Well! I’m home after what has been a … unique … Dragon*Con. You remember all that stuff that happened to Mrs Gneech and me? The pet hotel debacle? The fall on the escalator? There was also a fire at the hotel. What a weekend!

On the other hand, I met some cool new folks, completed my long-worked-on collection of MST3K signatures, got a ton of development work done on the new comic, and took part in a World Record attempt (for largest collection of steampunk costumes in a photo).

As you can probably tell, I spent a lot of time in the steampunk track, where apparently I fit in like the proverbial bug in a rug. Having hitherto not been much involved in the contemporary steampunk scene, I spent most of the time simply going to panels and soaking up what people had to say, but I was pleased to discover that a lot of the people in the fandom have similar opinions to mine in regards to such things as the preponderance of brown, the rather silly nature of goggles on a top hat, and the fact that “steampunk” is kind of a crap term. It was fun to sort of come into it as an outsider (Technomancer’s Toybox and similar things notwithstanding) and still feel like I had something to offer. One of the editors for Kerlak Publishing, when I mentioned that I’d be starting a steampunk(-ish) comic early next year, perked right up and was eager to be in the loop about it.

As for Dragon*Con itself … it’s suffering from growing pains in a major way. The ratio of costumers to non-costumers took a serious nosedive this time around (particularly as many members of the 501st Legion didn’t come this time around, I hear); and there were entirely too many panels that you simply couldn’t get in to see. I’m seriously worried that Dragon*Con will fall prey to the famous Yogi Berra quote, “Nobody goes there any more, it’s too crowded.” If I wanted to go to a con where I couldn’t get into any panels, couldn’t navigate the dealer room for the crowd, and couldn’t see any costumes, I’d go to San Diego Comic-Con. There are also way too many non-geeks (who don’t buy badges and don’t support the con) crashing the party. One commenter I heard referred to it being like “Nerdy Gras” — partiers with nothing better to do are coming to get trashed and get free entertainment by looking at the geeks.

The good news is, people are starting to recognize the problem; what steps can reasonably be taken to deal with it, have yet to be seen. Personally, I think we should start a major advertising campaign talking about what a bunch of totally uncool nerds the people at Dragon*Con are and how unless you’re the kind of person who thinks math and historical romances make an interesting combination, you’ll be bored stiff there.

Anyway! I did have a very good time, down to sitting right among the MST3K cast members in the audience of the “Servo vs. Servo” panel and heckling Kevin Murphy and J. Elvis Weinstein with them. Got a lot of work done, met a lot of cool new people, and generally had a ball, so overall I’d say it was a smashing success.

-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

I do so love being productive! I don’t know what it was that broke the creative logjam I’ve been suffering from for the past several months, but it’s made me a much happier Gneech in any case. And I’ve gotten a lot done this weekend!

The strip conversion for Childproof the Unicorns is at almost exactly the 50% mark. It would have been farther along, but some of my decade-plus old files were not readily accessible and I had not only to find the CDs they were on, then use IsoBuster to make the CD readable again, but then discovered they’d been saved as flattened .tifs (for some reason knowable only to 10-years-ago me) and had to have the text typed in again. Fortunately, it only seems to have been a few of them, so it won’t throw a giant spanner in the works.

That’s not all, tho. This weekend I also did up roughs for the cover of Attack of the War-Cats and sent that off to Sue, decided on the title for my new comic, registered some website URLs and did some major character development sketches, and of course did a lot of the prep work for going to Dragon*Con next weekend. I’m all energized now — if it weren’t for the fact that I have to be at work in the a.m., I could happily keep chugging away for at least another couple of hours. But that would mean a Monday of dragging at work, which would in turn leave me totally unproductive tomorrow night, so I have to break it off and go get some sleep for the greater good.

So! Lots of cool stuff. I said back in January that 2010 was going to be an exciting year, and tho it’s taken a little longer to get rolling than I expected, it’s still turning out to be true!

-The Gneech

On the Dubious Merits of Being “Gifted” and Learning to Do Things the Hard Way…

To get things on the table right up front: going by standardized IQ tests of the ’70s (which is when I last took one), I was listed as being almost, but not quite, a “genius.” Which is to say, I’m not krellborn, but I am smart enough that everything thrown at me by public school was in the “no brainer” category. (Well, except for P.E., but hopefully the reasons for that will become apparent.)

As is often the case with kids in that situation, I learned exactly the wrong lesson from it, which is: “Work is bad. If something requires work, it’s probably not worth doing.” I also learned that if I don’t pick up something immediately, it must be because I’m useless at that thing. Like any kind of sports, for instance.

This really came back to bite me in college, where a lifetime of being smart had left me totally unprepared for having to do things like “study” or “pay attention in class”. I had huge SAT scores and coasted through my pre-college education, but being smart very nearly caused me to flunk out of college. Because I didn’t know how to work, because if something required work, it probably wasn’t worth doing. This is a common problem among people within my band of “not-quite-genius”-ness.

See, “normal” kids don’t have this problem, because they learn “work or fail” early on. By the time they get to college, they’re used to stuff sometimes being hard, and are not afraid of that. Not that they like it, of course, but they are at least trained for it. (I don’t have direct evidence of this, other than observation, but it seems like a pretty reasonable deduction based on what I’ve seen and read.)

Well, after dropping out for a semester, discovering what work was like, and having the fear of God put into me (so to speak), I sucked it up and went back to college and more or less aced it the second time around. Not because I wanted to do well in college, but mostly because I didn’t want to have to get a job. But alas, all good things must come to an end, and so it was that eventually it was time to work or starve, and I’m not a man who tolerates starvation well.

But the general pattern of “if it’s like work, avoid it” continued through my adult life. I did over time become more willing to work at something, but it takes a lot to justify it. Drawing something over and over until I get it right: worth it. Learning to drive a stick shift: not worth it. Dragging myself out of bed in the morning to go to a job in order to keep from losing my house: Worth it. Barely. Mastering the “hard mode” of a video game: not even close.

Recently, however, as I have become more aware of this pattern, I’ve been trying to subvert it. In point of fact, I’ve started seeking out the “hard mode” on things. Because I have found that if I stick with it, and if it’s something that really does matter to me, I will rise to the occasion. And the more “hard stuff” I do, the easier the “easy stuff” gets.

To pick a video game example, as the most direct illustration of this: I have a racing game I enjoy (Outrun 2006 for those who are curious). The game has two modes that I most commonly play: basic “zoom down the course from easy part to hard part and try to beat the time limit” mode, and a more free-form “pick a level and race it over and over again” mode. For a long time, I was unable to beat the basic mode (and I still can’t, for the harder courses), so I would just do the easy courses on the pick-a-level mode because those were relaxing and fun. But one day, I decided that dangit, I wanted to beat that basic mode! So I went to the pick-a-level mode, selected the hardest courses, and started running them over and over instead. It wasn’t as relaxing, nor was it as fun, and I never did do very well. But it did dramatically improve my skill with the game. The next time I went back to the basic mode, I beat it easily.

Of course, anybody who grew up getting props for how hard they worked to master something (instead of for how clever they are), this is a no-brainer. But for me, it was an illuminating moment.

What does all this lead to? Just this: my recently-announced new comic project is gonna be, well, hard. Every page, heck just about every panel, is going to require that I operate on a level comparable to my current best work if it’s going to come off the way I envisage it. I’ve essentially promised myself to do a comic where every page reaches the quality of the “Dover and Comfort V-Day Kiss” pic (or hopefully better, as there are flaws in that piece that still jump out at me every time I look at it). Yes, I can do the work, but great googily-moogily, it’s going to be tough going!

But … on the other hand … if that becomes my daily norm … how much more awesome will my next “level-up” piece be?

That’s not why I chose the look I did for the comic, but if it works, it’ll be a nice perk.

-The Gneech

PS: Two bonus points to the first person who names where the post title came from.

EDIT: For more on this topic, see this page.

I have officially adopted a new comic project. I spent the balance of the weekend putting in some heavy development work on it, with some assistance from Sirfox and the usual beta-reader team, and have begun scripting out the first issue. There’s not a lot of it that’s ready for the viewing public yet, but I can let out a few teasers:

• It is a fantasy/adventure comic, not a “comic strip.”
• It is a “new franchise” of my own creation, not directly related to previous works, although I’m sure a lot of the “standard Gneechian elements,” whatever those might be, will be in evidence.
• There will be anthropomorphics in it, although it is not strictly a “furry” comic.
• I will be the primary artist, but I’m hoping to build an “art team” of like-minded folks who can take on sideline stories, bonus items, and so on. I’ve already contacted one or two, but until I have some folks definitely on board, I don’t want to name names. (If you’re interested in getting involved, drop me a line!)
• It will follow a web + print model, posting one or two pages a week on the web and releasing printed comic books (and trade collections) two or three times a year. It does not have a website yet, as I haven’t firmly nailed down a title yet. I expect there to be one before the end of the year, however, and probably the first issue to start publication late 2010 or early 2011.

What effect will this have on my other projects? It varies. My hope is that it won’t impact NeverNever at all, which should also start running again sometime this fall. (We’re building a buffer before we launch it again.) On the other hand, it will probably put the kibosh on any new Suburban Jungle comics for the forseeable future. There just isn’t time for me to do both and keep a day job — and there’s no way I can afford to do without a day job at the moment.

As for my writing projects (such as B&G), that’s harder to say. I haven’t been making much progress on those, though not for lack of trying! But for whatever reason, all of the book ideas I’ve been noodling around with have languished. However, this new project (assuming it’s a hit) may very well scratch my writerly itch, as it’s a very flexible framework. It’s not the wild and crazy “Throw everything in and see what sticks!” flexibility of Suburban Jungle — you won’t be seeing song-and-dance routines or ninjarazzi here — but it is a setting that will allow for drama, mystery, high adventure, and silly humor, all on an as-needed basis.

In Other News…

The other main thing I achieved this weekend was finally getting some real work done on the second edition of Childproof the Unicorns. The new edition is going to be in a larger format with three strips to the page instead of two, and will be available, barring catastrophe, at Further Confusion. My dream schedule also puts Attack of the War-Cats (the long-anticipated second volume of NeverNever) on the table at FC as well, but I’m not making any promises there.

Anyway! It was a great weekend, and I’ve gotta say it’s really nice to be excited about a project again. Watch this space for teasers and development pics as time goes on!

-The Gneech

Say what you like about James Joyce, he was a man who had a knack for epiphany. And last night, as I occasionally do, I had one of my own. It wasn’t a profound moment of sound and fury, no tears or anything like that, just a sudden but conclusive realization, more or less out of the blue.

That realization was, “Yes, of course I’m going to Further Confusion in January. Duh.”

Now, that may not sound like much — after all, I’ve been going to FC pretty regularly since the mid-00′s (the oughts?), but it carries with it a lot more significance than you might think.

You see, I have been seriously contemplating the issue back and forth for some time now. FC, while I enjoy it, is often a giant production, involving as it does a trip to the far side of the country and several days in a not-exactly-cheap hotel. In order to pull it off, I need to be fairly confident that my time at the table will justify the expense, and with the winding down of Suburban Jungle and the recurring lack of interesting new products to show, sales have been wobbly compared to their one-time heights. To go to FC means committing myself to creating new things to have at the table, getting back into the artistic swing, and coming up with ways to be generally awesome so people will want to buy my stuff.

There is another factor, a sort of “self identity” thing that’s harder to nail down. I love the furry scene and have since I first came across it, but it’s only one aspect of my larger self. There are lots of other things I also want to do with my creative career, but the success of Suburban Jungle (and the attendant demands on my time) pushed everything else to the side for so long that I lost touch with a lot of those interests. One of the reasons I decided to end SJ was so that I could do something else for a while. But within the furry community, SJ is my claim to fame, leading to a sort of “Without this, what am I?” situation. I haven’t really worked out an answer to that one yet, but really, it doesn’t matter anyway. If I keep moving forward with new things, the question will answer itself eventually.

What surprised me the most about this particular epiphany was the cold matter-of-factness of it all. If you’ll tolerate a bit of Anthropomorphic Freudianism here, it went something like this:

SUPEREGO: By the way, we’re going to FC. Start making that happen.

EGO: We are?

SUPEREGO: Of course we are. You’d never be satisfied if we didn’t.

EGO: You realize what that entails, right? Ten hours on a plane, five days away from home, jet lag?

SUPEREGO: Trivia.

EGO: We need a book or something to have at the table.

SUPEREGO: That’s why I’m telling you now. The books are overdue anyway. Get on ‘em. Besides, Sue’s working on NeverNever again, so it’s the perfect time to get Attack of the War-Cats into production and drum up interest. Both books need to be done by next May anyhow, for Confuzzled.

EGO: Okay then, decision made! I’ll alert the media, so to speak.

SUPEREGO: You do that.

ID: Will you two shut up? I’m trying to sleep here.

No sturm, no drang, just a matter-of-fact certainty. This actually pleases me quite a bit, because it’s the same matter-of-fact certainty that made me pick up a pencil and just start drawing SJ one day. I always consider that to be a sign that I’m on the right track, and it’s a sensation that I’ve been sorely missing for some time now. “This is the way it is, and this is the way it will be. So go to it.”

I guess I know how I’ll be spending my evenings and weekends for the next few months, now! [1]

-The Gneech

[1] Interestingly enough, a built-in assumption seems to be that I’m going to be writing as well. I’m not sure how I’m going to fit it all in, but Superego doesn’t seem concerned about it, and he generally knows what he’s doing.