HEART-SHAPED SKULL

SR 1 PAGE FIFTY-NINE Why is Sera’s bed floating? Why wouldn’t it be floating? It would be crazy for it not to be floating! If you can float your bed and choose not to, you should go to jail. Because of her crazy supernatural powers, sleepytime is probably the only time Sera feels physically vulnerable.…

SR 1 PAGE FIFTY-SEVEN This page full of TV screens was definitely inspired by Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns. If you were a kid in the late 80’s, The Dark Knight Returns was the COOLEST THING IMAGINABLE. Batman throws a little batarang through the Joker’s eyeball! THROUGH. HIS. EYEBALL. This was a big deal…

SR 1 PAGE FIFTY-FIVE Hey everybody, it’s Lois! I love Lois! Yet another character who first bubbled to life on my animation desk at CalArts ca. 1998-2000. Here’s the earliest sketch I have of her: Lois’ last name, “McCreedy,” is a reference to Kurt Russell’s chopper-flyin’ flamethrower boy in The Thing, R.J. MacReady. I try…

SR 1 PAGE FIFTY-THREE Into issue three! And #3 is a big stinkin’ deal, because it’s the first issue made under contract with Slave Labor Graphics (SLG). A webcomic no more, Serenity Rose had made it to the big time: PAPER PUBLICATION (just like Swank). And with the country’s foremost distributor of goth-tinged funnybooks, too,…

SR 1 PAGE FIFTY-ONE I LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE drawing big crowds of background characters.  Except that there’s rarely any time to draw big crowds of background characters. But when there is…HOO BOY. I love getting into each of their heads while I’m drawing them. And with the laborious pencil rendering style I was…

SR 1 PAGE FORTY-NINE It’s extremely difficult to come up with a new take on vampires. Even putting a new visual spin on the ol’ sucky-sucks is tough. Don’t think “mouth opens wide enough to roll up the nose” was ever gonna set the world on fire, but I tried. Those goopy eyes are nice…

SR 1 PAGE FORTY-SEVEN I was really uptight about drugs and alcohol when I was in my 20’s. There’s a history of substance abuse in my family, so maybe being uptight saved me from disaster, but man… I must have been annoying as hell to be around sometimes. Judgy. Choosing to avoid specific chemicals is…

SR 1 PAGE FORTY-FIVE This is just frankly an astonishing haircut. You might say Kasper’s majestic bunny hair is nothing but a cartoonist’s fancy, the fevered imagining of a wretched shut-in blissfully unaware of the physics governing the world around them. YOU ARE WRONG. I have seen this haircut in real life. It was green.…

SR 1 PAGE FORTY-THREE Ugh, there’s that slur again. Sorry, everybody. I believe this is the second and final time it appears in the Serenity Rose saga, and just like before, it’s coming from a character we’re supposed to find repulsive. Might change it for future printings of the book. Lot of pop punk hate…

SR 1 PAGE FORTY-ONE Thinking about how much time I spent getting the texture juuuuust right on that 2X4. Or all those teensy-tiny little wires behind the tower in panel four. Or that whole horrible frame! Do you think people even appreciate all that unnecessary trouble? I do! I loooooove teensy-tiny details, the more the…