SR 1 PAGE THIRTY-THREE

I think this page is the first time we hear Tess is a crafter. Thought it’d be cool if my witchy conjuror’s best pal was also a kind of conjuror. To me, as someone with no mechanical aptitude to speak of, people who know how to build things are as magical as a busload of Merlins. 

I mentioned before that Crestfallen is partly inspired by my childhood memories of Door County, WI, that quaint, touristy peninsula jabbing into Lake Michigan like a prison shank. Door Co. is distinctly UN-spooky, but a place like The Witches’ Brew would be right at home there. Cutesy, hand-made tchotchkes are big business on the peninsula, the more rustic and hand-hewn, the better. (Door Co. is the first place I ever saw those freaky dried apple head dolls, if that helps paint a picture for you.)

The swan in the lower left is a tip o’ the cap to some friends who ran a Door County inn called The Whistling Swan. Before that they owned a place called The Griffin Inn near the remote tippy-top of the peninsula. LOTS of memories there…

• Finding six consecutive issues of Marvel’s Sleepwalker in a trough full of comics at the musty 1800’s Pioneer Store and reading them in a dang gazebo.
• Placing pink sheets of paper in the street right before the Ellison Bay Days parade, in the hopes that a friendly horse would help me win the “Road Apple Contest.”
• Experiencing the first blinding migraine of my life in a small, one-room cabin while sorta-watching Regis Philbin on a fuzzy six-inch b&w TV. (This one’s not as fun.)
• MONKEY BOY.

Now I’m imagining what kind of creatures would participate in Crestfallen’s Road Apple Contest. And the poor, hazmat-suited worker that has to clean up after it.

SR 1 PAGE THIRTY-FOUR

These pages have a particularly intense amount of detail, don’t they? So many textures and fussy little background bits. I drew each individual piece of gravel in that lower left panel. And look at all those swirls on the doorframe on the lower right… Absurd. 

I had no idea how any of this would print. Answer: Not great! But also not as bad as I feared. Honestly, I put in all that detail hoping 50% of it would survive printing. All those rich, warm, cozy textures were desperately important to me, so I had to at least try.

Print production people hate this. They understandably want nice, simple, clean artwork that they know with 100% certainty will reproduce on paper precisely the way it looks on their screen. Print production people often loathe me with burning intensity, because I’m always doing things wrong or weird.

I don’t blame them! They’re probably used to taking all the heat when things turn out looking like smear-time and the sludge factory. I wish they understood that I know I’m an ignoramus, so when I ask them to try something odd, I know exactly which ignoramus to blame. Please trust my belief in my own stupidity!

“Bleed” and “trim” directions give me trouble, too. You’d think that stuff would be pretty straightforward, but it seems to vary wildly from publisher to publisher, printer to printer, or moment to moment. Why is “bleed” even a thing anymore? We’ve got A.I. out here giving people medical advice, but the machines still can’t cut paper on a line? Figure it out, computers.

The only other thing to mention about this page is that as a kid I was absolutely scandalized when I saw the Frog brothers stealing holy water from church in The Lost Boys. “Well, I guess if it’s to fight vampires…” I reasoned.

BACK TO THE PRESENT!

BIG NEWS THIS WEEK: I can finally share the cover of SHOCK CITY, the first graphic novel I’ve written and drawn since Serenity Rose! BEHOLD:

The release date is September 10, 2024. Pre-order RIGHT HERE.

ABOUT SHOCK CITY

“Equal parts nightmarish and outrageously funny, this graphic novel adventure is a thrilling joyride through an electrifying world!” – Max Brallier, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Last Kids on Earth

When shy, anxious Milo rings the doorbell of the forbidden Shock City castle on a dare, he gets more than he bargained for when peppy young monster, Sunny, answers the door and labels herself Milo’s new BFF. But when Milo returns to tell Sunny he—and the rest of the town’s residents—are moving out of the crumbling Shock City, his monster pal refuses to accept it. She soon convinces Milo to join her on a romp around the city to reverse the damages done, and persuade him and everyone else, to stay. But when Sunny learns that her grandfather, the great Darkness Von Shock, was not the revered benefactor she believed him to be, and is actually the cause of everything bad happening in Shock City, Milo confronts his biggest fears to help Sunny save the town and reverse her family’s reputation.

Extremely proud of this weird little thing. It digs into all my usual thematic graveyards (monsters, social awkwardness, love of weird things nobody else likes, etc.), but with more artistic ZAZZ than I’ve ever mustered before. Even did my own color this time. Can you imagine? COLOR.

Please pre-order if you can! (The marketing folks say I’ll be executed if you don’t???)

NEXT WEEK: PAY FOR THAT THINGEE.