I wanted to write the entire article and then post it on the site but I wanted enough of that article to be shown in the actual comic that the reader would understand more about some of the world events happening around the Variables universe. I think the page does a so-so job of that and I’m going to give it a week or two before I decide whether to truncate the comic article a bit so more of it is visible on the comic page itself.

Anyway, that’s all for this morning. Click through the page below to jump to the first issue of Variables 2002.

When it comes to indy publishing in comics, a lot of a creator’s money isn’t made by actually selling copies of his or her books but instead comes through commissioned artwork. Unless your comic is well-known, nobody wants to see drawings of your own characters. Everybody wants pics of Spider-Man, the X-Men, and Batman. A sad but true fact. I realized that I haven’t drawn any of these characters in months (if not years) and would need a nice backstock of images to show people and have things ready to sell by May, the date of the first convention I’m going to attend. Plus, I badly needed the practice.

So, I’ve been brushing up on superhero anatomy over the past few weeks, experimenting with ink washes, and getting used to working with markers again. I can’t exactly haul my entire art table with brushes, quills, and ink wells to a convention so I need to practice using more mobile methods of drawing and coloring. So, the comic will take somewhat of a backseat over the next month (but I still plan to update every week on time) as I get ready to dive into the world of licensed superheroes from Marvel and DC.

If you’re interested in seeing this work as I finish it, I’m posting a lot of it to my personal blog site over at Rocketpig.net.

Now for the art preview. This page was a tricky one. It was relatively easy to draw (plus, I got to draw a guy in a cape!) but where the real challenge lies is in the lettering. The focus of this page is the first article written by Hank Foster that I’m posting since the beginning of the comic. The reader will be able to see most of the article on the comic page, enough to get a feel for the incident, anyway. So, it’s kind of a trick page. It’s a drawing of… a book. Cheesy? I’m not sure. But it felt like a good way to give the reader loads of information about the Variables universe while exposing them to Hank Foster (again), a character who will appear throughout the entirety of Variables. Wanna see more? Click here to see the first issue of Variables 2002.

This is the most complicated page I’ve ever drawn of Variables and I’m pleased with how it turned out. I still need to practice backgrounds but I’m definitely improving. As always, click through the image below to jump to the second issue of Variables 2002.

One of the most exciting things about creating Variables is the myriad of stories from every corner of the globe. I’ve written so many summaries that I often lose track of when, where, and how things occur and how they fit into other events happening on the other side of the world. As I get further into the series, there are dozens of subjects that I won’t have the time to touch on in detail but are also too complicated to tell in a short story. For some of these tales, I will try to drop hints or tell snippets of the things happening around the Variables world. One of the main vessels for telling these stories is the character of Hank Foster. You have yet to meet him in the actual comic (though that is coming relatively soon) but his influence in the Variables universe comes via his position as an editor of the fictional Weekly American magazine. He specializes in writing about the Sui Generis and over time, gains public confidence through his articles on the subject of metahumans and their influence.

Why does this matter? Because in the page I’m working on, a Hank Foster article is highlighted for the first time and it’s about one of my favorite events in the series. I don’t want to spoil the surprise but I find the situation both comical and, given this cultural group’s propensity to live outside of reality, more than likely to happen given enough time. Initially, I considered writing this story into Variables itself but given the rather tragic ending, in the end I didn’t feel like it warranted 6-12 months of my time to draw it just to wipe out all the characters involved during the grand finale. I think reading A Song of Ice and Fire has altered my tolerance for authorial masturbation; leading a reader along with characters for months or years at a time just to kill them off for self-gratification doesn’t make for a pleasant reading experience. I try to stay away from it. There will be plenty of deaths in Variables but when I kill someone, I’m going to try to make it matter.

Anyway, to the preview. In this page, we jump to Karter and his stately abode. I wanted the audience to see how this character lives and how he’s pretty much a one-track guy. He’s not much for creature comforts and everything in his flat is geared for one thing: his career as Nemesis. He’s not crazy like Rorschach but he’s not a shining example of moderation, either. This page was also really tricky to color. I kept fighting with the palette, trying to get the blue/purple glow the emanates from a television in a dark room correct but I just couldn’t do it. So I ended up coloring the entire page normally and then put a filter over the entire page. It worked out far better than I ever expected it to and I’m really happy with how it turned out. Be sure to check back on Tuesday to see the entire page with words and all that jazz.

If you’d like to read the current issue of Variables, be sure to click here.

Anyway, this is the last page of Karter and Henri feeding the readers backstory. The next scene is more Karter, this time alone and in his apartment. This 4-5 page set explains a lot of the motivations of Karter and where he comes from but after that, it’s pretty much all action through the end of the series. As always, click on the image below to jump to the first issue of Variables 2002.

Enough of that. In future Thursday blogs, I’m going to talk more about my reasons for why the Variables world works the way it does. I don’t really blog much anymore so I thought it would be a good idea to start adding more details like this to the Thursday previews. As for this page, it’s the last Henri/Karter page before we transition to another scene later in the night. The sample image is a little cryptic in that it’s just a photograph being passed between the two. I’m not going to say any more than that so check back on Tuesday for the entire page with words and all that stuff. Cheers!

PS. As always, you can find the entire issue at http://variables.selfcentent.com/comic/variables-2002-1/.

I’m excited to see these pages go live but really, I can’t wait to start on the last 1/4 of this issue and most of the second issue. After this scene and one more following it, the entire series turns all stealth/action movie on me. While I try not to entirely base Variables around action scenes, it’s still a lot of fun to draw them.

That’s all for this morning. Click through the image below to read all of the first issue of Variables 2002.

This is something that I’ve been mulling over for awhile ever since I started drafting the 2002 story arc. The first Variables arc (that I have yet to finish) is very Ameri-centric in nature and can easily be picked up by any English-speaking person and read without difficulty.

But that’s not what Variables is about, really. When I started drafting the concept with my friend Nick back in 2008, it was about placing super-humans in the real world and fitting them into realistic situations and actual events that happened. It also wouldn’t be confined to North America, as so many stories of this kind tend to be. These people appear all over the world; it simply wouldn’t be plausible to focus only on the ones who reside in the ol’ US of A. Plus, a lot of really interesting shit happens all over the world. It would be a shame not to touch on past events and situations that an English-speaking reader may not know about.

Which leads me to the 2002 story arc that takes place in Athens, Greece. When I drafted the Karter Floros character, he didn’t have a home. I originally planned him to be in Europe but wasn’t sure where his character would be a logical fit. I considered Austria but there’s no blasted crime or real social unrest in the country. I also considered Germany and while social unrest is a little more prominent, it still wasn’t a good fit. So I started reading up on the former Soviet Bloc nations and almost placed him in the Czech Republic before it occurred to me that Greece was a no-brainer option. So I went back to the drawing board (not literally) and started researching more about Greece’s modern history, 1960-present. It was a literal goldmine of oppressive governments, social unrest, economic instability, and events that perfectly fit how I envisioned the Karter Floros character. I began writing the character into events, organizations, and movements that molded the already-established personality of the character. It was exactly what I wanted when the character first popped into my head.

But then I started to see a problem emerge. Nobody knows a god damned thing about Grecian history. In the story, I deal with the school protests of 1991 (a real event), the conversion from the Drachma to the Euro (which, as many of you may know, has led to quite disastrous results for the nation), PASOK (a prominent political movement in Greece for quite some time), and 17 November, a long-running terrorist organization that caused quite a fuss for the Greek government for almost three decades. All of these things created the Karter character as he is today but outside of news fanatics or Greek citizens, they probably don’t resonate with many people.

So how much can be expected of a reader? Do I continue down this path of relative obscurity, playing up events that don’t reside in the public consciousness or do I stick to more tried-and-true events and countries, forcing the comic to stick to mainstream western countries such as Canada, the US, England, and France? It’s not an easy decision to make, especially because I find the situations in these other countries so much more fascinating than the beaten-to-death tropes found in more publicized western nations. As I said earlier, the 2002 arc is just the beginning. Another story I will touch on is about the post-Soviet orphans of Moscow, many of whom eek out a life living in the sewer system. It’s a classic Lord of the Flies situation with a real-world side to it. Another story involves the devastating poverty of Papau New Guinea and how one man with extraordinary abilities could take advantage of the situation. It’s not as if I’ll be ignoring North America, though. What will probably be the most written-about character in the universe is American, as are several other peripheral characters.

Anyway, I’m kind of rambling at this point. This is something I will have to keep in mind as I draft future stories. I just wonder if I’m passing up a mainstream audience by not spoon-feeding them information and possibly challenging them to read up on world events just to understand everything that is happening in Variables. Is that too much to ask from a comic book audience? I’d like to think not but I don’t really know for certain. It’s not as if Variables is the most high-brow form of entertainment around (I mean, it is a comic book) but I’d like to think that’s it’s not Superman, either.

In other stuff news whatever, I’m building a bit of a buffer up right now. I’m one full page ahead as of today and by next week, I hope that to be even more. Once I get two or three pages up on the content, I will begin posting more than one page a week. So, at the earliest, two weeks from now will be a two page week. Keep an eye out for it.

That’s all for this morning. Click through the image below to jump to the entire first issue of Variables 2002.

So there you go.

I’m really enjoying this new coloring method I’m using, though the tiered nature of the shadows bothers me a bit. I’m going to continue to work on not making those so prominent and while this form of coloring takes me a little longer to finish (shocking), the difference isn’t enough to make me consider going back to the old style because it looks so much better.

The next few pages of the comic explain a bit of Karter’s history. In fact, a good portion of the rest of the issue are set pieces that explain more about the character’s past, his present, and what this arc is actually about. It’s cool to see the comic start coming together and how much my art has improved over the past 13 months since I started Variables. Anyway, that’s all for today. Check back tomorrow for the fully rendered page!

Oh, and check out the rest of the first issue of Variables 2002 here.