Psycho Joe

Psycho Joe published on 2 Comments on Psycho Joe
Psycho Joe
Click to view larger image

This is Psycho Joe.
Psycho Joe hates pretty much everything and everyone. He makes no apologies for anything he does and he attacks everything with maniacal gusto.
He has one friend – his knife, “Chucky”.

He is a character that a friend and I created when we were in high school, and I thought that he really needed to be drawn again.During our school years, we drew Joe and even created a Psycho Joe comic. It was full of hate, blood and cucumber sandwiches.

I created a few min-comics when I was younger, and now that I feel I have the artistic ability to do it justice, I am contemplating redoing the Psycho Joe mini-comic and I may release it sometime in the future.

Unfollowing family

Unfollowing family published on 1 Comment on Unfollowing family

There is nothing more lame than following your parents on social media.

At least, that is what many people think. (mainly teenagers and full on hipsters).
Sure, when you are at an impressionable age, most things to do with parents are perceived as lame and uncool.

But there are also many people who have embraced social media or online communications, as a way to reconnect with their parents and other family members. Now you can reach out and share all things good and bad,  faster and with more details than you could via the phone or letters.
Twitter, Skype, Facebook and emails have replaced the regular call home to mum, or a letter packed with photos of the kids.
Holiday photos are shared almost immediately via Flickr or Picasa.
Family gatherings are organised through Facebook events, Google calendars or email.
Overseas calls can be accompanied with vision, via webcams and Skype.

Technology is giving us ways to share and bring our families together, even as it simultaneously provides avenues to tear things apart.

Now, if I could just create an app to allow Mum to remotely do my washing.
(What? That is not callous.She misses doing it. I just know she does….)

Satanists and the Thug life.

Satanists and the Thug life. published on

The comics I am recommending that you check out this week, are two Australian strips which are currently shown online and will soon be gathered into graphic novels.
Showing your art & story online before you publish is becoming a very common way to build a fan base for your printed graphic novel before it actually hits the shelves. It is smart marketing, if you ask me.

Now get clicking, so you can check out:

McBlack

McBLACK is a graphic novel about the daily life of the thug, assassin, arsonist and small businessman Whiteface McBlack.
He used to be a private dick, but he gave it up in order to pursue on his true calling: murder, sabotage, theft and arson.

There’s shootings, stabbings, beheadings, machete attacks, hand grenades and exploding vehicles – so this is basically your standard slice of life drama….
Or, it would be a standard slice of life drama, if your daily life brought you into contact with mutant cyborg bikers, redneck triads, a wrestler-turned-monster-truck-dealer and a variety of other heavily armed freaks and weirdos.

This comic is presented online in a full page graphic novel layout, and has a fantastic dark, noir style feel to it’s art.
It is pencilled by the talented Jason Franks and the art is perfectly inked by Dave Gutierrez. You can get the McBlack graphic novel now, over at Black Glass Press.

The Sixsmiths

The Sixsmiths is a strip about an ordinary family of Satanists who have fallen on hard times.
They are your normal, everyday, suburban family. They go to work, go to school, buy groceries and attend church regularly. The only difference is that, when they go to church they worship Satan and cannot WAIT to experience the joy of living in Hell in the after-life. The Sixsmiths, this is one heckuva comedy and one helluva family.

The Sixsmiths is the work of J. Marc Schmidt and Jason Franks (yes him again).
Schmidts art style is wonderfully simplistic and clean, which allows the storylines to not be overshadowed by the art.

Schmidt is also the author of the graphic novels EGG STORY and EATING STEVE, available from Slave Labor Graphics.
The Sixsmiths is about to be released as a graphic novel later this year.

Got a strip you think I should know about? Then leave me a comment below.

Modern Discrimination

Modern Discrimination published on 5 Comments on Modern Discrimination

What side will you be on when this happens?

Take a look around and you will see the signs of the segregation that is coming. People are picking a side and defending their chosen brand with conviction and a semi-accurate knowledge of the systems inner workings.

If we are not careful, there will soon be whole sections of cities where certain technology manufacturers are totally banned.
Teenagers will meet in secret rooms to look at the “forbidden” systems not allowed by their parents.
And the world will be a shittier place…….

Why can’t we just have one unified platform that all manufacturers use, and live in harmony for ever more?