I have a webcomic now! Co-created with artist Anne Marcano and lettered by Danny Djeljosevic, it’s about an office drone working a day job so that they can afford traveling to an alien world where they get to be a superhero one weekend at a time!
Tag Archives: comics
New comic alert!
I’ve spent most of this year working on pitches, so I haven’t released as many new comics as I’d like to. However, I’m happy to present to you my latest available work as a comics writer.
Marta Selusi and I co-created A Prayer to God, a short comic about a mortally-wounded barbarian who meets his maker, and she has serialized it on her Deviant Art account. Check it out here.
Hey, here’s the fan-comic I did with Jean Pe:
You can find Jean’s work here where I highly recommend you hire her because she did ALL the artwork you’re looking at.
We do not own any of these characters and are not seeking to profit off of this work. Our goal is to celebrate Aquaman during the year of the character’s 75th anniversary. All characters are owned by DC Comics. Aquaman was created by Paul Norris and The Demon was created by Jack Kirby.
Here’s a dropbox link for an easier read.
We hope you liked this!
And you might expect to see this reposted here in the future with new letters from someone I have wanted to work with professionally for a long time.
Quick Update
My press badge for SDCC came in the mail today!
The comic Sally Cantirino and I did has been submitted to Comixolgy! I’ve ordered a small printing to take with me to San Diego. I’m not gonna push it on anyone but I’d like to have copies in case anyone asks about my work.
We also worked on a pitch together for an anthology that I’m feeling really good about! Whether good or bad, there will be more news on that possibly near the end of July.
That fan-comic I wrote is halfway to being complete!
And I’d have called you a liar if you had told me this previously, but I’m going to be taking a more active role in Comics Bulletin starting really soon.
All this heading towards a new job and a new semester in the Fall. S’gonna be very busy but I think it’ll be worth it.
On Getting Collaborators Paid and Promoting My Work
This is all a bit raw and rambling so bear with it if you would.
I wrote a comic in 2014 and someone drew it for me in 2015. That someone was Conan Sinclair, an Australian artist and just a generally cool dude, and I paid him for his work. But I didn’t pay him as much as I feel he deserves. He took the work because he read what I sent him and responded to it. I didn’t know until this year that he got something more out of it than I expected (and that made me quite happy). Turning 21 this year made me freak out the way I freaked out when I turned 20 last year, so I resolved to start putting more effort into my comics career that I had been sheepishly keeping up. I looked at what I had completed: a short comic completed with a great artist that I had complicated feelings towards. Part of those complicated feelings was that I had paid Conan the only page rate I could afford but not the one he deserved. I wanted to get that comic published so I could put “Comics Writer” in my Twitter bio without feeling like a liar and I wanted to get Conan paid.
I found a place online that could publish it, an outlet that wasn’t aimed at the comics internet and stood to grant more exposure to myself and Conan, and I sent them a pitch. I sent them a PDF with the comic and a short paragraph describing a prospective personal essay in which I described the process of creating the comic from my perspective while exploring my complicated relationship with the material. They said they wanted to publish it. I spent a few days working on the essay to accompany the comic. I knew they were buying the essay more than the comic so I knew I had to make that purchase worth it for them and I felt I owed it to myself to express some things I hadn’t really been open to discussing. Shea Hennum, a writer I greatly look up to and someone who I think of as a friend, really helped me in editing that essay from something raw and ineffectual in its communication into something much better. I was proud of how it turned out.
The publication of the comic and my essay was a bit of a nightmare, though. Continue reading
My first comic was published today!
My comic Veins with Conan Sinclair was published 4/4/16 over at The Establishment along with a personal essay I wrote about my experiences with mental illness surrounding its creation. This comic meant a lot to Conan and I so I’m quite glad we found it a home at The Establishment after sitting in a drawer for a year.
You can read it here: LINK
And I’ve also assembled a thorough writing process post: LINK
There’s No Crying in Baseball
I didn’t play baseball in school or little league. I don’t know if my friend and comics critic Chase Magnett did either but I suspect not. We do a column over at Comics Bulletin called “Leading Questions.” I say “we” but all I really do is ask Chase an often ridiculous or manipulative question about comics for him to answer.
This week, I asked him what comics make him cry and he wrote a fantastic essay on the impact of a series of Calvin & Hobbes strips had on him in response. A few people have admitted to crying when reading what he had to say.
You can read it here.
Mark O. Stack 