As stated in the first “Long John Primer” that was posted even before the comic went live––the “Long John Primers” beingfourarticles covering the four main inspirations for the development of the comic––one of the main inspirations for this comic is its setting, the Mono Basin in the Eastern Sierra Nevada mountain range that marks the boundary between California and Nevada.
Only a few of the buildings in Bodie are standing wholly on their own accord. All photos taken during a 2018 visit.
Though it hasn’t yet been a major setting for a scene of the comic, the whole region, at the time, revolved around the big mining town of Bodie. The town has been brought up at least afewtimes in the comic, acting more as a specter hovering over the entire story. At the risk of spoiling things, Bodie will most definitely be a major feature in the latter half of the comic in a more physical sense as opposed to the more ethereal presence it has held up until now. Bodie is what actually brought me to the region, and it’s from that epicenter that I circled outward and fell in love with the entire basin.
Even though, it hasn’t featured in the comic yet, the research of and time spent in Bodie has completely informed every other aspect of the comic. If you haven’t been, it’s a wonderful and strange place. A ghost town, it is elevated above others because, first, it is a state park. Second, it is preserved in a state of “arrested decay,” meaning that it hasn’t been “restored” to how it looked during its heyday with people in costume walking around pretending to be old timey cowboys. Instead, any restoration and preservation is done to keep it in the state that it was in when it became a state park––half falling-over, rotted, and dusty.
Most buildings, however, need a bit of assistance.
Being a state park, it falls under the purview of the protection of the park rangers, who must monitor and protect it year-round. This is especially difficult during the winter when the region––especially Bodie––gets buried in snow. While it is hidden by climate and inaccessibility, it is still technically open to the public (tenacious skiers can still access the park), necessitating the consistent presence of a ranger.
To that end, being the assigned ranger for Bodie during the winter is surely a lonely and unappreciated job. So, when journalist Rick Paulas spent some time with ranger Taylor Jackson, chronicling his time at Bodie during winters, the resulting article provides a really interesting look at an incredible place like Bodie during a time of the year when it’s most forgotten.
It’s only ever at the end of the year when I look back and see not only how much I accomplished, but I’ve consistently seen how much more I accomplish each year. While much of the Long John development has been behind the scenes, the growth and promise have been noticeable and much more public than before and promise good tidings for Long John fans in 2020.
CROCKER CON
This year’s Crocker Con was huge for me this year. I don’t simply mean that with regard to sales––this year the show itself was surrounded by a whirlwind of opportunity and exposure and community that really made me proud to not only be an independent comic creator, but specifically a Sacramento independent comic creator.
From getting to hang original Long John pages in a wing of the Crocker Art Museum to getting the chance to participate in the promotion of the show on Good Day Sacramento, I never have had my art on as full a display as I did in this concentrated period of time between July and September at the Crocker.
I don’t take commissions often, but I also couldn’t turn down the opportunity to draw the poster for the 2019 show (especially once I came upon an idea I liked) and I was actually quite pleased with the final result.
The poster for the 2019 Crocker Con.
This exposure brought with it the chance to sit and talk with the folks at the Crocker, who published a thorough and thoughtful interview, and those conversations really embodied the thing I love about Crocker Con––building the bridge between high and popular art and the chance to be an ideological docent at that meeting point.
As ever––but especially this year––this wonderful show (curated by good friend, Eben Burgoon) was one of the highlights of the year.
SHOWS
This year marked an earnest push on my part to widen the net of Long John‘s audience, if even only by a bit. That came with going to more shows than ever and, more importantly, going to new shows outside of the ring of protection and familiarity that Sacramento provides.
The farthest I had ventured before this was the dearly departed Alternative Press Expo in San Jose and, more regularly, StocktonCon (in Stockton, of course). This year, I put some new pins in the map and it paid off generously.
First, I had an incredibly good time at this year’s OroCon in Oroville, CA. It was, without a doubt, one of the heaviest trafficked one-day shows I’ve ever been to and the people who attended were incredibly invested in local indie comics, which was heartening to see.
The end of the year brought a show I was quite excited about––the first annual Reno Pop Culture Con. The three-day show in Reno, Nevada proved to be as educational as it was fun (and exhausting). Being multiple days, the biggest surprise was to have the people who bought the books on one day come back the next telling me they already tore through all three of them and loved them. That kind of feedback is so rare, especially for a comicker who works primarily on the internet, that it hit me quite hard (and it made me really wish I had Chapter 4 with me to sell to them).
Luckily, both of these shows were bolstered by the stalwarts in my conventioning pocket––Stocktoncon Winter (where I had the honor of sharing a table with fellow comicker and Con Artists co-host, Kyrun Silva of Taurus Comics), Empire’s Comics Vault’s Free Comic Book Day Mini-Con (where I debuted new prints and the new Long John coasters!), and (as stated above) Crocker Con––and they proved to be as emboldening as ever.
Exhibiting at shows is as exhausting as it is rewarding, but the memories alone are worth going back for another run around the bases in 2020.
Long John––an Academic Text
A drawing of Hellrider Jackie in honor of the talk I gave to Dr. Fanetti’s class at CSU, Sacramento in April.
Perhaps the most personally rewarding aspect of this year was the honor of having Long John, Volume 1 included as part of the reading list for an upper-division graphic novels as literature course at California State University, Sacramento.
It’s weird to know that a class of about forty people read Long John. It’s weirder to know that a class talked about the book––its characters, themes, and plot––on a literary critical level for about 90 minutes. It’s weirdest to know that people probably wrote papers about Long John. And it’s most weird to know that I wasn’t any part of that.
As an under-the-radar independent comic book, the discourse and identity around Long John has been completely under my control up until this point. While that certainly brings a sense of calm (to a degree), as an academic I subscribe to the idea that works don’t become complete until they have an audience.
Of course, Long John, had an audience before now, but this is almost a concentrated experiment, testing a hypothesis to see if this story falls apart or holds together in the hands and minds of others. And it did. I’m not going to say that this made Long John “art”, but it certainly made it something more than just my own.
Where it all hit critical mass was when I was asked to come speak to the class, delivering a talk followed by a Q & A.
I view my life right now as a journey walking with each foot in a different lane: academics and comicking. I work hard to make sure I’m always moving forward, but I have to hope that they’re leading in the same direction. As stressful and exciting as this nexus between the two worlds was, the best part was that––for a split second––my two roads merged for a stretch.
VOLUME 4: DEAD WORDS
Despite my promises for the book to be delivered in December, it did not come to pass, sadly. I’ve been plagued by life, grading, and even a nice dash of technical difficulties (I had to entirely recolor three pages recently). But coloring is moving forward––shading, specifically.
Even though the book didn’t drop this year, the milestone that this book hit that no previous Long John chapter had hit before was the speed at which it was created. For the first time, I drew, inked, and finalized an entire chapter over, basically, the summer––a rate at which I had never gone from page 1 to page done before. This speaks well of upcoming chapters and, if things go well, they will only get to the website and to you faster and sooner.
As it now stands, the pencils, inks, lettering, and flat colors are done for the book. All I’m doing now is shading/rendering and waiting for a few other special pieces to come together for this book to happen.
Since it’s the start of the next half of the story, I want this specific volume to be special, and that requires trying to coordinate a few spinning plates. As it is now, it looks to be not only loaded with a wonderful (if I do say so myself) new chapter, but it will also be chock full of interesting and very cool extra content. That––combined with the roadblocks mentioned earlier––are why the book is not out yet AND why the site has been quite quiet for the last month or so.
The cover to Chapter 4: Dead Words.
However, it has not been quiet behind the scenes, and you should look forward to Long John, Volume 4: Dead Words to be updating on the site sooner rather than later, with the print version available shortly thereafter.
It’s been a busy year with much more to come in 2020. I’m excited to share with you everything that I’ve been working on here in the coming year, so please keep checking in and a big thank you for all the support in 2019!
2019 ended up being very busy, in a surprising––but good––way. I wanted to do a multi-day reflection on the year and its many facets like Ihadlastyear, but when I finally looked up to do so, it was already the end of December. So, this year, we will do this over two days with today’s post covering all the things that kept me motivated, working, and inspired throughout the year while tomorrow’s will be a look at the year in Long John itself.
With that being said, I’m going to mostly talk about one item in each category while also citing two “runners up”, for lack of a better word, with a quick summary of my thoughts for each.
WATCHED:
Wondercon exclusive poster for Dark Phoenix by Orlando Arocena. Source: 20th Century Fox.
Dark Phoenix written and directed by Simon Kinberg. Starring Sophie Turner.
2019 ended up being the year where I confronted my fandom with the X-Men head-on. I have no problem being vocal about what I love, but there is a distinct line in my head that defines the difference between me arguing with someone and me straight-up fighting with someone.
The former is defined by rational thought––I have valid points that I know could stand up against an equally valid argument to the contrary. This is the type of argument you can hear me making on my weekly nerdy discussion podcast, A Podcast [ , ] For All Intents and Purposes, when discussing my “Week in Geek”, a segment where I make a case for some nerdy thing I did that week. The argument is based on experience with a text (and I’m speaking broadly here) and have formulated conclusions based on that time with it. Usually, this comes down to the types of texts listed in this post: movies, books/comics, music, games, tv shows, etc.
On the other side of the line, however, are the things to which I am profoundly devoted––while mostly rational, they are things to which I have such a strong nostalgia or emotional attachment that I breach the bounds of civil discourse into zealotry. I have learned over the years to not bring these items up with other people because any comment about them that differs from my own will impact my mood.
Things in this category (and I break out into sweats as I type this out) are things like my love for Twisted Sister, The Transformers, the fantasy film Willow, Highlander, among others––things of which most people either have no opinion or have a tossed-off negative opinion because they have put away childish things or have heard bad things. But the items on this side of the line defined a lot of my morals, personality, and ethos and, therefore, mean the world to me and are, basically, not up for discussion because to attack them is to attack me, in a way.
I actually think Dark Phoenix is a master class in subtle and powerful character drama, especially amid the popcorn glut of superhero cinema. Source: 20th Century Fox.
Even though it only came out this year, I have a feeling that Dark Phoenix has already slotted in with that crowd of texts. The movie was so universally derided––unfairly and irresponsibly, in my view––that I found that I had to actively disengage from any conversation about it, even with my friends, because I was immediately taking any criticism of it as “fighting words”, and I was getting way too worked up about it to keep my composure.
That being said, it’s a movie that I think is very good and will gladly watch as the world moves on from it, celebrating whatever the hell Marvel Studios does with the X-Men since it has purchased the film rights back from 20th Century Fox (by straight-up buying 20th Century Fox). I’ll watch those, too, but I’ll always have a soft spot for the Fox X-films, especially Dark Phoenix.
Letterkenny from Hulu
Every now and then you find a sitcom that makes you laugh like you’ve never laughed before. This year, Letterkenny was that show for me.
Alita: Battle Angel directed by Robert Rodriguez, starring Rosa Salazar.
The band, Queen (L-R): Brian May, Freddie Mercury, John Deacon, Roger Taylor. Source: QueenOnline.
Queen
I’ve always been a fairweather Queen fan, saying that I love their music while only really knowing one album (1986’s A Kind of Magic because it had the songs from Highlander on it) with the rest filled in with what’s played on the radio or on the greatest hits compilations.
A friend of mine rightly took me to task a few years ago and, since then, I kept in the back of my mind the implicit challenge he put to me: you’re not a fan unless you can speak to all of their music. This year, I decided to put my money where my mouth is.
So, 2019 kind of became the year of Queen for me. I started with their second album, Queen II, and created from there a pattern of buying one Queen album per month––at the beginning of the month––so I can spend the following 27-30 days absorbing the music it provided. I’ve ended the year with their hit album, The Game, being the album for the month of December. It’s been seven albums over seven months with as many more to go before I can consider myself fully informed.
It’s been quite a journey…and it didn’t start well.
Queen’s 1978 album, Jazz, is the album that really found a way to merge their proggy eclecticism, pop mentality, and disparate personalities in a way that really worked from start to finish. Source: EMI/Elektra
I didn’t like Queen II. I found more to like but still bounced off of its follow-up, Sheer Heart Attack. A Night at the Opera was, to me, their first good album, but the progressive rock lineage still bloated parts of it. I also enjoyed A Day at the Races, but it didn’t keep the momentum that its predecessor established. News of the World was tighter, more concise, and an album I really liked––thinking they had finally found the balance between their mercurial creativity and pop-minded songwriting. But it was Jazz that actually took the lessons from its predecessor and honed them even more to create an incredible album from front to back. Sure, Jazz is loaded with the big hits––”Fat-Bottomed Girls”, “Bicycle Race”, and “Don’t Stop Me Now”––as obvious standouts, but their deeper cuts––songs like “If You Can’t Beat Them”, “Dead On Time”, and “More of That Jazz”––impressed me even more. Their next album, The Game, is fine.
What I can do at this point, about mid-way through their catalogue––is say that I am a Queen fan. I have a more full understanding of what kind of band they are and I revel in that personality. They are eclectic, melodramatic, clever, and obtuse at times.
But what truly comes across is that this band is a collaboration between four very unique musicians, each with their own voice and musical tastes and goals. If you take them individually, it seems like Queen is an impossible supergroup comprised of musicians who have no business working together. In actuality, they were people that enjoyed the push and pull of working together both with and against their individual tastes. It’s in that musical morass that they became unique, edging near a space that, in my mind, has only really ever been occupied by The Beatles before them.
As I buckled down with the myopic task of getting Chapter 4 done this year, the sonic eclecticism of Queen has always kept things interesting and, most importantly, fun.
Judas Priest
I just can’t stop listening to them. It’s clear that, in many ways, they wanted to be the heavy metal Queen. And, in many ways, they fully accomplish that.
“Let’s Rock” by The Black Keys.
As a fan of the band since their early garage days in 2002, they shaped a lot of my musical aesthetic. I drifted away from them when they evolved their sound about ten years ago, aiming for musical targets that interested me less and less with each successive album. “Let’s Rock” is not a return to the form I fell in love with, but rather them taking their evolved sound and making it rock in a way I can appreciate. This is a fun, straight-forward rock album.
PLAYED:
Source: Mobius Digital
Outer Wilds by Mobius Digital (played on the Playstation 4)
Based on this list of games, it seems to have really been a year of indie gaming for me. Outer Wilds stands above any game I’ve played this year if only because it brazenly gives players an indie ethos in a game that easily has a scope the big-budget studios only yearn to have.
By “indie ethos” I mean that it is a game that is isn’t doing much on its surface––you’re a traveler sent by your planet to explore your solar system. You control your ship and bounce from planet to planet looking at their unique geography (and physics) and explore the ruins of a long lost civilization. There is no combat in this game; you have no weapons. It is literally just a game about exploring and learning.
It’s fun to buzz planets like Maverick in Top Gun. Source: Mobius Digital.
There is a story and a twist, but the game never strays from those mechanics. The reward is piecing together the story that you find through your travels––a goal that is remarkably well-designed, to that end.
And though it’s simple on the surface, reflecting on what is going on under the hood reveals how incredibly remarkable this game is. It’s clockwork. This studio designed an entire solar system with unique planets that have their own unique feel, look, and goals all weaving together in an intricate tapestry that I’ve never seen before in a game. The whole game is a mechanism whose very complexity comes together and becomes important to finishing the game itself.
This game runs the gamut from beautiful to terrifying; sometimes, it even blends the two. Source: Mobius Digital.
More importantly, the game worked flawlessly. I’ve played games with quadruple the budget and staff that still crash or break during gameplay. As complex as this game is––with all the ways it could go wrong––it never broke nor pulled me out of the reality of its world. All the big studios should take note that this upstart studio at the very least makes games that work.
It may be recency bias, but this game is on the wind of gaming discourse right now, but it has every right to be. I found it incredibly fun, rewarding, impressive, and cool while others found it to be those things as well as emotionally powerful and moving. While I didn’t get that from it, it’s definitely a game to play and will most likely be one I remember.
This year also marked my foray into (digital) card games, specifically with the genre of “deck builders.” Dicey Dungeons is a simple but challenging game with great music and a charming aesthetic that goes very fast, which is also nice.
Halcyon 6 by Massive Damage, Inc. (played on Steam)
I think my favorite games are not necessarily the ones about acquiring more power and slaying more foes; it’s the games that are about people just doing their jobs and doing them to the best of their ability. This game sucked me in at various points this year where I had to help rebuild a humanity lost in space and on its last legs (think Battlestar Galactica). There’s a calming effect to the stress of managing not only a fleet of space cruisers but also making sure your station’s crew quarters are as upgraded as possible.
