Daily Archives: February 10, 2012
Jeremy: Come through or suffer…
| February 10, 2012 | Posted by CalamityJon under Comics and Webcomics |
It’s been years since I last produced a strip for my comic Jeremy (Just Turned Nine)*, although I’ve had a couple of stories in assorted stages of completion for … well, years.
My plan is always to secretly finish these stories, then suddenly launch them on the world and be all “YO! Jeremy, y’all!” and bask in the surprise, glory and adulation.
But, lacking an incentive to publish these – not being under a deadline or an obligation or anything – I put them aside, month after month.
The thing is, I want to return to Jeremy – it’s the closest thing I have to a passion, in terms of personal projects. It’s the closest thing I have to good, maybe the best thing I’ve done. But, I lack drive and motivation, so I suck up the hours I could be spending working on it or I put it away and forget about it.
So, what I need to do is give myself a deadline, and a public deadline at that, with consequences. So, with that said, I will release a new Jeremy story in March, and if I fail to do that, I will let you punch me in the face at Emerald City Comic Con.
Actually, no, that’s stupid, but what I will do is this: If I fail to produce a new Jeremy strip before the end of March, I will donate $500 to the election campaign of one of the more horrible Republican candidates. I can’t decide if Santorum or Gingrinch is the worst, it’ll be one of them.
Let me be clear; I don’t have the money to throw away like that, plus Santorum is a ferret-faced oil slick and Gingrinch is a small, wobbly monster. SO it will cause me real pain – twice – to fail to come through on this challenge.
So. Yes. New Jeremy by the end of March or I render unto Caesar. I probably should have just done a Kickstarter.
(*PS: I know almost none of you know who or what Jeremy is anyway; here’s the link to both Jeremy books, including the very cheap eBook editions, and some of the old strips online)
Updates from the Illustration Portfolio
| February 10, 2012 | Posted by CalamityJon under Sketches and Illustration |
I’m still long overdue in getting a portfolio, gallery or sketchbook set up on this site, but while I work on that you should always feel free to check out my DeviantArt page (which I try to use as a repository for my work – not everything I do goes up there right away, but it gets there eventually).
Also, here are three of my favorite (fairly) recent superhero pieces; a pair of redesigns for Plastic Man and Metamorpho and Uatu, the Watcher, from Marvel Comics.
The City Desk – New Years for the Three Hoboes
| February 10, 2012 | Posted by CalamityJon under Writing |
The City Desk was a blog documenting the daily life and often absurd history of an unnamed, imaginary city somewhere in North America. Dozens of contributors helped give weight and breadth to this storied, anonymous urban institution over the course of several years, including yours truly.
What follows is an article, written by me, which originally ran on December 20, 2006.
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New Years for the Three Hoboes
It’s eleven days until New Year’s Eve, which means downtown visitors can expect to see the familiar figures of regional holiday characters Little Paul, Manuel the Turk and John Portuguese wandering the Central Corridor, Downtown, Boardwalk, South Factoryville and Daisyland Amusement districts.
Inspired by a tradition which dates as far back as 1780, the three figures are typically portrayed by a trio of the city’s less fortunate population of indigents, decked out in the familiar brown, green and violet robes and smocks of the three immigrant troublemakers. The legend has it that the original Paul, Manuel and John spent the eleven days prior to New Year’s and the three days immediately following involved in a series of misadventures and mischief, beginning with an escape from bonded servitude under their Dutch taskmasters and ending with the theft of cranberry tarts from a local baker, the acquisition of stolen kisses from one of the city’s prominent matrons, and the burning to the ground of the Lord Governor’s mansion and stable of horses.
The City’s holiday shoppers and Christmastime lookie-loos are encouraged to gift the wandering figures with candy treats and small amounts of money. Tight-pursed passers-by might be met with the mocking tones of the trio’s derisive song:
“We three mischief makers Little Paul, Manuel the Turk and John Portuguese, Are not so wicked as the lot of these Who daren’t give us sweets or coin!”
Children often join in the malicious tune, and are encouraged to jeer and stamp their feet loudly at the end of the ditty, or to follow the offending targets until they relent and give some tribute to the three wanderers.
In 1988, legislation was passed to limit the number of Little Pauls, Manuel the Turks and John Portugueses wandering the downtown area, as homeless persons from three neighboring states had, increasingly over the years, taken to virtually flooding the streets in an attempt to make off with their share of holiday charity. Such shenanigans led to the infamous John Portuguese mob riots of 1984, which ended in the suspension from duty of twelve police officers and the death of an Oregon hobo.
Nowadays, the City’s homeless hopefuls audition for the roles before a group of judges selected by the City Council. Unauthorized masqueraders may find themselves literally run out of town on a rail, during the New Year’s Eve festivities at the Coalborough Railyards.
Participants’ costumes are kindly sewn each year by the Ladies’ Lodge for Uprightness, a former women’s anti-suffrage organization (Their motto: “Helping those who are bootless to pull themselves up by their bootstraps, which will be provided.”) lately given to bake sales and scholarship drives.
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