Page 4

Gian Cruz is another guy from the old Fanboy Radio message boards. Gian is a talented artist, and his mini-comic Day Passing By, which deals with the loss of a brother, is still one of the most touching comics I've ever read. He's also a talented musician, and has a few videos posted on Youtube. All of this can be seen at his blog oh, sir.

Page 4 picks up right where page 3 left off, which is often rare in a jam comic. The two pages fit together perfectly. Ideally this is how it would always work, but usually doesn't. By the end of the page the murderous forest animals are on a hyper charged ride into insanity. The jam also takes a hyper charged road into insanity, as you will find out in the weeks to come.

Page 3

When the sketchbook finally hit the road it headed to Nicholasville, KY, and into the waiting hands of Justin Stewart. I had met Justin through the old Fanboy Radio message boards, and we became quick friends. Justin is an old hand at wecomics. He's created some of the funniest mixes of pop culture I have ever seen. First through his Crap Rares comics, which became Popped Culture, and now is known as Popstew Comics. Justin is also an amazing colorist, and currently colors just about everything Jim Mahfood draws.

What I love about this page is that the characters have finally hit the road, just like the sketchbook.

Lujan and the Sketchbook

Jim Lujan concentrates hard to create Page 18 of The Traveling Comic. I guess you guys will get to see Page 18 in 18 weeks. I've seen it, and it's amazing!

Page 2

Page 2 didn't have to travel far. Matt Leong also lives in St.Louis, and the two of us had worked together to create the anthology mini-comic Exit 126. So he was the perfect choice to continue after the page I had drawn. (note: Matt was also the first person to break a rule of the Traveling Comic by creating his word balloons on the computer and gluing them onto the book. But, he's so good looking I forgave him.)

Matt does a great little podcast called Doubledorkmeter where he talks about everything on his mind, focusing on the geek culture. He also has some pretty neat videos with his Atomicclockwork Media production house. Check out Node 666_D2M and his vlog for 6/16/08, they're two of my favorites.

Page 1

This is the first page, drawn by me. I consider myself to have many limitation in my art style, and thought others who may want to participate may also feel they could not contribute to something too realistic. Mulling it over came to the idea that cartoon animals are easy and fun to draw, and would also be fun to see drawn in various styles. So the comic opens with some cute, fuzzy animals...who have murdered someone. Ah, yes, I also have a difficult time being traditional.

This page also highlights what a horrible speller I am. Since all art is to be done on the page, forest is forrest in this story.

Welcome!

Hello, and welcome to The Traveling Comic. Let me give you a brief history.

Years ago members of the Fanboy Radio message boards created an online comic that was built panel by panel, with a new artist for each panel. This is known as a jam. The comic eventually was called The Bullet Angelica and had over 25 artist contributing to it before it ended. The Bullet Angelica can be confusing to read, frustrating to follow, but amazing to look at. For me, the creative energy and amazement at others' talent overrides the flaws in storytelling.

It was around this time that I also became very interested in the potentials of the comics medium. I began finding many experimental comics, as well as attempting a few of my own. One of these ideas took the jam idea, with the concerns of the storytelling problems, and said, "What if artists had a full page to tell their portion of a comic?" And so I purchased a sketchbook with this idea in mind. I drew the first page. Then, because I thought it would be fun, I decided to mail the sketchbook to a friend, and have them mail it to someone else, and so on.

The sketchbook eventually made its way back to St.Louis, where it stayed for a few years due to various time constraints and other duties I had. However, the sketchbook has made its way back in to the Postal System and is enroute to California as I type this. To date the sketchbook has met 17 artists, been to 6 States, and its cover fell off somewhere in the mail.

Before sending the book back out on its mission, I decided to scan all of the pages, to preserve them if anything happens. I will be posting the pages I have scanned on a regular basis, with hopefully some commentary on the artist that drew that page.

If you're interested in receiving the sketchbook by mail, and drawing a page, check the side bar for details.