Lightning Strikes page 1

As I was posting the previous comic on my blog, I saw this one which I’d thought, mistakenly, that I had already posted. Rectifying that hiccup, here it is…

Even while I have unfinished stories and comics that I am working to complete, I sometimes have an experience that just begs for its own expression in a comic of its own. Hence the first page of a series I’ve tentatively named Lightning Strikes, referencing the talk that Anthony Hopkins has with his daughter in the helicopter toward the beginning of the movie, Meet Joe Black. If you’ve seen the movie, you have a huge clue as to the subject of this series, not that it’s difficult to deduce. 

And it was really fun to adapt some of my Spirit Guides into Starfleet officers on my own personal Enterprise. 

I hope you enjoy it, and thank you for reading! 

 

Country Bank

Since my childhood, listening to my dad belt out The Wabash Cannonball every Sunday morning while getting ready for church, or to the Johnny Cash 8-track tapes he played on camping trips, or watching Hee Haw every week, Country Music has always been a part of the background of my life. Then came my teens along with a certain TV show that brought Country into the very forefront of my life on the wheels of a bright orange Dodge charger. 

Dukes of Hazzard brought me a visual representation, albeit not necessarily an accurate one, of something I’d always wanted - a rural life on a farm, surrounded by animals and wildlife, far from the bustling of an urban or even suburban environment. And this idyllic vision of country life came naturally ensconced in Country Music. In my teen years, when I discovered that to the governing influences around me, music was a slightly more acceptable pursuit than art, I surrounded and filled my life with this music, to the point of temporarily redirecting my Disney-flavored dreams toward Nashville, and becoming a singer/songwriter who, perhaps one day, might play the stage of the Grand Ole Opry. 

I recently received the thunderbolt of a revelation of a deeper purpose to the influence born unto me upon the harmonic melodies and chords of this special music that resonated so intimately with whom I was at the time. As the songs spoke to me, I in turn spoke to them, hiding parts and pieces of myself, as if planting seeds, between the notes to be harvested at a future time when I’d acquired the skills and know-how to do so. I am now reaping the rewards of my Teenage Urban Cowboy Blues - the title of the first song I ever wrote. 

Closure

For those of you just joining us... 

It'd been nine months since Valerie and I walked away from what was the best relationship I'd personally been involved in up to that point. It'd been nine months of recalibrating, redefining, and wading through a mire of mental and emotional ambiguity, which is admittedly still in full force. But sorting out your own shtuff is difficult enough, let alone dealing with emotional attachments of someone else, and at this particular point it was obvious to both of us that we needed to clean things up energetically and put to rest any loose ends and entangled cords. It was time to officially be, as my very first celebrity crush, Marlo Thomas, would say, "Free to be you and me."

Thank you for reading, and please follow my blog to stay updated on my latest comics!

 

Gerb's Quarterly No 11

So, funny story...

Many year ago, in the days before the internet, I had the idea of creating a short, quarterly mini-comic starring Gerb, my at-the-time, relatively new character, along with the two mainstays from my childhood, a dog named "Long Leg" and an earth worm named "Wormy" (Did I mention I've been drawing them since childhood?). Following through in the predigital times, printing off physical copies at Kinkos and distributing them to the masses, proved too much for me, as did producing them in the required timely fashion (Maybe instead of "Quarterly" I should call it a "Wheneverly"). 

One way or another, I do occasionally continue the storyline, and thus I present to you the 11th issue of Gerb's Quarterly. You can click on the GQ label below to read the previous issue, as well as to find the link to the first 9 issues that I have compiled into a graphic novel on Blurb.com. 

And, as always, thank you for reading!

 

Dismem-Boar-Ment page 26(A)

In the course of drawing this particular series, I realized the need for a slight adjustment. The most recent pair of pages I’d drawn were designed to be seen opposite each other for the full effect…

…However, with the numbering of the pages, these two would be on the back side of each other. The obvious solution - That I required an additional page to occur someplace earlier in the series to assure that these two fell into their preferred places - was… um… obvious. And I knew exactly what I could add, and where. 

I had a number of pages detailing interactions I’d had on my vision quest with Herne the Hunter, at one point with Herne declaring I to be his son…

…Fast forward to a recent exploration into my genealogy, where I uncovered a family bloodline on my father’s side with the surname of Herne. Exploring a little deeper, I discovered that my 8th Great Grandfather, Richard Herne, following in the footsteps of his Great Grandfather, Sir John, had been the High Sheriff of London in Elizabethan times, and had in fact overseen the execution of Sir Walter Raleigh. 

So this designation, as the Son of Herne, is a literal one, and would explain the resonance I have felt for the ‘Wild Men of the Forest’ - be they Tarzan, Daniel Boone, Davy Crockett, or Robin Hood - who have always been my greatest heroes. And it makes me wonder of that liminal space between history and myth - Might I be descended from the original Herne the Hunter, whomever and whenever he may have been? I don’t know, but for now - How cool is this?!

To read the Herne chapter, please click on the ‘Herne’ label below. To read the entire comic thus far, please click on the ‘Dismemboarment’ label below. And to remain up to date with my latest comics, please click the ‘Follow’ button on the sidebar. 

And as always, thank you so much for reading! <3

Turkeys on Parade

 So, back during the pandemic I took a spiritual business class with the renowned psychic/medium Lisa Williams, and it was suggested I make a video of myself drawing my comics. 

And so I did an experimental video, where I penciled in a comic page from a thumbnail drawing I'd made earlier about an experience I'd had on a vision quest years before. Here's that video...

I'd always intended to do a follow up video, inking in the same page, but never got around to  it, and the unfinished page lingered in my folder for a few more years. Then around Thanksgiving time this year it occurred to me that this would be a perfect time to finish inking this page about Turkey medicine. I started to ink it, but that felt really weird for some reason, and I realized I needed to follow through with that second video. Here's the second one...

It's strange that in both cases the video stopped unexpectedly after an hour because of an alarm or something going off on my phone. 

Anyway, I think the comic itself is pretty self-explanatory. I hope you enjoy it, and thank you for reading! 

Tower Moment

I wasn't sure I was ever going to finish this comic. In the middle of creating it, a wind storm knocked power out for days, leaving me unable to work on it in the evenings in the dwindling light of winter. Plus it is slightly more complex than most of my comics in that there were several portions of the page with separate shading techniques - The Tower card to look vaguely etched or woodcut, and the 'Natalie Wood' panel to look like a black and white movie.

On top of that was working through and sorting out my heartbroken feelings around the elections along with the guidance of hope I was receiving from my spirit guides, in order to organize them into words and illustrations that made sense and conveyed how I felt. 

*Phew!*

My hope is that by conveying my feelings and experiences will resonate with others and help them to sort out their own feelings, or in the very least know that they are not alone. 

I also feel like I cheated a bit on this page. I do usually go over my page on my laptop to edit out smudges, splotches, and ghost pencil lines that wouldn't quite erase all the way, but I pride myself on creating my comics the pencil and ink way (the brick and mortar of cartoonists) and try not to alter my drawings in any significant way electronically. 

Enter my long-time antagonist, white ink. Through all the years I've been drawing my comics, I have yet to find a brand of pens whose white ink maintained its opacity and clarity when drawn on top of a space totally darkened by black ink. On this particular page the stars are completely electronically applied. I eased my conscience by the fact that I was basically just poking my drawing with white electronic dots instead from a white pen, and not actually drawing anything. 

Anyway, thank you again for reading, and please follow my blog to remain updated on my latest comics!