Hey all,

I was thinking this week about Viper Comics. I mean, you hear ‘DC’ and you think Superman, Batman. When you say ‘Marvel’ you instantly have images of Spider-Man and the X-Men dance through your head. Even Image has a little mainstream presence with publications of the Luna Brother’s work on Girls and Ultra. When you say ‘Viper Comics’ to Mr. Joe Everyman, chances are they’ll raise an eyebrow and ask for an explanation, which is too bad since Viper has an excellent array of titles. I thought I’d spotlight a few of the ones that, for me at least, stand out.

The comic that introduced me to Viper in the first place is still, in my opinion, one of their better titles. Daisy Kutter details the exploits of a reformed train robber asked to do one last job by a mysterious employer. Armed with a massive shotgun and nerves of steel, there isn’t much that can stop Daisy, robot assassins and powered armor included. The unique setting of wild west and science fiction meshes well with the witty dialogue and excellent action sequences making this comic one of the greats. Check it out this great one-shot story collected nicely in the TPB “The Last Train”. Author Kazu Kibuishi

Ever heard of the show Lost? Oh you have? I guess it’s popular. The reason I bring it up is that Lost’s writer Javier Grillo-Marxuach is the mastermind behind the strangest spy fiction you’ll ever read. The wit and absurdity of The Middleman follows the title character and his newest sidekick, Wendy, as they combat “threats extra-, infra- and juxta terrestrial”. Anything is fair game for the duo; be it aliens, mutants or Mexican Wrestlers (I kid you not). Art by Les McClaine.

Some of Viper’s newer titles are also some their most intriguing. The Lost Books of Eve details the adventures of the world’s first woman as she travels about a fantastic earth in search of Adam who has gone missing. The Underworld Rail Road tells the tales of souls sent wrongly to hell, and the supernatural safehouses that help them make their escape to freedom. Long time running Dead@17, A Dummies Guide to Danger, and Villians are now entrenched standbys and all excellent titles. All in all, Viper is a great publisher for Parable, offering titles with great art and, more importantly, original ideas.

Lastly, I noticed this a couple weeks ago and thought I’d add it as well. Over at Kameleo.com, there are some new free online classes an comic design. Sometimes its good to take a refresher of the basics. Check that out here.

Until next time.

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Sally Jane Thompson is an itinerant postgraduate student, currently tucked away in a corner of England drawing pictures, working hard on her degree and eating lots of chocolate.

Stephen McCranie: Your story for Parable: Volume 1, entitled “Kiss,” is very unique because the entire piece is drawn on wood. What inspired you to use this medium, and what difficulties did you face while creating this comic?

Sally Jane Thompson: The wood was simply a result of too many art school projects involving “finding alternative surfaces” …but I fell in love with the way it absorbs anything you throw at it, so you have to build up dozens of layers, which I think gives a really rich look. As for difficulties, it’s hard to get a sharp edge when things soak in— but most importantly, you can’t erase anything, or even paint over it if you want to retain the grain!

S: I can imagine! Did you have to take photos of the wood in order to get it into digital format?

Sa: Yeah— I’d like to experiment more combining it with digital, but in this case I simply photographed the finished product, with relatively little touch-up. The actual panels were pretty large, and very heavy!

S: Really? How heavy?

Sa: Well, the boards were thick to begin with— and then I thought it would be a waste if they couldn’t be hung, so I made really sturdy frames to screw on the back! Probably not the smartest thing ever. Carrying two at once was a stretch!

S: I’ll bet! Ha ha. So you’re from the United Kingdom… Have you always lived there? What was life like growing up in the UK, and what inspired you to become an artist when you were a kid?

Sa: Not quite! Haha— I’ve been in the UK about 6 months now. I was born and grew up in South Africa, which I wouldn’t change for anything. I wanted to be a game ranger when I was little, and my earliest drawing memories where studying South African wildlife books and drawing all the animals. We moved to Canada when I was a teenager— where I was really exposed to comics for the first time— at least the kind that I would want to make. And now I’m having a great time getting to know the comics scene here in the UK!

S: Well that’s awesome! Can you speak any of the local languages of Africa?

Sa: Hmm…Unfortunately they didn’t start offering Xhosa and Zulu in my school until shortly before I left— so I missed out there. Afrikaans was something I was never very good at for some reason. All I can say are things like “I have a green giraffe” or other things that don’t make sense!

S: Ha ha. So, speaking of the comics scene in the UK, I noticed that you were a finalist for Tokyopop’s 2007 UK Rising Stars of Manga contest. What do you think about the recent Japanese comics invasion? How has manga affected your style and comics?

Sa: Manga was essentially my first exposure to comics that covered a wider range of genres, and showed me how much scope comics have to communicate! So it’s been a fantastic influence, and I’ve learned a lot through it. But I wouldn’t class my work as anything more than manga influenced. As manga has become a more prevalent influence over western comics, there is of course lots of debate over what counts as manga and so on, but I think the more varied influences people have, the better, and I’m glad to see the comics world opening up like this.

S: Me too. It seems to me that the definition of what comics can do is broadening. As comics become more popular, I hope to see more and more people enter the cartooning industry. Now, how did you become a Christian?

Sa: Well the short story is that I grew up in a Christian home, but really everybody has to decide things for themselves in the end. I’ve had a lot of questions, but in the end, everything Jesus did just resonated as so right to me— the way he treated people, the concept of self-sacrifice, and being able to develop ones spirit.

S: Okay, do you have any projects that you’re working on right now that you’d like to talk about?

Sa: Well my biggest project right now is my MA program, which I’ve just started! I’ll be doing a lot of illustrative and possibly even comic-based work for it, so I’m very excited! I’ll also be doing some self-publishing and attending some comic expos this year, as well as doing some workshops and events, and just generally getting my sticky little fingers into as many pies as I can! I’ll be sure to keep John updated once I have some secret projects sorted out!

S: Cool, we’re all excited to hear about them! So, that about wraps it up… I usually end with a silly question, and I’ve been really racking my brains about what to ask you… Is there something really unique or interesting I can ask you about?

Sa: Hmm…I got certified as a laughter yoga leader….I do lots of sewing and make geeky costumes to wear at conventions…I like knitting and crochet and tea and basically am an old lady….

S: A laughter yoga leader! Can you tell me what you do for that job?

Sa: Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to be involved in a group in the UK yet! There was a fantastic group at my university in Canada. It’s all about the idea that laughter is amazingly healthy and good for you, but society doesn’t really allow for us to get that kind of awesome, extended laughter. So it teaches you techniques to stimulate laughter, without relying on humor— and once you get going, especially in a room with ten other people, none of you can stop! Imagine a room full of people laughing for no reason! It’s the best thing!

S: That sounds awesome! Let’s laugh together.

And so, we began a small laughter yoga session together, even though we were communicating by instant messenger and separated by an entire ocean. The following is a direct transcript of the silliness that ensued.

S: Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha

Sa: AHahahahah HAhahahaha ahaha!

S: hee heee heee heee

S: hah had

S: oops

Sa: Hohohoho!

S: I’m actually laughing right now… how incredibly delightful.

Sa: Fantastic! Hopefully some of the people reading this interview will be as well!

S: Even though I spelled one of my hah’s wrong.

S: Well… that about wraps it up.

Sa: Excellent!

In two weeks, tune in for an interview with Bryan Ballinger!

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This week I’m indulging myself a little bit. My mind works like “Huh there’s a cat… cat’s have tails, so do Monkeys… my finance’s riding coach had a monkey… I wonder if she’s riding today…” and off into infinity. So when I saw that there were two Parable contributors that also contribute to Flight, my thoughts went something like “Huh, theres a few creators in Parable that also do comics for Flight. I love Flight! I should do a news post on Flight!” I’m really hoping that everyone reading this Blog knows about Flight, but if not, allow me to introduce this most excellent publication.

Flight Volume One featured 22 short comics by 21 contributors, first published back in 2004 through Image Publishing. Flight is now on it’s fourth installment, has seen a doubled page count(352 pages) containing 25 short comics and was released in 2007 under publisher Ballantine Books. The fifth Flight is currently in the works. Flight is a very good example of the kind of anthology that works and works well, bringing together very different views, ideas and stories into one beautiful package with something for everyone. Much like Parable, and we’re happy to have an connection to Flight through two of our contributors.

For those of you who are a bit quicker with recognizing names, you probably know who I’m talking about. For those like me that need a little prompting from time to time, I’m talking about Sarah Mensinga and Ben Hatke, two great connections to a comic anthology that is fast approaching it’s 5th installment with names like Kazu Kibuishi and Jeff Smith gracing the contributor’s list. It sure gives us at Parable something to aspire to!

In other news, I came across this article linked in Kazu’s blog, and I thought it was a great story to point out how mainstream business and audiences alike are starting to pick up comics from creators that aren’t owned by the big two. I thought it was awesome because you don’t usually associate comics with finance.

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Michelle Gorski is a computer animator by day and an aspiring comic book artist by night. Thanks to God’s gifts of grace and caffeine, she has also started the long process of writing her first graphic novel. She is currently residing in Portland, Oregon with her wonderful husband and evil kitty.

Stephen McCranie: Reading your story for Parables Volume 1 makes me feel all warm inside. What inspired you to do a story about a young orphan girl?

Michelle Gorski: It was just a character that I started doodling. I drew a little girl with birds all over her… I don’t know if I was inspired by anything more than my doodling.

S: So right now you’re doing computer animation up in Portland, Oregon? Where do you work? What projects are you working on now?

M: I work at Laika as a computer animator, and right now I’m working in the visual effects department on Coraline, the stop motion feature that’s going to be released next year.

S: What’s it about?

M: It’s based off of a Neil Gaiman book. Henry Selick has adapted the screenplay. It’s about a little girl who finds a secret door and goes to a parallel universe. But not everything is as it seems…

S: So you’ve worked on Ant Bully, Jimmy Neutron, and Veggie Tales… Your employment history in the animation business seems a little familiar. Have you worked with fellow Parabler, Sarah Messinga? Do you know Chris and Rena Fowler?

M: Yeah, actually I sat next to Sarah when I was working on ant bully. Me and Sarah and Rena used to hang out all the time.

S: Cool. I met them at Comicon. They’re quite an excellent group of people.

M: Yeah, I wanted to go to Comicon this year, but I couldn’t find the time.

S: So, next question. When did you become a Christian, and how has that inspired your work?

M: Well, I became a Christian when I was seven. I grew up in the church and my family was very faith-based. We lived three houses down from the church. It was a small community, everyone knows everyone, everyone goes to the same church kind of deal.

How it inspired my work is– I’m really inspired by nature. I feel like that’s God’s creation, and that’s where you see creativity in nature, you know, how trees are formed and how things grow and how animals interact with that. Everything works together. That’s actually one of the reasons we moved up here, to Portland.

S: What made you decide to go into computer animation? I’ve done a little animating in Maya before, but I got wrist problems from all the clicking so I’ve stopped since then.

M: I’m really not that much of a technical person. I actually went to school for traditional animation; I loved those movies growing up. I think there’s things that only hand-drawn animation can capture.

But once I graduated it was hard to get a job without computer skills, and my husband was already a computer animator so he said, “I’m going to take you into work, and you’re going to sit down at a computer and learn how to do this.” He took me into Big Idea, where he worked, and I made a bunch of peas hop and Larry bounce around. And at the time they were looking for some new animators and they said, “hey! that looks pretty cool” and I got a job!

But there are still things that I’m learning in it. And it’s nice to be able to ask my husband all sorts of questions.

S: So, recently on DrawerGeeks, one of the topics was a star belly. And I read in your blog that you have a star tattooed on your hip. So this is sort of the silly question of the interview: how did your friends get you to get a tattoo?

M: Yeah, me and my three roommates from college all met up in Madison, Wisconsin and we got star tattoos to mark the occasion. We always drew stars on everything; it was sort of our trademark. So we decided to all get matching star tattoos.

The one I got I actually did it with white ink, because I chickened out at the last minute and wasn’t sure I wanted a tattoo. Now I really love it and I want it filled in with a darker ink so it shows up better. I’d have to be absolutely sure I’d want it if I were to get another tattoo, though.

In two weeks, tune in for an interview with Sally Thompson!

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