And we're off in earnest!! Permit me to post this page in the plain too -- the bulk of these opening bits are going to be pretty PG-13, and because it's a new project it's helpful if I can talk shop about the art with a visual aid handy.
I'm still fine tuning my ideas for how the art should look in this comic, and later on in Goodbye to Halos. The idea, as I keep going on about, is to save myself unnecessary illustration by keeping things to a small set of flat colors and some basic inking. But it's trickier than it might seem to restrict yourself in a way that looks intentional? I'm not sure I'm quite there yet on the intentional bit. Maybe I'll just get there through gradual iteration?
Speaking of stories that didn't end right... ultra longtime readers may recognize a certain boy here, though his circumstances this time around are very different.
Charmside is a spiritual riff on my original concept for Portside Stories. That comic, too, was meant to be a kind of anthology, hence the plural in the name. For reasons way too personal to get into, I ended up losing creative control over Portside Stories before it ever got off the ground, leaving those characters' stories incomplete and uncompletable. How those forty-some pages ended up so dear to so many people I'll never know, though I'm blessed for it and for the jumpstart it gave my ostensible career.
Anyway, uh, this one's gonna be a little bit different!! I'm making CKC exactly as loud, trashy, and unshareable on Facebook as I didn't make Portside Stories. I like to think the end result will end up being dear to a lot of people as well, but whether or not that's the case, it's sure rubbing soothing ointment all over my heart just thinking about it. Back with more soon!