I posted this comic while I was still working on the original Grimstone site back when it was hosted by KeenSpace (now Comic Genesis). I was getting the design and layout finalized while I worked on the first batch of comic strips. I wanted to promote the site before the comic really got going, try to build up some anticipation. This was what I referred to as the “Sneak Preview” comic and is, I’ll admit, a bit of a bad pun. But I think every comic strip needs to use a lame pun at least once in its lifespan.

Commentary written in 2006.

This is the first “official” Grimstone comic strip and appeared on my 22nd birthday. Seemed kind of appropriate.

The process of developing Grimstone was long and difficult. I had been working on the characters for many years, through various different incarnations. While I was in college, especially my first year at Columbia (before I had to stop attending), I was developing Ribcage’s world into a dark fantasy/adventure story, something that I hoped I would one day produce as a series of animated films. The further along I got with that project, the less I liked it as it got farther and farther away from what the characters originally were. I decided it was time to get back to basics and started changing things around again. The idea I came up with was what I originally intended to do a comic strip about when I discovered KeenSpot. But I quickly realized that it still wasn’t ready. I hadn’t gone far enough back to my roots.

Grimstone was the result of wanting to do something more like what I had started out doing, just something funny and cartoony, with all the classic movie monster characters. I forget now just how I came up with the idea of Ribcage as an actor in horror movies, and all the other characters having some Hollywood connection. It was close to the original concept of The Ribcage Show that I had done as a kid (Ribcage and friends as stars of their own television show), but different enough that I didn’t feel like I was just repeating myself. This first week of comics are the first ideas I had for the strip and were all sketched out roughly on a piece of printer paper. Ideas continued forming and the world of Grimstone came together rather quickly.

Commentary written in 2006.

This remains one of my favorite jokes and represents what I consider my signature style of “offbeat” humor. Offbeat meaning that the first three panels of the strip establish a certain rhythm of time, place and characters, and that said rhythm is abruptly broken in the last panel with a sudden and, sometimes, unexpected change in setting or situation. You’ll see it a lot through Grimstone, especially in these early strips.

My initial work on Grimstone was greatly influenced by a wonderful book I had received by cartoonist Christopher Hart entitled Drawing On the Funny Side of the Brain. That and other books by Hart helped shape my artistic style for Grimstone as well as my writing. In fact, if it weren’t for his books, I may not have returned to doing a web comic (my first being the short-lived and ill-fated My Martian Friends).

Commentary written in 2006.

More of that wonderful “offbeat” humor I was talking about. I like this gag too. I cringe when looking at the original speech baloons though. I was still getting the hang of doing certain things back then. Eventually, I figured out a much better way of creating the balloons in Illustator and would later update the strip with what you see now. I would continue to learn neat new tricks to do with Adobe Illustrator throughout the course of working on the comic.

Commentary written in 2006.

And here it is, the first appearance of everyone’s favorite vampire (or at least my favorite vampire) Count Cyanide. The Count was a character I came up with during Alegbra class in my Freshman year of high school, many years after creating Ribcage and the original main characters. His place in the story fluctuated throughout the many incarnations of Ribcage’s world, and he was never a very prominent character. In fact, in the version I was working on just before Grimstone, he was extremely minor, and much more fearsome looking. I did a total redesign on the Count, in both appearance and personality, for Grimstone. He’s much closer to the original character now and quickly became the number two character in the strip, not only in terms of prominence, but also in terms of my adoration for the character. He’s my favorite to draw and one of my favorites to write. And he quickly became much more than I ever imagined he would be.

The joke is inspired by an old Ray-Bans commercial where a bunch of vampires prevent themselves from being toasted by the rising sun by wearing the sunglasses, except for one that forgot his and gets blasted to smithereens.

Commentary written in 2006.

Not one of my funniest strips, but it does establish Ribcage’s short temper and occasional hot-headed-ness. It also gives some background on what films Ribcage has been in, or at least, the actors he’s worked with. He appeared in House of Frankenstein with Boris Karloff, House on Haunted Hill with Vincent Price, and Army of Darkness with Bruce Campbell.

Commentary written in 2006.

Joel Schumaker freaking sucks. You can quote me on that. He didn’t always suck. He use to make good movies. The Lost Boys is one of my favorite vampire flicks. But he totally lost it after the whole Batman fiasco. Batman Forever had its moments, mostly from the ever hilarious Jim Carey, but come on. Batman and Robin is the worst movie I have ever seen. Terrible, terrible piece of monkey poo. I loathe it.

I am a huge Batman fanatic, and the first movie got me, like so many people, really into comic books. For the first three Batman films, I owned the VHS tapes, the soundtracks on casette, the comic adaptations, the official movie souveneir magazines, t-shirts, toys, you get the picture. I will own the special edition DVDs sooner or later. But for Batman and Robin, I own nothing. Not a damn thing to remind me of that horrible putrid mess of a movie. Schumaker and screenwriter Akiva Goldsman should be ashamed of themselves (Akiva doubly-so for the very stupid Lost in Space movie). They practically killed the Batman franchise. I’ll take Superman IV: The Quest for Peace over Batman and Robin any day. And that’s all I have to say on the matter.

Commentary written in 2006.

I think this is my favorite strip from the original run. I don’t know why, I just think it’s really funny. So do a lot of other people it seems. In fact, I like this one so much, I think I’m going to make a t-shirt based on it.

This strip is also the first appearance of the often used bar set, and its oddly human bartender.

Commentary written in 2006.