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 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

“Well, you know, I wanted to like Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow,” said Brigid, starting a fresh piece of pizza. “I mean, I was all into Tale Spin and I really like that whole Steampunk vibe.”

“Dieselpunk,” said Alex.

“What?” said Brigid.

“The planes have diesel engines,” said Greg, nodding at Alex. “So it’s Dieselpunk, not Steampunk.”

“Oh come on,” said Brigid. “What difference does it make?”

“I didn’t make the term,” said Alex. “I’m just pointing it out!”

“That’s just stupid,” said Brigid. “The planes in Sky Captain weren’t powered by anything but special effects. Besides, there was a car in League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, and you said that was Steampunk.”

“Well,” said Alex, unconvincingly.

“Although strictly speaking, if we’re going to pull all this stuff apart,” said Greg, “the real problem is the appellation ‘-punk.’ I mean honestly, how does putting goggles, straps, and gears on everything have anything to do with an ideology of aggressive anti-authoritariansim and critique of mainstream consumerism?”

“Do what?” said Brigid.

“Really, if anything, with all its pseudo-Victorian ‘God save the Queen’-ing, the genre should be called ‘SteamRetroImperialism.’ Or possibly ‘SteamSellingOut’.”

“Well, no genre makes it into the mainstream without selling out,” said Alex. “I hate to tell you this, but at their core, ninety percent of the population actually prefers tyranny. Do you really think an antiestablishment genre can survive? Even among fandom geeks, people prefer divine-right monarchies and happy endings over the messy realities of life and politics.”

“Hold on,” said Brigid. “I thought we were talking about Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow.”

“Eh?” said Alex. “I thought we were talking about Steampunk.”

“Dieselpunk,” said Greg. “Or possibly, DieselRetroImperialism.”

-The Gneech

<-- previous B&G

During my college years, I ran a Fantasy HERO campaign in a setting that took a lot of elements from Tolkien, but was in the early stages of an Elizabethan-style era. There were still elves (mostly in seclusion), sorcerers, and the occasional troll or magic sword, but there were also flintlocks, fencing schools, and enormous hoop skirts (among the right crowd). The richest district of the Big Campaign City even had gas streetlamps. Magic was generally not something the players mucked around with, as it tended to be pretty Lovecraftian in nature.

It was a bit of a mess, but I thought it was a pretty interesting setting. 7th Sea came along later and did some similar things, although I felt they kinda went overboard with the “This nation = England, that nation = Spain” thing. (If you’re going to have that thinly-disguised a real world connection, why not just go historical?)

Anyway, after my mini-rant about steampunk yesterday, my brain was apparently chewing on the matter, because I woke up with an interesting germ of an idea that involved taking that particular setting, ratcheting it forward a few hundred years, and bringing to the forefront a minor motif that I always thought warranted more attention but never really managed to do much with. Of course, there are problems: as I say, the setting was a bit of a mess and I’d want to clean it up, and the motif I have in mind is something that is wearing a bit thin these days, even if this is a relatively unique spin on it. (Sorry for the vagueness, I just don’t want to show my hand too early if I decide to go with it.)

The biggest problem of course, is my old enemy, “Premise without a plot.” I don’t have a main character, I don’t have a storyline, all I have is a background and a few supporting characters who need heroes to support. I sometimes wonder if thirty years of GMing roleplaying games has trained me to think this way. In the early days, I kept coming up with characters and wanting to be able to play them — leading to the dreaded “GM’s player character” syndrome — so I deliberately taught myself to think about everything but the hero. These days, trying to come up with both a hero AND a story seems to make part of my creativity balk.

Ah well, into the file of story ideas it goes, at least until something more comes to me. Meanwhile, I’m going to try to keep focused on the projects I’ve already got going, unless this one starts being interesting enough to knock one of those aside. Honestly, I’d like for any of my current projects to excite me that much. I’m having a serious problem with “Meh.”

-The Gneech

But before I sleep, I must point at this!

-The Gneech

Alas, my annual summer slump is here and in full force, which has why there hasn’t been much from me for the past month or two. Every year at this time, I am hit by my peculiar inverse seasonal affective disorder, and spend several weeks feeling like something the cat dragged in. As you might expect, this has a negative impact on my creative output, whether it be fiction, comics, Brigid and Greg, or even just my usual daily ramblings.

That’s not to say that I’m not doing anything productive, even if it’s all quietly bubbling away in the background. For instance, I’ve been putting a lot of thought into the story referred to here, and ways I can take it beyond “Variations on a Theme by Tolkien” and make it its own work. (To that end, I’ve also been going through the lectures of The Tolkien Professor, which boils down to a free college-level course put out there simply because Corey Olsen loves his work. I highly recommend it!)

There is also movement on the NeverNever front, which I’m extremely jazzed about. Really at this stage it’s mostly a matter of Sue and I actually putting our heads together and getting stuff done — which is often harder than it sounds!

Finally, I’ve recently been increasingly struck with random little Suburban Jungle “bits” — mostly in the form of silly little three-panel gags. Obviously, some part of my brain is still bouncing around New San Angeles! I haven’t decided whether I should toss these ideas together as quickie sketches and post them as “bonus strips,” write them down for eventual inclusion into the long-discussed comic-book format new series, or what.

I’m still getting fan mail about SJ, which is always gratifying, including one that recently asked me about my “policy on fanfic.” I’m glad that people are still discovering it and enjoying it! And I don’t want to let that go to waste.

-The Gneech