The Radicals - Issue 2 - Page 8

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The Shepherd - Issue 1 - Page 22

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Burt and the ILS - Issue 1 - Page 9

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The Radicals - Issue 2 - Page 7

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The Shepherd - Issue 1 - Page 21

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Burt and the ILS - Issue 1 - Page 8

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The Radicals - Issue 2 - Page 6

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The Shepherd - Issue 1 - Page 20

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Burt and the ILS - Issue1 - Page 7

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TEchnically, Not Sick

Just injured. However my pain medication is affecting me a lot worse than anyhting I've ever taken before.
This shouldn't affect the other comics, and I should be back to normal update schedule next week.

Radicals - Guest Art

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The Shepherd - Issue 1 - Page 19

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Burt and the ILS - Issue 1 - Page 6

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Movie Review - TMNT

This past summer, being a tremendous and lifelong fan of the Transformers, I was caught up in the Movie merchandise frenzy and by the time the movie came out, I had bought figures of every character in the movie except for Megatron. When I finally saw the movie, I was hit with a sense of buyers regret I hadn't felt since... well, Beast Machines, probably. As you can tell by looking back at this post, I didn't much care for the movie. I mean most of the toys are outstanding, but some of the characters never even spoke.

A few weeks ago I finished the first six volumes of the "classic" Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles animated series, and though the experience left me stupified, it also left me nostalgic. So, I started collecting the movie figures, and they're pretty outstanding, with the possible exception of April. The face is great and will eventually serve as the basis of a Hailey Kitson custom, but the body lacks poseability. That is fine on a female figure if poseability is sacrificed to keep the lines more feminine and sexy, but April is a stick. I had heard good things about the summer's hit CGI movie TMNT, from which the figures hailed, but I heard good things about Transformers, too. Was I setting myself up for another disappointment?

As it turns out, no.

This movie was pretty outstanding. I usually don't like CGI movies, either. Including the Final Fantasy movies. But Turtles was well-animated. 3d enough to give you a feeling of depth, but still cartoony enough to feel like you're watching... well, a cartoon. It's rare that an animated movie (short of most Disney-Pixar releases) can be action-packed and funny enough to entertain a kid without annoying the piss out of parents, but TMNT achieves it. This is a much more grown-up "real-world" version of Turtles than most people are used to seeing in the mass media, with real feelings and real problems. With the possible exception of the original Mirage Comics, this is probably the first version of Turtles to not insult my intelligence. Yet it achieves this more grown-up feel with out a single curse word or a drop of blood and without sparing humor and lighthearted moments. While much of the conflict in the movie is actually between Leonardo and Raphael, more than any other version you also feel the Turtles and Splinter are a true, if somewhat dysfunctional family. Highlander fans will probably find the twist of the "repentent villain weary of immortality" a bit familiar, but it was a welcome surprise in a family-targeted mass release, especially with Patrick Stewart voicing. Sweet.

When was a kid, Michelangelo was my favorite Turtle, with Donatello a close second. This movie gained Raph a lot of respect in my eyes, but while a lot of the movie focused on his conflict with Leo, I would say all the Turtles go a pretty fair share of screentime. Leo, is however, still my LEAST favorite. (Of course the leader guy usually sucks. At least he isn't Cyclops.)

All in all I give it an A+, two thumbs up, and a 9.95. Anyone who gets the Spunkadelic reference should be euthanised.

The Radicals - Issue 2 - Page 5

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Running Way Behind

My "real" job is killing me. This month's pin-up should have been up yesterday, but it will probably be tomorrow before it's posted. The comics are the priority, though and the new Radicals is 90 percent complete as I type this. I have been sitting in this chair for about 17 hours straight working and I'm going to rest for a while.

Updates for the rest of the week may be posted on the day they are due and not the night before as I had been doing as I don't have another day off til Saturday. It may be like this off and on until Christmas. I'll let you know about any more delays ahead of time.

The Shepherd - Issue 1 - Page 18

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Burt and the ILS - Issue 1 - Page 5

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The Radicals - Issue 2 - Page 4

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Happy Birthday, Doctor Who!

That's right! The world's longest running sci-fi series turns 44 today! Celebrate by watching Time Crash if you haven't already!

The Shepherd - Issue 1 - Page 17

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Burt and the ILS - Issue 1 - Page 4

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The Radicals - Issue 2 - Page 3

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The Shepherd - Issue 1 - Page 16

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Burt and the ILS - Issue 1 - Page 3

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My Least Favorite Time of Year!

The holiday blitz in retail is already on! I've been so busy with my other job I can barely keep up with the comics. That's why I've been pretty silent on the blog front lately. That and the fact that most of the ideas and thoughts I would want to share right now involve burning down my workplace. Just yesterday I pencilled, inked, and colored this new Radicals page. I think it kinda shows too. Seems like I had been steadily improving and this was sort of a step back. Also, You may have noticed a pretty stark diference in last week's linework. That's because I did it over a year ago. This was originally supposed to be the beginning of issue 1. See the previous entry about "Bug" to see how we got so screwed up, story order-wise. But at least I got a lot of wordy internal dialogue and exposition out of the way. Next week begins a sequence that should yield a lot of action! and be a good chance to get back into practice. When I got my unwanted promotion-like thing I was FIVE WEEKS AHEAD on the Radicals. Now, I have fallen so far behind, I am doing the new pages the day before they are due.

The Tuttles Vol. 1 Collection has been submitted to the printers. I'm just waiting for them to let me know when to pay or that it's ready. It should be available before Christmas.

In collecting news, I picked up Transformers Movie Megatron the other day. He was the last character from the movie I didn't already own. He has a pretty impressive robot mode, but a barely-existant vehicle mode. Tear the kibble off his back, spray paint him silver, and NEVER TRANSFORM HIM AGAIN and he's pretty cool. Mostly just good next to Optimus as display piece.

The Radicals - Issue 2 - Page 2

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The Shepherd - Issue 1 - Page 15

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Burt and The ILS - Issue 1 - Page 2

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The Radicals - Issue 2 - Page 1

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The Radicals - Issue 2 - Cover

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The Shepherd - Issue 1 - Page 14

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Burt Begins! and a Happy Halloween

As promised, a new strip! Burt and the ILS. begins! Not only have we added a new quality strip by Sam White, but we're another step closer to our ultimate goal of bringing you fresh comics every weekday!

Also, added this months donation incentive pin-up: Brandi Cassidy!

Make sure to come back Monday when Issue 2 of the Radicals begins with a cover pencilled by Roberta!

And a Happy Halloween to everyone! It's one of my favorite days of the year for one reason: the History Channel! But everybody be safe tonight and have fun! I have to work :(. Otherwise I'd set my camera to infrared and go check out some allegedly haunted areas of East Tennessee according to The Shadowlands.

Burt and the ILS Page 1

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Burt and the ILS Begins!

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Radicals Issue 2 Teaser - by Roberta Jackson

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The Shepherd - Issue 1 - Page 13

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Home Sick - Radicals Issue 1 Complete

Aaugggh! I'm not sure how widespread it is, but around here it's front page news: the SUPERBUG! It's a highly contagious stomach virus that's tearing through east Tennesee right now. The other day I was in Powell, Tennessee scouring all the toy departments for 25th Anniversary G.I.Joes. When I got home I saw on the news that Powell Elementary had been shut down or sent home early due to an overwhelming outbreak. Two days later I was violently ill. Ironically, the same morning, we got G.I.Joes in at work. I managed to suppress my need to vomit until the store opened and I was able to buy them. That's right, G.I.Joes are a slightly higher priority than health. If I hadn't run out of hours and had to come home early, I probably wouldn't even have gotten the page colored this week. Speaking of which...

Radicals Issue 1 is done!

I'm happy. This is the first issue I've finished in over 3 years. Usually I would get 4 pages in and decide to reboot the continuity again. Never again! This universe is here to stay.

Next week, I will be running some filler art by Roberta as a "bump" to give me some more pre-production time for issue 2, which should start the following week.

Also, running the same week as the "bump", is "Burt and the I.L.S.", an action comedy series by Sam White, author/artist of Tuttle's and Burt Cottage.

Congrats to the Shepherd for running consitently in the TWCL top 1,000 for the last week!

The Radicals Issue 1 - Page 22 - Last Page!

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The Shepherd Issue 1 - Page 12

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Update: David House and the Wizard of Time!

Double Holy Crap! I got an email from David House, artist/author of the Wizard of Time the other day! He's still around and writing sci-fi! I wanted to wait until I had the presence of mind to formulate a proper response and ask for permission to post it, or I would have had it up much sooner, but here it is:

"I ran across your Aug. 19, 2007, post asking for information about The Wizard of Time and its creator, David House. Well, that's me. I wrote, drew and published the comic book. I did it all, from working with the printers to boxing and shipping orders to distributors. I ended up needing a small second printing of the first issue - distinguished by the letter "TIME" in blue instead of red on the cover. The covers of the first two issues were only black plus spot color, but the third issue had a full-color cover.
The venture collapsed just as I got started with what they came to call the "black and white boom-bust" of 1986. Suddenly, I wasn't getting paid for orders for No. 3, and my capital was gone. I had to quit.
I attempted to start an anthology title called "Animal Universe" with two other funny-animal cartoonists in late 1986. I intended to continue The Wizard of Time story that way. We produced a preview edition and distributed over a thousand to comic shops through distributors. But by this time, the industry was buried in unsold independent comics. We got zero orders.
So in 1987 I did produce about 40 copies of a photocopied edition of The Wizard of Time No. 4 that was 5.5 by 8.5 inches. It had only six additional pages of the story. On the flip side it had an unrelated 8-page story. I have only one copy, and it's part of my portfolio.
What's ironic is that The Wizard of Time was not the story I wanted to write. It's an alternate-reality story with the same villain as in my main story. The story I really wanted to write is about an Oregon boy who goes on amazing adventures across the galaxy under a secret get-to-know-humans program with advanced aliens. I developed the story and individual episodes during college from 1981 to 1985. The title would be Space-Worthy with the main character a teenager named Jess Worthy.
But as you can see, I don't draw very well! I could do OK with animal
characters, but not people. So I figured that if I wrote a related, alternate-universe story with animal characters, and made money at it, I could then pay an artist to do the main story. Hoping to push on even with the failure of The Wizard of Time, I penciled out a sample opening page and gave it to one of the cartoonists from the Animal Universe fiasco in 1987. But he wasn't interested. He moved on to the computer game industry. And I moved into journalism and public affairs.
Amazingly, When I visited him in 2006, he gave back that penciled page untouched. He'd kept it all these years!
And I kept Space-Worthy in the back of my mind all these years but never got any new project launched. Until 2004, that is. At that time, I decided I'd write and self-publish the main story as a series of novels instead of comic book format. The result is much better than the comic book in so many ways. As you saw in the comic book, the expansive story line in The Wizard of Time didn't work well spread out over many, many issues, as I'd envisioned. The novel format is much, much better for an epic-length story.
I published The Key to Space, Book 1 of the Space-Worthy Chronicles, in March 2006, and a short novella that goes with the series called Survivor Planet in March 2007. I'm now working on Book 2, The UFO and the Wizard, as well as other short stories for the chronicles. It's a thousand times better than The Wizard of Time, in my opinion.
You can learn all about it, read sample chapters and order the books at www.space-worthy.com. Both books are also available at Amazon.com.
David"

That's awesome! I never really expected my blog to get anyone's attention, let alone an actual reply from the author. Anyway, this guy was a HUGE influence on me and you should at least take the time to go check out his site space-worthy.com. This I command!

The Radicals Issue 1 Page 21

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The Shepherd Issue 1 Page 11

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Shortpacked! Collection and TIme-slot Change (Again)

Ooooooh! Look what I got in the mail the other day! The first collection of Shortpacked! It's great! Go right to Shortpacked.com and purchase it this instant!



And speaking of toy-collector geekery: Check it out! Shipwreck and Zartan from the 25th Anniversary GI Joe Series! I also drove 120 miles yesterday to every Wal-mart and K-mart I could think of and found 3 of the Cobra Legions 5-pack! My Cobra Army Dominance is now unquestioned!

Also, the Shepherd is moving to Friday starting either this week or next (looks like this week since Jake never sent me the script, although the art is done.)

Like Our Comics? Help Us Out!

While doing comics is very rewarding, it's also A LOT OF WORK. And when you have a "real job" in addition to doing comics like we do, it's hard to even muster the umpf to make yourself work on it some days. So, if you enjoy the comics, help us out. There are a lot of ways you can help out, some of which don't even cost you money!

1.) Help improve the comics' rankings on thewebcomiclist.com. All you have to do is click the buttons I've put on the comics' pages and then follow the links back to the site. All it costs you is a few seconds!

2.) Buy stuff from our CafePress.com store. There's lots of great stuff in there, including posters and wall clocks of the monthly pin-up girls. Funny stuff too, like the "I've decided to be (Check One) Evil" shirt, which you'll see Jayce wearing in the next issue of Radcials.

3.) Donate. When you donate, you get nifty incentives like wallpapers of the monthly pin-up girl. Sometimes, there might be extra strips for donating as well or extra material cut from the finished issues. Donations are also the way we get the highest cash yield. "Duh!" you say, but you'd be surprised how little we actually make off our Cafepress items. And if you are going to donate, please donate $2.00 or more, as most of the first dollar gets eaten up by paypal fees.

Now, I've seen alot of webcomics, that will put up a status bar for donations and say something like "If we don't get this much cash by the end of the month, we will shut down forever and/or eat this bucket of kittens!" and we aren't saying anything like that, but it does cost us a lot of our own time and money to produce this stuff. So, if you appreciate it and feel so compelled, then please share what you can so we can devote even more time to doing what we love and bringing you more entertainment.

Also, feel free to drop us a line and let us know how we're doing at destinyhelixcomics@gmail.com.

Radicals Issue 1 Page 20

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Visit our MySpace Page

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The Shepherd Page 10

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The Radicals Issue 1 Page 19

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Copyright Jack-assery!

Okay, here's the story. Back in middle school, I had this friend. We'll call him "Bug" cause I know he hates that nickname and for good reason (he brought it upon himself.) He was one of those great kinda friends who would run and kick you for no reason and when you asked why he'd say "Just to see what you'd do." I think he had some kind of emotional disconnect from the entire human race and experiments like this were the best way he could think of to interact with people. He would only do this to his friends which were very few, due to his tendency to kick his friends. It's a savage cycle.

Anyway, Bug came up with great story ideas, but none of them were ever fully realized. The scenarios and action were great, but that same emotional disconnect showed through in his writing. Character interactions were mostly either collisions or evasions. They would either fight (or torture each other or have sex depending on the situation) or interact just enough to avoid emotional entanglement with each other. They were all like cold, emotionless, and, occasionally, horny androids. oh, and did I mention his hang-up on torture? Practically everthing he wrote involved someone getting raped or strapped to a table and anally electrocuted. Even his X-men and Pokemon fanfics. The following was an actual line from one of his scripts:

"Let's see what 800 volts will do---right up your ass!"

I SHIT YOU NOT! Any time you critcized his work either you were wrong or he would throw it away and sink into a depression. He didn't believe revisions unless they were his idea.

Anywho, to the point of this blog. Above are character designs I did for Bug in high school. And I did them over and over until he was happy, because he completely lack the ability to compromise. And I didn't get paid. About a year ago, as we were about to launch Destiny Helix Jake, myself, and "Bug" were working on a story together on a Radicals story which would have featured characters created by all three of us and we would all have a hand in writing it. At the last minute, he backs out, despite my having his permission recorded in IMs to use his character. This was to be the first issue and set us back months to re-write parts of the first year. Parts of it were already drawn in fact. I could have gone ahead and used his character, seeing as how I not only have his permission in writing, but he has also failed to even bother to copyright or publish anything using said character. But, I'm not going to for 2 reasons: 1.) Using his character may someday end up benefitting him in some way, and I don't want to do that. 2.) I'm not enough of a jackass to steal someone's character even if he WILL never bother to publish it himself.

I am however enough of a jackass to copyright these designs I DREW and was NEVER PAID FOR just so he can't. These guys are my visual creation will play a role soon in the Destiny Helix Universe. They will of course have far different personalities and backgrounds than he had intended for them because his sucked. I think they were all omnipotent in his version.

If you are wondering about the current status of "Bug", he has kicked (either physically or emotionally) most of his friends too often. He continues to write stories about Japanese-style giant robots and monsters and show them only to the select few he can trust to not criticize him and can stand to put up with him. He is also a binge drinker.

The Shepherd Issue 1 Page 9

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The Radicals Issue 1 Page 18

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Gilgamesh and Enkidu

I hate Todd MacFarlane, but I love the action figure sculpts his people crank out.

Here you see Mr. Eko and John Locke from Lost together. If I didn't remember taking the picture, I'd have to question if it was a photo of the figures or the real Terry O'Quinn and Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje. At last, the two warrior survivors of 815 are together in my collection.

I was both saddened and angry at Mr. Eko's sudden death and departure from the show, whith his storyline seemingly unresolved. Not that death is a certain end to a Lost character. Ethan Rom has appeared more since he died than before. But it seems the Locke/Eko-Gilgamesh/Enkidu path the characters seemed to be following got discarded before it was even very clear.

Oh, well still supergreat sculpts! Only disappointment is that Eko does not have the story about the boy and the dog as one of his phrases.

The Shepherd Issue 1 Page 8

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Radicals Issue 1 Page 17

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Meh.

Gah!!! I have been buried under a tsunami of work! That's why not much bloggy lately. Not to mention, I've been working on the comics so much, that nothing has really happened worth blogging about. The first Tuttles collection is about 70% done. Man, ISBN's are real racket. I'm a few weeks ahead on the Radicals linework, which is good because, I'll need a couple of weeks to do pre-production on issue 2 of the Radicals. All this work though may mean big things for the site soon, though.

I've gotten a unwanted promotion (sorta) at my "real" job. It basically entails a lot more work and responsibility with no additional pay.

My few precious moments of free-time for the last month have been spent reading the archives of Shortpacked! and It's Walky Can't wait for my Shortpacked! collection to arrive in the mail!

Also, the New Heroclix set Justice League is out and it's pretty awesome! Finally, a Zauriel! All I want now is an Eradicator and I can die happy.

I think that's the most exclamation points I've ever used.

The Shepherd Issue 1 Page 7

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Radicals issue 1 Page 16

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Shepherd Issue 1 Page 6

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