This page, by the way, is where the rousing travel music kicks in if this was a movie.

Also, one of my favorite cartoonists, Shaenon Garrity, just started a new webcomic! I seriously doubt she needs the links from me, but what can I say, I'm excited. It's called Skin Horse, and it's only one strip in but so far I love it. Sincerely.

Judging from the intro, it's named after the skin horse from the Velveteen Rabbit, which was my my favorite story of all time ever when I was a kid. Oh, the Velveteen Rabbit! I love that little guy. Double bonus!

Oh crap! I forgot to fix the color of Jackie's pants before I posted this! I'll have to change it when I get home. (What was I thinking?)

Merry Christmas! Mine was pretty good. Every year we watch It's A Wonderful Life on Christmas Eve if we can, and every year I'm reminded that it really is a completely awesome movie. I think Frank Capra's "Capra-corn" reputation is a little undeserved. Most of his movies have such bleak circumstances that the usually uplifting endings seem very welcome and sincere, and not at all over the top.

But anyway, I hope you all had a great holiday, and thanks so much for reading! That's your christmas present to me.

(Okay, maybe that sentence was a little over the top, but I mean it.)

Oh man, it's almost time for Death Pool! I only got Joey Bishop this year. I had lots of good ones, too. Jerry Lewis, I love you, but I cannot fucking believe that you are still alive.

Just wanted to say that this page is one of my favorites of all the ones I ever drew.

Nona's got "Black Beauty" there. Dean Martin claimed that was the only book he ever read, besides comic books. (He loved Batman.)

...Look, I love Dean Martin, okay?!

Josh is every boy I knew in high school. Every white boy, anyway.

I just made a Sketch page, but it's not linked on the main page yet. For now, you can find it here. There's only four things up there now, but there's a lot more coming.
Last blog entry I recommended the movie Dog Day Afternoon. This time I'm gonna suggest Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore. It's a very early Scorsese, and sort of atypical because it's about a single woman and her son. This was also a huge huge inspiration for The Good Crook, or at least I think it was. It's a good one, and much much better than the TV show it spawned (Alice.)

It's also a little closer to being a christmas movie for the whole family. But not totally. There's swearing. Kids swearing. (That's one of my favorite things.)

You might notice a link to a Good Crook holiday card I made above the logo there. I think it came out pretty okay! I might use it as my regular holiday card except for it has guns in it.

The other day I watched one of my favorite movies again for the first time in probably a year, Dog Day Afternoon. If you like this comic I strongly recommend it (not that this comic is anywhere close to that movie in terms of ... goodness). Al Pacino's character in that movie was a huge inspiration for Jackie, especially visually. There are some major differences, though. For instance, Jackie is not a young, gay bank robber. So, y'know. It's also worth it just for John Cazale's performance (he was Fredo in Godfather). He'll break your heart, but doesn't he always?
So anyway, Dog Day Afternoon: It's a perfect holiday movie for the whole family! (Not really.)

Happy Thanksgiving, everybody! I'm really late on the Scott Pilgrim train but seriously it may be the coolest comic book of all time. I didn't want to read it before because I thought it was about anime hipsters, and it kind of is, except somehow really good.

I've been looking forever for my sketchook with all the concept work I did for Good Crook. I just found it yesterday, so I'll put up a sketches section really soon. It's a Thanksgiving miracle!

Hey, everyone! I hope you're enjoying the comic. Please don't hesitate to let me know what you think, whether it's by emailing me or on this blog. There's no "chapters" in this, because I want it all to be more sort of cinematic or something, but this page does mark the start of the second thirty-page installment block, so I guess you could call it part two if you want.

There's been two mob movies released recently, We Own The Night and American Gangster. I thought both of them had a raging case of Trying Too Hard To Be Goodfellas syndrome, which is only marginally more tolerable than Trying Too Hard To Be Pulp Fiction syndrome. We need some new brand of mob movie for everyone to rip off. The age of the gritty, realistic mafia and the hip, self-aware mafia is over. It is time for an earnest, whimsical mafia movie that's sweetly charming and vaguely magical. James Cromwell can star as the grumpy, strict old don who learns to love again with the help of his bright-eyed, inventive new consigliere.

Well, it sounds awesome to me.

Happy Halloween! Here's a quick Halloween picture I did (it'll open in a new window). Features characters from Templar, Starslip, and Gunnerkrigg Court. (I don't like that cutesy "Guess who they're supposed to be!" thing.)

In "real life", I don't think any of the characters read webcomics. I think Nona would most likely go as Lyra from Golden Compass. The movie version better not suck.

Quick note- You may notice an "Extra Comics" link there. I'm still messing around with it, so expect it to be all wierd until at least the weekend. You can still hit the link at the header to see the 24 hour comic all in one place.

For now, my 24-hour comic, about Jackie and his dad, can be found here. It's just a temporary location though, I'm still trying to decide how to present it. I might just make a seperate series here on Webcomics Nation for Good Crook related short stories, since I have a couple of em in the works. I'll try to get that done, maybe on Thursday or something.

Guys who read Bukowski when they should be working. What are you gonna do?!

Anyway, I did 24 Hour Comics Day! At first I was worried that I had resigned myself to spending the whole Saturday in my room hunched over my desk, but it actually turned out to be really fun. I wrote a story about Jackie's dad. I'm not gonna post it here yet because I used part of an anecdote one of my teachers told me, and I need to ask his permission to use it. Hopefully I'll have it up on Wednesday. It came out pretty nice if I do say so myself.

Four new things in the gallery, including the teaser image that used to be up in the archives.

I plan on participating in 24-hour-comics day this Saturday, if I can get a handle on my homework and stuff. It will probably be Good Crook-related, and if so, I'll post it here. I'm also working on a short series of comic strips featuring just Nona, which I might put up in November. Anyway, look for an "Extra Comics" section soon.

I like this page.

Also, there's a new picture in the gallery. It came out pretty sweet, if I do say so myself.

If the characters look slightly different in the first few panels of today's comic, it's because I completely redrew them yesterday morning because I decided the writing there was dumb. I tried to draw Jackie like I used to. It was way harder then I thought it would be.

After the comic has been going up for a while I'm going to put that, and a few other pages, up in a category called "Deleted Scenes". Because there are a lot of pages I redraw or cut from the comic. And it might be ... sort of ... interesting? I don't know.

I am so proud of that drawing of Robert Deniro, for reals. Man, what a cool guy.

When my brother read this, he looked up at me and said with a big smile, "You based Rico on me, right?" My answer was "Well... I don't think so- actually, well, maybe." So let's just say for now that the answer is yes.

I'm gonna put up a cast page and maybe some other stuff at the end of the week.

Hey guys! You may notice I've added a gallery of Good Crook-related images. Eventually I'm gonna put up a cast page and other extras, but not yet.

Today's page is one of my favorites, by the way.

Drawing this page, I learned that omelettes are way harder to draw than they look. At least, for me.

I'm mainly just posting now so that big long one below isn't on the top. I get embarrassed when I write long blog posts.

Do you guys read My Year of Flops? It's a blog on the Onion A.V. Club where this guy writes about movies that failed critically and commercially, and didn't even get a cult following afterward- movies that were either completely forgotten or became a sad joke. It's really interesting, and I want to see more of the movies reviewed there then the ones that get good grades on the main site.

Even though there's no page today, I wanted to write a short post about some stuff I've been thinking about. But first:
Thanks so much to Spike of Templar, Arizona for linking Good Crook and saying some really nice things in her blog. Templar is one of my absolute favorite comics of all time, for serious. And Spike is an artist who has a certain sensibility that I just really get into. It's not just that I love her work- I also love the sort of mindset I get when I read her stuff. It's very inventive, but completely natural at the same time, which is very rare. It's the same for me when I read Michael Chabon- it takes me a while to get out of the mood the writing puts me in. Know what I mean? Anyway, I swear to the god of the Internet I would still be saying this if she hadn't linked me.

So, yeah. This comic has barely started, but I hope you'll stick with it. Maybe this isn't the format it's best suited for, but I hope you'll enjoy it anyway. I'm excited about it, and maybe you will be too.

Guys, I drew most of this like a year ago. I promise- the drawings -will- get better.

Also, I'm gonna add other stuff like a cast page and sketches and whatever after a few more pages go up. We're almost at the talking!

Still no talking for maybe another two pages, but this is still one of my favorites.

This past week of comics has done way better than I thought it would, so thanks to everyone who's reading!

Anyway, you can now get to this comic from www.goodcrook.com. That's probably easier.

So, here we go. I wrote this thing as a graphic novel or whatever, so the first couple of pages aren't going to be... action-packed, exactly. It'll probably take a week and a half of updates to get into, you know, talking and stuff. I'm pretty happy with the drawings, though. Come back here Wednesday for the next page, which at least has one of the characters on it. After that the comic will be up MWF. This counts as Monday's, just because I wanted it to start on the first of the month.

Does it look wierd that the comic is on a white background but the page is black? Or is that okay? I don't know, I'm not very good at site design and stuff like that. It's good that Webcomics Nation does most of the work for me.

By the way, soon you'll be able to find this page at www.goodcrook.com. FANCY.

So I'm setting up for when I start posting pages of Good Crook.
Basically copying the blog setup for Templar, Arizona.
Um... sorry.

There's probably something better than Blogger to use for something like this,
but um... I'm not gonna worry about that right now.

Anyway, this comic is something I've been working on for
over a year now. I'm giving myself until September to keep ironing
out the details. I wrote it as a graphic novel and I'm still a little worried
about positng it online. The pacing isn't really written for page-a-day stuff.
But, I think posting on the web is the best way to get myself used to showing
it to people. I'll probably keep making small changes even after I post pages
though.

But yeah. I hope you guys... will like it? Or something.

First

Testing some stuff...