PICTURE YOURSELF… 

It’s October, 2003, and you’ve stumbled into the shadowy back corner of your local comic shop. You’re in the “goth” section, an irregularly-visited island of misfit comics featuring characters wearing black clothes. Johnny the Homicidal Maniac is there, along with Gloom Cookie, Lenore, Little Gloomy, Oh My Goth!, Kindergoth, MAYBE The Crow, definitely NOT Sandman for some reason… Nestled among them is a shiny new floppy with a cover somehow even blacker than the rest… Your wallet chain quivers in anticipation… 

SERENITY ROSE HAS ARRIVED.

I always liked this cover. Something nice about that big ol’ arrow pointing at our small social phobic protagonist. She’s trying to hide in all that black but NOPE. We’re gonna read about YOU, buddy.

Did any of you venture into the darkness to find this inky rectangle back then? (Don’t worry, you’re not “old.” Clearly you were a toddler with very cool parents.) I’ve only got three copies left myself, all carefully preserved bag-n-board style. HOT TIP: Those issues fetch upwards of SEVEN AMERICAN DOLLARS on eBay today – unsigned!

Serenity Rose #1 was the end of a six-year wander through the wilderness. I’ll fill in the gory details later, but to keep it quick: Serenity Rose was born at CalArts in 1997 as a character to use in animation assignments. Eventually I made two short animated films with her, the second of which led to work as a character designer on Jhonen Vasquez’ Invader ZIM. While on ZIM, Jhonen and Rikki Simons encouraged me to make a comic book starring Serenity. Horrible idea! But irresistible. I pecked away at the comic after work for a year, and when ZIM was cancelled, I went all-in on financial insecurity and tried to make a career in comics. In 2002 I started posting pages as a webcomic, eventually submitted the first issue to SLG Publishing, and BANG! ZOOM! POW! goth ghetto 2003. 

And I could not have been happier! It blew my mind that a real publisher was willing to back my awkward, fumbling, hideously personal little story. I had wanted to leave my name off of the comic completely (just like the webcomic version), but SLG wasn’t having any of that. “Aaron Alexovich” was going to have to own this mess. Couldn’t just keep pretending this was Serenity’s autobiography.

“But it is,” I sputtered (to my cat, Igor, presumably). “It is autobiographical. Serenity is both an embarrassing self-portrait and a daydream of what I wish I could be!” (Igor yawned, presumably.)

But plenty of time to talk about that later. To celebrate the 20th anniversary of issue #1, we’re gonna go page-by-page through all three volumes of Serenity Rose. We’ll look at what I was thinking, what I was trying to say, the techniques I was wrestling with, what was going on in my life, the indie comic scene, the goth scene, the wider culture of the “naughty aughties,” *wink* and any other weird memories triggered as I go along. Hope this bizarre nostalgia fest will be as fun for you as it is for me. The plan is to post at least two pages a week, which means we’ll be done in… uh… four years? Is that right??

So for this week’s second page…

This was the cover for WORKING THROUGH THE NEGATIVITY, the collected edition of the 5-issue floppy print run. Published in 2005.

The book’s dimensions were a little squashed-down from the original comic size. Manga was HOT HOT HOT in 2005 (hello, Tokyopop!), and publishers thought if they mashed their books to manga size they might get shelved next to Naruto at Barnes & Noble. That didn’t necessarily “happen,” but on the plus side, making my tiny text even tinier gave people’s eyes a good strenuous workout. Gotta keep those optic nerves limber! 

Anyway, on this cover Sera is snapping a broomstick because she ain’t your momma’s witch. She has voluminous slacks because it is 2005. This will not always be the case.

BACK TO THE PRESENT!

But forget the past, what am I doing NOW? Well, right now I’m finishing the “special features” section for my first SHOCK CITY! book for Viking.

WHAAHHH? You didn’t know about SHOCK CITY? Check out the article, bud! Fresh spookiness coming this fall! Hopefully I’ll have a cover for you before too long!

NEXT WEEK: A HAPPY FLOWER.