Finishing the website and putting together a book pitch have delayed me for another week. But that’s okay, because it gives me the opportunity to make some long overdue fan-art for the best ever webcomic set in Ancient Rome: SPQR Blues by Klio!
Yessir, that’s Vesuvius in the background. The volcano is to SPQR Blues what werewolves are to Family Man: you never know when it’s going to kick in.
SPQR Blues, beyond being a great ensemble soap opera, is also one of those rare works of historical fiction that make the time and place it depicts feel both cozily familiar…and completely foreign.
Klio’s delicate and conservative linework can be consumed in large doses with no dangerous side effects, and the obstacles and heartbreaks of daily life in a complicated society make for very tasty reading as well.
There’s an immense archive available for your reading pleasure, so shoo! Go read!
Soon we’ll back to regular updates and I’ll roll out the new website, but in the meantime, here’s our third week of art devoted to some of my favorite comics online. This week we move away from longform narrative comics and head for strip land, with Arthur (duck) and Flaco (lizard) from Dave Kellett’s Sheldon.
There are many strips online that I enjoy deeply, but Sheldon is the only one that makes me feel like I’m a little kid again, pressing my nose with delight against the daily newsprint funnies while I wolf down a bowl of Rice Chex before school. Calvin & Hobbes was a strip at the time which, even if I didn’t get every joke, was so exuberant that I loved every panel. I think 9 year-old me would’ve felt the same way about Sheldon.
As it is, 26 year-old me happily returns to Sheldon every day, snerking at the obscure “grown-up” or pop culture jokes and quietly enjoying the sheer silliness of it all.
Dave Kellett is also a bonafide funnybook scholar and a stand-up fella. Bless the internet for bringing him to us in this day and age!
Another week, another drawing of somebody else’s character! Continuing with the unintentional theme of “naked green ladies”, this week it’s Angora from The Meek, by Der-shing Helmer.
Sadly I drew this sucker on Bristol, and had to use my four remaining Colerase pencils – or else I would’ve watercolored again.
I’ve been gawking at The Meek since shortly after it started up, so it was a pleasant surprise to turn up at APE and see actual print copies of the first chunk!
The Meek is one of the few comics that manages to be densely, lushly illustrated… and lively. Too often an artist will lavish all their time on the coloring or the stylish character design…and forget to inject life through gesture and interaction or, you know, writing. The result is eye candy that I get bored with about ten pages in.
But Der-shing has been knocking it out of the park for several dozen pages now. I can’t wait to see where she’s going and how these delightful, elastic characters are going to smack into each other.
Also? I adore how she draws Angora’s boobs.