…By someone who has NO IDEA how to do it.

I originally wanted to tackle the SpacePunks “origin” as a back story in the regular comic-book, but after considering having to rewrite the cliffhangers of the main story to fit the fewer pages it would have now… well, I just got lazy. Truth be told, I’m having trouble just releasing the comic-book as it is to bother altering it even more.

Then, as we were designing and building this new website, it came to me: Why not create a series of comic-strips to showcase the adventures of young Bala and co. on the main page of the site for people to view for free, then, after gathering oh, maybe 100 strips or so, put them all together in a mini-book and sell them at conventions to people who already read it for free in the first place?

GENIUS!!!… just… GENIUS!!!

So, I sat down, paper and pen in hand and decided to write SpacePunks’ much asked about origin (asked about by my nephew and a couple of other kids, in case you’re wondering). So, I had the idea, I had the characters, I had the universe and I had the experience of writing comics, what could go wrong!?

Well, plenty… I learned nice and early that, being a comic-book writer DOES NOT make you a comic-strip writer and/or vice versa. I started writing stuff and eventually hit the wall of “dude, that is not funny” over and over again… I tried reading the comic-strip greats, such as Berkeley Breathed and Frank Cho, but realized I was just ripping them off.

All in all, I was creating a big effin’ mess… more so, a big, effin’ BORING mess.

I’m lucky to have a couple of friends who write very funny comic strips: One, Paul Horn, who writes and draws “Cool Jerk”, a weekly comic that is both very funny and very cool and two, Daniel Brokamp, who not only helps me with coloring and inking “SpacePunks”, but also has a very funny, yet to be discovered comic strip, “Cybernetic Babies”… their work has inspired me to give this a go again with fresh eyes. I can’t really say I’ve learned everything there is to know about this comic strip business, but I do think I’m heading in the right direction this time. Mind you, please be patient with me… I am learning as I’m going here.

Here’s the thumbnail for the first strip, Bala’s introduction! (good luck trying to read my handwriting…)

And here’s the pencils:

After this, it’ll be inked, scanned, lettered and placed in the top part of this site, just in time for C2E2!

Wanna see the final work? Come back this Friday! It’ll be up by then!

Cheers!

Josep

Here’s Guinn:

Guinn is the techie of the bunch and, very likely, the smartest one in the group. He’s always quiet and the rest prefer it that way, ’cause once he starts yapping, he does not stop!

Cheers!

Josep