250 Words on Art Supplies

Some artists are very particular about their art materials. I’d call myself mildly particular. In my experience, your paper, paint, ink, brush, pen, etc. can work for or against you. At best, they can feel less like lifeless tools and more like collaborators that make you better. 

I remember working on my graphic novel Whatever Happened to the World of Tomorrow when I seriously wondered if I’d forgotten how to draw. Nothing came out of my brush or pen right. It all looked like garbage. 

Trying to diagnose how I’d completely lost my mojo, I realized that the trouble began when I switched from one brand of art paper to another. I don’t know if it was smoother, rougher, or more or less absorbent, but when I switched back to the old stuff I immediately fell back in the groove.

More recently, I painted a watercolor for my wife, Karen, for which I’d bought a sheet of premium 300-pound cold-press paper. It was literally the finest paper I’ve ever worked with. Laying down paint felt like gliding a knife through velvet butter. 

I swear that paper could read my mind. We communed. It was beautiful.

You’ll notice I haven’t offered a shopping list of my ideal art supplies. That’s because mine wouldn’t necessarily be yours, and vice versa. I know professional cartoonists having very nice careers using printer paper and ballpoint pens (or digital devices). Try everything once and see what speaks to you. The right tools might be telepathic. 

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I Had No Choice

Nearly two years ago, I pre-ordered a toy playset from an outfit called Mezco Toyz. Price was no object because I really had no choice: the set was from the Fleischer Brothers' 1941 "Superman" cartoon "The Mechanical Monsters." If anybody in the world had to have those toys . . .

There's probably a name for Mezco's business model but I don't know it. At least for this playset, they advertised for pre-orders and then (I guess) made as many sets as the promised funds allowed. If they get more orders, they make more toys. In any case, my set arrived today and I couldn't be more delighted. 

It's got Superman AND Clark Kent, plus a phone booth with a revolving platform so they can transform into each other (as the cognoscenti know, "The Mechanical Monsters" was the first time in history that Kent changed into Superman in a phone booth). Lois Lane with a little reporter's notebook. And the Robot! With detachable arms and propeller for flight or terrestrial modes, and optional flames for its flamethrowers! 

I could quibble with some of their proportions and design choices—I think the Robot in my Last Mechanical Monster book is maybe two feet taller—but chalk that up to "two different people looking at the same inconsistent source material and drawing different conclusions." They're great.

I don't expect anyone else to care, but I'm thrilled to have them.

Behind the Story: The Last Mechanical Monster

Until this morning, my publisher Abrams and I were working with an overseas publisher to print a foreign-language edition of The Last Mechanical Monster. (I'm being deliberately cagey about the country and language.) It would have been a good book. In addition to reprinting the translated story, they wanted to include a ton of extra material in the back: sketches, early drafts, an interview, etc. Although most of the original artwork for The Last Mechanical Monster was lost when my house burned down in 2017, many digital scans and photos were on my computer back-up, which I grabbed on the way out. More survived than I'd thought.

Through no fault of mine or Abrams's--in fact, despite quite a bit of time and effort on our parts--the deal just fell apart. Frustrating and disappointing. However, since I had all this extra stuff pulled together, I thought I'd share it here. Lemons, meet lemonade.

First Draft

My very earliest draft of The Last Mechanical Monster goes back to about 2009, right after Whatever Happened to the World of Tomorrow? I had always loved the Fleischer Superman cartoon, “The Mechanical Monsters,” and thought to create a sequel to it. Since the copyright to the cartoon expired in the 1960s, and I had no intention of using the characters of Superman or Lois Lane, I thought it was a story ripe to be continued. Whatever happened to the Inventor and his robots?

These are two preliminary animation drawings done by the Fleischer studios in 1941, in preparation for producing the “The Mechanical Monsters.” They show Superman fighting a group of loosely sketched robots in a scene that was never included in the final cartoon. I was lucky and grateful to acquire these pieces in a recent auction, and I am proud to hang them on my wall to inspire me.

My first draft of the story was very different from the published version. That draft featured a young journalist writing an article about the mechanical monsters. She had managed to find several robots that avoided destruction because they were absent from the inventor’s lair when Superman attacked. I made a list of every robot whose number appeared in the cartoon, and figured there were seven unaccounted for. 

In my story, one was later used during atomic bomb testing in the 1950s. One was turned into a carnival ride. Another was lost at sea while working on an oil rig. And one was in the barn of a retired engineer named Lillian, who was almost killed by the robot when she was a child and was now trying to restore it. The journalist interviewed the Inventor in prison. When she revealed that at least one of his robots had survived, he escaped and made his way to Lillian’s barn, where the three characters worked to bring the robot back to life.

I wrote and made rough-draft drawings (“thumbnails”) for the entire story, and had drawn about 100 pages of it, when I decided I needed to start over. I realized that the story I was telling was not actually the story I wanted to tell! I wanted to see the old Inventor back in his cavern lair, wearing his old tuxedo. I wanted him, not the journalist, to drive the story. I also wanted the story to be more fun! So I turned over those 100 pages and began drawing a new story on their backs. That became a webcomic that became the first draft of the book.  

These are some of the preliminary thumbnail drawings of the abandoned earliest draft.

Some of the nearly 200 pages I thumbnailed before realizing the story wanted to take me in a different direction.

In this draft, one of the surviving robots was used by the U.S. government during atomic bomb tests, leaving only the stubs of its legs fused to the desert floor. I would've worked in the poem "Ozymandias" somehow, because of course I would.

A two-page spread of the Robot doing training drills in the skies over Proto-Lillian's farmhouse.

The earliest draft of the story ended with Lillian's robot heroically destroyed, but another found rusting at the bottom of the ocean. The LAST Last Mechanical Monster?

Finished First-Draft Art

When working on the first-draft thumbnails, I did more-finished versions of some pages to see how they might look when done. At this point I thought they might be published in grayscale—shades of black, white and gray—and so prepared some pages that looked like this. This is still from the first abandoned draft featuring the journalist character that I later dropped.

Preparation

In preparation for doing The Last Mechanical Monster, I made a wood model of the robot so I could draw its proportions consistently and correctly. 

I also used a simple 3D rendering program (SketchUp) to make a digital model of the robot that I could pose and turn around in space. Here I used it to make an image of the robot that looks three dimensional when viewed through red-blue 3D glasses. I originally hoped to use a lot of 3D images in the story but later decided to tone it down to a couple of spots where it would have narrative impact.

 

Also, as part of my drawing and coloring process, I made up detailed color palettes for each character and location in the story. Each has a distinct feel and personality that is partly expressed through color. I try to be very thoughtful about how I use color. It is a tool that can convey meaning or evoke emotions without a reader even realizing it. My challenge is understanding how to use that tool most effectively for the good of the story. I wrote quite a bit more about my approach to color in The Last Mechanical Monster in an earlier post.

Process

I make comics the old-fashioned way. Although many of my friends and colleagues have gone to digital art, I still take great joy in putting ink on paper. That’s the fun part for me. I don’t expect to ever stop. However, for The Last Mechanical Monster, I did letter and color the story using Photoshop and a typeface made from my own hand lettering. 

After I write and edit a script, and typically draw some very rough thumbnails, I pencil the artwork using light blue pencil on Bristol board paper. I use blue pencil because in the old days it did not photostat or photocopy, rendering it effectively invisible. It is still very easy to delete after scanning, which means I never have to erase the lines.

After penciling, I then go over the blue lines in black ink. I use a variety of brushes, nibs, pens, and brushpens. The small “X” marks are areas I plan to fill in with black.

After that, I scan the art at a high resolution (at least 600 dpi), delete the blue pencil lines, and color and letter it. Preparing art for press is technically complicated, but at this point the page is essentially ready to publish. 

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Back to me in the present: Wouldn't that have been neat material to include with the book? I was looking forward to what might have been the definitive "artist's edition" of The Last Mechanical Monster (albeit it in a language I don't understand).

Alas.

The Last Mechanical Monster taught me a couple of lessons that maybe others can learn from. First, the many months of work I did on the aborted first draft weren't wasted. I had to do that preliminary work, and draw those 100 pages, to get to the story that I really wanted to tell. It was kind of a sucky process and I wish I'd figured it out sooner, but it worked. 

So Lesson One: Don't fall for the Sunk Cost Fallacy: "Oh, I already put so much time and work into it, I can't start over." If you have a better idea, start over. I didn't regret it for a second.

Lesson Two: From initial idea to earliest draft to self-published webcomic to GoComics.com webcomic to published graphic novel took something like 14 years, constantly evolving as it went. I was doing other work at the same time (including A Fire Story, another book idea that it turns out is never gonna happen, and yet another book idea that might still happen), but The Last Mechanical Monster was always percolating on a back burner. 

I think there's a fine line: don't waste your whole life banging your head on the brick wall of one fruitless project, but if you think you've got a nugget of something good, grind and hone and polish and shine it for as long as it feels like you're making progress toward something better. There's a chance you'll end up with a pile of sand, but also a fair chance you'll produce a fine little gem. 

Shocking Secrets Revealed!

Comics friend Tom Heintjes reminds us that "The Mechanical Monsters," the Superman cartoon on which my new book The Last Mechanical Monster is based, premiered on this date in 1941. To mark the anniversary, I'm sharing A SECRET I DIDN'T TELL MY EDITOR!

As Editor Charlie and I gave our presentation at the Miami Book Fair, there were a couple of times he said, "I didn't know that," or "You never told me that." One example: even though our book couldn't mention Superman, I gave considerable thought to what a world that had had Superman in it would be like. For instance, I figured he, and whatever other superheroes existed, would influence fashion. People would dress like their heroes.

There's a convention in comics that heroes wear primary colors--blue, red, yellow--while villains wear secondary colors--green, purple, orange. There are exceptions--Green Lantern springs to mind--but it's a guide. Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, the Flash, Captain America, Thor, Spider-Man, the Fantastic Four: primaries. The Joker, Lex Luthor, Galactus, Doctor Doom: secondaries. One of the smart things Jack Kirby and Stan Lee did to define the Hulk as an anti-hero was make him green and purple, a hero in the colors of a villain. [Edited to add: In a comment on Facebook, Editor Charlie attributed the Hulk's palette to Stan Goldberg and offered more insight into Marvel's creative process in the early '60s.]

In my book, the inventor Sparky's tuxedo has purple highlights and his cavern lair is green and purple (as it was in the cartoon). Lillian wears Superman's colors: blue jeans, yellow t-shirt, red shirt. (Superman Blue isn't 100% cyan ink, by the way; it has a bit of magenta in it, which leans it toward purple). Helen the librarian wears Batman's colors: blue, gray, yellow. The boy in the library, who was unnamed in the webcomic but whom I called Dwayne in the book after the late African-American comic book writer Dwayne McDuffie, wears Green Lantern's green, gray and white.

So near the end of the book, when Sparky trades his tattered purple tuxedo for a blue (with a bit of magenta), red, and yellow sweatsuit, it's a subtle signal that a change is afoot. Similarly at the end, Lillian adopts a version of Sparky's purple suit--not meant to hint that she's turned evil, but maybe a little of him has rubbed off on her.

I try to be thoughtful about how I use color. Every book I've done has a different "color philosophy." Honestly, I don't know if it makes a difference, but I have to believe these choices have a cumulative effect on the reader, even if they're not aware of it. Color is a tool that can convey meaning or evoke emotions subtextually. My challenge is to understand that subtext and use it with purpose.

Toon Talking at the CAM

Hey, look who's doing a Toon Talk and book signing at the Cartoon Art Museum in San Francisco next Saturday! Spoiler: me! At 1 p.m. I'll be speaking about The Last Mechanical Monster, then hanging around talking to folks and signing books until 3 p.m. 

Best of all, it's free and open to the public, so if you just want to say "Howdy!" it won't cost you a dime. However, an ice cream sundae at the nearby Ghirardelli Chocolate shop will set you back $14 or $15, so keep that in mind as you budget for the trip.

CAM is a great institution that's been very good to me, and is always worth a stop even when I'm not sitting in it. Which I will be, next Saturday.

A Gorgeous Love Letter

"A family-friendly adventure with a surprising amount of heart and timeless themes..."

A new review here from Sam Stone at Comic Book Resources, a leading online source for comics news. It's a very good one.

"After crafting numerous tales that ventured headfirst into considerably different subjects, Fies’ The Last Mechanical Monster is a refreshing read without coming off as overly lightweight. A gorgeous love letter to the Golden Age of superhero comics and animation, Fies uses the genre to touch on themes of friendship and legacy borne from a lifetime of cynicism and spurned ambition. A solid collection of the original webcomic in a gorgeous format, Abrams ComicArts continues its recent high-profile winning streak with its publication of Fies' Eisner-nominated graphic novel."

I'm especially happy to see that nod to my publisher, Abrams ComicArts, which I think has put out a tremendous body of work I'm proud to be a part of.

The cool-kid writers aren't supposed to care about reviews, but I guess I'm not that cool. One person's opinion doesn't carry a lot of weight with me, but one good or bad review can translate to a lot of people who do or don't buy your book, and that matters. It's also true that one bad review seems to outweigh a hundred good ones, and stick in your brain a lot longer. At the same time, not everything is for everyone, and you've got to be OK with that. I am.

Anyway. Here's a good review.

The Real Mechanical Monsters

I recently came across an online auction at a reputable site, and bought two pieces of art I knew I had to have. In fact, immodestly, I can't think of anyone who deserves them more.

These are two drawings done at Fleischer Studios during the 1941 production of "The Mechanical Monsters," the 8-minute Superman short that inspired my new graphic novel, The Last Mechanical Monster. 

I worded that carefully, because I don't know exactly what they are.

They're not production drawings, which is what they'd be if these scenes appeared in the cartoon. They didn't. The robot designs aren't complete, and in the second drawing you can see what must be the robots' inventor (Sparky!) slumped over his control console, which never happens in the cartoon. Also, a production drawing probably wouldn't include both Superman and the robots, or Superman and the inventor, in the same piece. They'd be drawn separately so they could move independently. 

The auction house said they were "believed to be" preliminary drawings made to promote the film, but I don't think I buy that either. Frankly, any ad or lobby card promoting a Superman cartoon would focus on his face and chest insignia instead of his butt. 

What feels right to me is that these were animation drawings done at an early stage of the filmmaking process. Then the directors went in a different direction, the script was revised, and new production drawings were done for the cartoon that got made.

I'm confident they're the real deal. They're drawn on large animation paper with three registration holes and a watermark that reads "Management Bond/A Hammermill Product," which is correct for the era. Superman is clearly fighting robots, which he doesn't do in any other cartoon of the time. The figure-drawing style (smooth, round, bulky) is exactly right. They're from Fleischers' "The Mechanical Monsters," no doubt about it.

Regardless of what they were then, what they are to me now is a physical connection to those filmmaking geniuses of 81 years ago who created an animation masterpiece that inspired generations of animators and cartoonists, including me.

I'm honored to be their steward through history for a while.

We Have Liftoff!

My daughters Laura and Robin drove up for the event, which meant a lot to me.

The Last Mechanical Monster got a terrific launch last night at Copperfield's Books in Santa Rosa! About two dozen people came--many friends, of course, but also some other fans and curious readers. I think we nearly sold out the store's stock, plus a smaller stack of Fire Story copies. 

For my first time giving this particular talk, I think it went very well! Very good questions about the story and process of creating a graphic novel. I did a reading, during which I discovered a print error that had snuck through, which I thought was hilarious. It doesn't really hurt the story but I'll fix it in the second edition, if there is one, which will make this first edition *unbelievably* valuable. Better buy it now!

My friend and Kid Beowulf cartoonist Lex Fajardo came, much to the delight of a young fan who ran and bought two of Lex's book so he could sign them for him. Man, that kid was happy!

Explaining how original art gets turned into a book. Apparently I had to shout to get my point across.

Good turnout, nice people. What more could you ask?

Thanks to Copperfield's and to all my neighbors and friends from many jobs and times in my life, as well as the complete strangers, who showed up. You gave my book a very happy birthday.

(Photos by Karen.)

An Absolute Wonder

My day is made! "This one's an absolute wonder," says Publishers Weekly in its Starred Review of "The Last Mechanical Monster." A star from PW is a big deal: they're stingy with them, and bookstores and libraries make purchasing decisions based on PW's opinion. A star tells industry buyers it's worth a look.

"This touching, delight-filled fable . . .  tackles classic themes: the drive to be remembered, the battle against aging and failing, and friendship."

They got it. Couldn't have said it better myself. In fact, I may steal that.

Mr. McFly! Mr. McFly!

Just dropped on my porch: one (1) copy of my forthcoming The Last Mechanical Monster, flown from the printer with a brief detour to New York City. It is strange to see this thing, which until now has been pieces of paper scattered around my desk and electrons glowing on my computer monitor, as a finished physical object. It's heavier than I expected. As I just joked to Editor Charlie, he must have used the good thick paper on this one.

Here's a quick peek at my life: my wife Karen took this photo, and emailed it to me so I could post it here. The subject line of that email is "Mr. McFly!" because at the end of "Back to the Future," Biff runs into the house yelling, "Mr. McFly! Mr. McFly! This just arrived! I think it's your new book!" My family has actually said that to me when previous books arrived, and it's a tradition I enjoy. George McFly and I may be more alike than I care to admit.

It Lives!!!!

Editor Charles Kochman teases me just before I go to join him at Comic-Con with photos of "The Last Mechanical Monster" in print! Hey, look, it's a real book! The first couple show the case--the hardcover beneath the paper dust jacket--and I especially love those big robot eyes because Karen thought of that. Charlie and I couldn't figure out what to do with the case and Karen said, "How about a big robot eye?" And that's what we did. An angry red eye on one side and a happy green eye on the other. Can't wait to hold it in my hands someday soon. 

Blurbs 1

"Blurbs" are a sordid but necessary bit of the authoring racket. You try to convince the most impressive people you can find to say complimentary things about your book, on the off chance that shoppers will believe them. For my forthcoming The Last Mechanical Monster, Editor Charlie called in some favors and found some good ones. This is the blurb we're putting on the back cover; I'll tease more later.

Joking aside, the idea that people like Paul Dini (and others to be named later) not only read my story but liked it enough to say nice things about it is astonishing and humbling.

EDITED TO ADD: I wanted to explain a bit more about why this particular blurb means a lot to me. Dini's animated reimagining of Batman in the 1990s, and his later work on Superman, are considered by many fans the definitive takes on those characters--better than the TV series, movies, even most of the comic books. More than that, the look and feel of those animated series was inspired and informed by the same classic Fleischer brothers cartoons from the early '40s that inspired my story. He understands these characters and their roots like few others. So that's very cool.

Proofs

One of my very favorite parts of the publishing process: checking proofs. These are pages of a book printed on the actual paper and press the book will be printed on, mailed to the publisher and author for their approval. 

I gather that the industry is moving toward digital (PDF) proofs, which I think are useless. Especially for a graphic novel, you need to see how the images and ink will look on the page, which is very different from how they look on a monitor. You need to inspect the quality of the publishing process itself--are the colors in register (lined up right), are there flecks and specks on the printing plate? A PDF doesn't tell you any of that. As it is, I only got physical proofs for 12 spreads, or 24 pages, so we picked pages that might reveal problems or answer questions, e.g., how does my white lettering on a black background look (the answer: just fine!). 

I love proofs because I'm a process geek and because now my book is real. Aside from one hand-bound copy of Last Mechanical Monster I made for Karen, it hasn't been a physical object. Until now. That's neat.

The Return of the Last Mechanical Monster

COMING THIS FALL: 192 pages of full-color Eisner-Award-nominated action and adventure! Plus a robot paper doll you can cut out and glue together yourself! It's THE LAST MECHANICAL MONSTER, in hardcover, from Abrams ComicArts!

I began working on LMM about 10 years ago, after Whatever Happened to the World of Tomorrow? was published. After Mom's Cancer and World of Tomorrow I wanted to do something fun and fictional. This is the project on which I spent about a year writing and penciling more than 100 pages before realizing it wasn't the story I really wanted to tell. I turned all those sheets of paper over and began drawing a new version on their backs. I never regretted that "wasted" time because I figured I had to go through that to find the right story I DID want to tell.

At the time, publishers weren't interested. That's fine! I serialized it as a black-and-white webcomic, and it was nominated for Eisner Awards in 2014 and 2015. GoComics.com later picked it up, and after Editor Charlie and I did A Fire Story it came full-circle back to Abrams ComicArts, where it has found a very happy home.

This is the cover, which was just finalized a few days ago. Charlie and I are doing final edits now (Oxford commas, bah!). We'll put it to bed in a couple of weeks, then it's off to the printer and into your heroic local independent bookstores in September.

My fourth book. I really love this story and hope you will, too.

My Robot Army Grows

This makes me very happy! Got an email from Cameron Jones, who just found and read "The Last Mechanical Monster" after seeing the Superman cartoon it was based on, and took me up on my invitation to build a papercraft Robot using the pattern I created. Cameron not only did a fine construction job, but also set up a little tableau putting my Robot face to face with his nemesis. Check out these pics (posted with permission)!

Wonderful! Made my week! Thanks, Cameron.

Robotic Ruminations

I had a comment/reply on my "Last Mechanical Monster" webcomic, currently running on GoComics.com, I thought was interesting enough to share. (Background info: my story is a sequel to a 75-year-old Superman cartoon.) A reader questioned a drawing in which I showed my Robot full of gears, saying gears'd be too heavy and slow. My reply is a good example of how I approach a story:

"(That's) something I actually spent quite a lot of time mulling over before I even began 'The Last Mechanical Monster': How does the Robot work? I thought hard and seriously about it for some time, drew a lot of diagrams, and decided it simply can’t, especially with a mostly hollow chest cavity (as shown in the Fleischer cartoon). There’s no way to attach the arms, no place to put a motor for its neck-propeller, no room for an engine or batteries, etc.

"Basically I had to decide if I was telling a science fiction story or a fantasy story (I think it’s fair to say Superman himself could go either way), and the total impossibility of the Robot convinced me I was writing fantasy. If this were science fiction, I wouldn’t have filled his chest with gears; since it’s fantasy, and I thought gears looked cool and fit with some themes I develop later in the story, I went for it.

"Think of the gears less as a way to move a robot and more as a metaphor to reveal a character."

We Have Liftoff

Tuesday's launch of my new webcomic, The Last Mechanical Monster, went far better than I'd hoped. Thank you!

Many people whose opinions I respect offered compliments I think were sincere, and my visitor numbers were through the roof. Modesty/prudence forbids me from reporting what they were (along with the fear that you'd shoot back with "That's ALL?!") but they were about 10 times higher than I expected. Traffic dropped off by about half on Wednesday and to a relative trickle on Thursday. Numbers look stronger today with the posting of a new comic (I'm putting up a new page every Tuesday and Friday) but it's early.

I know I'm in a marathon, not a sprint. Steady readership growth would make me happy. Steady (or precipitous!) decline would tell me I'm doing something wrong. I'm not planning on drawing any conclusions for at least a few months.

Like I said, it's an experiment.

Best of all, I've begun getting the type of editorial feedback I hoped for. My rule of thumb is that if one person doesn't get something, maybe he or she has a problem; if two or more people don't get something, I have a problem.

For example, two different people said that the way I drew the old Inventor made them wonder if he was a robot himself. That never occurred to me and I don't see it, but it's something I'll have to mull over and try to address. For the record, he's 100% human.


Not a robot.

Readers really like the Inventor's penchant for making lists. It's a character trait I created and love myself but I'm surprised so many people mentioned it. That's good information I can use going forward.

Yesterday I had lunch with a writer friend who'd seen the webcomic and asked me some questions that indicated (at least some) readers are catching what I want them to catch and I'm doing some proper foreshadowing. That's gratifying.

Some incidental info on process: before I launched The Last Mechanical Monster, I built up a backlog of 50 fully completed pages. I really wanted to avoid the common webcartoonists' trap of making promises I couldn't keep. If I never put ink to paper again, I have enough story already done to last through April. Of course my goal is to create at least two new pages per week to keep up with the rate of posting and maintain my cushion.

Which isn't to say the pages are locked in stone. The nine-panel grid I'm using for this story gives me some modularity--it's easy to add panels, subtract panels, or move them around in response to new story ideas and reader feedback as long as the page breaks hit the same spots. I built in that flexibility on purpose. I am occasionally clever.

If you didn't catch it, I wrote up an Author's Note/FAQ for the webcomic that has more details about what I'm up to and how I'm doing it.

Three days in, and so far it's been pretty fun. Please continue to read, recommend, comment and link. Thanks again.

The Last Mechanical Monster

So I've started a new webcomic. It's called The Last Mechanical Monster, it's about a very old man and his giant robot, and you can find it over here. There are currently 18 pages up, with another 140 or so to come at a rate of two per week (Tuesday and Friday). I expect it'll keep me occupied through mid-2015.

The Last Mechanical Monster has been percolating in my brain for years. The premise always tickled me but it took me a long time to figure out what to do with it. This is the project that I penciled 110 complete pages of in 2011-2012 when I decided the story wasn't working and I needed to start fresh with a whole new approach. I literally turned those 110 sheets over and began drawing new pages on their backs. No sense wasting good paper.

A real catalyst for reworking The Last Mechanical Monster was my experience last year doing The Adventures of Old Time-Traveling Brian, a series of dopey little comics I posted here and then self-published as a limited-edition zine. I had so much fun doing that, while at the same time I was having so little fun slogging through my 110-plus pages of pencils, that I figured I must be doing something wrong. So I started over.

The webcomic is a work in progress. One key reason for releasing The Last Mechanical Monster as a webcomic is to get readers’ feedback. When I did Mom’s Cancer, readers told me what worked and what didn’t. Crowd-sourced editing. We talked and argued, and it turned out you were always right. Please feel free to share your thoughts via the comments on each page.

It's also mostly black and white. I plan to color it eventually; my palettes and swatches are all picked out. But right now coloring would take so much of my limited time that it'd prevent me from doing the webcomic at all. I think the black-and-white art still stands on its own, and I'll add color when it provides necessary clarity or meaning.

The Last Mechanical Monster is an experiment--or actually a few different experiments. I'm trying some stuff just to see what happens. I hope you'll check it out. If you like it please come back regularly, link to it, tell your friends. If you don't like it, keep it to yourself and maybe my next project will be more to your taste.

If you're not familiar with webcomics, they're typically posted in reverse chronological order with the most recent installment on the home page, so you can bookmark it and always see the latest without additional clicks. Links below each page and along the right margin should make it easy to navigate (let me know if they don't). I recommend clicking the link in the header that reads "Starts HERE."

Here you go. Let's see what happens.