Comics

From the afterword:

The story of Ghost and Old Crow started as a monthly drawing challenge in 2019. If I recall, I’d actually started in on the challenge with a completely different tone and intended story, not been satisfied with the direction and walked away from it around seven entries in. This wasn’t a new result for me.

I’ve always struggled with these challenges, either in finding motivation or the time to complete them. However, I didn’t just want to give up. I sat down, armed with some new pens I wanted to try out, and drew the first picture, ‘ring’. Something in that first drawing sparked an idea, and the conversation between Ghost and Old Crow began. The art that followed, and the journey they took was a surprise even to me; a reflection on love, death and the perils of humanity in the backdrop of a horror story was not where I thought I’d end up.

This book is a collection of all 31 entries I made for the Ditkoctober 2023 art challenge, in both black & white and full colour with notes on each. This challenge celebrated the many great characters created or co-created by Steve Ditko, one of the comic greats.

He helped create such great characters as Spider-Man, Doctor Strange, Green Goblin, Hawk & Dove and many others. I had a great time with this one, and it was the first monthly challenge I not only finished on time, but was early enough on to go ahead and start colouring everything! I'm really proud of a lot of the work in here and wanted to pull it together into something, as well as chat a bit about the process and how I approach things.

I have a short story in volume three of this insanely huge and well done anthology, called "The Last Voyage". My hopes are that it introduces some characters that have quite a few adventures ahead of them.

Here's the description from Amazon.com:

The original, critically acclaimed graphic mixtape returns in a new volume, once again mashing up the next generation of cartoonists with the some of the medium's finest in stories covering nearly every genre and style imaginable!

This was my first published work, the short story "The Spirit & The Woods" in the fantasy anthology "Fablewood", published by Ape Entertainment. Incredibly exciting and daunting all at the same time.

Here's the description from Amazon.com:

Featuring thirteen complete fantasy stories, from sword-and-sorcery to slice-of-life, Fablewood features the creations of Ryan Ottley and Manny Trembly, Flight alumni JP Ahonen and Sarah Mensinga, and Chris Studabaker with his Day Prize-nominated tale which Dave Sim called 'evocative, austere and expressionistic'.

Quotes:

'Fablewood is exactly what the comic industry needs more of: a variety of styles, storytellers, talent and genre to retell and make new myths and fables.'
--David Petersen - Author of Mouse Guard 

'It's a contained explosion of visual imagination - really exhilarating.'
--Ursula K. Le Guin