Turn Up Turn Up… Turn Up My Microphone
crossposted from Lee Edward McIlmoyle's blog
Okay, so today is the day that the PDF and individual pages of the StinZine Issue 002 June issue have been released. You can see the first two pages and download the web-friendly PDF HERE.
For those wondering what the StinZine is, it’s a neighbourhood newsletter/zine with a difference. We use local Stinson neighbourhood (Hamilton Ontario) writers and artists to furnish us with articles and artwork, and then we turn it into a roughly sixteen-page half-letter-sized magazine, both in black and white (to keep down print costs) and colour (for online use).
This issue marks the first summer edition, so we went with a comic book theme, including panels and balloons and a clever little cartoon character called Zoe, whom I’ve been drawing off and on for about fifteen years. I promised her a comic book appearance, and now I can finally collect my long-overdue agent’s fee. Just in time to pay the hydro bill.
So perhaps a little explanation about Zoe: she’s kind of like my daughter, only she’s more like the daughter I’ve never had. The closest I’ve ever had to a daughter was Alex, and I can’t claim that, because the most I ever actually did for her was babysit a few times after Wendy and Gary got back together. Other than that, I only helped raise a little boy for a couple of years, and teased my mother’s former next-door neighbour’s daughter, Ashley, mercilessly about marrying her when she got old enough (she was an adorable young lady, and always made me smile, but was far, far too young for me).
So, Zoe… technically the ghost in my computer. She’s also a fictional character who features as-you guessed it-the ghost in a computer, only one owned by a mad genius in a graphic novel I have yet to finish producing. She was accidentally killed by a freak mishap with a virtual reality roleplaying game that my protagonists were all fans of in their teens, and she basically haunts the online digital world of my story until years later, when one of the protagonists, who was permanently crippled in the same freak mishap, decides to reenact the events of that fateful day and try to undo the psychological damage it did to everyone involved. A story of redemption and sacrifice, of taboos and trauma, of a world that has no concept of Good or Evil. The Gas Mask Chronicles… coming to an interactive graphic novel near you… some day…
But meanwhile, Zoe has been waiting for her day in the spotlight, and finally it came. She mostly recites the lines of other writers in this one, but she does a good job. I only wish I’d had more time to draw the final art better. I really had to rush to meet the deadline, and several of the drawings are taken from either thumbnail sketches or from preliminary portraits working up to the proper caricatures, which never materialized. And zoe looks pretty rough in more than a few of those panels, many of which were drawn without being drawn to scale, so they either look really rough or they look really faint.
But hey, it’s a comic, it’s drawn by me, designed by me, and (in part) written and edited by me (with a LOT of help from my neighbourhood and the StinZine team: Ralph, Erika, Katherine, Maggie and Dawn, this time around), so it’s pretty cool. I’m quite proud of it, and if I never do it again, at least I’ve done it once.
Now, if I can just master coding to create an online version that is fully interactive…
Time to get dressed and make the coffee. Must wake my lovely wife to get ready for a graduation ceremony of our friends in the Neighbourhood Leadership Institute program this afternoon. Thank you for reading.
Lee.
Share this:
Okay, so today is the day that the PDF and individual pages of the StinZine Issue 002 June issue have been released. You can see the first two pages and download the web-friendly PDF HERE.
For those wondering what the StinZine is, it’s a neighbourhood newsletter/zine with a difference. We use local Stinson neighbourhood (Hamilton Ontario) writers and artists to furnish us with articles and artwork, and then we turn it into a roughly sixteen-page half-letter-sized magazine, both in black and white (to keep down print costs) and colour (for online use).
This issue marks the first summer edition, so we went with a comic book theme, including panels and balloons and a clever little cartoon character called Zoe, whom I’ve been drawing off and on for about fifteen years. I promised her a comic book appearance, and now I can finally collect my long-overdue agent’s fee. Just in time to pay the hydro bill.
So perhaps a little explanation about Zoe: she’s kind of like my daughter, only she’s more like the daughter I’ve never had. The closest I’ve ever had to a daughter was Alex, and I can’t claim that, because the most I ever actually did for her was babysit a few times after Wendy and Gary got back together. Other than that, I only helped raise a little boy for a couple of years, and teased my mother’s former next-door neighbour’s daughter, Ashley, mercilessly about marrying her when she got old enough (she was an adorable young lady, and always made me smile, but was far, far too young for me).
So, Zoe… technically the ghost in my computer. She’s also a fictional character who features as-you guessed it-the ghost in a computer, only one owned by a mad genius in a graphic novel I have yet to finish producing. She was accidentally killed by a freak mishap with a virtual reality roleplaying game that my protagonists were all fans of in their teens, and she basically haunts the online digital world of my story until years later, when one of the protagonists, who was permanently crippled in the same freak mishap, decides to reenact the events of that fateful day and try to undo the psychological damage it did to everyone involved. A story of redemption and sacrifice, of taboos and trauma, of a world that has no concept of Good or Evil. The Gas Mask Chronicles… coming to an interactive graphic novel near you… some day…
But meanwhile, Zoe has been waiting for her day in the spotlight, and finally it came. She mostly recites the lines of other writers in this one, but she does a good job. I only wish I’d had more time to draw the final art better. I really had to rush to meet the deadline, and several of the drawings are taken from either thumbnail sketches or from preliminary portraits working up to the proper caricatures, which never materialized. And zoe looks pretty rough in more than a few of those panels, many of which were drawn without being drawn to scale, so they either look really rough or they look really faint.
But hey, it’s a comic, it’s drawn by me, designed by me, and (in part) written and edited by me (with a LOT of help from my neighbourhood and the StinZine team: Ralph, Erika, Katherine, Maggie and Dawn, this time around), so it’s pretty cool. I’m quite proud of it, and if I never do it again, at least I’ve done it once.
Now, if I can just master coding to create an online version that is fully interactive…
Time to get dressed and make the coffee. Must wake my lovely wife to get ready for a graduation ceremony of our friends in the Neighbourhood Leadership Institute program this afternoon. Thank you for reading.
Lee.
Share this: