Did somebody say "Drunken Monkey"?

Since the artwork is finished and approved, and since it is Halloween, I'd like to announce my very first published comics work: a backup strip in Furious Fist of the Drunken Monkey #2. On comic racks everywhere in January '05. A couple of preview panels:


Uh thankyuh.

A few friends, family and creepy camera stalkers might remember that, exactly two years ago at Halloween, I managed to pull out an undeserved victory in an art contest with a faithless rendition of the now-famed Drunken Monkey (in fact, second place went to the very astonishing Ryan Ottley, who's become the new Golden Boy of the comics industry in the last year or so, pencilling one of the hottest comics currently running - hoofah!). Two years and several emails with Monkey creator Rich Stahnke later, I'm lending my pen to his script for a piece of the actual comic.

Rich is a really cool cat, by the way, who's managed to forgive my hemming and hawing about art help with the first issue of DM. I bumped into him earlier this year at San Diego Comic-Con and the guy even comped me a copy of the comic. He's hinted around at teaming up on other projects, so who knows?
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We have an elevator in our condo's building, which Carey and I make terrific use of, being that we live on the top floor. Every so often, I can't help myself, I look down at the little gap between the elevator door and the floor and think, "gee, it would really suck to drop your keys down there."

And yesterday, on the way home, I got The Phone Call.

"Jer, how close are you to home? I just did something really stupid."

Fortunately, Carey was able to wait with our neighbor for me to get home. But, yup, she'd dropped her keys down the elevator shaft. When I arrived, she'd already talked to Linda, the president of our HOA. We need to call to get the Elevator People to get down in the shaft and dig out the keys. Also, we have to pay for this particular service.

Somewhere in the neighborhood of $140.

Gah!
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So last night I was prepping some final changes on the Drunken Monkey artwork. Beg pardon if this gets a little design-technical, but it's important to the story:

I decided early on to do all the comic art in the vector-based realm. I'm not sure I've ever seen a completely vector-based printed comic in my life, so I thought it would be cool to do something that stands out from the crowd. Adobe Illustrator is my weapon of choice for producing the actual art and, as you can imagine, it takes about 3 times longer than drawing it by hand, as producing vectors is a very exact science.

Um, also. Er. My copy of Illustrator is... er... pirated.

Oh, not the original version. That I paid a pretty penny for back in '98. But for subsequent upgrades, I didn't feel I could justify the expense, so I sort of did a little winky-winky, clicky-clicky, downloady-loady so I've been slightly less than legal for the past couple of years.

Anyhow, I went to save the changes and I got an disk-writing error. Weird, so I decided to reboot and try again. After the reboot, I clicked to open the file and... urk. "File corrupt."

To reiterate: I was doing the art in vector. To translate: There was no "hand-drawn original". Everything was in that file.

To clarify: I was f****d.

As I tried frantically to un-corrupt my file, recalling the days and hours that had gone into producing the art, I made a deal with God: "please help me get this file back. I don't have the time to redo it all. If You do me this favor, I mean it, I'll buy a bona-fide copy of Adobe Illustrator."

And, magically, with no rational explanation at all, I was suddenly able to open my file. Everything was there, good as new.

Yow.

Carey knew I was mid-crisis, so she was wisely staying out of my way. I walked out into the living room in a daze. She asked me, tentatively, "how's it going in there...?"

I told her what had happened. She was very happy for me.

"But wait. So now you're going to buy a real upgrade of Adobe Illustrator?"

"Yeah, that was the deal."

"How much does that cost?"

"A lot."

"How much exactly?"

"It's about as expensive as dropping your keys down the elevator shaft."

posted by Jeremy Bear 1:26 PM

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Wednesday, October 27, 2004

Little Jermo's Adventures in Slumberland

Really really embarrasing: a couple of nights ago, I fell out of bed.

Look, I have absolutely no idea how it happened. I haven't fallen out of bed since I was, jeepers, six? I was having a very peculiar dream about trying very hard to get up and get out of bed, when... WHAMMO! I was awakened by the sensation of my face + my entire body weight abruptly meeting our bedroom floor. It really, really hurt.

Also, it caused a terrific racket. Immediately, the cats flipped out and began tearing through the bedroom and the house, knocking over vases and other breakables. Carey sat bolt upright and started screaming "OH MY GOD, OH MY GOD! YOU LANDED ON GILBERT!"

Well, no, I hadn't landed on Gilbert, but I was too shocked, irritated and embarrassed to debate the issue with her.

But what grown-up does that? Falling out of bed? What is this, amateur night?

posted by Jeremy Bear 2:10 PM

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Monday, October 25, 2004

High-Speed Creepy Camera People

"Great, super, spectacular, I'm being tailgated," I thought as I drove home from work on Friday. I hate tailgaters the most when there's absolutely no reason whatsoever for tailgating. It's time to be pissed off at someone and, lucky lucky, it happens to be you. My favorite method of dealing with them is to slow to ridiculous speeds until they get fed up and speed ahead and, failing that, the old Brake Test.

But when I looked closely at my rearview mirror, I noticed that it was a trendy-looking young couple - the driver a bleached blonde woman in a beret, the passenger a goateed hipster in a scarf and jacket. I should also point out that he was holding a very professional-looking camera.

I should probably also point out that he was pointing the camera at me.

So the guy keeps snapping pictures and I'm debating with myself about whether this is for real or whether I'm having some sort of narcissistic delusion. As soon as a break in traffic occurred in the next lane, the car bolts ahead and begins keeping pace with me. I look to the side, and the guy is still snapping pictures.

Of me.

The weirdest thing, though, was the look on their faces. They didn't seem angry at me. They weren't laughing or even talking to each other, so it didn't seem to be some sort of joke. They looked as if it was their job, just one more day of snapping photos of the dork in the black Jetta. I waved an awkward Hello-How's-It-Going-What-The-Hell-Are-You-Doing wave. They slammed on the brakes and flitted off down a side street.

Hah?
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Spent most of the weekend on what I'm referring to as Comics Project #1. I don't want to name exactly what it is or who it's for, but suffice it to say that it will be my very first published comics work and I'm having the time of my life. I'll spill it when I'm done, but for now, I dunno, I feel as if I might jinx it if I talk about it too much.

Nothing big, just a single-page backup strip at the back of a larger comic, but still.

Okay. Shutting up.
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Lately I've been getting spammed like crazy.

Not to embarrass my dear, dear wife, but several months ago, trusting faun that she is, she saw an Amazon auction for a Playstation 2 for somewhere in the neighborhood of $20 and she thought it would be a lovely surprise for her husband. Now, most of us would rightly assume that, you know, if it looks to good to be true... well...

As it happens, Carey's trusting nature is one of my favorite things about her, but it's gotten her into trouble once or twice. Upon inspection, the auction was actually for a *web-link for information on how to get a Playstation 2 for $20*, all you had to do was provide the seller with one dollar and your email address for this spectacular deal. So, bless her lovely heart, she GAVE THEM MY EMAIL ADDRESS.

It turned out to be a scam, of course, run by a company selling e-books. Buy several hundred dollars worth of books and you could gain dollar-book-credits that can be redeemed for prizes such as Playstations and blah blah blah... a complete rip-off and, what's worse, now they've got your email address (which they don't mind selling to spammers). It probably didn't help matters when I logged on and left them negative feedback.

Almost immediately, I began getting spam, which was previously a rarity. At last count, I'm up to nearly ten a day with no signs of slowing. It's a total pain in the arse to hassle with changing my address and getting everyone to update their address books, but I don't know, man, if this continues...

Good God, I hate spam.
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Finally, Dad has informed me that Pat begins her chemo on November 1. There it is.

posted by Jeremy Bear 10:06 AM

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