Oh, what could have been…

So, earlier this summer I took an online RISO zine-making class from OutletPDX in Portland. They were the same group that taught the RISO print-making class I took last summer, and I wanted to play around a little more with the technology & get published in one of their publications.

The theme was “Things we love about where we live”, and in June I was pretty optimistic about what my summer might look like. Alas, that window was only briefly open before Delta took hold here in the Mid-South, and I was back to mandated masking and pretty much sheltering in place before I got the chance to enjoy any of these things I love about Memphis…

An odd thing (well, odd to me) about Outlet’s Let’s Make a Zine! Volume 6 is that they didn’t want to make any extra copies available, either for contributors to purchase or even for them to sell in their own store! I’d hoped to have some copies of this multi-colored extravaganza to sell once I could get back to doing shows again, but I guess the vision of easily printed and distributed media they touted in the class wasn’t something they actually believe in practicing…

So, since I have no other way to share this cartoon (or the story behind it), here it is now (rather than my customary year after publication), in as close to its dayglo glory as is possible to scan!

It’s actually a shame I wasn’t able to have extra copies, because I did make my first tentative steps back towards doing shows at Memphis Zine Fest 6 over Labor Day weekend. It would have been an appealing item for that crowd. Instead, I took the opportunity to show off the books I’d finished over the nearly two years since I’ve last done a show. There wasn’t a crush of crowds (which was good, given where our numbers were earlier this month), and it felt okay. So okay that I’ve signed up to do another (larger) event in November…

One of the new books I showcased at Zine Fest was Monster Melee!, inspired by a format I saw in the Outlet virtual class. It was really a soft debut, as I was saving it for October’s Monster Market! I was happy with how it turned out, and was able to use some of what I learned in the RISO class to try out a new kind of coloring for me…

[January 2023 UPDATE: this post originally appeared on my now-closed Patreon page.]

The secret (finally) revealed!!

Revealed at long last– the secret origin of Watusi the Talking Dog!! Or maybe “originS” is more accurate, as told in this collection of comics by me, Matt Corrigan, Steve Peters & Daniel Heredia, Steve Skeates, Drew Boynton, Nate Corrigan, Larned Justin, Tom Cherry, Billy McKay, and J.B. Winter!

This “untold origin” project is one I’ve had on the back burner for a shamefully long time; it fell into the cracks when jam comic participation dried up before this invitational issue was filled up and other projects pushed to the fore. But it’s finally complete, and I’m really happy with how it turned out!

Watusi the Talking Dog #40 is a 16-page black & white digest w/ full-color cover; ask for it at your comic shop of choice, or get a copy by mail via my Square store for $3.00 postpaid in the US. You can also get a copy by becoming one of my Patreon patrons during the months of May/June 2021 at the Correspondent or Art Lover tier– plus, joining gives you immediate access to online bonus comics, including a full-color Human Spring adventure!

[January 2023 UPDATE: I’ve closed my Patreon page.]

A horrific year, reflected in drawings

As you might guess from its cover, the latest issue of my Smeary Soapbox Press-ents minicomic series is another “art” mini, collecting drawings from the pandemic year of 2020. It’s no big surprise that 2020 was a difficult year (I’m sure you know why), and that mood of impending doom was reflected in my drawings from that time. Lots of monstrous images, including ghosts, murder hornets, and silent era horror movies.

Interested in your own copy? You can get a copy of Smeary Soapbox Press-ents #21 (an 8-page minicomic) from me by mail, postpaid in the US for just $1.00 … or by becoming one of my Patreon patrons during April or May 2021 at the Correspondent or Art Lover level … plus, joining (at any level) gives you immediate access to other online bonus comics, including a full-color Human Spring adventure!

[January 2023 UPDATE: I’ve closed my Patreon page.]

Celebrate the 901!

The membership of the Mid-South Cartoonists Association are back doin’ what we do, this time celebrating The Good, the Bad, and the Sketchy about our own hometown! Memphis may be known for Blues, BBQ, & Beale Street …. but it’s much more than just that! This issue kicks off with my own 3-page “The Legend of Robert Church”, and includes comics & art by Kevin L. Williams, Grace Smith, DaMarco Randle, Jim Palmer, Michael Irby, Charlie Forrester, and Jason Negen; Beale-tastic cover art by Charles Ettinger.

The Good, the Bad, and the Sketchy #6 is a 20-page black & white digest w/ full-color cover, and is available in the area at 901 Comics and Comics and Collectibles & by mail via my Square store for $4.00 postpaid in the US.

An April Fool’s blast from the past!

I’ve written before about my time spent as a member of APA-5 and what a large part it played in finding a voice for my cartooning work. It gave me a free-form venue were I could make any sort of comics without concern for its final printed form. One of those comics (this one, in fact), introduced Drake, my own evil twin! In best evil twin form, he embodies a lot of the things I don’t like about comics, and back then that included the whole bad girl/softcore genre that filled comic distributor catalogs. There’s a lot about the comics medium (words + pictures) I love, but there’s a lot about the culture of comics that is definitely cringe-worthy … and that’s the kind of stuff Drake loves!

A couple of names of other APA-5 members are dropped in here, where Drake pitches edits on their work to get more in line with what he wants to see. Those mailing comments were a big part of APA-5 membership, but I usually kept them as a separate text section. Integrating them into my content as I did here was a rare occurrence.

I’ve also mentioned before how I’m working to get the content from my APA-5 years digitized & into a form that I can share, and this is a part of that effort. Because [SPOILER ALERT] Drake ended up playing a fairly large role in that body of work…

[January 2023 UPDATE: this post originally appeared on my now-closed Patreon page.]

Hot off the press: Double Dip #3!

Well, maybe “warm” off the press, since Tom Cherry and I finished the latest issue of our two-person anthology Double Dip at the tail end of last year. With the holiday rush behind us, now is a great time to share this issue’s release with the wider world! As always, it’s a joy to team up with Tom to serve you a heaping helping of our different but eerily simpatico cartooning sensibilities…

In Tom’s half of the issue, Dadman & Sonny confront an unexpected visitor, while the alien FooF reveals his secret origin in my story, which incorporates a tactile structure that can only be appreciated in its physical form!

I was thrilled that Tom and I were able to finish this issue in so much less time than it took to finish #2, and that’s even with drawing two covers for it! While I’m not a big fan of variant covers, Tom’s cover gag was such a winner (and of the moment, too!) that it’d be foolish to not use it. My gag was … well, kinda what I used on the first issue, but that’s what happens when there’s a years-long gap between issues #1 & #3, I guess…

Double Dip #3 is a 16-page black & white digest w/ full-color cover; ask for it at your comic shop of choice, or get a copy by mail via my Square store for $3.00 postpaid in the US. You can also get a copy by becoming one of my Patreon patrons during the months of January/Feb 2021 at the Correspondent or Art Lover tier– plus, joining gives you immediate access to online bonus comics, including a full-color Human Spring adventure!

[January 2023 UPDATE: I’ve closed my Patreon page.]

Man plans, and God laughs

I can’t help but think about that Yiddish aphorism “MAN PLANS, AND GOD LAUGHS” whenever I look back at 2020. Coming off of a successful year in 2019, I had some goals that sounded within my reach, but needless to say, my year turned out nothing like what I expected. All my IRL events were canceled, which kind of bummed me out in April … not so much come November, when the situation had gotten even worse. I’m blessed with a roof over my head and a partner who didn’t get sick & tired of me during months and months of living like hermits, so I focused on staying as productively creative as I could, even on the many days when I struggled to keep the real world at bay enough to undertake the deep imagining my work draws from …

SILVER LINING! I was able to collaborate with a number of artists in similar situations. While not all of those collaborations were successful or have reached fruition yet, strengthening those connections was valuable in its own right, especially in a year like 2020. Still, I did manage to work at my goals set early last year, even if they weren’t fully or successfully completed, either…

GOAL 1! Revamping my website was one of those goals, and I pretty much accomplished what I set out to do on that front, as you can see right here. Not sure it’s necessarily connected with readers as much as I’d hoped, tho, as my stats have continued their downward trend of the past few years. Of course, I didn’t post as much as I have in the past, either. My WATUSI webcomic saw a slight uptick in visitors and views per visitor, which is surprising (and gratifying!) considering that strip is in the final episodes of a years-long epic!

GOAL 2! Kind of a subset of that goal, I wanted to better stock and promote my online stores. Still not doing a bang-up job with promotion, but I did set up an online SQUARE STORE that features prints, printed comics, and original art. That’s in addition to my SELZ SITE for downloadable comics (never a big seller for me; I may work to integrate them into my SQUARE store), and my TEEPUBLIC SHOP for t-shirts & other merch.

GOAL 3! I had wanted to do more short comics for anthologies in 2020, and while I missed out on the deadline for one of them, I was able to use my pages in CARTOON LOONACY and the MSCA project THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE SKETCHY to get some short stories & other art completed and shared with readers. Actually, 2020 turned out to be one of my better recent years for finishing comic stories; in addition to my weekly WATUSI webcomic, three SMEARY SOAPBOX PRESS-ENTS minicomics, an issue of DOUBLE DIP, and editing four issues of THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE SKETCHY, I finished another 35 pages, plus more that I just need to finish adding grayscale tones to…

GOAL 4! Not as successfully, I still had no luck finding a store to carry my work year-round, tho I had an even better year at MONSTER MARKET, the one (virtual) pop-up shop I was involved with in 2020.

GOAL 5! My search for a literary agent kept getting put on the back burner, especially when I had a hard time focusing for so much of this past year of disruptions. Still something for me to work at…

A REALIZATION! I’m often slow on the uptake, but I noticed that over the past few years my “creative” goals have really tended to be “business” goals. And they really should be more than just that, shouldn’t they? With that– and the experience of having my 2020 plans so easily sidelined– in mind, I thought I’d try a less list-like set of goals for this year, and focus more on the “why” I want to do things instead of just a list of things to do…

GIVING UP ON COMICS? Comics have been a dwindling proportion of my sales (again with the business, but it comes around to creativity, honest) over the last few years. And they take considerably more time than single-image prints, which seem to connect better with my audience, anyway. Since that’s what people gravitate to, it only makes sense to give them more of what they want, doesn’t it?

NOT GIVING UP ON COMICS! Of course, I don’t think I will fully eliminate comics from my plate, as they’re a key part of my public persona as “DALE MARTIN, CARTOONIST”. So while I plan to flop my focus from “comics, then art/prints as time allows” to “art/prints first, then comics as time allows”, it won’t be an easy change for me to make, since “cartoonist” is also a key part of my own internal persona as an artist…

WANT MORE COMICS? Of course, there’s a simple way to keep me making comics a more frequent part of my creative mix: BUY THEM. They’re available in stores locally, from my website, or via regular PATREON patronage. If they become a larger part of what my audience invests in, I’ll happily invest a larger part of MY time and focus in them, too!

TOO MUCH OF A GOOD THING? While I happily incorporate NOSTALGIC ELEMENTS into both my cartooning and my publication design (as evidenced by the layout of this very post, for those who notice such things), if TWITTER user (and fellow CARTOON LOON) @MJacobAlvarez is right, I may be leaning TOO heavily into them! My cover to THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE SKETCHY #5 reminded him of a DELL comic, a comic publisher that predated my own comic reading habit (and with no conscious effort to do so on my part, either)!

GETTING OFF THE TREADMILL! I’ve been thinking for some time that I should take a break from my weekly webcomic, and plan to do so in the next few months. While I’ve enjoyed doing it, the reader interaction of its earlier years has dropped off considerably over time. More than that, though, I’d like to get away from such rigid deadlines to be able to take a deeper dive into processes (get into a solid penciling groove for a whole story– plus some of my landmark prints– before moving on to do the same with inking, for instance) or content (I’ve had a hard time making time to research my next MEMPHIS history comic). Since I was planning for shorter comics following WATUSI IN OZ anyway, this feels like the right time for that…

SO NO LIST OF GOALS FOR 2021? I’m just gonna cool it with my annual laundry list o’ goals & play things more as they come. After last year, I’m only going to look ahead a few months at a time!

CHEERS! To a better (it’s gotta be better, right?) new year!

[May 2022 UPDATE: I’ve closed my Selz store, but have a new storefront for digital publications at Gumroad. Check it out!]
[January 2023 UPDATE: I’ve closed my Patreon page.]

Holiday piece No. 9

Holiday wishes from a simpler time (1994). Cheers to a better new year! (It’s gotta be better than this one, right?)

Walking in a winter wonderland…

While it’s not really winter yet (not that it ever is here in the MidSouth), once I dust off my holiday CDs for their annual spins I can’t help but think about winter & snow & the like. Fortunately, the members of the Mid-South Cartoonists Association are feeling that way, too, in the latest issue of The Good, the Bad, and the Sketchy! It features comics & art by Jason Negen, Jim Palmer, Lin Workman, Kevin L. Williams, and me. I even did the cover for this one, featuring my take on some of the characters appearing inside! The Good, the Bad, and the Sketchy #5 is a 20-page black & white digest w/ full-color cover, and is available at comic shops all around Memphis ( 901 Comics, The Cellar, Comics and Collectibles) as well as by mail via my Square store for $4.00 postpaid in the US.

Thankful for collaborators (and for comics)

Like for most artists, this pandemic year has been a challenge for me. With all my IRL events for the year canceled, I’ve been working on a number of collaborations with other artists in a similar situation. While I love collaborating with others, I’m especially thankful for it during this year. And even though most of these projects have not reached fruition yet, one of them sees print in a new collection released this month…

Take a walk on the wild side in the animal-themed fourth issue of the Mid-South Cartoonists Association’s The Good, the Bad, and the Sketchy; it’s led off with a Watusi/Muley crossover by Kevin L. Williams and me. For years now, I’ve wanted to work on a story with another artist where we could both draw our own characters on the same physical page, and at long last I’ve been able to do so! I think it turned out pretty good, too! Other comics & art in the issue provided by Jim Palmer (who also drew the cover), Jason Negen, Jack Cassady, Kevin Thorn, and Lin Workman; co-edited by Jason & me. The Good, the Bad, and the Sketchy #4 is a 24-page black & white digest w/ full-color cover, and is available at comic shops all around Memphis ( 901 Comics, The Cellar, Comics and Collectibles) as well as by mail via my Square store for $4.00 postpaid in the US.

Also newly published is Smeary Soapbox Press-ents #20, another arty collection of my daily Instagram drawings, a more or less real? fictitious? document of my hair during our month of shelter in place. Can’t help but feel there are more sheltering hairstyles in my future, tho… This full color (my first!) 8-page minicomic is available from my Square store or from me by mail, postpaid in the US for just $2.00 … or by becoming one of my Patreon patrons during November or December 2020 at the Correspondent or Art Lover level … plus, joining (at any level) gives you immediate access to other online bonus comics, including a full-color Human Spring adventure!

I hope you all have a safe and happy Thanksgiving!

[January 2023 UPDATE: I’ve closed my Patreon page.]