Galaxion

This isn’t a character birthday retrospective. June 1st is the birthday of Galaxion itself! To celebrate, we dug into the archives for all sorts of miscellaneous goodies – earlier designs of the ship, characters that are no longer part of the story, and much more! You can start reading it here.

August 15th is Zandarin Wilder’s birthday, so please celebrate with us by checking out his retrospective!

There’s been some really amazing stuff happening on the internets this past week that I want to share with you all because it knocked my socks off! Over on The Webcomic List Forum (TWCL), one of the social sites I tend to hang around in, the topic came up—again—of which webcomics are successful enough to support their creators. One person had said that anyone with a webcomic that has a Wikipedia page survive the Great Mass Deletion must be raking in the bucks, and at that point I chimed in to say, look here, I have a Wikipedia page, and I’m certainly not going to be on that list of self-sufficient webcomics anytime soon! Then a fellow who goes by the screen name of lonelyfetus said something to the tune of, “well, for crying out loud why aren’t you?” And thus, last Wednesday, began…

Campaign: GALAXION (the thread!).

This came out of nowhere, from my point of view, and it seemed like it was up and away before I even had time to blink. I’m still not sure how many of the TWCL forum members who posted to say they’d Stumbled or Dugg or reviewed Galaxion were already fans, or how many were just doing it because they thought it was a neat idea, but… holy cow! I was, and still am, astounded and humbled that these people whom I’ve never met would come together for this kind of thing so selflessly. Now, don’t nobody groan at me for this, for I have to say I feel like I’m not, you know, worthy.

I suppose I’m a typical creative geek: I hole up in my basement and obsess about my creation, I’d do it even if I had no readers at all, and like many of us comic creators I’m inept at tooting my own horn.

…but I’m more than happy to toot the horn of other people!

First, you must go visit the thread just to see some of the banners that were created for this campaign. Oh. My. Gawd. There are also some suggested t-shirt designs in there… would you all like t-shirts? Do you like these? Something else, perhaps? Then, you must go to the webcomic Maskerman and see the cool Galaxion cameo!

Thank you to the creators of

• Crowfeathers,
• Marooned,
• Rampage Network,
• Millennium,
• Outrageous Fortune,
• Stud Kickass,
• Marsona’s Story,
• Goth Bunnies,
• A Mad Tea Party,
• The War of Winds,
• Luke Surl.

And big thank yous to the ringleader, lonelyfetus, who doesn’t have a page that I can link to, but I know you’d go click it if he had one because he’s been that great.

I’m sure I forgot to thank someone here—Varethane, you’re up next!—so please let me know who I overlooked in the comments. I love you all!! <3

My book is out at last! Actually, it was probably out months ago, but I only just got my copies. Here it is, my very first not-self-published book (yaaaay! *waves arms like Kermit the frog*)

Roberta’s Space Adventure is part of the Grade 6 space book club unit Mission: Space in the Moving Up with Literacy Place program by Scholastic Education Canada. Comics in the classroom—isn’t that awesome? There are, I think, eight comic stories in total in the unit, all done by different artists. In the ongoing struggle to get kids reading, this is going to be a pretty good tool!

Roberta’s Space Adventure is a fictional story set sometime in the nebulous future (where I like to set all my stories!), but the purpose of it is to teach the reader about the Canadian astronauts. The two main characters, who live on a large Canadian spaceship (because of course we have one, in the future), learn about their early space-pioneering ancestors. The more they learn, the more they appreciate how amazing those first Canadians to go into space—people like Marc Garneau, Roberta Bondar, and Chris Hadfield– really were.

The story is 40 pages long, and there is additional biographical information on the astronauts in the back. I did the pitch, script, script rewrites, art, and colouring (but not the word balloons or the title design) all within the space of about 5 months, which for me is insanely fast—especially considering the weeks of downtime where I was waiting for editorial approval before I could go on to the next step. It was both hideous and wonderful, and I hated and relished every minute of it.

Unfortunately, the book is only available to schools and similar educational groups (meaning I can’t sell you one). So if you’re an elementary teacher or if you know one, you may be in luck! Oh, and I guess you probably have to be in Canada, too… though if you represent a school in another country and have a burning desire to teach your kids about the Canadian Astronauts, I suppose Scholastic won’t say no to you! If you are in Canada… please spread the word!

I went to Fan Expo here in Toronto and had a great time! Thank you so much to everyone who bought a book (or a comic, or a button, or a post-it pad), or who just picked up a flyer and checked out the comic online. I am grateful for the opportunity to spend time chatting with some wonderful people. I can’t begin to tell you what was a lovely change it was from my day-to-day life here in the burbs to be able to have conversations about super geeky things like Doctor Who and Star Blazers and the comic creative process, and not be looked at like I’m some sort of weirdo! Well, yes, I am a weirdo, but when you’re in good company with other weirdoes it’s suddenly a marvelous thing to be.

It’s been awhile since I’ve attended any of the major mainstream comic conventions. I did come to Fan Expo in 2007, but my webcomic was barely a year old and I didn’t have the new book to sell. Also, I had been set up in Artist’s Alley, which in Fan Expo terms means a half-table space somewhere along the back wall. I grant you, this is also where some of the famous names in comicdom also sit, but I didn’t feel as though it was a very nice location, if your goal is to sell stuff and meet new fans. So this year I forked over the money for a full table in the Small Press area, which had seemed to me to get better through-traffic.

Now, the strange thing about the Small Press area is, the actual comics there are far outnumbered by the fan-art prints, cosplay accessories, and other handmade items. This is a stark change from what I used to see ten years ago, when the Small Press area was full of self-publishers like myself. Perhaps this is because Fan Expo is trying to be an All-Things-To-All-People kind of show, with areas for horror, gaming, and anime in addition to the comics, and the Small Press area is the catch-all section for all the artists of all the different mediums. But as I said, I haven’t been to any of the other big comic shows lately, so I don’t know if this trend is just a Toronto thing or if it’s an industry-wide thing. I know the number of independent comic creators out there hasn’t gone down—the amount of amazing independent artists who came to TCAF was a pretty good indication of that. Not to mention all the great webcomics being made (I’ve listed a of a few of my favourites on my links page)! Of course there are plenty of webcomics that have frustratingly erratic schedules or come to a sudden stop within a few months, but that was how it was with minicomics and self-published comics in the ‘90s, so no change there. Maybe there is a larger proportion of webcomickers who either aren’t interested in print at all, or else believe they can better serve their fans by selling their merchandise entirely through online stores, and skipping the expense of buying tables at conventions. And I suppose another barrier is the move towards making graphic novels (or book-sized collections, for strip comics) rather than the old “floppy” comic. A 100-200 page book represents a year-or-two’s worth of effort, rather than the month-or-two’s worth needed for a 24-page issue. So I guess in print terms we’re losing a lot of those start-ups that never make it to their first year.

For myself, I wondered if I belonged in a big media show like Fan Expo, where so much of the focus is on the movie stars like Leonard Nimoy and Bruce Campbell, and when comics are mentioned at all it’s only in terms of the Hollywood-supported superheroes. But you know what? Despite the fact that probably less than 1 percent of the attendees were willing to give my table a second glance, that was enough to make the weekend worthwhile. Same was true for my pal Jay Marcy —he does an autobiographical comic, very different from mine and not at all genre-ish, but he told me he had record sales this weekend (Go Jay!). So do we self-publishers still belong at these big shows? Yeah, I think so. I wonder if, as the desire to “monetize” webcomics grows, we’ll start seeing more of us in the Small Press areas of Fan Expo again?

I’m pleased to report that I sold a lot of books this weekend, and between this show and the upcoming Word on the Street, I expect to need to make a second print run before next year. The next edition will likely feature different cover art, and while we’re about it we’ll fix some of the small interior things that are bugging us, so if you have a burning desire to own the original edition of Galaxion Book 1: The Jump, you should probably order it soon!

Finally, though I didn’t manage to take any photos this weekend, plenty of other people did. Here is a video interview in which we talk about my Star Blazers influences, and in this photo gallery on the CBC website (it’s the 24th one in the set), you can see me hard at work on the next page!

We promised our son that he would get to be a Dalek for Halloween, and here is the final result! His verdict: an awesome costume to rival last year’s Ghostbusters uniform (which was a big success all around).

When his heart first became set on this notion, I tried to caution him about a Dalek’s traditional… limitations. He insisted he’d be fine, so we forged ahead, collecting cardboard and styrofoam balls and spray paint. But sure enough, when the day came to put the costume through its paces (Friday’s Halloween parade at school), he discovered what most of us have known for a long time– Daleks really can’t go up and down stairs. Yes, it’s a shame we weren’t able to build one of those newfangled Daleks with the hover option!

There were only a handful of people at his school who had ever watched Doctor Who, and were able to identify what he was dressed up as. At least one person asked if he was supposed to be a cheese grater. But those who knew were suitably impressed. During our trick-or-treating trip around the neighborhood he garnered a lot of puzzled looks from people who obviously don’t appreciate good TV series, but there were enough people who did murmur “Doctor Who!” or “Dalek!” as we passed to make us all feel good about our efforts. One lady who was handing out candy did a double take and almost screamed in delight, announced she was a huge Doctor Who fan, and then genuflected (seriously!) at us for bringing the delightful nerdy goodness to her Halloween evening.

I had to assist him at all the houses that had stairs leading up to the front door (“Trick or treat! I’m holding this bag here for my son the Dalek, down there, who can’t negotiate your stairs. Happy Halloween!”). There are lots of these in our neighborhood. He had to move at a much slower pace than his typical racing-to-the-next-house marathon, and a few bits fell off along the way, but he still came home with an enormous bag of loot. I’d say it was a successful night.