’s trying
to you [solve], whatever. So then it’s trying to figure out the
best way to use dialogue to get across where she’s at, what she’s
trying to do, who she’s talking with, and their situation. And in
the back of my mind, I sort of leave notes to myself constantly, to
remind me. “Does the reader understand what I’m trying to do?”
Because to me — and again, this is not a right or wrong thing.
Comics are art. So there’s no right way or ‘one size fits all’
policy. But for me, I want my comics to be very comprehensible. I
don’t need to read a scene or read an issue and go, “what? What
the hell just happened? Who are these people and what are they doing?
I don’t understand.” So that, for me, is anathema, unless you are
doing it very, very deliberately, you have a very specific point in
mind. For me. There are no rules; it’s up to individual creators to
solve this or to tackle it. But that’s sort of what I think about.
What is the function of the scene? What am I trying to do with the
story? And, you know, how does the dialogue…
And I don’t know. I mean, dialogue is in some ways its own
art. So if you’re asking me, “well, how do you choose?” I don’t
know. The characters…
It sounds good to me. I try to verbalize it and make sure I read it
out loud so that it has its own kind of rhythm and it doesn’t sound
mechanical. It sounds like an actual human being would talk, but
that’s probably one of the hardest things to do.
Was it Cormac McCarthy? I think it was Cormac McCarthy who removed
almost all punctuation —
quotation marks and what have you —
so you very rarely read, “Bob turned to Fred and said, ‘quote,’”
and “Fred said in reply to Bob”…
you don’t get that. He kind of throws you in. And that can
work. With comics, you’re always going to have the speech balloon.
So it’s a different thing. But I never want to lose readers. I want
readers to be able to understand what I’m doing, what I’m saying.
And at the end of the day, my feeling is if somebody doesn’t like
my work, that’s okay. If somebody doesn’t understand my
work and is baffled with it, then I failed. Then I’ve just
terribly failed. And that’ll bum me out for days, because if you
like it or if you don’t like it, but you understand it? Good.
We’re good. If you read it and you’re just like, “I don’t
understand who these characters are. I don’t know. Lauren? I don’t
understand what her motivation is or what she’s trying to do.”
Like that. That’s the worst.
So I try very hard —
and I’m very lucky because my wife is a professional editor and she
works for the government. She’s had a great deal of editing
experience. And so she always is looking at my work and I sort of
pester her with these type of details. And I could get you the issue.
I don’t remember it offhand. But Jim Shooter, back when he was
Editor-in-Chief at Marvel —
actually did in a couple of his little columns —
talked about what, for him and therefore for Marvel at the time, made
a good story. And it was things like, “do characters have clear
goals? Are they trying to accomplish something? Are they failing?”
And on and on and on. And I tend to think about that type of stuff a
lot, to make sure that goals and motivations and obstacles and
whatnot are very, very clear. Not in a hopefully
didactic way or I’m hitting you over the head with it, but in a way
that, if I’ve done my job right, it’s very, very subtle. And the
reader is oriented in a way that they’re never questioning why
these things are happening. I always want things like that to be
very, very clear, but very, very intuitive as you’re going through
the story.
Barney Smith: Let me ask you, Von, if people want to pick up your
book and read this, where’s the best place they could go to right
now?
Von Allan: For the book, for the hardcover, Amazon,
Barnes
and Noble, anything like that, because they have them. They never
stock them deep, which is one of the tricks about being an
independent author. They are never going to have tens of thousands of
them in stock or anything, but they’re easy for them to reorder and
there’s no problem getting it. I know it’s a hardcover. It’s a
bit more pricey, especially as an independent. But if people are also
wanting to try “Wolf’s Head” more inexpensively and don’t
mind reading digital, it’s easy to find on Kindle, as well. And
then, you know, on top of it, there’s excerpts on my website.
And I have also short stories I’ve done and all kinds of stuff like
that, too. So if you people really want to sample for free and just
want to sort of get a sense of how I draw and how I tell stories and
whatnot, there’s all kinds of short stories on my website that
people can take a look at.
Barney Smith: Good. So Von, listen, when you get volume two to
come out, you got to come back on, because you and I can literally
talk for hours.
Von Allan: Yes.
Barney Smith: We can talk for a long time about this and just
incredibly impressed by the fact that, as you said, you’re
basically a self-taught artist and your work is amazing. So
congratulations on that.
Von Allan: Well, I mean, that’s lovely. Thank you. It’s such
an exciting time for comics, and that’s not to say there aren’t
frustrations and there aren’t difficulties with it. But it is such
a wonderful time for comics. And I hope people are just always
reading them and always passing on recommendations —
word of mouth —
because find stuff you love and share the love.
Barney Smith: Because it’s a good point. If you find something
you love, you got to share it.
Von Allan: Yeah. It’s got to spread like an infection. And
again, in the best sense of the word. That’s is one of the things
that I love. And I’m weird because I’ll read stuff from the 1930s
or right to the present. I’ve got my hands on like old Fawcett
Comics right to you [comics] translated from Japanese or Korean or
French and it’s right to the present. Damn, that’s fun! You know,
that is so much fun!
Barney Smith: All right. Well, thank you so much, Von. This has
been great.
Von Allan: Oh, thank you for having me. I really appreciate it.
I thought it would be fun to share some of the ol’ “process” behind a recent page from WOLF’S HEAD. In this case, it’s the first page to issue 18. And hey, 18 issues in for an indy comic book series is not too shabby, folks.
This page features Lauren Greene and Super Bob Sanchez chit-chatting in a diner in Alberta. The page also builds off of issue 17 and the various struggles that Lauren is currently going through. While I don’t think there’s any “right” or “correct” way of starting a comic, I’ve long been partial to opening with a splash page to get things going. This is especially useful here because the preceding panel in the previous issue was actually very small. So if one is reading these issues in sequential order, it should be fun to leave off last ish with a tiny panel and then start this one with a biggie.
I’ll start with the final coloured and lettered page and we can work backwards to the initial layouts. Oh, one important caveat: while some pages take a bit of visual brainstorming, in this case I knew exactly where I was going (building from last issue, right?) so I didn’t need to do that. That’s often not the case and many pages take a bit of thumbnailing (usually tiny thumbnails) to work out mentally how I want to approach a page. This is often especially true for covers; considerations of logos and whatnot influence how the page might look. In other words, sketching and “mucking about with page design” is a tried and true way to go.
Next are the final inks, including screen tones (or, if you will, Ben Day dots or what I long called “zipatones”). Generally I do not include the lettering in the final inks (well, at least for colour work) and that is reflected here. Inking is one of my favourite things to do and this page was a blast to work on!
Next up are the final tight pencils. There is a bit of visual cheating going on here. I actually rarely rough out a page like this as one individual unit. Rather, I actually do various pencil sketches (and sometimes even inked sketches) on different sheets of paper, scanning them into my computer and finalizing the pencil layout that way. I like that approach, mainly because it allows me to isolate various parts of the illustration and work on that. In this case, the diner is a good example: isolating the perspective drawing from the figure drawing allowed me to play around with some ideas, something a bit harder to do if everything was on one sheet of Bristol board.
The next two illustrations showcase more of what I mean. First is the tighter pencilled perspective sketch of the diner and that’s followed by the very loose sketch (this time with my trusty Tombow brush pen) as I loosely laid down some ideas. These actually follow part of the same process I described here, but in this case I did do a round of tighter pencils rather than just go into final inks because I needed to be sure of a few different things. The trade-off is time, but I felt it was worth it in this case.
Not included here are the separate figure sketches. I generally do loose little gestures, often in ink, and then scan, check, print out, and tighten into final pencils. You can see the final result in that first sketch above.
Some pages are slow, some go surprisingly quick, and this one was somewhere in the middle. It was a lot of fun to do and hopefully starts off issue 18 in an engaging, intriguing, and beautiful way.
I'm very pleased to announce that I'll be one of the participating artists in this year's Vanier Artisans Christmas Craft Sale. This is organized by the always capable and wonderful Charlotte Taylor and she's bringing together a wide range of artists of different disciplines for the sale. I really like that; I don't like "silos" and the idea that artists have to "stay in their lane" or somesuch has never made much sense to me. I like that different artists can get together for an event like this. That's a neat way to share art and a great way to have some fun. And a special bonus is that I designed and illustrated this year's poster, too!
I'll be bringing a number of my comics and graphic novels, including the hardcovers of WOLF'S HEAD and LOVE, LAUGHTER, AND LOSS. Plus prints, cards, and a few other odds and ends. And I think a very special guest will be joining me there, too. That's all hush-hush and super secret! The only way to find out is to come!
So if you're interested in meeting some amazing artists and perhaps buy some lovely art for Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, or "just because," please drop by on Saturday. It should be a lot of fun!
Given everything that has been going on, when I get a chance to draw I've been looking for fun little pieces to work on. The illustrations below certainly fit that bill!
Drawing kids is a great deal of fun. Very challenging, but fun! Why challenging? Drawing adults allows for more "wiggle-room." In other words, there's more flexibility in how one chooses to render adults. Or rather, I find that there's more flexibility. That's partially based on style, probably mixed in with a bit of my own sensibility when it comes to figure drawing. If you over-render children, they immediately look "wrong." Generally my goal is to try and keep everything as simple as possible while (at least in these cases) still maintaining my own visual style. It might sound easy, but it's really not in practice. In the cases of all these girls, I didn't want to get too cartoony or abstract, so that also influenced how I approached each piece.
In the case of the middle illustration, I also decided to play a bit with colour holds (where I change my black linework to a colour). Why do it? Again, for fun! It's neat to play and see how the art (and, more importantly, the feeling of the art) changes with different visual approaches. I've done it before, something you can see in this little celebration of Mary Marvel.
One of the things I love about art is that there's no "right" way to do it. There are multiple ways and multiple approaches. How one feels about that is a reflection of them, at least in that particular moment. And, of course, opinions change about art, too. Even how I approach colour has changed over time (see this, for example).
I don't know about you, but I find that pretty exciting.
With the 2022 Ottawa Municipal Election just around the corner, the Ottawa Transit Riders tasked me with the illustration and design of their issue-based campaign signs. I wanted to keep “within the ballpark” of what I had done for them in the past, but try to give a fresh spin on things, too. Part of the challenge this time around is that these signs are much larger than before (24" × 18" versus 17" × 11"), but at the same time they needed to be clearly legible and eye-catching from a distance. I wasn’t going to get away with a lot of fine hatching or subtle colour here!
Another challenge was to have a double-sided sign with both French and English text. Working within their requirements was challenging, but that’s also part of the fun!
The “extra” challenge was that they also wanted the illustration to be used for a campaign button, too. That’s hard; the button itself is only about 2" in diameter, so too much fine detail would be lost if I simply shrunk my art down from 24" to 2". What I wound up doing instead was taking my initial design for the campaign sign, shrinking it down alright, but re-inking and re-colouring the entire thing in a different way to make this smaller version “work.”
What makes this election fairly fascinating are the number of incumbents who are not seeking reelection. These include Councillors Jean Cloutier (Alta Vista), Diane Deans (Gloucester-Southgate), Keith Egli (Knoxdale-Merivale), Mathieu Fleury (Rideau-Vanier), Jan Harder (Barrhaven), Catherine McKenney (Somerset), Carol Anne Meehan (Gloucester-South Nepean), Scott Moffatt (Rideau-Goulbourn), as well as Mayor Jim Watson. Catherine McKenney is running to replace Jim Watson as Mayor, but I’m not sure if any other current Councillor is doing so (Councillor Deans was, but announced that she had dropped out). The nomination period is still open, so this could all change.
Anyway! My sign designs are below. I added two mock-ups in attempt to show what they’ll look like “out there” in the world at large. Pretty neat, eh?
2025 UPDATE: Please visit the following link for more details and thoughts about Diamond Comic Distributors. Some of what’s discussed below "elided" certain issues, but this the new post discusses the situation more openly now (and that means I’ll probably revisit the post below with updated information, too): https://www.vonallan.com/2025/01/Diamond-Comic-Distributors-Wolfs-Head-and-Me.html
Whew, boy, what a tough couple of months. While there has been some
joy (receiving the
City of Ottawa grant and being shortlisted for the Peter
Honeywell award being the best), for the most part it has been
one helluva frustrating slog. I’m going to do my best to outline
what the current situation is, mainly to help solidify
my own thoughts on what’s gone wrong. Or, to put it another way,
what hasn’t?
To put it bluntly, sales are not good. Worse, every attempt I’ve made
to mitigate that has failed. In different
circumstances, that would be enough to shut the series down. In fact,
I have
done exactly that
in the past (specifically with my previous graphic novel series
STARGAZER, ended
after two volumes,
and with the digital-only series METAL GODS, ended
after four issues).
What
makes WOLF’S HEAD
different from those two? The biggest difference is that WOLF’S
HEAD has never reached the Direct Market and, as a result, has been
cut off from its largest potential audience: comic book fans. Mixed in
with that are the aforementioned awards and grants; these have been especially
important in teaching me that WOLF’S HEAD does
have merit in certain (local) art circles, but there’s a “circuit
break” between that and the larger comics community world-wide.
In
fact, one of the biggest examples I could point to in terms of
specific
my role with in
the comics community is the utter lack of media coverage and interest
in my work. Not just with WOLF’S HEAD and not just recently; a
significant disappointment to me was when the documentary film I’m
in (titled I AM STILL YOUR
CHILD) received no traction whatsoever with comics media. If the
film had been covered, then more people might have been introduced to
both me and my work. I
had partially launched WOLF’S HEAD with exactly this in mind: maybe
my role in the film would help galvanize interest and awareness in
the series. Since
that didn’t happen, WOLF’S HEAD did not receive the momentum from
the film that I hoped it would.
Diamond and the Direct Market
This
has been difficult for me to place, mainly because getting a direct
answer from Diamond
Comic Distributors has been so difficult. For those who don’t
know, Diamond is the largest distributor of comic books in North
America and Great Britain and they also distribute comics and related
merchandise throughout the world. Prior to 2020, they were a de
facto
monopoly in
the world of comics;
however,
with DC Comics breaking from Diamond in early June 2020, the monopoly
label is harder to apply. Diamond was also a de
facto
monopsony; though that, given
DC’s departure,
is harder to apply,
too.
For
a small press like Von Allan Studio (that’s
me, folks),
Diamond plays a critical role in facilitating sales of comics and
graphic novels to comic book stores. Fortunately, I have an account
in good standing with Diamond; in
fact,
STARGAZER
was
distributed into the Direct Market (under Item Numbers NOV101057 and
AUG111259) through
Diamond a decade ago. Unfortunately, my amazing sales rep departed
the company and his replacement has been fairly problematic. This
is key: while
Diamond never outright
rejected WOLF’S HEAD, they’ve never accepted the series, either.
In other words, WOLF’S HEAD exists in a sort of limbo
for the past few years.
That
has been dismaying for a few reasons:
WOLF’S
HEAD is a far stronger work than STARGAZER and it remains baffling
to me why the latter was accepted for distribution while the former
hasn’t been.
“Limbo” also means
that WOLF’S HEAD could be accepted for distribution with
Diamond
tomorrow…
or never.
The
specific
format
of
the
print versions of WOLF’S HEAD was a result of attempting to meet
Diamond’s specifications.
While
I don’t want to stray too far into the weeds here, the basic
process works like this: once Diamond has agreed to take on a title
for distribution, each issue/volume has to maintain a minimum sales
threshold or risk cancellation. That threshold is based on total
dollars; so selling 1,000 copies of issue 1 of a $2.99 US series
results in a total dollar amount of $2,990.00, but selling 600
copies of issue 1 of a $9.99
US
series results in $5,994.00! But that requires a print format that
justifies the higher cover price. To
do just that, I
went with a trade paperback trim size and approximately 60 pages of
content per
issue for
WOLF’S
HEAD.
I
felt that this would give the series the best chance of meeting
Diamond’s benchmarks while still giving readers a terrific
experience.
Now,
if Diamond had formally declined distributing WOLF’S HEAD, then I
would have went in a very different direction with the print version
of the series. Since I was in “limbo,” however, I decided to go
ahead with it, hoping that, as the series progressed, Diamond would
get on board and
distribute the series.
Sadly, that has never happened, leaving me with a print format that
I’m not particularly happy with.
I did
manage to get a few Canadian stores to pick up the series. But a
combination of the pandemic (see below) and bad luck have basically
ended that experiment. The store that did the best with the series
was Librairie Astro in Montreal. Sadly, they closed in the summer of
2018 and I lost one of my biggest advocates. Strange Adventures in
Halifax was
carrying the series,
but has apparently stopped. I say ‘apparently’ because I’m not
exactly sure what happened; I suspect the audience simply never
developed for the series.
What format
would
I be happy with? Well, either
a saddle-stitched periodical series (i.e.: ye olde 32 page comic) or,
better, a
beautifully
produced hardcover
series that collected each story arc.
As
it stands, I suspect the next release of WOLF’S HEAD (issue 7) will
be the last with
this 60 page format.
Comics Media
Without
Diamond distributing the series, gaining
media attention for WOLF’S
HEAD
from “comics media” (for lack of a better phrase) has been
problematic. Some of this is understandable; a lot of comics media
supports the Direct Market and are
very
plugged into Diamond’s distribution
cycle. WOLF’S HEAD lack
of distribution with Diamond falls outside of this purview and,
as a result, few media outlets have been interested in discussing the
series.
What’s
been frustrating to me is that WOLF’S HEAD is
broadly distributed. Finding the series is not difficult for either
readers or retailers, primarily because WOLF’S HEAD has world-wide
distribution through Ingram. This also means that the series is easy
to find at
online at retailers like Amazon,
Barnes
& Noble, Chapters/Indigo,
Waterstones, and
so on. However, from the point of view of “comics media,” this
isn’t
enough. Worse, this
lack of distribution from Diamond has
also disqualified WOLF’S HEAD from the Joe Shuster Canadian Comic
Book Creator Awards (while
I’m not positive on
this score, I
believe that the “Shusters” require distribution through Diamond
for eligibility).
More
importantly, the lack of media attention has meant that the series is
pretty much unknown with the audience I need the most: comic book
fans. Especially comic book fans who
like independent or alternative comics (or “comix”). It
is very hard to grow a series if your
key demographic doesn’t know you exist.
Comics
Media are
also tricky to talk about because there’s a split in what
and who receives
coverage. More mainstream sites like Comic Book Resources or
Bleeding Cool
tend
to focus on corporate intellectual property. This means titles from
Marvel, DC, as well as licensed properties. Sites like The Comics
Journal focus on more literary titles. Unfortunately, either due to
the lack of distribution from Diamond or other reasons, I’m persona
non grata
with both. And that’s certainly not for
lack of trying on my end.
The
knock-on effects of all this is problematic. As a simple example,
there is now a great deal of scholarship being conducted on comics
with some truly fascinating insights from
some remarkable scholars.
Unfortunately, comics scholars aren’t, as far as I can tell, aware
of my work. Or even aware of me, for that matter. A
second example are librarians.
Librarians
have become key advocates
of comics, but I’ve never managed to gain library support for
WOLF’S HEAD outside of my
own
local Public Library. WorldCat
certainly illustrates
this plainly.
This
is disappointing because my work has
been
in libraries in the past,
but without awareness of the series it would be difficult for a
librarian to justify the purchase of the series, especially given the
times of austerity we’ve been experiencing for the past twelve
years.
COVID-19
The
pandemic has effected everyone. In the face of the death toll (it
boggles my mind that 200,000 people have died in the United States
alone and we’re not that far from 1,000,000 dead throughout the
world), it’s a bit hard to think of anything else, but there have
been knock-on effects for everyone, even those who haven’t directly
been hit by the virus itself.
Obviously
declining retail sales are a significant example. The effects are
more horrifying when you think about food scarcity, layoffs,
evictions, and the like. Yes, it could certainly be worse; in fact,
I’d argue that one of reasons that COVID-19 has not been as
horrific as, say, the 1918-19 Influenza pandemic is that there are
still enough social programs by various levels of government to help
prevent the situation from spiraling out control. Plus science has a
far greater understanding of how pandemics spread than it did back in
1918-19. Still, the official governmental responses has been
problematic (really? 200,000 dead in the US?) and we are clearly not
out of the woods yet.
Since
art tends to be a discretionary purchase, in the face of the global
pandemic my print sales have declined. Not that sales were robust
before 2020, but the pandemic has destroyed them. While book sales in
general slumped when the initial lockdowns occurred, there seems to
be some evidence that book sales are now stronger,
at least in some
markets. Unfortunately, this has not led to any sales growth for
WOLF’S HEAD or any of my other backlist, though this is not
surprising given what I’ve outlined above.
Digital Comics
What
about digital sales? WOLF’S HEAD is available on both ComiXology
and Kindle and released in periodical format (i.e.: approximately 30
pages) for $1.99 US each. This
format has not led to strong sales. In fact, sales have been very
weak. Kindle is almost a non-starter; while it doesn’t take too
much work to format titles for Kindle (using the Kindle Comic Creator
software), I’ve only had a handful of sales in this format. My
ComiXology sales have been marginally better, but ComiXology (and
Kindle, for that matter) really require reader awareness and interest
when
seeking
out titles. What
do I mean?
Well,
there’s
a conundrum with digital discovery
that I don’t think has been solved yet. In a ‘brick and mortar’
environment, people can stumble
across titles that they might not have known about simply because they are
on a shelf, let
alone activism from a passionate sales staff.
While COVID-19 has obviously effected the ability of people to enter
into retail stores of all types, this
is still a key element of what makes ‘brick and mortar’ stores so
compelling. Wander in, stumble across something interesting, buy it,
and try it. With digital comics, it would appear that you really need
to know what you’re looking for. I realize that
digital does allow some
degree of browsing, but (at least from my point of view and
experience), this doesn’t seem to work all that well in
practice.
As
a result,
my digital sales have been very poor. What I find interesting about
this is that my 2020 experiences with Kindle and ComiXology mirror my
2014 experiences with ComiXology and my series METAL GODS. Things
really haven’t changed all that much at
all.
Where Things Are At
As
disappointing as this has been, the good news is that the comics art
grant from the City of Ottawa has helped mitigate some of the damage
detailed above. In fact, if it was not for the art grant and the
Peter Honeywell award shortlist, I suspect I would cancel WOLF’S
HEAD immediately. As it stands, WOLF’S HEAD will continue, at least
through the current story arc, and then I’ll revisit in 2021.
Self-publishing
is hard. Frankly, I’ve never wanted to do it, not because I’m
against self-publishing per
se,
but
because of the immense
amount of work
involved in doing
it. Hell, I already wear all the hats (writing, art, production,
etc…).
Adding “publisher” to that list is a
bridge too far.
I badly need a publisher. I badly need an agent, too.
With
WOLF’S HEAD, it’s hard to know how things will go. My efforts to
find a publisher for the series will continue, though that is one
helluva slog right now (my jealousy of authors with formal publishing
contracts knows no bounds!). For the short term, this means that
WOLF’S HEAD will probably be turned into a webcomic.
Webcomics
actually terrify me. While once-upon-a-time I did do
a
webcomic through Girlamatic
(THE
ROAD TO GOD KNOWS...),
that
was both a long time ago and with a group of allies. Doing it alone
is scary. And WOLF’S HEAD was never
designed to be a webcomic; I’m leery of how transitioning the
series to that format will work in practice. At the same time, I know
that a
WOLF’S HEAD webcomic might be the best (only?)
chance
that
the series
has to find a real audience.
To
paraphrase one of my favourite movies, “art is a cruel mistress,
but she is her own reward.” Easier
said then done. I
don’t like writing and drawing in a vacuum. While I’ve never
minded the solitary nature of the craft, my stories are meant to be
read.
I’ve
never wanted to make ‘outsider art’ that few if anyone reads. My
goal was never to ‘hermetically seal’ my work from the world at
large, either.
It’s
not a fun feeling to be where I’m at, struggling to find an
audience and struggling to make a living at it. Solutions
are difficult to find. And the loss I’ve been feeling is difficult
to place. Given the state of the world (not just with COVID-19 but
with the wildfires in California and Oregon, the explosion in Beirut,
and so on), there’s a lot to be thankful for. There really is. Art
and writing bring me a great deal of joy, not to mention the fact
that I’ve grown
a great deal as an artist.
I’m
extremely proud of WOLF’S HEAD, despite the terrible sales and lack
of awareness that it even exists. I think it’s some of the best
work I’ve ever done. And it’s been a joyful experience, too.
It
would just be truly awesome to be able to share that joy with
readers.
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