Jane’s World

My pal Xavier, in France, asked me to participate in a book he published there for Free Comic Book Day. I thought I would share a copy of the comic here, for my American readers who did not get to pick up a copy of “Scarce.” It’s funny that I did this comic and just today, came back from a few days out of the office to discover the donut fairy left a pink box of donuts on my desk.

I did a little personal experiment today while on my afternoon coffee break, during which I usually enjoy a Payday candy bar. There was this really cool lizard hanging out staring at me. I thought to myself, hmmm… does he want some Payday? Do Lizards even like peanuts and caramel? So I plucked off a small bit of Peanut with just enough caramel on the bottom for adhesive purposes and I stuck it on the wall. See photo diagram below:

Then I went back in a couple of hours to check on my experiment. The lizard was gone… the Payday remnant was still there.

Maybe next time I’ll try a Milky Way.

Xavier Lancel, publisher of SCARCE comic magazine in France, is sponsoring a free comic book day collection of various artists’ work. Jane and her pals are participating with an unpublished original work, just for this free issue. Jane’s World collections are available in French from EDITIONS DANS L’ENGRENAGE.

I posted a link to this article on Facebook today: http://www.danoah.com/2011/11/im-christian-unless-youre-gay.html

This blog story is about love. It’s about kindness. It’s about friendship.

It prompted a few posts about Christianity and the Old Testament laws pertaining to Homosexuality, among other things. I want to let anyone who’s interested know that it is possible to be a Christian and not persecute Gay people or any other minority group.

If people actually read the Bible, it would solve many misunderstandings, for example, the Pharisees questioned why the followers of Christ did not practice the laws pertaining to certain actions that should be performed on the sabbath. Christ responded in Matthew 15:7-9: “Hypocrites! Well did Isaiah prophesy about you, saying: ‘These people draw near to Me with their mouth, and honor Me with their lips, but their heart is far from Me. And in vain they worship Me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.’”

When tested further by the Pharisees (religious leaders of the time, who wanted to trip Christ up because he did not seem to follow the letter of the law from the Hebrew Bible – the Old Testament) Christ responded in Matt 22: 37-40: ” Jesus replied: ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” — ALL OF THE LAW, not some of the law.

I think as Christians we hide behind the law in the Old Testament because it is much easier to follow rules than it is to follow Christ’s commandment, to love unconditionally. Rules are easy, love is hard.

True, unconditional love requires sacrifice of self.

ADDITIONAL NOTE: Since I posted this, another article has appeared responding to the first one:

http://www.danoah.com/2012/04/a-teens-brave-response-to-im-christian-unless-youre-gay.html

I recently posted on this blog that I’m working on a new comic story, called Rabbit Stew. The lead characters (rabbits) in the story have several enemies, some within their own ranks, but the scariest are the wolves.

As luck would have it, I’m currently reading a Cormac McCarthy story titled, The Crossing. The story is about a young man and his pursuit and relocation of a wolf. There’s this one scene in the book where he and his father go to a trappers house to stock up on supplies to catch the wolf. They enter a shed out back and this is the passage that describes the scene. Every now an then you come across a passage in a book that is so transcendent that it must be shared. This is one of those:

“There in the dusty light from the one small window on shelves of rough-sawed pine stood a collection of fruit jars and bottles with ground glass stoppers and old apothecary jars all bearing antique octagon labels edged in red upon which in Echols’ neat script were listed contents and dates. In the jars dark liquids. Dried viscera. Liver, gall, kidneys. The inward parts of the beast who dreams of man and has so dreamt in running dreams a hundred thousand years and more. Dreams of that malignant lesser god come pale and naked and alien to slaughter all his clan and kin and rout them from their house. A god insatiable whom no ceding could appease nor any measure of blood. The jars stood webbed in dust and the light among them made of the little room with its chemic glass a strange basilica dedicated to a practice as soon to be extinct among the trades of men as the beast to whom it owed its being.”

In case you don’t see this in the comments, Abby posted a very fun fact about Rabbits:

Fun scientific fact: we’re bunny cousins! Primates (including humans) and Lagomorphs (including bunnies) are members of the same superorder, Euarchontoglires, a.k.a. Supraprimates. I thought knowing that might help you as you enter into your new endeavor : )

I had no idea! Thanks for that!!

And here’s a photo of my Rabbit Stew co-conspirator, Vicki (on left), at a recent book signing event:

I want all my Jane’s World readers to know that I tried every angle to figure out more time in my week (and my brain) so that I could work on Jane’s World and Rabbit Stew at the same time. But alas, I just got overwhelmed.

I was staying up every night super late to get JW uploaded for the next day… and fairly quickly, that makes the story line suffer. I decided it’ll be better for all of us if I focus on Rabbit Stew until the script is written and then I can go back to JW completely rested and brimming with new cosmic, romantic disasters for her.

Thanks for your patience… and I promise that the Rabbit Stew story is going to be something you’ll really like when it’s finished.

Be well.

Jane’s World, circa 2007, the foreshadowing of stories featuring rabbits

In any story that continues for a significant amount of time, there are challenges that mean you can’t simply keep doling out the same jokes and situations for years to come. Story arcs could take many issues to resolve, and characters may grow up, die, leave, come back, or be introduced, sometimes over decades.

That evolution of characters is definitely the biggest challenge. If you’re writing a comic in a humorous vein (gag a day), then you’re often going to find that people are generally okay with no character evolution. However, if your comic is more of a “journey” story… meandering through many and various story arcs… the characters should evolve or at least experience transformative moments.

Applegeeks is a pretty good example of a comic that evolved from a humorous comic into a social drama laced with science fiction and comedy. Each character has grown and changed over the years the comic has been running. Some of you read every comic as it goes up, and some of you may marathon them in between FoxyBingo games – some of you may not even be aware of the comic. But it’s a sound example of keeping a good idea going over time.

If DC’s New 52 signifies anything, it’s that DC managed to keep character arcs and storylines interesting for decades, but accepted that the comics had been for too long – a justified opinion, as attempting to get into that world would take years, even with a single character, and a considerable financial investment on the part of the reader. In some cases, I had sort of given up every catching up with certain characters. I did get invested in Batwoman for several issues unfortunately they just switched artists.

Reboots aren’t for everyone, and wouldn’t work with some comics, but it does send the message that some can run for so long, and often have such complex plots and back-stories that it becomes necessary to hit the reset button, lest you miss out on a lot of new fans who’d love to dive in but find the water that little bit too deep.

Writing an ongoing comic is not easy – and this strongly applies to story arcs, potentially just as much as character evolution. You can have an arc last a week, a month, or ten years (a gamble that requires very loyal readers!), but it is important to remember that your links between each arc – how you segue between story lines for a single character – are going to make or break the realism of your work, and if people feel that something just doesn’t make any sense within the context of the world you’ve built, you’re in trouble.

There are a ton of comic writers and artists out there, and I’d genuinely like to know what people’s thoughts are on keeping a comic going, and what challenges go along with that.

After 10 years, I feel like I’m at a crossroad with Jane’s World. A feeling that’s been lingering with me ever since I printed volume 10 of the book last year. I know I mentioned in the post yesterday that I’ll be taking a short break from JW while I work on this new feature… and during the break, I will no doubt miss the characters… I always do when I take a break from them and don’t hear their voices in my head for a few weeks. I really feel at the end of the “break” that I want to take JW back to its roots. Back to its roots as a humor comic, with shorter story arcs. I hope you’ll be excited about that reboot.

Anyway… sorry for the long post… it’s been one of those contemplative weeks… and it’s only Tuesday!

As many of you will notice in the next couple of days, I’m taking another short break from new Jane’s World material. There’s a good reason for this and in the meantime, I’m leaving GoComics and Yahoo readers with one of my favorite Jane’s World story arcs.

I mentioned in a recent AfterEllen interview that I was beginning work on a Rabbit story. Meaning, a story featuring Rabbits. This idea was inspired partially by a story I did where Jane was morphed briefly into a Rabbit (JW vol. 7), but this current Rabbit story has turned out altogether different. The title is Rabbit Stew:

Vicki Scott and I are collaborating on this epic trilogy. Vicki and I have worked together on a few children’s books and also on some Peanuts comic books. Once she and I started talking over this concept it became obvious that we should collaborate.

For me, it’s very hard to have my mind inside the heads of two sets of characters at once. So while we’re finalizing the script and dialogue for Rabbit Stew, Jane and her pals will be temporarily on hold. (I had to do the same thing while Jason and I finished up The Martian Confederacy.)

I wanted to give my blog readers a first look at some of the “behind the scenes” development of the characters for Rabbit Stew. These sketches are a mix of things… some from me, some from Vicki… oh, and not all of the main characters are Rabbits:

Stay tuned for more!