Hey! Ho! Let's Go!

Draft title page for my sample
chapter "Girl On The Road,
I-90 1994"

As part of my grant proposals in support of the graphic novel, I outlined that I would use my blog to document my process as I go.  Well, I've officially dived into the drawing portion of things, and here's where I'm at.

Discipline 

I've been told more than one time that I need to write every day to be a writer, told to draw every day to be a cartoonist, and famously informed by the poet Eileen Myles "You wanna write a book?  Write a book. That's the only way you're gonna write one."  So OK.  There are things I'll finally be applying to accomplish my first graphic novel. 

 

Here's my short list:

Draw A Page A Day

At least draw every day, with the goal of a page a day, six days out of the week.  I'm only on page #4, so my due date for raw art on my sample chapter is going to be the end of May.  Since my first and second days were dedicated to an elaborate front cover image set in a sunflower field and an equally elaborate draft title page (above), I'm hoping I can complete two or more pages of art on some days to make up for the truly challenging visuals.

Schedule Business Hours

On the seventh day, I blog.  I build and update my website.  I finally scan work to my ETSY shop (Check check).  I research outside work and draw commissions.  I'm going to concentrate on scheduling as much of the work as I can for completion on Tuesdays.

Just Say No

Panel detail from page #4. 
The Chicago Picasso!

I said yes to a lot of really interesting projects over the past year - most of which somehow culminated over the span of only a few recent weeks.  I love anthologies.  I love art galleries.  I've thoroughly enjoyed creating work for themed art shows.  AND I'm not going to get any further towards my aims as an artist until I complete a graphic novel.

So I need to apply some pretty strict criteria to what I say "yes" to moving forward.  Basically, unless it's a paid illustration gig or something I have a truly deep personal connection to and can complete in a reasonable amount of time, I'm going to be turning projects down.

I am going to contribute to My Small Diary Issue #19 and, of course, Prince did just pass away, so yes to the Prince-themed art show, dammit.

 Girl On The Road posts about comics, publication and community on Tuesdays.

OK OK! Seattle's OK Hotel Remembered in Comics.

 

 The OK Hotel

I would happily credit
this photo if I knew
who took it!

If you weren't in Seattle in the late 80s through the early oughts, or if you just weren't into live music, performance and poetry, than you probably missed out on the OK Hotel.

It had, in fact, been a hotel.  Mostly small rooms for transient laborers. Graffiti from the Wobblies still graced the back rooms.  But Steve Freeborn and Tia Mathies took over the building and made it a live music mecca, fine arts gallery and also a cafe.  The rooms above the first floor were rented out as studios.  It's like that day - dreaming you did in art school where you came up with everything wonderful that you would put in one place, only they did it!  From their first show in 1987 to closure due to earthquake in 2001, it was the most interesting place to see live music in Seattle.

There is so much to say about it, but you can read the comic.

The OK Hotel Comic

I was a shy member of the audience for music shows there early on, but an active member of the performance poetry community later.  I regularly attended the Seattle Poetry Slam, which was introduced to the city by David Meinert and Paul Grajnert at the OK.  

I left town from 2000 - 2005, so I missed the closing year of the OK Hotel.  Years later, my partner took me to see the Great Wheel on Seattle's waterfront and we got so close to the old OK that I had to go see it.  It's been converted to artists lofts with a small gallery, but no live music.  No cafe.  Kept the name but lost the life of it.

Couldn't help but take a photograph.  The wide-angle lens bent the edges of the scene, where I stood in-between the buildings and the (soon to be gone forever) Alaska Way Viaduct.  Then I drew it, posted it, and the response to that image was enough to inspire me to create a history of the venue.

The original OK Hotel Drawing
as the front cover of
Gone Girl Comics #1

I consider this comic my official entree into comics (It first published in 2013) and combines my love of live music, my work in poetry and my degree in fine arts.  I got to marry those interest in one 8-page comic, and I get to bring it to life again this weekend.

The OK Hotel Reunion

Stand-alone, special
edition of the OK Hotel
comic, in the works.

Steve and Tia may have lost the OK Hotel, but they opened a new venue in Columbia City - the Royal Room.  As 2016 marks the 15th - year anniversary of the closing of the OK Hotel and they are doing a reunion weekend, bringing back iconic bands from the 90's et al to perform at Royal Room from Thursday through Sunday night.

With help, I've been able to create a special edition of the OK Hotel comic.  It's been published previously here, on http://inktart.org/, and in a mini-comic, but I created a new cover for the story as a stand-alone special edition.

It's available onsite or via my paypal at m.noel.franklin.com

Push/Pull, What I Am Missing

I am a super huge fan of Push/Pull Gallery - who met their Kickstarter goal and moved to a larger space in Ballard.  They've played host to Exterminator City, a micro comic convention featuring over 20 local artist with their newest zines, books, posters, releases.

I've sold a ton of comics at Exterminator City, and I'm sad that this year's event is opposite of me tabling the OK Hotel Reunion show this weekend.  But that doesn't mean YOU can't go.  And you should. 

Until next week.

C-log posts on comics, publication and community that publishes on Tuesdays.

The Anthology Game Part 2

I have great news regarding anthology publication this year.

 

In November of 2013 I became determined to get comics short stories published in anthologies.  I figured this would keep me drawing regularly, get my art out there, sometimes bring in money and ultimate make the case for signing a book deal on a graphic novel.  This post is an update on an earlier post about starting my adventures in publishing that can be found here.

I'm working with a super-secret comics collaborator to create a
story for Rock is Not Dead.

My efforts have resulted in acceptances from nine different projects:  one local weekly paper here in Seattle, two United States publications and six international journals.

Here are some updates you might be interested in:

Canadian Anthology "Rock Is Not Dead" is seeking more stories inspired by rock songs!

One of the publishers I am working with - Canada-based 11th Dimension Press - is putting together an anthology of straight-forward prose as well as comics short stories inspired by rock songs.  NOT ONLY THAT, but they will be having independent bands cover the songs and put out an accompanying CD's.  It's a short turn around, but pitch your stories.

Here is the link to the 11th Dimension Press call for submissions.

 

Only 2 MORE DAYS to pre-order The Strumpet.  Eight dollars gets you A LOT of story! 

The Strumpet is an anthology of women cartoonists that publishes in both England and America, and is currently edited by a fabulous cartoonist in her own right -  Ellen Lindner.  It features over 50 pages of work by 18 female artists.

This is Issue #4 of The Strumpet and it is themed around women's friendships.  I LOVE this because so much of what is represented in the media are not reflective of women's voices or actual experiences around friendship.  The story I created for The Strumpet is the most difficult work of art that I've tackled to date, because I had to smoosh dacades worth of friendship into three pages to tell the story of my friendship with fellow female artist and carpenter, Lisa Mei Ling Fong.

Check out The Strumpet Kickstarter page here.   And if you miss out on the Kickstarter, it will eventually be available on Ellen Lindner's Etsy Page.

Free or "Pay-What-You-Can" International Anthologies

While several of the anthologies I'm working with are still in the process of being published, I have works running currently in two publications that you can access for free.

Outre Press out of Norway is a free online journal that features themed issues.  Issue #4 is "Silence" and can be downloaded here.  They ran a super sweet Creator Spotlight for me on their blog here.

While I only did a 1-page illustration for Outre, I created a 17-page rendition of a dark Czech folk tale for Blood Root #3, which also features work by Haan Lee, Ram V and Kishore Mohan.  You can purchase the lovingly designed print edition here.  You can also find free and pay-what-you-can titles from Sawdust Press here. 

Well, there is SO MUCH GOING ON in Seattle comics right now, and so much more in motion with anthologies, that I could keep writing forever.  However, until next post. . .



C-log posts on comics, publication and community that publishes on Tuesdays.

Kickstarting Comics! Gone Girl Comics #2 Takes Flight.

Cover Image for the Kickstarter video.
Come on over to the campaign site and check it out!

Last week, I started a new chapter in my creative life.  I launched a Kickstarter campaign for Gone Girl Comics #2.

It was something of a last-minute response to the theft of my portfolio that I wrote about earlier.  I planned to partially fund the printing of Gone Girl Comics in time for the Short Run comics festival here in Seattle with the sale of the artwork inside.  With that gone, and time ticking (Short run is November 15th!) I decided to bite the bullet and launch the campaign.

 

And so it began: Gone Girl Comics #2 and & The Lost Originals! 

It launched exactly one week ago, and - as of this morning- is funded at 60% !!

 

The internet is rife with articles on how to run a Kickstarter, and Kickstarter themselves offer excellent "How To" guides, but my super-secret weapon is the expert advise of fellow cartoonists who have run significantly larger Kickstarter campaigns and lived to tell the tale.

I promise to spill all my secrets about running a successful Kickstarter campaign.  If my campaign is a success.  I still have two more weeks - until October 27th @ 10 PM Pacific Standard - to find out. 

What I CAN tell you already is this:

For a once-upon-a-time Slam Poet
I  had a rough time with my
video voice - over.

• I simply didn't have time to get a videographer, so I taught myself Garage Band and iMovie and made my own video.  Should I ever crowd fund again, I will get some professional help.
• I set my goal realistically, but did a cost-benefit analysis.  Glad I did, or I would have LOST money on meeting my original goal due to the cost of mailing printed material!
•  I have been sending out personal emails and FB messages to folks every morning, asking them to support.  I'm keeping track of people who share my video as well as those who give.  Non-cash supporters will be thanked as well

I did do one unconventional thing, which is launch my Kickstarter and drop off the grid for three days - no phone, no internet access.  I was OK with it.  I figured, no need to make a pest of myself at the beginning of my campaign, and when I come back I'll see if the campaign has legs of it's own.

Happily, on my return it was nearly 50% funded, and so now I will be here, at my computer every morning for a designated amount of time.  Designated, because otherwise this will eat up my entire attention span, and I won't get any drawing done. 

The cover from Blood Root #3.
I have a 17-page story in this issue,
and am offering it as one of the benefits
in my Kickstarter campaign.

So come on over to the Gone Girl Comics #2 & The Lost Originals Kickstarter page.  With you're help I'll write about the successful campaign in two weeks.  And you know you want to have an awesome comic published with your name on it!

A Quick "Anthology Game" Update

 

Back in July I wrote about beginning my adventures in seeking publication credits, in a blog I titled "The Anthology Game."  At that time I had three comics accepted for publication in anthologies.  Now I'm up to 8 new projects and hope to have some stunningly good news on that front SOON.

Tune in next week and I'll give you the full story, including listing new calls for submissions that I am aware of as well as what I've learned moving forward so far.

C-log posts on comics, publication and community that publishes on Tuesdays.

The Anthology Game

Welcome to the one-month anniversary of C-Log.  (I've decided that blogs are like babies.  Cute in their infancy but probably won't make that big of an impact or pay their own rent until they are old enough to go to college.) 

NEXT WEEK I'll have a guest blog by Meredith Li-Vollmer, a risk communication specialist for Public Health - Seattle & King County who spearheaded the project Comics 4 Health Coverage.

Title page in-process for an anthology
submission due later this month.

THIS WEEK is about my experienced with seeking publication in comics anthologies.

I'm excited to report that it can be done.  Since the cold Seattle night that I decided to Google "Comics Anthology Submissions," I've had five stories selected for publication, with two more under consideration.

I feel good about the chances of the pending submissions because I researched the anthologies thoroughly and feel my art fits well with what the editors are trying to do.

Which is the sweet spot - the fit.

There are not a lot of open calls for comic book anthologies, period.  Of those, a high percentage of them are for genre fiction, mainstream horror and/or manga themed publications.  That's great, if that's the kind of work you're making, but my stuff is more in the autobiographical vein.


So, I did A LOT OF RESEARCH.  And this is what I've found:

• Again, there's not a ton of open calls for submission out there.
• Some of the best ones I found were buried deep in the editor's blog (so keep digging!)
• Many calls for submission are out-of-date.  I have an embarrassing story about making a comic for an anthology that was already published.  The story has a happy ending, because the comic is being printed in another journal, but you can bet I triple-check dates, now.
• There are at least two lists of open calls that seem to be current and relatively accurate.  They are kept by Cloudscape Comics out of BC and Indie Ladies Comics.  

My super-secret weapon for taking over comics by 2015.

After a few months of submitting to anthologies, I began keeping a spreadsheet.

This is a practice I started after missing the call for inclusion in Dirty Diamonds #5, which I really REALLY wanted to be in, but am not, because there was just so much time left until the deadline.  And then I forgot about it.  And then the deadline passed.

There is actually a second page to the spreadsheet, which lists stories after they get published, so that I have a record of my publication history.  Why so organized, you ask?  Because in my past life, as a poet, I got grants, publication, residencies and the like, but never did anything with all that good stuff.  My peers were getting book deals and performance tours and I was working as an arts administrator and not making a case for myself as an artist.  I feel that I squandered a lot of creative capital. 

I don't know how many shots you get at doing what you love, but I'm not going to waste it this time around.  Both the research and the spreadsheets have been helpful in getting my stories out there and have even led to inclusion in invitation-only anthologies.

I'll keep posting about this topic as I learn more and come across new developments.  If you are aware of any other resources that would be useful in the quest for publication, and care to share them, feel free to email me or post in the comments below. 

Blood Root: Free Download of Intelligent New Horror Comic

This week, an independent press out of Los Angeles introduced an awesome new contribution to field of contemporary horror comics.  It's called Blood Root, and it's being produced by Shing Yin Khor of Sawdust Press.

Shing is an artist in her own right, creating comics such as Center for Otherworld Science and autobiographical short stories, as well as fine art sculptures of creatures she calls "Gravebeasts."  The Gravebeasts are alarmingly cute despite their nomenclature (You can find images of them here), which seems to be Shing's driving aesthetic.

You won't find slasher fiction or torture porn in the pages of Blood Root.  Instead, Shing has curated works that represent "a very specific type of horror . . . slow, moody and psychological" consisting of "a bunch of strange little stories with amazing art and a diverse range of characters, by a similarly diverse slate of creators."

The title itself is the popular name of the flowering plant Sanguinaria.  "I wanted to name the anthology after something both sweet and sinister, and a pretty and poisonous flower fit the bill."  The stories themselves range in subject from seemingly shape-shifting sea creatures to Haitian Vodou traditions.

From "The Family That Eats Together" by James Neish

I contacted creator James Neish regarding his heartbreaking contribution to Blood Root.  (You can visit his Facebook artist page here.)  He said he "wanted to dedicate something to Hayao Miyazaki in his year of retirement, so this short comic is inspired by his work, which has molded my approach to storytelling through the years."  James currently lives in Halifax, Nova Scotia but met Shing when they attended school together in the Philippines.  

I've never met Shing Yin Khor in person.  I've only corresponded with her via the internet, regarding a story I submitted for consideration in Blood Root.  I'm already impressed, though, by her inclusion of truly diverse artists representing a variety of styles, from a variety of countries, and her professionalism in dealing with me as an artist is even greater inspiration for me to step up my game as a comics creator.
 
Blood Root Number One is available online as a pay-what-you-want (even free!) digital download here.  If you're like me, and enjoy holding stories in your hand in a print publication, you'll be able to purchase a beautifully printed edition for $8 here after the 4th of July.  Which reminds me of another vital bit of information:  Blood Root contributors get paid a healthy licensing fee for their stories, so know that your payment goes to supporting good artists!

I'll be writing about Blood Root again in the future, and I definitely want to further explore the idea of how the internet is creating a comics community without borders or boundaries.  So come back later and join me in exploring that topic.

Until then, go check Blood Root Number One out!

Quick Update:  I almost neglected to mention that this issue of Blood Root has a lovely, scientific illustration of the Sanguinaria plant by hometown Seattle artist Angela Boyle!

Cat Door Monster – A Gone Girl Comics Issue #2 Preview

This week marks the one-year anniversary of Gone Girl Comics, my first mini comics offering.  Issue #1 - “Some Seattle Stories” - received great reviews from The Comics Journal and The Comics Bulletin, and I’m working on Issue #2 as we speak.

In keeping with themed publications, Gone Girl Comics #2 will be built around “Urban Animals.”  While I haven’t always lived in gigantic cities, it’s safe to say I’ve spent most of my life in paved environments, surrounded by buildings.  My primary contact with nature has been via creatures that can survive in the fragmented habitats that urbanization creates. 

A page from "Cat Door Monster."

So I have comics about spiders, beetles and birds, including a story about my very weird encounters with crows.  I’m especially excited about a story involving beached whales.  Yes, whales do beach themselves on the shores of the  “citified” coastal American Pacific Northwest.  Sad as this is, what excites me about the whale story is that it is a collaboration with Tracy Lang, an artist who is renowned for her printmaking skills and also happens to be a fantastic writer.  It’s a story that will break your heart open.

On the more humorous side of tragic, Gone Girl Comics #2 features "Cat Door Monster."  It’s a story about fear disguised as a story about cats.  It’s an awesome artistic achievement for me because it dispatches with the obligatory cat comic and the obligatory monster comic simultaneously.

You can read the entire story here, on inkt|art.

It's worth taking the time to check out the rest of the inkt|art site as well.  inkt|art showcases women comics creators—specifically those who work from a fine arts perspective.  I love the editorial focus of inkt|art and think it adds another much needed perspective to the dialogue that’s happening around women in comics.

I mentioned that "Cat Door Monster" was both comic and tragic.  Most of my work is autobiographical and the cats in the story are real pets.  As the story is one of my first attempts at humor, it pains me to report that the “1,000 year old cat” (Grey Kitty), who makes a guest appearance on the first page, passed away just a few weeks after I finished these drawings.  His elderly owner played “Taps” on the trombone when they buried him in the yard. 

Rest in peace, Grey Kitty.  I hope you’d find your appearance in Gone Girl Issue #2 a fitting tribute.

Next Tuesday:  New developments (and free downloads!)  from Los Angeles, California-based Sawdust Press!

Welcome to C-log!

Hello!

Welcome to C-log, the weekly Gone Girl Comics Blog by Noel Franklin.  I’ll be reporting from Seattle, WA every Tuesday about comics, art, the creative process, fellow cartoonists and the communities we weave.

June 25th marks the one-year anniversary of my first mini comic - Gone Girl Comics, Issue #1 - Some Seattle Stories.  While this was my first serious comics effort, I consider it a marriage of the years I spent jumping back and forth between visual and literary arts.  Bringing images and words together with the goal of making great comics felt RIGHT, and that's what I'll be doing from here on out.

By way of introduction, Gone Girl Comics is a self-published mini-comic that I plan to produce annually.  It contains comics short stories loosely based around a theme.  The first one, "Some Seattle Stories," was selected because of a drawing I created of the OK Hotel - a performance venue that featured prominently in my life in the mid-90s.  The initial drawing inspired me to complete a graphic history of the venue and also explore the incredible energy from that time in comics form.

I had only drawn less than 10 pages of comics prior to beginning Gone Girl Comics #1, so I stayed away from stories of substance - mostly.  I was afraid I wouldn't do them justice, as my skills aren't fully developed yet.  However, at the last minute, I created something of a tribute story for Joaquin Tavares, a Seattle musician who was murdered in 2006.  It's called "Seeing Stars," and you can view it here.


I've been busy since Gone Girl Comics' debut.  2014 will see my first print publications in newspapers, journals and anthologies.  The pending publications (which you can check out here on my website) are part of why I'm kicking off C-log.

I do plan on writing about much more than my own art and want to foster a creative dialogue, SO, feel free to post thoughts, questions and ideas in the comments section below. 

ALSO, hang in there with me as I learn the technology.  If there are glitches on the blog or on www.noelfranklin.com I will try to catch them and fix them as fast as I can.

See you next Tuesday!