Okay, here’s the situation. When I stopped doing the original Grimstone comic on KeenSpace, I had not yet finished the Count Cyanide & Toasty storyline. It stopped on August 8th. The rest of the strips in this storyline were not completed as part of that original run. When I began putting together the first book collection, From Here To Insanity, I decided I was going to finish that storyline. So the remaining pages of The Haunting of Count Cyanide were completed between late December 2005 and early January 2006. The first edition of the book, where they appeared for the first time, was available in February of 2006.

When the Grimstone website relaunched in March 2006, I did not have the old archive up yet and was not sure if I was going to put it up at all. I eventually decided to put all the old stuff up, including these remaining strips that had never been online. At the time, I could not post them with a recent date because they would have interrupted the current story and they would have all had the same date. I was originally going to post them with dates near to the dates they were completed on, but I ultimately decided to post them under the dates they would have originally been posted on had I finished the story back in 2003. So as you read these strips and, perhaps, notice the 2005/2006 copyrights with the 2003 post dates, just remember that the dates are ultimately meaningless and just allow me to keep things better organized. Which was another thing I disliked about the daily comic format, the constant association of comics with a particular date. I much prefer comic books, where I can just say issue 5 or whatever. (Yes, I know, comic book issues still have dates, but the issue number is used way more to identify them.)

Commentary written in 2006.

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.