I don’t think I have been taking proper advantage of the patreon blog as newsletter / work and inspiration blog, but I intent to change that. This may be my first early new year’s resolution.
Meanwhile I’ve been struggling to get a new comic off the ground -discarding stories for being too long, too weird, being two ideas at a time or simply concepts that refuse to take a story shape- I’ve been following the reach of a repost of one of my comics on tumblr, which I reformatted considering mobile reading. The consequence of that being that it became my most reblogged comic on tumblr, with more than 15K notes so far , and I believe that’s a clear sign regarding format and how lots of people are reading and scrolling through content these days. Since I’m not particularly concerned with fancy page layouts, this is not a heavy restriction on how I present my stories, though it has some influence on the pacing and the kind of story-frames I put into each comic panel. I’ve been thinking about these aspects over the latest comics, trying to reach a formal coherence where in story terms, although most Secret Knots comics navigate around a handful of topics -culture parody, made-up references, imaginary places and habits, odd paranoia- they often diverge in tone and genre. A more stable shape may be useful to me in order to work freely the different stories under a stylistic guise of cohesion. Yes, I’m unveiling a distraction technique here, but this is the Secret Notes blogs for patrons only, then so be it.
In local news, I’ve had some really good ones concerning print publication in my country. Over the latest weeks I was contacted by an indie graphic novel publisher to make a small print book with some of my comics, and a few days after, I found out that another publisher interested in making a bigger, hardcover compilation of my older comics was granted funds in order to do that, so I look forward to a bright new year regarding physical books. These will be my first print books ever, so I must confess I’m shamelessly looking forward to take selfies with my book on bookstores shelves; my book among other actual books. It’s the kind of thing that thrills you when you’ve been annoying bookstore owners with your constant, silent, ominous presence on their shops for years.
I hope you liked my take on Black Manta, above. I don’t know a lot really about superhero comics, but I’ve always liked that guy. Look at that suit, contemplate that helmet. Supervillains are so committed.
I’ll be here again in a few days with more notes. I hope you have a nice, lovely week.
J.S.
What I’ve been
watching: ‘Humans’, season two. ‘The Exorcist’ tv show, I think it’s accidentally hilarious and I love it. Finished ‘Westworld’ s01. Arrival. Happy Valley season 2.
reading: 1Q84 by H. Murakami. Normal by Warren Ellis.
listening: this best of the year podcast (feature ambient, alt rock, psych, folk and more), and this one called Cantus Orbis: Some Examples of Medieval Drone – Vol.3
scrolling through:
‘Where to begin with folk horror’
14 Beautifully Shot Horror Films That Changed Cinematography Forever
