Just Kidding, Folks! No Hard Feelings! Honest!
[Note from the Editor]: I thought I ought to put this at the top, or some of you might miss it: There is new artwork in development for 6-Commando! To get a preview of it, vote every day this week – each day there will be a new character drawing from Chapter 2 on TopWebComics.com’s vote site for this comic! So vote away, and let’s get 6-Commando into the top 150, if we can!
This little strip started off as a doodle I did in anger, and I found the result so amusing that it made me feel a whole lot better by the end. Essentially, I got a message from someone I don’t know, saying that they’d been directed to 6-Commando by a friend of theirs, but hated the art style and thought the story was too slow-paced, but they thought “it’s nice that you’re giving it a try.” Yeah, fuck you, too.
As artists go I think I’m pretty thick-skinned. I have to be in my line of work, since every time I do something in the stuido where I work, it is guaranteed to be pused, pulled, and prodded until it bears little resemblance to the original idea. It’s the nature of the work, and I accept it. Frankly, a part of me likes it. But this message just felt… I don’t know. Personal. I mean, why even write that to me? Not to mention that, this weekend, I went to New York City to buy some fencing equipment and ended up getting totally stuck in the city for like 9 hours when all the trains back to New England got totally screwed up. So I was feeling a little bit confrontational when I finally got back to my studio and took pencil in hand, so to speak.
So I sat down and banged out this little piece as my artistic “answer.” And so here it is. By the time I was done, I found that I’d been cheered up enormously, and so I kept it for this little interstitial week, here, to regale you with.
Now on to business. I think I am going to need another week of prep time before I can get Chapter 2 really rolling. There’s been a lot of preliminary stuff I have had to do, not the least of which was reformatting my computer, which unceremoniously crashed just after I finished Chapter 1 last week (thank goodness I back up my files daily!) On the artistic side, I am really looking critically at the first chapter now that it’s done, and reassessing a lot of things that I want to do with the plot and characters. The biggest things are that (1) I’m trying to do a major overhaul on the artwork; and (2) I’m focussing in on some particularly important parts, where the first chapter was mainly more expansive, to introduce the whole thing. I also have to conceputalize this as a whole book, with beginning middle and end, and as a result, I can tell you now that Chapter 2 is going to raise a lot more questions than it answers. It’s how stories are. Answering every question in the beginning would make the end awfully boring.
Anyhow, I hope that I piqued your interest with the “art overhaul” comment because, starting today and going every day this week, I’m posting a new sketch of a character who has a major role in Chapter 2, drawn in the new style and technique I’m introducing. And if you want to see them, vote for 6-Commando every day this week! Again, I know it’s kind of silly and these ranking systems are artificial and skewed towards the ten which ALWAYS make it to the top (I suspect there’s something iffy about that, in all honesty, but what the hell do I know about it?) But still, to get into the top 150 or even the top 100 would really increase 6-Commando’s exposure, and that would make me a happy dude. You know, just in a general sort of way.
Otherwise, I will keep you posted. As of now, my estimated start date for Chapter 2 is 26 July, so we’ll just keep shooting for that. Until then, my little gag comics will tide you over, I hope.
Another one down, folks. See you next week!
:XD Thanks for making me laugh after a nightmarish night (lil heatwave over here).
Yeah, it’s been really terrible around my neck of the woods as well. And New York City was no better. I’m glad this perked things up a little, though. These days it’s getting harder and harder to press onward without my comics to fall back on at the end of the day.
–M
There’s a line from RJD2’s Final Frontier that sticks out:
“The ass of my artform’s always exposed
But I’m inspired by the front rows
They’re the reason I prepared for the final frontier”
Keep up the good work!
Thanks, man. Good advice from the very start. It’s been a rough couple up here, and no mistake!
–M
Hey, I hope you remember me? (‘the’ dutch guy and not joost :p )
Must say, love the ‘comic’ of today, it is brilliant! And don’t worry! I for sure love your comic so keep up the good work (or, as you are doing, make it even better 😉 ) and I will lurk around some more.
good luck with chapter 2 and I look forward to it!
I do remember you – and as the Netherlands consistently send me more visitors than any European country but Germany (and it’s a close one!) the Dutch are well represented – and welcome!
I’m glad you like where the artwork is going. I’m really fortunate to have a good, solid core of readers pretty much from all over the world, who look the site up so consistently. So thanks! And if all goes to plan, it won’t be long before Chapter 2 is on the way.
–M
i almost pissed myself i was laughing so hard at that comic! I love it! if you ever get mad, do another one! Post it on friday or something!!
“Featuring her, him, him, him, him, him her and thing”
Oh, believe me, I have quite a stock. I have a bluging sketchbook I call “The Grail Diary” (get the reference?) that is packed with all the doodles and post-its and slips of paper I draw on. And believe me, after the last four days, which have been really very rough and don’t promise to get much better anytime soon, well, having my comics to fall back on is really more important than ever.
–M
Thank you so much for cheering me the hell up! That is sooo damn funny,y ou find it cathartic we find it relievingly funny, you should do one of those at least once a month,as for the dick who didn’t like your work… joke ’em if they can’t take a f*ck!
I’m glad it cheered you up – God knows, I need it myself these days. Sometimes things seem to go wrong on you so fast that it makes your head spin, and all you can do is just set your teeth and try to get through it with your skin. Having something like this to fall back on is really important to me. And if it brings a little laugh to everyone else, well, so much the better.
–M
Whah?! Don’t be hatin on my man Rucker! He’s way cooler than that one guy who said that stuff!
Nah, you want a real change in the artwork, you do a sprite comic with just Mike and Rucker talking, kinda like Quantz Dinosaur comics. That would be refreshing.
Sprite comic? No… no, thank you. But really I think Rucker is a lot closer in his new incarnation to how I have characterized him. I’m aiming for more consistency in the remainder of the book. And though I rail against it when other people do it, I will probably totally re-draw Chapter 1 before this goes to print.
–M
“I’m aiming for more consistency in the remainder of the book”
Among Characters?! I want character *development*, not character consistency. Yes, make it so that they have a continuing thread to them, but don’t use cookie cutters. So Sarah deserves her time in the sun? Give her a chapter or two. Highlight her( and Milo, if he is supposed to be a main character), and maybe her relationship with Mike or Haulley for a bit, if you would like. But don’t blackball Rucker just because he had a larger role in one chapter than you anticipated. They are all main characters, and its the interactions, relationships, and characters that make them interesting, and even human.
Action? I could give a damn about action! Its a dangerous drug, action. I, personally, didn’t like the A-bomb, because I wanted to see more of Mike. Not M1E the indestructible supertank, Mike, the character. I wanted to see Rucker and Haulley trying to grapple with a rampant AI. I wanted to see the Russians panicking and improvising and messing up and making absolutely human mistakes.
Don’t get me wrong, its pretty, but your art isn’t *that* good. Its too photorealistic. The only comics I follow for their art are Copper and reMIND. Yours is pretty, but its the people I watch it for. It was the people who drew me in. The subtle but important inflection in Mike’s voice when he learned that it was Major *Sarah* who had been captured. Sarah dealing with her capture and Milo’s beating. Improvising, not quite panicking, Mike’s taking his orders too far, intentionally or not. Rucker’s relationship with Mike, how he will have to rethink everything he thought he knew about Mike, the yearning in Mike’s voice to do what he felt was right, screw his programming. The panic and bewilderment of the Russians, the confusion of close quarters infantry combat, the helplessness of Haulley. These are the things that drew me in. Not the pictures, the text.
On page four, the one where Mike is first introduced, dominating his cavernous hangar, maintenance scrambling over him, missiles stacked by the wall, do you know which panel I admired most? The final one- the one where you gaze at Mike’s eye as he learns who has been captured, where you ponder the implications of him repeating her name, the importance of that name. That was the panel I admired the longest. That was the one that drew me into this comic. Action did nothing, but in Mike I could sense that we had a real Character.
So, that is why I am here. The characters. I didn’t care about the nukes. I was a bit disappointed when Mike killed people on page 21, actually; I’m sure Mike could have disabled the tanks if he wished, and I think that having him a bit of a pacifist, a reluctant warrior hell bent on rescuing Sarah, would have been quite interesting. I care absolutely nothing for M1E, you see–I care about Mike. There is nothing special about your tank design that I would want a plushy tank, but Mike’s character, up to this point, is such that I would want a plushy mike–not for the cold shell but for the man inside it.
Panels four and five of this comic are wrong, you see. Mike didn’t go crazy, and Rucker and Santelli didn’t do nothing. Mike’s actions were perfectly logical according to his honor code, his programming, what he believed in. Rucker and Santelli enabled Mike, and they dealt with his epiphany. This chapter wasn’t an action chapter about a rescue operation gone horribly wrong; this was a coming of age story for Mike. He has started to break through his programed restraints, and is starting to believe that he is more of a person than other people think. I like to think that Sarah was particularly important to him because she never treated him just as a computer or a piece of equipment, and her endangerment was what triggered Mike’s disobedience. Just a theory, but I like it. I wouldn’t mind if that theory was never proven correct, but I *would* mind if you went out of your way to prove that theory wrong. Never do away with the Mystery, Mr. Average. Don’t show us the ending, who the characters are, if it is some dismally boring flat story.
That is why I was almost personally offended by your aiming for “consistency” with Rucker. Are real people consistent? NO! I was offended because I had this terrible, nightmare vision of you turning into Michael Bay, miles wide and an inch deep, turning out some humongous, brilliantly colored page depicting absolutely dismal people doing incredible things. I was afraid that, after this great, intense start, combining action and character development in incredible depth, combining rapidity with subtlety, I was afraid that you would take the easy way out, fall back on consistency.
I’ve seen it happen before. Do you know “Questionable Content?” It used to be fairly good, I assure you. It used to have character development, occasional action, and some frequent but weak humor. Now, all that is left is weak humor. Don’t turn this comic into one with nothing but weak action, I beg you. Action will never turn you into one of the classics. It cannot. Twenty years from now who will remember Transformers 2? Who will remember The Hurt Locker, on the other hand?
Each of your characters *is* a real character, if you will let them be. But I am afraid, truly. Your pace is so slow, I am afraid that you lose sight of who they are. Action is easy to remember, characters are not. I read this in one day, all 30 pages. The characters were brilliant, subtle and complex, but on the edge at the same time.
Rucker should keep developing. He should grow ever rounder, ever more complex. If he isn’t the *main* character, fine. Give him a major part to play every three chapters or so. They should all develop. Don’t try and hold him back, to rehash formula. I can rehash formula on my own. Keep it fun, keep it serious, keep it intelligent, keep it complex.
The comic that I follow most ardently is called Bittersweet Candy Bowl. It is the only comic that is on my RSS ticker; in fact, I installed an RSS ticker so I would know when each new chapter was complete. I have to admit, it is a whole different speed from 6-com. The characters are cats, for one (originally based off the author’s cats, but its been more than a decade). It can appear to be a cutesy tale, full of shallow humor and feel-good fluff, and the comments are amateurish and doting. However, I managed to guess the author’s major before I read her profile. I guessed it without even wondering what her major was in the first place. I was just reading, and it occurred to me that she must be a psychology major. The characters were too complete, too complex, too human to be formed from the mind of a fool or a unreflective, anti-intellectual person. They all had backstories, traumas, hidden facets of their psyches. The art, quite frankly, sucked, for the first several years at least. Its has gotten quite good recently, but that is not why I follow it. That is never why I follow a comic. There isn’t much of a story independent of the characters, either. It is a high school slice of life drama. But the characters, oh the characters. They’ve developed to the point where I am convinced that they are more complex than many real people.
So, the moral of my story–focus on the characters, the depths and layers of their personalities. There are enough flat, uninteresting, boring, and frankly pathetic people out in the real world. I’m sure you can do better than that in this universe.
Well, good heavens, I only meant “consistency” in the sense of keeping the artwork on-model. And to be honest I have NEVER heard anyone call my work “photorealistic” before – many people have actually complained (if that’s a fair word to use?) that it’s too cartoony considering the seriousness of the storyline!
You have really paid me a tremendous compliment with this post, I have to say, and I am really supremely pleased that the finer points of the characters and their development aren’t getting lost in the mix. Rucker is an enormously subtle character – the first one whose story I wrote when I outlined the comic for the first time. Believe me, he has a LOT more to do in this book before he’s finished! None of the characters I have introduced so far are being capriciously disposed of or “forgotten,” and I can say this with confidence because I know where it is going, and what it is doing when it gets there. The fact that you are engaged by all the right aspects of the plot and characters really made me feel fantastic when I read your post just now – it was a terriffically difficult day for me, and to know that someone is reading my story and taking it so incredibly seriously, as you are, was profoundly wonderful to see. So thank you.
The characters in 6-Commando all have backgrounds and stories and all the associated baggae of real people, and I only wish I could tell you about it, but that would wreck the story. At all points I have endeavored to make them deep and believable people, and to see them taking on a life of their own like this is a real success, to my mind, especially since 6-Commando is my first actual comic seeing any kind of publicity. And although there is a lot of “action” to a story like this I am very aware of how quickly that can cheapen things – like having a radio at full volume all the time. There’s a lot more to this story than action, and I’m really pleased to know that I have such thoughtful readers in my audience – it makes me feel that I can make the story as complex and interwoven as I intend it to be, without losing people to it.
I do think you’ll be happy about the next chapter on all the counts you have mentioned. It is not, I think, what people might expect, but it is going to be a good one.
And yes, even though this chapter is admittedly Sarah-centric, Rucker is part of it as well – and I think you’ll be interested to see where it takes both of them.
–M
Hmmm….
chatty today aren’t they? It’s refreshing to see the creator artist respond in kind and in length to the comments he/she recieves, and not just to one or two of them either. Good on you, and in the future if you can’t respond (should your work become too popular to respond to the legions of fans ((no jinxes
)) I will gladly forgive you. Excellent work, excellent marks on fan appreciation to the fans.
I really do try to respond to everyone’s comments – interactivity is a big part of what this site is about, for me. If it were just a one-way proposition, it’d be really boring, I think. And I also like to think I’m open to lots of different ideas and views, even those that differ from my own. And though I don’t go in for outright abuse or simplistic nonsense like flames or people automatically gainsaying each other for the sake of being argumentative, a lot of give and take is a part of the creative process for me and so I really like to see it happening here.
–M
Everything here was just awesome, and I LOVE how you drew Mike in panel 4. 😀
And it’s great how you wanna overhaul your comic and all that, but just remember to stay happy with what you’re doing. Feel free to change your style if you start resenting the decesion to ever start a webcomic; if people hate it, snort and point out that it’s your story, your way, so suck it.
And if you ever get writer’s/drawers’ block, eat something spicey right before bed. That helps me out. ^_<
Ooo. Spicy before bed? Yikes. My insomnia’s bad enough as it is!
You make a good point though, one that I’m particularly aware of, and that is that in something like this, you really have to like it a lot to keep doing it. Especially since I basically subsidize this entire thing without advertising or any of the other online stuff. Frankly, a lot of people say I should add that in. And a little revenue could be helpful, as well as making some space for people with their own comics to network. But something about it… I dunno.
Anyway, I digress. Yes, it’s my story, but I also try not to be bullheaded about that because on a certain level it belongs to the readers as well, since you guys give me a lot of inspiration and motivation. I find myself instantly disliking artists who take the approach that their own work is ipso facto unassailable because it’s theirs. Not to mention that the comments people have left (the productive ones) have really helped me a lot in conceptualizing many of the dimensions to the characters that I would not normally have thought about. asdfsdf’s comment above, for example, really drove home to me the fact that I was hitting the right notes with Mike-One-Echo, whose actual “personality” is coming across clearly even at points where I’d been very subtle about it, to the point where I had begun to fear that he’d be too hard to “read.” An active interaction with the readers is something that a project like this really can benefit from.
–M
Ha, ha! That’s the way to deal with hateful critique!
You should do some more of these. I also really like that you take your art to the next level, it really looks good. The new Major Rucker reminded me off the characters drawn by Kasuhiro Otomo. Keep it up!
To be fair the thing that bugs me most is their casual use of enslaved AIs.
Art and pacing aren’t much to worry about. You want bad pacing then go read Outsider. One page every other month if you’re lucky.
Outsider…outsider was fairly decent when I first read it. I read 70 pages all at once and it was pretty good. Unfortunately, I realize that I’ll start to see some character development by the time I rediscover it several decades down the line. Maybe I should make a note to look it up after my kids go off to college or something.
I wrote a long post, as I am wont to, but I decided that it was long winded, so here it is summed up, perhaps the nicest criticism anybody can ever get: Arioch, your art is too damn good. It is so good that it is holding you back if you ever want to make a webcomic for a weekly-or-monthly-or-yearly audience. If you want to pick up the pace you are going to have to be a little less narrative and a little less detail-oriented with regards to the art. I don’t read Outsider for the visuals; I don’t read comics for the visuals. I, as the audience, desire story, and if Outsider were to come out on a weekly basis but drawn with as much detail as XKCD I would find it more compelling.
It is my understanding that Arioch was largely drawing it for his own benefit, as a way to experiment and practice. I, of course, am writing from the point of view of myself, and I would like to see more of it. The artist and author should always avoid populist compromises, but they should always keep criticism and comments in mind. If he wants to make the comic for himself as a challenge and experiment, then fine, it looks excellent (as if my judgment matters in that case), but it won’t take off publicly if it takes the main character a year to enter a room and have an exposition bomb.
Ooh boy, I do get off topic and long winded. Damn this infernal internet and its ability to make all my drivel available to the masses, it shall be the death of me.
I thought the pacing was great to be honest. Good character development, got straight to the point, and really has me hooked. 😀