6/7

I’m back, folks. Over the last few days I posted pages 6 and 7 of NO RACCOONS IN HELL part two at my patreon. These posts are behind the $1/month paywall, but here is a preview panel from each page to get you interested:

VAL 1997-2000

I have plans for the future of Meeting Comics that include eventual full length Val Cannon Mystery books. The drawings above reflect my current thoughts on her style in those books, but there'll be changes along the way.

1997: This one's right on, as it's basically how she looks in NO RACCOONS IN HELL.
1998: How Val might appear in the tentatively titled DADDY ISSUES.
1999: How Val might appear in the tentatively titled CHESS KINGS.
2000: How Val might appear in the tentatively titled RAVEYARD.

Will I make these books? Stay tune for the next decade or so to find out!

SOMETHING I DIDN’T DO

This is an image I posted on social media letting folks know I was not going to be set up outside at Acme Comics for Free Comic Book Day due to potential rain. I think it actually would have been fine, rainwise, but I had a lot of other stuff to do, so it worked out for me. Also, if I’d been sitting there all day wondering if it was going to rain, that would have exhausted me more than the event itself!

A DIARY COMIC

Here’s a recent diary comic!

I CANNOT TELL A LIE-FELD

This image has been making the rounds on the comic book part of social media:

Here are some thoughts on this, and on generative AI, adapted from some posts I made on bluesky:

I'm not a Liefeld fan, but this type of thing, which is presented as "look how shitty this art is," really just illustrates to me that the dude understands his own art.

It looks way more fucked up without the lines, because the space around them emphasizes how small they are, and with the lines they fill the space in a way that reads better. The guy is cartooning, not drawing a real dude.

It's not cartooning in a way that I enjoy, but the current loop of marvel movies influencing marvel comics influencing marvel movies has created a lot of boring "realistic" stuff, and I'd rather see some idiosyncratic shit than a real-looking superhero any day, even if its not my thing.

Why did I feel compelled to post this? Because I don’t like the idea that there’s a right way to draw, or to cartoon. I don’t like the current tendency toward attempted realism in comic art, and while I hate generative AI, I don’t like the way certain people are using whether or not a piece is drawn “right” to determine whether it is AI generated.

I'm glad there are people out there who are trying to figure whether images are gen AI or not (I'm one of those people), but I'm not glad that at how much the average person looking at a comic/illustration/drawing confuses quirks of the individual artist's hand with AI artifacting.

"That's not realistic!"
"That's not how that part of the body works!"
"That's a weird looking shirt!"

Has no one ever looked at a drawing? Has no one ever experienced stylization? Or cartooning?

This type of thing is pushing us toward representational/"realistic" art as the only acceptable type. It reminds me of when people redraw cartoonists' work to "correct" it. Exaggeration is allowed. Abstraction is allowed. Not liking it is allowed, too, but it's not wrong just because you don’t like it, and it's not necessarily AI.

This hasn't happened to me, by the way. This is just something I've observed repeatedly. Well meaning AI-seekers who just don't get art at all. It's getting in the way of rooting the AI shit out.

THANKS

Thanks for reading my rant. As a reward, here are pictures of my three cats and one cat who is not my cat, but who lives outside my house and gets fed by me.

OK, everybody. Take care! I am hopefully back on my comic creation routine again, and I will be back to sending these email updates pretty much weekly if that holds true.

Take care!