After a whole bunch of years, I finally have something (albeit something very short) I did coming out in print:
“The Fairy Tale” is a 2-page vignette with art by Charley Spencer, a small window onto an ordinary life. It will be appearing in The Girly Comic, issue 15, which I am reliably informed will be available at the UK Web & Mini Comix Thing 2007 this weekend (linked here).
(The Girly Comic website is here but issue 15 isn’t on there yet. When it is, copies can be picked up from there.)
Here is a look at Charley’s art for the story:
(Image links to original at Flickr, where the line weights look a lot better. I had to reduce it to show it here.)
Charley really is very good. Kind of makes me wish I’d fleshed the piece out into a more defined story, rather than leaving it as a deliberately ambiguous strip, but I’m still quite happy with it.
Cousin George
Congrats cuz.
Remember, the great thing about non-fleshed out stuff, is you get to flesh it out!
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Nicolas Papaconstantinou
Hopefully, readers will have the patience to do that. I’ve seen it in print now, and while I think everyone has done a good job on it, there are choices that I made that I wish I didn’t.
Which sounds incredibly precious when you’re talking about a two page strip, but what can you do? I will make better choices next time!
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Cousin George
See… if you can learn those lessons from a 2 page strip, why produce a 400 page graphic novel til you’ve worked those out?!
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Nicolas Papaconstantinou
George – That is a good point. Hmm. There truly is a positive philosophical view on everything, isn’t there?
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Cousin George
By that, I don’t mean don’t do the big stuff. Just that there’s still loads of value in the small stuff.
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Rich
Is that George in the pictures?!
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Nicolas Papaconstantinou
George – Oh, yeah, I agree. For example, I love doing the short fiction pieces on this site. In fact, it’s interesting how much less critical and neurotic I am about them than I was about the finished result of this strip, when one considers that this website is all me, whereas in The Girly Comic, there are many other contributors to distract from my stuff (positive or negative).
Rich – Heh. Good question, and no. Charley drew Steve from the following description:
“He’s got mid-length black hair. He’s not a strapping lad, but he’s still taller than Julia, and a bit chunkier, too. Not fat, just ordinary.
Steve is wearing casual clothes… black jeans, logo tee-shirt”
The reason I find it funny that you asked is that there’s more than a passing resemblance between George and myself (more obvious when we were younger, mind), and as such, Steve kind of looks a bit like me, as well.
However, Charley and I have never met face to face, and as far as I know, he hasn’t got the first clue what I look like. It’s a coincidence that the long, black hair he gave Steve is so curly, but I like it.
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