So last year I ran away and got married and didn’t tell anyone. In fact, I didn’t tell anyone I was engaged either. Anyway, when I got back from Maui, I had to draw a comic that week and this was it. Explains why it’s a little light on plot.
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This panel still makes me laugh. I think because I made this comic when I had a super gnarly flu, I unconsciously tapped into my baser creative instincts and this comic just came out as raw introspective honesty. Still just slays me. That and I really like how I drew those castle bricks.
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This winter, both my wife and I got that super gnarly flu that everyone got, and I got it the week I needed to make a new comic. While in a somewhat delirious, Advil Cold & Sinus fuelled haze, I was laying around on our upstairs couch desperately trying to think of a story to draw. I resorted to my surefire recipe for story writing inspiration when all else fails (including writing on the toilet, or in the shower) I put away my idea book, laid down on the couch, stared at the ceiling, and put on some Hawkwind. It’s usually Pink Floyd, but I’ve been listening to Hawkwind a lot more lately.
What I realized was that all I really wanted to do was draw a story about a wizard (Hawkwind sings a lot about wizards.) I also realized I didn’t really want to draw proper trees, and since this story was on some kind of alien planet, I could draw the trees any damn well way I chose, which is why they look like popsicles. And so, I came up with that week’s comic: “Tower.”
However, I wasn’t alone on the couch that day; I was hanging out with Pokey. During a Christmas time trip to Costco that year, my wife saw a woman and her young child leaving the store with a giant stuffed dinosaur. My wife had to have one. She regularly reminds me that buying Pokey was “the best $20 I ever spent.” Naturally my couch companion had to be included in the story. So that’s why Life is riding a dinosaur to the wizard’s tower.
This bizarre flu-driven comic got considerably more attention and traffic than normal that week, and most people commented to me that they really liked that dinosaur.
-Love Nick.
Last year I participated in an online art project called Moebius Time, created by Bryce Martin. The idea was to combine elements from the cartoon series Adventure Time with the famed French comic artist Jean Giraud, aka Moebius.
I contributed a drawing called Finn Est-Il Bon? based on my favourite Moebius drawing, a cover illustration of his short story L’Homme Est-Il Bon? (I even traced his original hand lettered title and rearranged and changed the letters to make the Finn part.)
I first saw this cover on an 1980s English edition of his work called Moebius 4: The Long Tomorrow, reprinted by Epic/Marvel Comics, and it had an absolutely profound effect on me.
This particular cover got me hooked on Moebius in the early 2000s. I had only been vaguely familiar with his work prior to that, most notably his famous Arzach story. Around that time I was reading a lot of European science fiction comics, and I got addicted to Moebius’ unparalleled work.
I take a lot of inspiration from different artists, most notably Carlos Ezquerra (Judge Dredd), Carl Barks (Donald Duck and Uncle Scrooge) and Herge (Tintin), but my main and most apparent influence is Moebius.
Now I’m certainly not claiming I draw anywhere near as well as Moebius, but what I am saying is that he’s the one I steal from the most. Not stealing as in copying or tracing, but more like subscribing to his artistic school of thought.
I have a stack of books by my drawing table to see how artists like Moebius draw things that I simply don’t know how to draw. Sure, drawing a building sounds easy, but what about putting in all the details for a futuristic building? Or how about just drawing fire with smoke so it doesn’t look like an eight year old drew it? Not so easy I tell you.
Drawing influence and studying a master like him has taught me a lot, and while that only goes so far, right now I just want to draw in that style. I believe that Moebius has a become a genre, and it is the genre I want to work in because it appeals to me the most.
-Love Nick.
LIFE THE NECROPOLIS 