Woe is me!

Thursday City was shaken to the core today (Thursday of course) as we received word “the Moth or the Flame” was not deemed worthy of receiving a Xeric grant. For you 8 people who have been eagerly awaiting its imminent arrival you are going to have to wait a lot longer. As stated below (far below now), I am determined to get this book printed. But until I can find a way to do it I have no idea when it might be done. Unless someone has a cool $6-7,000 sitting around in need of a publishing project.

Anyone?

the Moth or the Flame

In July I finished a story that I have been working on since Fall 2005. The title of the story is “the Moth or the Flame.” These photo images are from a set of prototypes I made in order to solicit publisher attention. I also sent in an application for the Xeric Grant (http://www.xericfoundation.com/) for comic book self-publishers. Hopefully I will know something within the next few months.

Regardless of the response (or lack thereof) from publishers and foundations I am determined to get this printed. It is unquestionably the best, most complete, and most ambitious work I have ever done. And it is the first thing I have done that I feel is truly deserving of an actual audience larger than friends and family members. That is not to say that none of the other work was deserving of a larger audience, just that I never felt it to be thus.

The Magic Number

In March 2006 I began a 26 page abecedarium comic book, which I envisioned as a gift for one of my typography classes at Pratt. In May 2007 I finally finished it. The title is “the Magic Number.” You can look at a preview and/or order it here (you can also just click on the title of this post): http://www.lulu.com/content/860232

The book follows the plight of Jehosephat Sunrays, a local type cobbler in Thursday City, and his golem Quatrain.

This was a test run in terms of using Lulu. I wanted to find out whether digital publishing was feasible. Well, it is certainly easy to do and easy for anyone to acquire, but I think the per unit cost is a bit prohibitive and the quality, while seemingly very good, could be better. All things considered this is definitely a great option for individual creators and hopefully the quality of print will continue to improve. Due to the enormous amount of detail in my drawings, though, offset is still unquestionably the way to go. As well the material quality of any object I produce is very important to me, so hopefully one day I will be able to afford high quality printing. For now Lulu seems to be a good way to get my work into the hands of others, however it is not the ideal at its present state of quality versus cost. But, of course, you should order one anyway.

This is an image of Jehosephat and his brother Cucumber in repose: