Plans, Schemes, Vague Ideations

So one thing I hadn't thought through with thorough thoroughness, when I set off on this little Comics Semi-Sabbatical, was what exactly 'devoting myself to the comic' means. I have several (too many!!) things in train, and in the spirit of full transparency, A Little List:

1. Print

I think just for my own satisfaction I need to get the existing comics cleaned up and on paper in some way. This is first priority.

Question: Should I do these in instalments, or do the whole opus at once? Bearing in mind that The Organist isn't cleaned up and is 120 pages without notes… I couldn't get the whole comic so far in print in under six months I don't think, if I was doing everything else I want to do.

I quite like the idea of doing an Annual, a very Victorian concept.  I'd have to scramble like the very dickens to get even The Client out for the traditional Christmas Annual release, given that I've just today opened up my 30-day trial of In Design and I'm still trying to figure out how to get the pictures in. The Client, The Origin, and some interstitials are coming out to around 80 pages… would there be interest in something like that? with Fancy Typography? Or would you rather wait however long and get The Complete Lovelace and Babbage?

2. User Experience!

A few months ago, there was a Wild And Crazy Hack Day Weekend up at Agant iPad Wizard Labs, wherin I drawed and Dave Addey coded and my husband did soundy things and other folks did other things and we asked ourselves, what kind of fun stuff can you do with comics when you're no longer a Book With Pages? The Lovelace and Babbage App is the firstborn, but User Experience is the adorable mutant embryo product of that weekend. It's a slooooooow gestation on that one but it IS pretty darn cool, so in spite of all reason I'm going to keep plugging away.

3. Lovelace and Babbage The Opera! The Breakfast Cereal! The Bafflingly Complex Mortgage Product!

Sundry and assorted Things, ranging in breadth of ambition from another tshirt, to the enchanting vision of a radio play, which I'm madly in love with. Should these notions become other than chimerical at any point I will keep you posted. I believe I can nearly guarantee a new tshirt at least.

4. Freakin' Comics Already!

Speaking of mediums, I read with great interest this piece by Warren Ellis, which pinged with some stuff that's being on my mind what with the iPad app coming out and all. This in particular:

Also, it's a hell of a lot easier to take your time telling a story when you're not charging people.

…this is harder to make sense of, perhaps?  It may just be a weird personal tic masquerading as a concern, that is meaningless to everyone else?  But I always saw webcomics as the place where people could do huge, sprawling picaresques..

It may be a personal tic, but it's one I share in my own small way. The real gift of this comic to me has been the way I can be an amateur – one who does out of love. It's a very playful space here. I draw entirely to please myself, make jokes entirely to please myself. If others share the same sense of fun then that is great but first and foremost it's Amateur Hour here at 2dgoggles and 'success' is not what I am aiming for.  So over and above all the Very Serious Plans outlined above, all of which involve pouring this sprawling spilled mess of stuff into a Vessel, I think I need to go back to my 2-and-a-half year old roots and just draw a freakin' comic here.

2dgoggles began as a list of joke comics I still have on a piece of paper from March 2008, which is the comics that must naturally follow from the idea of Ada Lovelace and Charles Babbage fighting crime. The joke comics were:

- the Orgainst! (DONE!!)

- Sir Isambard Kingdom Brunel's Hat (does this count as done? I have drawn his hat!)

- Cyborg Napoleon! (I have a few sketches for this, it's a lot of giant war machines which are very hard to draw)

- Vampire Poets

So, ladies and gentlemens, IN TWO WEEKS..