Don't do anything that affects anything

The internet is abuzz today with chatter about the return of everyone's favorite fantasy series that - because just enjoying something for what it is isn't enough these days - doubles as a keenly-observed allegory of the struggles of - and ultimate irrelevance of - the poor in the face of rich white people's monopoly of the mechanisms of social order, complete with the expected outrageous and leftfield turns of fortune for plots and characters alike that drop like bombshells into stories and leave you unsteady.
I speak of course of Lifetime's Drop Dead Diva, a show about rich white people who love money.  Rich, white Christian people who love money (the series mythos is rooted in Western Christian theology), whose central protagonist's karmic donkey-punch comes when she is prevented from being skinny and blonde and has to work for a living - a nightmare scenario, I'm sure we can all agree.

Also some gay shit about dragons and elves is back on TV, but I'll only watch that when I run out of shows that matter.

Free men pull in all kinds of directions

I want to believe that I'm still a human being

Priests don't do what he did - they know that God's watching

Very thin panels today, thanks to big fat panels yesterday.

 In my efforts to not be a jerk and keep things "all ages" and inoffensive, I dropped the final balloon from that last panel Just In Case, but if you were wondering, it was the lady tutting and saying "don't be racist," which was the worst thing in there so I'm probably doing okay.

I take back what I said earlier - you COULD be a bigger pussy

I'm starting to think this is not therapy - I think we're making you sangria

Posting early today, so I haven't even seen how badly the budget has fucked me over this year while handing money to rich people.  I'm guessing there, of course - I'm sure I can always edit this post in the future if it turns out around one o'clock that the Condems have been just lovely to all us poor folk.

Why is everyone hitting me in the face today?

I ought to move to some place where there's no art like Iran or Utah

I did it first and that's why you're doing it now

Although I've finished with the pages I sent off as samples, I continue posting regardless and today begins another J6 strip.  This one's an "arena" type story where characters get dumped in a place to fight other characters for "all the marbles" on some flimsy pretext, and it was inspired by Marvel's Avengers Arena comic book, which sounded okay at the time but in practice spent its first issue apologizing to the readers for its own premise, which it then didn't follow through on.
Although it cannily cultivated fan outrage at the premise while it was ongoing, it wasn't actually a particularly odd duck of a comic, being no different from other mini/maxi-series published by the Big Two, as DC did a more or less identical miniseries called Salvation Run a few years earlier, and Ultimate Spider-Man had a near-identical story arc in the mid-2000s, but I did like AA for being so openly a product of editorial mandate rather than creative teams making a pitch, and even if this did kind of betray very early on that we wouldn't be seeing the deaths of any characters beloved of editorial (like X23 or Runaways), it does at least help underline that when you're making comics on Marvel's level - especially something under the Avengers brand - it's a product first and foremost.
Martin Gray has some good reviews of the series over on Too Dangerous For a Girl, should you be curious to know more about it.

And so we arrive at the end of another week!  I shall continue to post daily strips over the weekend - hopefully you'll all have a good one.

If I told you the truth you wouldn't have done what I wanted

And that's the end of the pitch material.  Probably should have put some sort of "next episode" blurb at the bottom of that last panel, as I've clearly left room for it.  Ah well.

I think this will make sense if I get more wine

Other characters from nowhere referencing other characters not seen yet?  I suspect it is time to put cards on table in regards to this turkey.

 You've read the blog so you are well-aware by now that I fly by the seat of my pants on most things, so it will probably surprise you not a jot that barring one or two sketches lost in the big PC switchover of 2013, this is more or less the entirety of my planning for the J6 pitch:

True to form, I have lost the actual pitch I made, too, but it was something along the lines of:

Whereas other superheroes find their way around the globe, working-class Brummie superhero team J6 usually have their hands full just finding their way around the UK to the spots of mythic or historical interest to which their adventures call them - places like Loch Ness, the Williamson Tunnels or Mary King's Close - in a series of family-friendly adventures that emphasise the fun and surreal adventure of superhero tales over grim angst.

I referred to the sketch page occasionally for visual reference because I just have the absolute worst memory, but that's more or less it apart from the outline for the main story (these and the pages I've still to run on the blog are proof-of-concept as the submission guidelines called for an example of the finished artwork and lettering as well as a thumbnailed chapter), but I shan't be putting that up here as I might yet get mileage out of it one way or another.
I've worked with less than the above, though - the current project I'm working on was based on something like two notes I found that read "homeless He-Man" and "don't just make the cat a bear again," but I'll muddle through on that one, too.

Last night I had a dream that I was brushing a horse

I have cheated slightly on the "no shadows" rule because it fixed a small art problem, and again, no background in panel 2 - less is more.

Ireland's Hibernia imprint has recently done a collection of the Tower King storyline from the early days of the 1980s Eagle revival, and it's one of the high points thanks to a fast-paced script from Alan Hebden and some cracking Jose Ortiz artwork that - I will be blunt here - was far too good for the strip, or Eagle.  Even today it's pretty gobsmacking in places, especially presented as it is in the original oversized Eagle format rather than the usual US-format for trade collections, so you can really drown in the artwork and I had to stop looking at it in case I started trying to emulate the meticulous hatching and brilliant use of solid blacks to make the characters feel like real people, even if they're grotesque post-apocalyptic mutants living in the ruins of London reduced to a new feudal era - trying to copy it would drive me mad eventually.  If nothing else, it makes for a pretty macabre colouring-in book for younger kids you might be determined to turn into weirdos, as seems to have been the long-term effect of the Eagle on those who grew up with it.
I got my copy from Comicsy, but it's a limited print run of 200 thanks to the deal agreed with the current copyright owners of the material and last I heard Hibernia were down to the low double-figures of the remaining stock, so if you think the entire run of a brilliantly-rendered post-apocalyptic romp sounds like something you'd be interested in checking out, you might want to grab one quick.

I got attacked by a duck at the park yesterday

Back from the weekend lull, there were Saturday and Sunday strips, in case you missed them.

Although it ends up playing around with the visual geography of the scene, I flipped that first panel at the inking stage for lettering reasons, so I do actually give it some thought despite all appearances and evidence to the contrary.  See also: no backgrounds, a decision made to keep the foreground art uncluttered even though I always bitch at those who choose not to draw backgrounds. I'm discovering that sometimes less is more, or at least that most things are a subjective experience, which was a lesson probably begun about 30 minutes into watching The Hangover and finding it about as funny as watching a dying child being kicked out of their wheelchair.

Elsewhere, True Detective wraps up its first season and I shan't spoiler anything here in case you're still catching up, but I liked how it continued to swerve between genres before arriving at its destination.  A great slice of gothic Americana with the odd hint of Lovecraft thrown in.

I can still make evening service if I haul ass

I should have continued slowly poisoning you when we were kids

I'm just gonna go do some research on lawsuits in my room

"One day, madam, I will be better at lettering and colouring my comics, but you will still be ugly." - Winston Churchill, Graphic Narratives Convention for Gentlemen, 1943.

Given the cultural reference, I probably should have done the Hachiko post from earlier in the week with this strip... whoopsy daisy.

So it's the end of the first week of Lent, having given up booze, meat, caffeine, milk, and eggs, and I don't miss any of it at all.  No sir, not one item on that stupid list of things that I don't know what I was thinking when I made it do I miss because I have plenty of toilet paper and headache tablets to hand, so what do I have to complain about?  I'll be honest, I really don't rule out the possibility of snapping and going on a bit of a bender.  We shall see.
I hope the weekend finds you well and I shall see you on the other side of it hopefully fit and well.