Daniel Boone and the Giant p11-14 (Boone and Crockett: The Sasquatch Sagas Chapter 3)

They took a bit of a strange turn toward the end, but here are the last four pages of my Daniel Boone and the Giant comic, the third chapter in my series that ‘comic-tizes’ a pair of letters documenting the Sasquatch encounters of both Davy Crockett and Daniel Boone. 

I still need to draw up a cover, possibly a chapter opener illustration for each chapter, and a bibliography, but it feels good to be done with this comic that’s lived in the back of my mind for years. 

To read the rest of this chapter’s story about Daniel Boone, please click on the Boone & Giant label below. To read the entire comic, please click on the Sasquatch Sagas label below. 
 

And thank you for reading! 

Dismem-Boar-Ment page 33 & 34

I have a number of comics I’ve been working on over a number of years that still linger in that liminal state of almost-but-not-quite-finished, so I have recently committed myself to finally complete the final few pages of at least two of them. These are the first couple of those final pages for my Dismem-Boar-ment comic, now five years in the making: 

To read the rest of my Dismem-Boar-ment comic (to get a hint as to the title and to see how these pages fit into the story) click on the “Dismem-Boar-ment” label below. 

And thank you for reading! 

 

The King of Oaks and the Oak of Kings

They recently made the sad announcement that the "Major Oak," the famous tree that has stood silent witness to a thousand years of Sherwood Forest history, has died. 

I've referred before to memories I have of a past life in Sherwood, and because of that I've had intentions for years to travel to Nottingham and do a vision quest of sorts in that storied forest. So, to find out I missed my window of opportunity to meet this great being in person, alive, is quite a disappointment. 

A couple weeks or so before drawing this comic I found out my dear friend Rev Judith Laxer had been diagnosed with last stage cancer. Being a Pagan High Priestess who founded Gaia’s Temple in Seattle, she was very connected to Mother Gaia and all her natural cycles and rhythms, and the timing of this, so close to Summer Solstice, spurred on a story to help make sense of it all...

For Judith

Solstice tales have long been told

Of Oak and Holly Kings of old

Who in each turn would take the throne

And claim that time to be his own

And so it is still to this year

With Midsummer a memory near

The roy'l exchange already made

When Oaken life begins to fade

Now the part comes into play

That tales tell not and bards don't say

For as the Oak King's light does pale

So too his sight begins to fail

Then, as ever, once again

Supported by the Feminine

The masculine, bold, mighty king

Softens and, surrendering 

Strength, bravado, prowess vast,

To melt into Her arms at last

The one who catches all that fall

Gaia: Mother of us all

 Yet, eyesight dimmed, he must be led

Unto his star-suspended bed

To sleep, to die, or so it seems

Retiring to the Land of Dreams

So each year as Winter brews

The Goddess lovingly doth choose 

A daughter who has earned the right

To shepherd gods into the night

And so this year of which I speak

The Oak King having reached his peak

Had none to guide him in his plight

To rest deep in the winter's night

But Gaia's mind and heart were clear

She whispered in her chosen's ear

"Come home my child, your service done

Unto this world of shining sun.

"'Tis one who needs your hand to guide 

His path across the Otherside

By light of moon, with eyes of Owl

You've danced and shone, you've laughed and howled

My bright presence in life you've been 

'Tis time to join me once again"

And so it was, is, and shall be

An Owl Moon Goddess for to see

The clear path on into the dark

Where Oak King may rebirth his spark 

Thus the priestess, Goddess born

When Mundane form has freshly shorn

Rises to the velvet skies

Her light added to ancestral eyes

To watch o'er us, to guide and steer

Her loving light so far yet near

Though gone our hearts her love shall fill

Within and without, she remains with us still.

Blessed Be

Try Tri Again

After almost twenty years of living a shamanic life, you’d think I’d have a better handle on dealing with the constant Death & Rebirth cycles that are a permanent fixture of such a life.

 …Nope!

The thing is that as soon as you clear one set of fears and issues, so you think you’re done, things arise literally out of the wallpaper - those areas that blend into the wallpaper, that you don’t really see because you think it’s a permanent, unshakable, essential component of the very structure of the Universe. In other words, those safety nets that you believe you can depend on and lean against for support. 

The good news is that you are the only permanence in the Universe. The Universe has so much love for you, and so much faith in you, that it layer by layer peels away everything that is not you in order to reveal the glory of your true being. 

It still sucks, though. When seen and felt through the filter of  duality mindedness, it can be interpreted as a test or even punishment. 

But as I realized this past week, it’s not so much a ‘tough love’ thing, like throwing a kid into the lake to teach them how to swim, as it is removing the training wheels, which haven’t touched the ground for a long time, or my favorite image - that of Dumbo dropping the magic feather to find out he’d been flying under his own power the whole time. 

 

It does still suck. 

 

Daniel Boone and the Giant p10 - Boone and Crockett: The Sasquatch Sagas Chapter 3

 It’s amazing to me sometimes where my mind goes. As I was reading the letter that is the basis for this comic, and I reached this part where Daniel Boone is describing the “giant” he’d just shot, particularly the “long yellowish hair” portion, my mind suddenly saw this Sasquatch in an Alphonse Mucha, Art Nouveau painting. I’m sure you’ll recognize the genre I’m talking about from my drawing below.

At first I thought, “No. I can’t do that. That’s just a little too far.” Then I remembered what one of my spirit guides advised me recently. “Lean into your whimsy.” There’s a kind of poetic beauty there, because it was the no-nonsense, all-father, king of the Norse gods, Odin who said this. Yet there’s a certain level of whimsy necessary to even mention having a casual conversation with an ancient god. 

Besides that I am the cartoonist and I can do anything I want. So there! 

This page also helped me come full circle in a way, and pointed me toward the realization of how much influence Art Nouveau, and Mucha in particular, had on my personal art. Along with Mucha is the Hanna-Barbara cartoons that filled my childhood - Yogi Bear, Huckleberry Hound, Touche Turtle - which were always drawn with thicker, heavier outlines, with lighter lines  filling out the details on the inner lines. 

And so I present to you page 10 of our little yarn, and the Art Nouveau Sasquatch. 

To read the entire series thus far, please click on the Sasquatch Sagas link below. To read just the Daniel Boone part, click on Boone & Giant link. I hope you enjoy it, and thank you for reading!

Daniel Boone and the Giant p9 - Boone and Crockett: The Sasquatch Sagas Chapter 3

For those of you just joining us, this is my latest project which entails the retelling from personal letters the stories of encounters by Daniel Boone and Davy Crockett with Bigfoot. To read the entire series thus far, click on the Sasquatch Sagas link below. To read just the currently unfinished Daniel Boone part, click on the Boone & Giant link below. And for the Davy Crockett portion you can click here for the Bigfoot Prophecy. 

…We now return you to our regularly scheduled comic already in progress…

 

Good Questions

 

Dismem-Boar-Ment page 32

The advantage of having a perpetual half dozen projects in progress simultaneously is that, when you hit a snag in one, there’s always another one to pivot to in order to maintain creative momentum. 

On arriving at the final page or two of my Daniel Boone and the Giant chapter of my Sasquatch Sagas project, I realized, due to some of the archaic terms in the original narrative, it required a little more research in order to clearly see a vision of the unfolding story and how to translate it onto the page. 

So while that is mulling about in the background, I am afforded the opportunity to turn my attention to another project that has lingered unfinished for some time - my Dismem-boar-ment comic about a profound Vision Quest I experienced a few years ago.  

Ta-da!

To read the rest of my Dismem-Boar-ment comic (and to get a hint as to the title) click on the “Dismem-Boar-ment” label below. 

 

Daniel Boone and the Giant p8 - Boone and Crockett: The Sasquatch Sagas Chapter 3

Page 8 of Daniel Boone’s experience with a Sasquatch, where the previous second hand narrative of the letter’s author suddenly shifts to the firsthand words from Boone’s own mouth. 

To read the rest of this story thus far, please click on the Boone & Giant label below. For the entire comic to this point please click on the Sasquatch Sagas label. I hope you enjoy it and thank you so much for reading! 

 

Daniel Boone and the Giant p7 - Boone and Crockett: The Sasquatch Sagas Chapter 3

Here yet is my latest page of my most recent ongoing comic project in the comic-tization of the true life adventures of both Davy Crockett and Daniel Boone, who each independently experienced encounters with a Sasquatch -- This being a man's letter recounting Boone's first-hand account as told to himself when he was a boy, from around the turn of the 19th Century when correct spelling was still just optional.

To read the rest of the Daniel Boone portion up to this point please click on the Boone & Giant label below. To read the Davy Crockett portion please click Here. And to read the entire comic thus far, please click on the Sasquatch Sagas label below this post.

And as always, thank you for reading! 

 

Daniel Boone and the Giant p6 - Boone and Crockett: The Sasquatch Sagas Chapter 3

 For those of you just joining us - This is page 6 of chapter 3 of my most current project, so on its own, out of context from the rest of the comic, there are sure to arise a couple of questions. Other than the obvious, “What the heck is going on?” there’s the additional, “How can this guy write comics if he can’t spell worth a darn?” Both questions share the self-same answer: This is a “comictization” (like a ‘dramatization’ but with… well, you get it!) of a documented Sasquatch encounter experienced by Daniel Boone, as reported through a handwritten letter by a person who was told the story firsthand by Boone himself at the turn of the 19th Century when there was still quite a bit of wriggle room where spelling is concerned, especially in the Kentucky backwoods. 

To read the rest of this story, you can check out my previous post here. To read the entire comic thus far, please click on the Sasquatch Sagas label below. And, as always, thank you so much for reading! 

A Normal Day

This one comes from the “A Day In the Life of a Shaman” category. Most of the time I forget that my life with its inherent synchronicities, miracles, and Divine Interventions is not ‘normal’ - That most people’s days do not include such things as conversations with dead people, deities, or dragons, or experiencing the Universe directly responding to what I may do, say, or think. I seriously find myself thinking, “Isn’t everybody’s life like this?”

And this is why the directive from White Buffalo Calf Woman to me during my first Vision Quest was to “share my path.” Not that I am in any way special, but my path as a Shaman is different from most, and in sharing it, hopefully, others get an inkling of how much bigger the possibilities for their life are when they step outside the narrow spectrum of normalacy, and begin to expect the extraordinary. 

As Dr. Wayne Dyer would say: “I am a realist. I expect miracles.”

And thus is this comic page an ‘ordinary’ day for me.

 

Daniel Boone and the Giant pp1-5 - Boone and Crockett: The Sasquatch Sagas Chapter 3

Next stop - Boonesborough! Here is the beginning of the next chapter in my Sasquatch Sagas series where it comes time to tell the story of Daniel Boone’s real-life encounter with a Sasquatch. Any strange phrasings or spellings are due to this being a direct relaying of a personal letter penned by a 18th Century gentleman to whom Daniel Boone personally told this story. 

As an aside, the fourth page below is, incidentally, the first time, I believe, I’ve ever drawn some form of firearm in my comics. Thus far I’d always found a clever way to scrub around guns, such as in this earlier Davy Crockett comic. I won’t go into my personal feelings on the subject here, but at some point my plans do include drawing at least one excerpt from The Three Musketeers (One of my life goals is to learn French so I can read the original Musketeers books by Alexander Dumas), and musketeers, strangely enough, require muskets. 

 

More coming soon, so stay tuned! And thank you so much for reading! 

Visit from Artemis

Applausibilty

 

Segue p4&5 - Boone and Crockett: Sasquatch Sagas Chapter 2

When I finished the final page of my segue between the Crockett and the Boone stories, and went to post it here, I discovered that, though I'd uploaded it, I hadn't actually published the penultimate page yet.

So here they are together, the last two pages of the segue/break/intermission between the main stories. Next stop Boonesborough!

If you'd like to read the whole comic thus far, please click on the Sasquatch Sagas label below, and to read just the segue, please click on the segue label. 

And thank you for reading!

Segue p3 - Boone & Crockett: The Sasquatch Sagas Chapter 2

Normally when I do one of these Gerb and gang renditions of literary sources, the portrayal itself contains little jokes and fourth wall flouting dialogues, questioning, mostly on the part of Gerb, the direction taken, or the interpretation of the material, by the “lame-brained cartoonist.” 

For some reason - perhaps the brevity of the original source materials - so far, this particular project hasn’t contained the same breaks and asides from the primary documentation. Therefore, this ‘second chapter’ segue between the two main stories was probably inevitable to give the necessary space and free reign to the guys to express those things that are such an integral ingredient of my comics. 

To read the entire comic thus far, click on the Sasquatch Sagas link below, and to read just the Segue portion, click on the Segue link below. Thank you for reading! 

 

Segue p1&2 - Boone and Crockett: The Sasquatch Sagas Chapter 2

As an update to my last post, I couldn't not connect the two stories, the most likely segue between the Davy Crockett chapter and the Daniel Boone chapter, being the inevitable behind the scenes squabble amongst my characters about who should play the leading role. Enjoy!

To read the entire comic thus far, please click on the "Sasquatch Sagas" label below.

 

Davy Crockett and the Bigfoot Prophecy (Boone and Crockett: The Sasquatch Sagas - Chapter 1)

This is one of two comics I’ve been planning on drawing for quite awhile now - ever since I discovered the fact that both of my childhood heroes, Davy Crockett and Daniel Boone, had individual, documented experiences of encounters with a Sasquatch. 

This one, Davy Crockett’s first hand account, is briefer with a bit more of a paranormal slant than Daniel Boone’s, with a prophetizing by the Bigfoot. As a shaman, in my eyes, this actually lends credence to the validity of the experience, particularly since this occurred in 1836, in Nacohdoches, Texas on his way to the Alamo!

Daniel Boone’s narrative is next on my agenda, but I haven’t yet decided whether it’s going to be two separate tales or two parts of a single comic. I’m leaning toward the latter, so stay tuned to find out how it plays out! 

                                       

 

I Just Wanted to Draw