Gods & Undergrads Update #4 - the last one for Chapter 6!

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Aaaaaaand scene. That's it for this chapter, everyone! I wanted to leave it on a quasi-cliffhanger, or as my boyfriend would call it, an "Oh shit, it's Mystique" moment. Which is a reference to the first time I saw X-Men in the theater. When Mystique first appears on screen, revealing herself as Senator Kelly's aid in the helicopter, this dude in the back of the theater was TOTALLY SHOCKED and said out loud, "Oh SHIT, it's Mystique!" Priceless.

For this chapter, I wanted to deal almost entirely with Anthony's descent into the Underworld. At first I thought about making it just about he and Hermes' journey together, but then I decided to split it up into sections - each one dealing with one of the stages of grief. As Anthony eventually accepts his death, his wounds return, and it finally becomes real what happened to him. And even though the build-up is kind of scary and sad, the reality is - kind of no big deal. Hades was the general underworld of the population - it's where everyone went, good or bad, which I always loved about Greek Mythology. Rather than going down to hell or up to heaven, you got ferried to one place, and sorted out later. I know I barely touch on Hades and Persephone in this chapter, but I'm saving them for later. I didn't want them to steal focus from the guy we've journeyed with this whole time - not yet anyway.

Oh - and they're big on purpose. ;)

Thanks everyone for reading, and please feel free to share your thoughts on this page, or any part of this chapter!

***UPDATE: Gods & Undergrads returns on Dec. 12, 2012!! EEEEEEE!***

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Countdown

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Oh, how I wish the title was "final countdown" and I could see Gob's magic intro. [vimeo http://vimeo.com/1418162]

But by countdown, I mean the countdown to the end of Chapter 6 of Gods & Undergrads! Woooo! Gasp! There are only 4 pages left, my friends, so starting next Tuesday, January 17th I'll post a page a day. It's not terribly dramatic, since really there's only a few pages left, BUT STILL. I like to pretend this sort of thing is a big deal.

In case you need a recap of what's happened thus far, you can check out:

Then come back next week for the startling conclusion! (okay ... still, not startling, but EXCITING!)

Countdown

/

Oh, how I wish the title was "final countdown" and I could see Gob's magic intro. [vimeo http://vimeo.com/1418162]

But by countdown, I mean the countdown to the end of Chapter 6 of Gods & Undergrads! Woooo! Gasp! There are only 4 pages left, my friends, so starting next Tuesday, January 17th I'll post a page a day. It's not terribly dramatic, since really there's only a few pages left, BUT STILL. I like to pretend this sort of thing is a big deal.

In case you need a recap of what's happened thus far, you can check out:

Then come back next week for the startling conclusion! (okay ... still, not startling, but EXCITING!)

Bored Comic Ladies

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After drawing this print of Poison Ivy a couple months back ...

I decided it might be fun to draw popular lady comic characters who looked equally as bored. Like - ho hum, I'm gorgeous and quite powerful and have stuff to do, but I'm waiting for the dryer to stop running before I can leave the house ... you know, so my house doesn't catch on fire and I lose all my awesome possessions.

So here's my next one - Harley Quinn! She's BEYOND bored ...

Bored Comic Ladies

/

After drawing this print of Poison Ivy a couple months back ...

I decided it might be fun to draw popular lady comic characters who looked equally as bored. Like - ho hum, I'm gorgeous and quite powerful and have stuff to do, but I'm waiting for the dryer to stop running before I can leave the house ... you know, so my house doesn't catch on fire and I lose all my awesome possessions.

So here's my next one - Harley Quinn! She's BEYOND bored ...

Nona Tribute

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Since I mentioned my Lipstick & Malice character Nona LaBete the other day as being the face of my new website re-design, I thought I'd take a moment to share some of my thoughts and sketches of that sassy model/assassin. I created her in 2008, motivated by my love of La Femme Nikita (the movie, the show, and even Bridget Fonda's remake Point of No Return) and inspired by my own (minor) experiences with modeling. With Lipstick & Malice, there were a few points I wanted to address.

  1. The Sexy. Although I know the concept of the sexy femme fatale killer has been SUPER overdone, and the model/assassin idea has been covered (hello Domino), I thought it would be interesting to explore a killer whose strength lies in the fact that she is a model, first and foremost. And by being a model, she is the ultimate chameleon, someone who commands the spotlight and yet can morph into whatever the situation requires her to be. She becomes invisible because she's both the center of attention and whatever the stylist of the day commands she be. I dunno - for some reason, this idea fascinated me more than the run-of-the-mill hey, there's a hot girl, watch her take these criminals by surprise with her SEXINESS!
  2. The Skinny. I also wanted to explore the fact that sure, she can rock the lingerie and the sexy party dresses, but she's also incredibly skinny. The biz requires her to basically be a hanger, so she's got very little meat on her bones. I didn't want to make her look anorexic, but definitely all sinewy - and in that way she could fit wherever she needed to, compress or expand like Mr. Fantastic. I definitely looked to Aeon Flux for lithe inspiration. She needed to fit in vents, hide behind door cracks, and slink along the floor.
  3. The Gore. Another main point I wanted to emphasize with this comic, was that she wasn't afraid to be brutal or do what needed to be done to finish the job. If she's an assassin, she's all in. In my second book in the series, I tried to emphasize the brutality of the profession and how little it bothered Nona. She's still a killer, remember? There's no need for her to be squeamish - she wants this job, for whatever reason. It appeals to her.
  4. The Victim. I know in a lot of stories involving crime and killers and women, there's a tendency to make even the strongest women eventually become victims (if you haven't heard of Gail Simone's Women in Refrigerators yet, definitely check it out -- the video summation from Bitch Magazine is also good). I wanted to make sure to steer clear of this stereotype - it doesn't mean that Nona will never be in danger, or fighting for her life (it's kind of part of the profession, I would think), but by no means is that going to be the default position for her, nor is the method going to be torture porn. I tried to drive this home in my 3rd book in the series, when Nona is attacked in her home, in an extremely vulnerable position, but yet doesn't get raped/murdered/treated any differently from a male assassin in her same position. In fact, she may even come out ahead.

So that's a little introduction into my model/assassin series. Here's a colorized version of Nona that I've done recently, as well as a few awesome pieces of FAN ART! which I love love love and don't receive nearly enough of!

Loris is an amazing comicker whose illustration blog can be found here!

Charly's a longtime friend and one half of the super podcast Indie Spinner Rack. You can find his artwork here! Sorry for the crappiness of the reproduction of his drawing - but he did, after all, sketch it on the back of an envelope that was mailed and, apparently, crushed and dragged through the mud. ;)

Et Voila!

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Since I mentioned in this post, I'm bad at thoroughly planning a project out before I get too excited and want to see it ... I've updated the main page of my website! It used to look like this:

....Aaaaand now it looks like this!

I wanted the image at the top to be my latest-and-greatest work, so it will change depending on what I've worked on lately and liked. But since it was a picture of my Lipstick & Malice character Nona La Bete, and she was angrily smoking, my friends thought it might give viewers the impression that I was an angry smoker. So I added a little lipstick (as is my custom) and tried to make her look a little happier. I also don't think it particularly looks like me (hello, she has boobs), but apparently I do have a tendency to slouch.

Let me know what you guys think! I know it doesn't match anything else on the site yet, but gradually it will. I have lots of plans to redesign my comics pages so they're much easier to navigate, add a comments functionality, etc. In the meantime, if you guys have any critiques of my current site, I'd love to hear them!

'Sup December ... You Still Here?

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It's that awkward time of the year when I want to be on winter break and drawing nonstop, reading Calvin & Hobbes, and playing Donkey Kong on the N64. Alas, for me - it's back to work this week. But does that mean I have to stop eating cookies and listening to holiday music and generally pretending I'm still on some kind of vacation? I sure hope not. Well, since as I briefly mentioned last week, my computer ka-putzed, things have been a little hectic trying to get a new machine up and running that will allow me to limp along until I can buy a new one. Luckily my dad is the Frankenstein of computer hardware, so he and my boyfriend rigged up a nice little zombie to get me by.

Just a couple questions I had for YOU all in the meantime, though ...

As you know, I have two webcomics going - Gods & Undergrads and Bonnie N. Collide.  As things stand now, Bonnie is usually once-a-week updated and G&U maaaaybe once every two weeks. Now, I know that sporadic updating is the WORST trait a webcomic could possibly have. Alas, with the day job sometimes I find it a little tricky being consistent. So, my question to you guys out there is ... would you rather things update once on a semi-weekly schedule like they do now, orrrr update maybe twice a month with more than one strip/page at a time? I know everyone has a different opinion when it comes to their comics, but I wanted to give you guys a chance to chime in.

... Now I'm going to run off and pretend it's snowing outside or something. December!

'Sup December ... You Still Here?

/

It's that awkward time of the year when I want to be on winter break and drawing nonstop, reading Calvin & Hobbes, and playing Donkey Kong on the N64. Alas, for me - it's back to work this week. But does that mean I have to stop eating cookies and listening to holiday music and generally pretending I'm still on some kind of vacation? I sure hope not. Well, since as I briefly mentioned last week, my computer ka-putzed, things have been a little hectic trying to get a new machine up and running that will allow me to limp along until I can buy a new one. Luckily my dad is the Frankenstein of computer hardware, so he and my boyfriend rigged up a nice little zombie to get me by.

Just a couple questions I had for YOU all in the meantime, though ...

As you know, I have two webcomics going - Gods & Undergrads and Bonnie N. Collide.  As things stand now, Bonnie is usually once-a-week updated and G&U maaaaybe once every two weeks. Now, I know that sporadic updating is the WORST trait a webcomic could possibly have. Alas, with the day job sometimes I find it a little tricky being consistent. So, my question to you guys out there is ... would you rather things update once on a semi-weekly schedule like they do now, orrrr update maybe twice a month with more than one strip/page at a time? I know everyone has a different opinion when it comes to their comics, but I wanted to give you guys a chance to chime in.

... Now I'm going to run off and pretend it's snowing outside or something. December!