For anyone who’s not on the Suburban Jungle community feed, here’s a riff on Tiffany’s first big gig, all the way back in 1999. Done purely to get the artistic juices flowing again! If there’s sufficient interest, I’ll offer this one as a print. Enjoy!

-The Gneech

As some of you may know, my new comic took a lot of inspiration from the “Steamcycle” pic done by Leo Magna … which he has graciously given me permission to use. In the comic, it will be Fagin’s ride of choice, and features pretty prominently in the first issue, so I figured I’d better figure out how the thing works! So this is what I came up with.

Let me just say … complex design is complex. O.o

Original pic, for those interested.

-The Gneech

“Big Bad” John Dunn, Charlie O’Toole, and Fagin, the interfering troublemakers — ER, adventurous heroes of my new comic! This is a concept rough for the cover of the first issue … it still needs quite a bit of work, but it at least gives you a hint of what’s to come. Characters copyright ©2010 by me.

-The Gneech

Okay, I’m having a bit of a quandary, and I’d like to hear various folks’ opinions on it — but it’s about the potentially-loaded topic of race, so I respectfully ask that people keep their heads about it.

I’m working on the main cast of my new comic; it’s a lighthearted fantasy adventure story following a trio of troublemaking heroes-for-hire. The leader is a suave trickster type, the second is a cute and perky gal who has a propensity to blow things up, and the third is a big and scary-looking strongman who covers up horrible scars with a Phantom-Of-the-Opera-esque hooded mask, who actually has a squooshy nougat center and loves to pet kittens. (Anybody remember the phase-through-walls guy on Buck Rogers In the 25th Century? He’s sorta like that, but more brawny and less brooding.)

The trickster isn’t human at all; in point of fact, he’s a white-and-black-furred fox-morph. The bomber-gal has red hair and freckles. The big scary strongman is an imported character from an earlier project I worked on, in which he was a big ol’ cueball — think “Mr. Clean” meets “Two-Face.” However, when I was importing him into this story, I thought that in an effort to keep the cast from being too monochromatic, I’d make him black instead.

This is where I run into a catch-22 … now instead of an “all-white” cast (if you take a white-furred fox thing as being “white” in the same sense), I’ve potentially got “black man = big, ugly, and scary.” That’s not the intended message by any stretch — this character is a doll and the scariness of his exterior is intended to be a subject of pathos rather than revulsion — but it is something I worry about people taking away from it.

So rather than just bat this one around with my beta readers, I’ve decided to toss this issue out for more general discussion. Am I just overthinking the whole thing? The comic is not about race in any sense, and is not a defining aspect of this character. I don’t want what was basically an aesthetic choice causing anybody grief.

What do you think, folks?

-The Gneech

A bit of random silly fun. Click through for full-size image.

-The Gneech

Just a quickie piece I did on Friday for a stressed-out friend. But with all the stress that’s been flying at me since Friday afternoon, this is the first chance I’ve had to scan and post the thing. Click through for the full-size piece.

Enjoy!

-The Gneech