Necessity Births Invention

Way back in the late eighties, I was in graduate

school at Louisiana Tech University in the graphic design program. One of my most enjoyable experiences there was being a teaching assistant in a cartooning class taught by then Tech photography professor and comics connoisseur Dan Younger. The culmination of the class was the printing of a 32 page black and white comic book with a color cover entitled Burn This Comic. Most people took the title literally, and so few of the original 1000 copies exist today. Each member of the class contributed pages and I was allotted 4 pages as my portion. Needing an idea quickly, I started with the pun of “Dr. DeCoy” and progressed from there in a fevered frenzy of creation until Star Quack was born. That story was a much-abbreviated version of “None Are So (Duck) Blind,” the first story in this volume. This was in early 1988 when there weren’t many Star Trek parodies yet. In fact, the only ones I knew of were the Saturday Night Live version and Pigs in Space. Since then, of course, there have been more parodies made than can be counted, some even involving

ducks (much to my heartache and sorrow). 

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Boarding Up

​I went on to follow my career of being a college professor of graphic design when in 1993 a contest in Animation Magazine caught my eye. It was the first annual Cartoon Network/Animation Magazine Storyboard Contest, open to both professional animators and amateurs alike.

I thought it would be a good chance to build up my storyboarding skills and revisit a concept I loved, so I revamped my original 4-page story, adding in new sequences. An honorable mention encouraged me to develop the idea further. I eventually completed a black and white version of issue #1 with the intention of self-publishing. This prospect seemed daunting, but happily a company called Shanda Fantasy Arts published a black and white version of issues #1 and 2 (the first four stories in this book) combined. Sales were low, I believe, due to the black-and-white printing and the 48 page (and thus more expensive) format. So I let the concept alone for awhile.

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 A New Venue

​Then I read Reinventing Comics by Scott McCloud and everything changed. That book got me excited about the possibilities of online publication of Star Quack. The internet, with almost no overhead costs or financial risk, offered the capability of working in color, and seemed a perfect home for my work. I investigated McCloud’s references and eventually discovered an ebook publisher called Unbound Comics. Amazingly, here was a company actually trying to implement some of McCloud’s visions of comics’ future; diversity of genre, direct connection between creators and readers, and creator control. I submitted my work to them and was a top seller for them for a couple of years, though “top seller” was a relative term. NO ONE was making money in downloadable e-book comics in 2003! I completed my third issue, “Sappy Days,” yet the Unbound Comics model ultimately failed. They were about 10 years too early. 

 

I later tried Wowio, which was a dead end, and then Comixology, which was quite promising

until Amazon bought it and ate it up. But I still had that “one more story” I simply HAD to produce;

“Bird Seed.” I spent much of 2024 producing it. What took so long? I decided that I really must go all out and build 3D sets in Blender for the background, for consistency and ease (I kind of hate drawing perspective). There’s a lot of time invested on the front end, but if you are re-using sets over and over, it’s a great way to go. I built them all myself (with the single exception of Ihearya’s phone because, well, why?) That brought me to a total of over 100 pages (including covers) and I realized “I’m in crowdfunding graphic novel territory, baby!” So here we are.

 

But the sharp-eyed among you may notice there’s about 20 years in-between “Sappy Days” and “Bird Seed.” So what’s up with that? What have I been DOING all this time? Well, raising a family, following a career as a graphic designer and professor (see mikejonesjr.net) and working on a vast NEW project you can see at omni-men.com!

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