ON SALE NOW – Let’s talk about STRANGE TIMES #1

ON SALE NOW – ORDER STRANGE TIMES #1 HERE

It’s been a couple of weeks now, and I’ve been delinquent in writing about Strange Times #1. So let’s fix that.

This book is the easiest book I’ve been associated with making. So easy, in fact, that I kinda wonder how it came together as it did.

When I got back into small press comics/zine publishing after 30+ years away, I could count the number of people who I knew on two hands. And of course, everyone had their own projects, their own lives, etc. I got a fair bit of “Welcome back…good luck to you…can’t wait to see what you make.” Which would be awesome if I could draw as well as write, but the Good Lord Above didn’t see fit to impart that skill upon me. No, I had to find collaborators.

Through social media — specifically, Terry Flippo’s outstanding Small Press Heroes group on Facebook (I link because I STRONGLY suggest you join the group if my site interests you) — I put out a simple and rather naive “Hi, I’m here. Anyone want to try working together?” post. Literally one person agreed to give me a shot, and that’s Alan Groening.

Alan, whom I did not know prior to that point, is one cool customer. He was literally up for anything. Totally of the “Hey, let’s have some fun” spirit that I love so much in our little hobby. Because if you’re not having fun making comics and fanzines, why are you doing it?

He’s also prolific as can be, putting out near-daily drawings and cartoons on his Groening Studios Facebook page. But he’s not a one-trick pony; he’ll jump from a line art gag drawing to an impressively lush piece of digital art using Procreate.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

We started to chat about ideas of things that we liked — themes, characters, comics, films, etc. We found near-immediate common ground in science fiction. His monster interest have manifested itself in the Monster Monday Facebook group, which hosts monster artwork of all types (and is especially busy on Mondays, go figure). So…sci-fi…and monsters. Interesting.

At the time, I was deep diving into classic EC science fiction – specifically the EC Comics Archives editions of Weird Science. The stories were so well constructed, so tight — and so short! Get in, tell the story and get out. No fluff. But there were the occasional monsters!

My mind went to work. Sci-fi, monsters, EC-style storytelling…where to go with that? I’ll leave out one key element because that would spoil some of the surprise ending, but the end result was our 9-page short, “Run for Your Life”, which anchors Strange Times #1. It was one of those scripts that wrote itself; I banged it out in a couple of hours. Everything just fit. Alan took it and ran with it.

After that, we had to fill out the book. It was a UFO member zine, so the Checklist went in. And I needed a cover as well as a welcome/introduction page. But that made 12 pages — would have done the job, but it would have been sparse. Alan suggested that I look in his Groening Studios inventory for additional content. I was a kid in a candy store!

We were going back and forth on cover ideas at the time. I was hell-bent on doing an EC homage (something that likely will happen in a future issue), but I found that Procreate gas mask image and was hooked. What a perfect sign of our Strange Times, and what a great way to kick off this series! Some creepy font work, and we had a cover. (And the Procreate work also gave us a creepy yet funny back cover as well!)

By this point, I was appreciating that this issue was going to be a showcase for Alan. Fine by me — he’s very talented, he’s prolific, he took a chance on collaborating with me….give him the spoils! The Groening Studios page had tons of cartoon art, and I thought it only appropriate to add some to the book. We agreed on a full-page monster with art bleeding to the edges on the first interior spread, then on a humor piece toward the back.

With one page left to fill, I thought that it would be fun to play with the “Strange Times” motif and found that The Independent, the London newspaper, had a whole section of “strange but true” articles. I found the craziest headlines and assembled a page of them with a link to the section page. Gotta attribute the work!

Lastly, the design. With the 50’s EC design largely out the window (but note that Alan used the mechanical-looking EC font in the captions on “Run for Your Life”), I wanted something that fit the “Strange Times” theme. A little work with InDesign and massaging some fonts resulted in the smoky titling that just works so well. And then putting grey on the background pages added to the mood.

The finishing touch was the decision to abandon the full-size comic format and switch to magazine format. I’d never done a magazine before, but the pricing wasn’t significantly worse than for printing a full-size comic…so I went for it. It’s killing me on the postage, but boy is it worth the money! The pinups especially look great.

So yeah, it all just kinda came together. Alan was a champ for playing along; I think he was amused at first and increasingly excited when it became clear that this new anthology book was going to be a solo showcase on him and his work.

He also has the patience of a saint as the USPS appears to have lost the first batch of contributor copies that I sent him. The second batch, sent by UPS, made it safely, but that lost batch depleted my inventory and leaves me with 2 copies left of our first printing. If you want one, order it NOW. I’m hoping the lost shipment surfaces but am not optimistic.

So there you go — Strange Times #1. It’s a quirky, fun book…and one that I really enjoyed making with Alan. I hope to work with him again in the future, and who knows, maybe other artists might want to take a turn! If you’re one of those artists, reach out and let me know!