Well, here it is. The first Grimstone comic to appear online in nearly three years. Was it worth the wait? Probably not. Those of you familiar with my work might notice somewhat of a difference between this comic and prior ones. There really is no joke here. Not even really a funny visual gag. See, this is the beginning of an actual story, not just some funny comics loosely linked together. Oh, there will be humor, to be sure. But it may be a little while before I return to my usual brand of funny comic goodness.

The point of this first storyline is to let us get to know Sara Morningstar, who she is and what she’s all about. She will be the focus of Grimstone for the next several weeks, possibly months. We’ll see how long it takes me to tell this tale. When it’s done, you’ll have gotten to know Sara a little better, and through her, been introduced to Ribcage, Cyanide, Furface and all the rest of my wacky creations. I’m sort of telling this story as if it were the first issue of a comic book, only I’m giving it to you a page at a time, three times a week. So this may take a while. So sit back, relax, and enjoy the ride.

Some final thoughts. There are two songs that continually run through my brain when I look over this comic. The first is Scorpion’s “Send Me an Angel”, which is pretty fitting. There’s a lyric about “in the land of the morning star”, and Ribcage will definitely come to think of Sara as his dark angel sent from above. The other is that song that goes “I’ve been through the desert on a horse with no name”, for obvious reasons. Only in this case, it’s a motorscooter with no name.

I don’t really have much to say about this one. It was one of the first ideas I came up with for the new storyline, that Sara would come across the town sign for Grimstone. Originally there wasn’t going to be any captions in the strip. The humorous sign was going to be a visual joke in lieu of any punchline. But then I added the narration, and decided to have a bit of a verbal joke in there. I thought about using various cities or places for the joke, but since the comic takes place in California and Los Angeles is an easy target, I just went with that. Basically, Sara has been traveling across the country on her motorscooter, kind of on a quest to find herself, and one of the most recent places she’s been is Los Angeles and she didn’t much care for it. Let’s see if she finds Grimstone more to her liking.

This comic was just a quick way to briefly introduce a couple locales in Grimstone that we will see much more of later on. The first being the Dragon’s Keep. This is actually the same bar that appeared in the original Grimstone that Ribcage & Cyanide often hung out at. It is now under new ownership and has been remodeled into a medieval tavern. It is opertated by an actual dragon. This will be the social gathering location in the comic. Ribcage and company will hang out here often. This is where we will see other recurring characters most often. The second locale is the theater. While it does look mostly like a movie theater, it will actually later serve as a traditional stage theater. It will be featured in a later storyline featuring Francis Hotep, the world’s first and only ancient Egyptian mummy who is a classicly trained Shakespearean actor. The final location will be a bit of a surprise, one that will be revealed in the next comic.

You have no idea how long it took me to do this comic. So I will tell you. FOUR DAYS! That’s right. Roughly 6-8 hours each day, except the last one, only a couple hours there. Why did it take me such a ridiculous amount of time? Well, that spiffy spooky mansion was not drawn, oh no, that is 3D computer modeling there. I made that baby in Maya (on my iMac, I might add) and being that I am an obsessive-compulsive perfectionist, it took me forever to complete.

I had it mostly done the first day. Then I made a whole lot of revisions and fixes on the second day. Then what began as clean-up on the third day ended up taking longer than I wanted. By the end of the third, I had a completed comic that I was happy with. But no, it didn’t end there. I forget something I was going to change to the model, namely the crossbar frames on all the windows. So I had to fix the windows. (Fortunately, I just have to change one and then copy it a bunch of times. Really should of used the clone function there instead of the duplicate though) And then I decided to add a little more to the background of the comic. I meant to put trees in there originally, but somehow, it slipped my mind.

So after four days and many long hours sitting in front of the computer, I’ve finally finished the damn thing. And now I am way behind schedule. Got two more comics to do by the time you all read this in order for me to catch up. And then the week starts over and I have three more to do. I really want to stay on schedule here. I’m trying to work a week ahead. Can’t wait until I start up at school again. Between that, this and my job, I ain’t gonna have any time left. But hey, once I finish school, hopefully I won’t have to work at Circuit City anymore, and I can go off and make cartoons and comics for a living. Ahhhhh….

Not much to say about this one. This one took me a fraction of the time that it took me to do the previous one. A couple hours maybe. Shots of the house are still from the model. The purple-ish looking bat hanging upside down is Dingbat. He’s actually one of my oldest characters, I think I may have started drawing him even before Ribcage.

The name isn’t very original, but it describes his personality perfectly. I’m sure I took the name from somewhere else when I was a kid, the question is did I get it from:
A) All in the Family
B) The vampire dog Dingbat from the old Plastic Man cartoon
C) the little bat that Curly Joe had as a pet on an episode of the New Scooby-Doo Movies.
It could have been all three, but my money is on Curly Joe.

Anyway, Dingbat has been waiting very patiently for me to get around to using him and here he is, in a brief cameo. We’ll see more of him later. He doesn’t really say much anyway, not anything that most people can understand. Furface understands him perfectly. Cyanide thinks he does, but his bat is a little rusty. Ribcage is still learning.

That’s all I have to say. I’m tired. Need to get work done on the comic.

You know it’s not easy trying to come up with something to write about each of these comics. Especially the ones where not a lot is happening. Basically Morningstar has decided she wants to learn more about this strange little town she has found herself in and so heads off to the town square. In the next installment, we’ll meet the proprietor of Occult Treasures, who will be a familiar face to those that have already read the archives. Things will be picking up soon from here.

Interesting enough, the stuff in this comic that I would usually just draw in Illustrator (the Occult shoppe, the overhead shot of the town square) I drew by hand. I don’t know that I prefer this, as the lines are never as straight as they would be if I drew it in the computer. The strip always has been, and will continue to be, a mixture of elements. Mostly hand drawn stuff, some computer created vector drawings, and a little CGI. I had thought about doing the Occult Treasures in Maya, like I did the Manor, but I just don’t have enough time right now. Maybe later on down the road I will if I find I am using it alot.

Ah, Madame Hildegarde. Hildy, to her friends. A character I like a lot and have big plans for. She’s actually been around much longer than some chracters, such as Count Cyanide. But she didn’t make her first appearance until near the end of Grimstone’s original run back in 2003. I used her in both of the last storylines, and she now has the distinction of being the first returning character from the old strip (Krulor on the billboard does not count).

Hildy the Witch. I think I based her off of some old Halloween decortation of this cute little redheaded witch girl. Throughout the development of Ribcage’s story, she has been both heroine and villainess. She’s a powerful and mysterious character, and has been my most prominent female character until Mornginstar showed up. She will show up often in the comic, aiding Ribcage and friends on their adventures. She will serve as a surrogate sister to Sara (try saying that three times fast!), an antagonist to Count Cyanide and a love interest for Furface (a kind of “Beauty & the Beast” motif). But only she knows her true intentions. You can bet she too will have a Character Evolution gallery as she has had many, many designs over the years.

Trivia time. Hildy’s cat’s name is Starshadow. I named her after my girlfriend’s online “handle”, who is a big cat lover. I think I named the cat Starshadow before I came up with Sara’s last name of Morningstar.

I have absolutely nothing to say about this strip itself. It’s pretty much filler. So a little background info instead. Grimstone Manor is an old Victorian house that once belonged to Lord Marmaduke Grimstone. Lord Grimstone is, naturally, the town founder. He created the town as a supernatural safehaven where monsters and creatures of the night could live in peace and harmony and not be persecuted by the rest of the world. In the town square, which we saw an aerial shot of earlier in the sotry, there is a statue of him. He lived in the Manor until the day he died (he died in the house) and rumor has it his ghost haunts it still. I haven’t decided yet if the Ghost of Grimstone will show up, as I have a few ghost characters already, but he’s likely to pop up sooner or later. Behind the Manor is a fairly large graveyard, the very same one that was featured in several comics of the old strip that was home to Krulor’s ghouls and later, Ribcage & Cyanide. Lord Grimstone is entombed in a crypt in the graveyard. The Manor had been abandoned for years. No one disturbed it for fear of angering or upsetting Lord Grimstone’s spirit. He is respected very much by the town’s inhabitants, at least the supernatural portion, and most would not disturb what is still considered to be his home. Most, that is, but not all.

I like this strip. It’s pretty much the first of the new series to end with an actual punchline. It’s a gag I’ve been wanting to use for a long time now. It was one of the first jokes I thought of when I was trying to come up with a new direction for the series and how to reintroduce Ribcage and company. And here they finally are: Ribcage, Count Cyanide and Furface.

You can bet Ribcage isn’t too happy that it took this long for him to show up in his own comic strip, especially after I left him out almost entirely of the last storyline of the original strip. And good ol’ Cyanide. He’s a character that I came up with much later on than the originals. See, most of my characters date back to when I was in elementary school (just like Jeff Smith and his Bone characters). Cyanide is one I added during high school. He wasn’t a very prominent character at first, but in later incarnations of Ribcage’s story, he took on a very major role. When I first developed my Grimstone concept, he’s a character I knew would appear almost as much as Ribcage himself. He’s grown way beyond what I ever envisioned for the character and become one of my favorites, second to Ribcage himself. In doing so, he’s pushed other, older characters back a bit (like Dingbat). But he’s such a joy to write and draw that I don’t mind it at all. Which would infuriate Furface, another of my original characters that has waited a long time to finally make it into the comic. And here he is, at long last. We will soon see that Cyanide and he do not get along very well, it’s a whole werewolves hating vampires thing. I’ll elaborate more on that in the future. Furface will also feature prominently in the series. He’s changed quite a bit over the years as well. For a time, he was basically a hairier version of Disney’s Goofy. Now, he’s a bit more like Gimli from Lord of the Rings. He’s tough and gruff on the outside, but deep down he has a heart of gold and is fiercly loyal to his friends. He’s still not the brightest of the bunch, but what he lacks in brains he more than makes up for in heart.

It feels good though to finally get this idea out of my system and reintroduce Ribcage & friends to Grimstone. It’s still not much of appearance, but there is much more to come. I will also eventually get around to doing character evolution series on our three main monsters. I want to try and round up some really old designs of Ribcage & Furface, from back in their Ribcage Show days. So stay tuned.

For the record, Hildy was NOT trying to cop a feel. She does not swing that way. So…what can I say about this one? It’s another good example of the various techniques I use in making the comic. Obviously the backgrounds are reused from previous comics. The last two panels are the same drawing of Hildy, with a new face drawn (by hand) for the second one. The first two panels (except for backgrounds) are fresh drawings. I know they look like they could have been recycled, but they’re not. But they were both drawn using the same printed out template of Sara that I use as a sort of model sheet. I’ve thought about doing what some cartoonist do, and entirely use sprites and stuff (like the Flash characters that Kris Straub uses to wonderful comedic effect in Starslip Crisis) but I still like drawing by hand and I don’t think sprites would completely meet my needs. I prefer a more eclectic method. A mixture of fresh hand drawings, recycled drawings & backgrounds, hand drawn & computer drawn backgrounds, and a little 3D modeling for good measure. Some day I might even experiment with photo backgrounds. I don’t know if I’ll ever use 3D modeled chracters in Grimstone, but I would like to do a comic completely created using Maya. That would be cool. 3D backgrounds and characters. Could use the same models for animated versions too. Definately something I’ll do someday, just probably with one of my superhero comic ideas.