Dylan Edwards's Blog, page 66

Be Your Own Boss Level

Yuki and Sunita wander onto the wrong Guardians of Generica server.

New PiQue, New characters

Oh, look, a brand new comic. IF YOU CAN BELIEVE IT. This one introduces Yuki and Sunita, two new additions to the PiQueverse. What happens when you’re playing Guardians of Generica and you wander onto the wrong server? Perhaps you should click through to find out, yes?

This one’s only up on Tapasic for now. I’ll post it here on the main site in a couple of weeks, just to keep an archive of everything here.

Next week I do believe I’ll post the new comic I did for Rocksalt, so stick around for that, yeah?

New PiQue, and brand new comic in Rocksalt

Head on over to Tapastic.com to read this week’s remastered Politically InQueerect. SHOCKING REVELATIONS in this exciting conclusion to our family visit melodrama! Strife! Disagreement! Sarcastic remarks! NO ONE WILL EVER BE THE SAME.

Next week I shall have for you a brang new Politically InQueerect comic, which will introduce us to two new characters, Sunita and Yuki.

But you don’t have to wait all the way until next week for a new comic from me, oh no! For the latest issue of Rocksalt was released this week, and I have an all-new comic featured within. I’ll put said comic up on the site here in a couple of weeks, but for now you can read it in the online version of Rocksalt, or if you’re in Austin (or a certain level of Kickstarter backer from the recent campaign!) you can peep it in the print version of the paper.

Tomorrow I’m off to Providence for NecronomiCon, a Lovecraft-themed convention at which I will be selling my Feeping Creatures itemries. If you’re in the area, you should come! I expect hijinx shall ensue.

The latest PiQue on Tapastic

Archer’s brother and his family are coming for a short visit. Archer’s hippie, vegetarian brother. Oh, yes. Read it here on Tapastic.

Trivia: This is one of the very earliest PiQue strips I ever drew, originally created in 2000 with monochromatic black & white art suitable for newspaper printing. The idea was that I was going to sell the strip to queer newspapers (ha ha). Well, a couple of things happened:

1. Pretty much all queer newspapers in the U.S. had space for one or two comics, and that was it. I got a lot of very nice rejection letters.

2. It was around this time that huge numbers of queer newspapers stopped publishing altogether.

3. The cross-hatched inking style was murder on my hand, causing me crippling pain. I had to develop a new style or perish.

Once again, this is an experiment with digital coloring. I can’t say I’m thrilled by it – a lot of the textures dropped out when I reduced the file size for web. But the act of coloring their house helped me realize some interesting details about Todd & Archer’s styles – Archer would prefer to live in a featureless white box. Todd wants a different color on every wall. Todd wins this one because he works from home all day and is the one who actually has to spend time there. He invited Archer to repaint to his own tastes, knowing full well that Archer would never paint it himself and is too cheap to hire anyone to do it. And I didn’t know these things about them until I colored this strip! How about that.

Please don’t tell Todd McFarlane

Yes indeed, I’m working away on a new PiQue one-pager, which will introduce us to two new characters: Yuki and Sunita, a pair of gamer dykes.

You may well have heard about the recent panel, where straight white dudes like Todd McFarlane declared (superhero) comics to be solely the provenance of straight, white dudes, because of something having to do with testosterone. I really didn’t quite get it, since testosterone is not listed as an ingredient in any of my art supplies, but he appears convinced of this.

The comic I’m working on was not written as a reaction to the panel; I wrote the script for it a couple of months ago, but as you may be able to tell from the excerpt here, the subject matter is not entirely irrelevant.

One of the panelists also suggested that the only correct way to write PoC characters is as though race doesn’t actually exist, I guess because PoC supes are somehow magically immune to racism, like that’s their superpower. I personally would love to see a Black Batman. 1960s Batman bears only the most superficial resemblances to 2010s Batman, so I’m not sure why Batman’s race should be set in stone.

Again, I didn’t cast this comic with people of color as a reaction to that particular discussion (Yuki as a female knight is also a total, but delightful, coincidence), but it does strengthen my resolve to present a diverse cast whose experiences are reflective of what actual, real people in the modern world are experiencing. Pretending racism doesn’t exist would be a huge disservice. That doesn’t mean that PoC characters have to sit around talking about racism all the time. They will also talk about video games, or food, or music! Theater, or books, or movies! Art, or writing, or … you know, “interests” that people sometimes have and like to share with their friends. And it’s really my friends for whom I’m writing these characters, so they get to see some aspect of themselves reflected in my imaginary world, just as they are part of my life in the real world. Being invisible is a neat superpower, but it kinda sucks when you can’t turn it off.

New PiQue makes Wednesday more traumatic!

Time once again for a newly colorized Politically InQueerect strip. This time around, we learn things we cannot unlearn about Todd & Archer’s sex life.

Technical notes on this comic: Whne I first drew this comic I intended to hand-color it (and I still plan to one of these days), but it was originally published in a black & white anthology, so I scanned the inks and threw down some digital b&w shading. When prepping this color version for Tapastic, I didn’t have time to go back and do the proper hand-coloring, so instead I used it as a guinea pig to experiment with different Photoshop shading techniques. So here we are.

And, in case you’re wondering, I am indeed working on an all-new PiQue strip even now. It’s a one-pager that introduces us to a couple of new characters. I will probably post it towards the end of the month. So! Hang on to yer whatever it is people hang onto these days.

Cheers,

Dylan

Our current PiQue storyline concludes

At long last, we have reached the exciting conclusion to Politically InQueerect’s “If I Had a Dollar” story, Colorized Edition. If you want to go back to the beginning and read the whole thing in one go, start here.

What’s up next, you ask? First I have to finish my piece for the next issue of Rocksalt (whose Kickstarter got funded, by the way, and which you still have two days to contribute to if you want to score some goodies).

After that’s in the can, I’ll be starting on a brand-new PiQue strip that introduces a couple of new characters. In the meantime, look for more remastered PiQue on Tapastic. I believe their August theme is video games, so I’ll be focusing on strips that have some mention of video games. (There aren’t a whole lot thus far in the PiQueverse, but Todd does like his Nintendo, even if it’s not clear he has anything newer than a Game Cube.)

Cheers,

Dylan

Rocksalt kickstarter

If you look over to your right, you may notice an ad* for Rocksalt Magazine, the Austin-based indie comics paper that is distributed for FREE all around town. They publish a number of different Texas (and Texas-adjacent) artists, myself included, and they’re running a Kickstarter to help fund their next issue. They are, as of this writing, a mere $30 away from meeting their goal. If you have a couple of dollars to spare, please send it their way. I will have a BRAND NEW cartoon in this issue, so please help make it happen!

* Unless someone else’s Project Wonderful ad is in the rotation. Or, I guess, if you’re reading this via RSS feed.

Penultimate PiQue and updated con schedule

A pregnant pause pervades the penultimate page of our PiQue parable, now up on Tapastic.

Speaking of PiQue, I noticed someone came here from googling “politically inqueerect archer and todd go to england.” When I redesigned this website last year I took that story down since there were no actual finished pages up, just color tests and storyboards. I do plan to start working on it again, though, and will start posting it again once I have final artwork to show.

I’ve also updated my con schedule for pretty much the rest of the year (there are one or two more potential happenings rattling around, but I’ll wait until they firm up). So yes, I will be at SPX and APE, tabling with Northwest Press, and I have a couple of shows where it’s just me and the feeps. It’s gonna be a busy autumn!

Cheers,

Dylan

PiQue and San Diego Comic Con

This week’s Politically InQueerect page is now up on Tapastic!

And today the madness that is Comic Con begins. If you’re in San Diego for the show, you can find me at the Prism Comics booth (#2144), chillin’ with the Northwest Press gang. I’ll have my TransTransformers prints for sale, and of course copies of Transposes. I’ll also have a bunch of original art with me, so come visit to look and buy!

I’m also going to be on the queer webcomics panel titled Bizarre? Queer? Perfect: Taming the Wild Webcomics Frontier, which is happening on Thursday, July 18 from 5:00 – 6:00 PM in room 28DE. If you’re using Comic Con’s panel scheduler, use this here link.

Come hear us natter on about the creative process and give tips on how to promote your own queer webcomic. I will, of course, be dishing out free Politically InQueerect bookmarks, so please come snag one, either at the panel or at the Prism booth. Hope to see you there!

Cheers,

Dylan