6-Commando

UPDATE! (11-9-2009)

I finally finished coloring this page.  I hope it was worth the wait – I’m backdating this page to last week in order to keep the archive arranged properly.  I guess that’s kind of dishonest of me, calendrically, but as I’ve been playing catch-up lately, I’m allowing myself a few cheats here and there.  I have, however, kept Joost’s piece of guest art in place in the “batting order” though for the sake of having a consistent archive.  I may change that order later but for now it’s just what it is.  The next page is almost but not quite done and I’ll be posting it either tomorrow or Wednesday of this week, backdated to today.  And that will, I sincerely hope, put the comic back on track.

I appreciate everyone bearing with me as I try to absorb a couple of unforeseen bits of trouble and get the comic back into decent order.  The first chapter is approaching the halfway mark here, and it’s really important to me to get things back into good order as quickly as I can.  If all else fails I’ll leave this week blank and restart the order next Monday, but I’d like to avoid that and will see if I can manage to do so with a little extra work this weekend.  So thanks for tuning in!  The show will go on!

Original Post: (11-2-2009) It’s not exactly an update, but kind of.  You notice no doubt the lack of color.  Well, to cut a long story short, I’ve had to do a lot of travelling recently for some very stupid reasons, and that has kept me away from my studio.  Most of these excursions have revolved in some way around my car, which is eighteen years old and was doubtless due for some sort of catastropic breakdown sooner or later.  In the United States, unless you live in certain select cities, it is simply part of the way of life that you pretty much have to own a car in order to be functional in society.  So I bowed to necessity, bit the bullet, and got the damned thing fixed.  All the rigmarole surrounding that, of course, took its toll on my artwork, and so this update is admittedly anemic.

However, black and white is better than nothing, I like to think, and I was surprised that I was able to get as far as I did, what with the car trouble, the long-distance intercity travel, the World Series (which my team is currently losing – Come ON Phils!), Hallowe’en, political strife at home and abroad… but I promise that as soon as all these problems go away, the comic will be back to 100% normal.  Whatever normal means.

In any event, the astute observer will notice that this page and page 8 are a spread, the first such panoramic piece I’ve so far tried.  I drew them at different times, and the vicissitudes of the scanning process I use has caused me some little trouble in getting the two parts to knit properly.  But I think in the end the effect will be close enough to carry and I’m running with it.  This page is also where the “real action” starts – I bet some of you were wondering whn I’d get to that.  To be honest, I feel a little bit wierd about that, as I currently have friends in war zones and to be over here in a (relatively) safe place turning their reality into a comic book makes me feel a little bit lame.  I was recently talking to someone who is currently in the field about this country’s wars and overseas committments and making broad, sweeping statements about “If I were in charge, I would…”  A moment later I realized just how entirely silly that was of me to do in that circumstance, and I felt terriffically ashamed.

It’s all very well to talk about what you’d do or not do, but in wars, when you do that, you’re still asking other people to go do it for you, essentially.  It’s best not to forget that.

Anyway, having waxed philosophical enough for one day, I’ll just leave it all at that.  Anyone in the field reading this comic, godpeed.  I hope you enjoy it for what it is.