Long John

Sketch Fridays #27 – Shaman’s Destiny

Sacramento has a vivacious comic creator and pop art scene. Over the years that I’ve been a part of this community (having moved to Sacramento in 2008), I’ve met an incredible amount of talented creators, usually through one of the many events that are held locally, everything from Second Saturdays to Sac Con to Crocker Con.

Last year, I debuted Long John Volume 1 on Free Comic Book Day. I was able to debut the book at the FCBD festivities held at my favorite local comic shop, Empire’s Comics Vault, surrounded by the wares of my colleagues with their comics and art. I was seated next to Kyrun Silva, who writes and draws the superhero comic, Shaman’s Destiny. Kyrun carries a life-long passion for comic books, but does so with the enthusiasm of someone who just discovered them without a hint of cynicism. He is in love with the medium and such sentiments are infectious when you spend even a little bit of time with him (much less sharing bad jokes together for something like eight hours straight). That FCBD was filled with a lot of laughs (and some pretty good sales, to boot). Just spending that day joking around and lobbing art challenges at each other (I can predict a Geck Force Sketch Friday in the future somewhere) formed a strong sense of comic book camaraderie that led me to picking up the first two issues of his series and enjoying how well they captured his passion and vision.

With the release of the fifth issue in his Shaman’s Destiny series, Empire’s Comics Vault is hosting a release party this Saturday. This type of event is something I hope to see more of in the future, if only as a way to celebrate the vibrancy of local creatives. Perhaps, with such bolstering, we’ll see even more Sacramento area creators burst through to the next level (we already have an impressive, but small, roster with names like Sam Keith and Ron Lim leading the charge) and make the world know how much the area has to offer.

I bring this up not only because it’s nice to celebrate the accomplishments of a friend, but also because Kyrun was nice enough to include a drawing I did of the main character of his series, Malik, as back matter in the new issue, which is always fun to see and was a pleasant surprise. As is clear in my signature on the above drawing, this week’s Sketch Friday is a bit of a cheat, but it was a drawing I had not yet shared on the site and it allowed me to spend more time drawing and inking new Long John pages this week. Art is such a zero-sum game with time.

So, if you’re in the Sacramento area, I highly encourage you to stop by Empire’s Comics Vault on Saturday (starting at 3pm) and check out Kyrun’s work as well as the work of the rest of his studio, Big Tree Comics, and help support local creatives.