Mars becomes a little more crowded with the sudden appearance of the evil robot, Bob!
Bob is a renegade robot from Earth that used to pester our heroes during training. But how did he get to Mars? Is this the ticket back to Earth? Not if Bob can help it. He has other plans, including the use of his nefarious Time Cube!
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My good man John can’t catch a break with anyone can he? Just a quick note to check out the store if you haven’t, the limited edition giclee prints are in.
└ Tags: John, Orphan, Ril
One of the coolest things about being a cartoonist is meeting other artists. In the two plus years I’ve been doing this, I’ve met lots of really neat people. As many of you know, I’ve even met one of my best friends, Steve Ogden, by commiserating over comics.
I mentioned yesterday I had another pair of eyes on my comic. That pair of eyes just happens to belong to Christopher Baldwin. I had no idea about Chris or his comics until last week, but suddenly I find all these great comics he has produced! I wrote to him to compliment him on his comics and see if he had any advice for me (I’m a sucker for good advice) and we ended having a really nice conversation and he was very helpful.
Who is Christopher Baldwin? Well, he’s currently a cartoonist for MAD magazine (how fun is that?!) and has already found great success with his comics on the web. He’s been covered in The Washington Post, Wired Magazine, Salon Magazine, UK Daily Telegraph, Newsbytes, and even appeared on NPR. He has been best known for two long successful runs of webcomics, Bruno, which ran from 96′ to ‘07 and is about an introspective young woman, and Little Dee a wonderfully charming comic about a young girl who gets lost in the woods. (More about Dee in a bit.)
However his current project is a sci-fi comic! Yeah, let’s talk about Spacetrawler!
(Note: this is an adult comic with language and adult themes – consider it rated R.)
I’m not sure how I missed this one. Maybe because it only started up this year. But Spacetrawler is really very cool. Let’s talk about the art first. As you can see, it’s colorful, detailed and excellently drawn. When you see his full pages, you can’t believe the amount of detail that goes into an update twice a week (on top of all his other work!) I mean these updates are BIG.
And his depictions of the many alien races that inhabit his story are just fantastic. All different variations of well designed and drawn characters. Imaginative and interesting.
And this brings me to the writing. Chris states that he spent a year in development and it shows. He has a well thought out story (one he says will keep him busy for TEN years!) and well rounded characters. It’s a fairly large cast already and he has just begun. But already we understand the motives and the personalities of all the main characters. This makes it really fun to read.
And make no mistake – read you will! This is a STORY for crying out loud! I love the fact that he makes no bones about plenty of prose to go along with that great art. We’re getting lots of bang every update. Not to mention, the comedy is excellent. Chris is funny in ways I wish Marooned was. And I found myself really enjoying the strip, and literally laughing out loud at certain points.
The story revolves around an alien race, the Eebs, that has been put upon by the rest of the universe due to the Eebs special talents. This is quite unfair of course. After a rousing introduction where we see Rickshaw Boans (founder of Interplanet Amity) free a crew of Eebs and disappear, we are introduced to Nogg, interplanetary activist and ship’s captain. Turns out he is responsible for the kidnapping of various people on Earth. He hopes these Earthlings will claim Earth’s position in the G.O.B. He hopes by doing this that eventually he can free the Eebs from their slavery!
Trust me, this is just scratching the surface.
To find out what the G.O.B is, who the Earthlings are and how cool Nogg is, you’ll just need to start reading Spacetrawler from the start. And now is a great time. Since it only just started in January with a twice a week schedule, catching up is very easy. Trust me, you won’t regret it.
Again, note this should be considered reading for 18 years of age and older. So for my younger readers, please skip this one for now. Everyone else, get over there!
That brings us to Little Dee.
Little Dee apparently already completed its run, but has once again begun from the beginning. This time the art is larger and it is being posted Monday-Saturdays with annotations.
When I began reading this one, I was immediately taken once again by the beautiful art and the great characters. It seems simple on the surface. A little girl wanders into the forest and meets up with a bear – Ted – who takes her in. His vulture friend (Vachel) thinks it’s a bad idea. But they along with a dog named Blake realize it’s up to them to take care of her.
I got this far and realized I really wanted this in book form – so I ran over and bought book one! This strip has the classic look, and seems to have wonderful writing. I really can’t wait to sit down and read it. Meanwhile, you can check it out at the Little Dee site. This comic should be safe for all ages.
Many thanks to Chris for taking the time to give me an honest critique and help me out (which is always very welcome and appreciated.)
Zed of the Baro has been given a new lease on life!
With that in mind, John enlists Zed to finally fix his rocket so he can make the return trip to Earth. But as you can expect, things don’t quit go as planned.
I mentioned at the end of last year that I would be trying some things to promote Marooned and see how things go this year in order to make a decision on whether or not, or how to, continue.
In the first quarter, I tried 3 things.
In addition to doing the “normal” things. Results? Readership continues to decline. It doesn’t seem as though any of those three channels resulted in new readers. (But hey, if you are new from one of the three, please let me know).
In January, I was recording around 315 weekly users. We are currently now at around 250. That’s an alarming drop for so few readers.
A friend of mine and I who both do comics have been having a lot of conversations about this. Some tough questions need to be asked, mainly:
Ultimately, I think I have to look in the mirror. If the strip fails to grow or pull in a passionate audience, I can only blame the content in the end. It’s simply not good enough, or not appealing enough. If it were, more people would read, but more importantly, more people would tell others. In marketing it’s the Net Promoter Score. And I can tell you that pretty much the only promoter of Marooned is me.
THAT IS NOT TO BLAME YOU, THE READER. I want to be perfectly clear on that. If you are not compelled to share with others, that’s my fault. It also needs to be said that not everyone is comfortable promoting things even if they do like it. Not everyone is a sharer. That’s why it’s important to have a larger following, so the rare ones that do promote make a difference.
At this point, Marooned is a tough sell. There’s a large archive to dig through. It’s a long form story, which frankly the internet does not reward by noticing on social media. It needs organic growth, and we just may be beyond that.
I have other stories to tell (like “The Flower” in production on Patreon) and I have a goal to put together stories for sick children. (“The Flower” is part of that, as is my story “Green” many of you have read.) At some point, I’d like my stories to make a difference, to have a connection that matters.
I’m not quite ready to give in yet. But certainly something has to change. I don’t really know what more I can do, though.
One option is to go completely behind the Patreon paywall and just update when I can for those supporters. I’m aware that choosing that would result in losing almost all of you. It might give me a little boost and earnings and would allow me to only concentrate on a single point of publishing.
I’m not looking to you for answers. I am thankful for each one of you that visits and reads. I’m just being totally transparent so you know what is going on. This really hasn’t been working for some time now. I either need to be okay with dwindling numbers, go behind the paywall, or stop completely. It’s not a decision I make lightly. This story and these characters mean a lot to me.
For the next quarter, I will continue producing and trying to think of solutions. I’ll re-assess again at that time.
As always, thank you so much for reading.