A strange, but important, milestone...

Some of you folks know this about me, others don't, depending on what time period in my life you knew me... but I draw comics as a hobby... Not the funny Haha kind (Though I have done that in the past as well), but the Superman kind -30 page comic book-thingies.

I started in 1995 with a comic called "Dokuko's Angel" which I wrote, 5 pages at a time, for a Japanese Anime magazine that the local fan club put together (Not professional in any way). I drew about 18-some pages (with a couple of inserts to make it 20... but the actual pages I wrote were 18) before I grew bored of it and quit.

later, in 1999, I used those pages to send portfolio packets to comic book companies... of which I received a few rejections, but mostly no response at all...

Except one little British company which wanted me to write a 20-page short for their little Anime magazine...

I wrote "Letters Home" as a 20 page short in 2000... It was a war story set way in the future. I had based the characters on the people in my workplace at the time, and it came out okay.

But I never wrote an issue two.

In 2001, the British company asked for another Letters Home, but it was right after 9/11 and I didn't really think it appropriate to do the second episode (The story was about a surprise attack on Jupiter... or humans)... so instead I wrote "Legend of Innocence", a Retro Sci/Fi... sorta a Science Fiction written from 1890's POV: Space Ships have sails, Mars is red because of red plants, you can breathe in space, etc... I wrote 20 pages on that story as well.

But again, there was never a part 2...

Well, it has turned out that Comic writing is my peraonal Discipline Barometer. I don't really write them to be published, I kinda did a half-assed attempt at that in the 90's... I really write them because I enjoy doing it...

But I have a real problem passing 20 pages...

When I got here, I took a different tack; I decided to write a story based in a very established world, Star Trek. I wrote "By Her Reason Swayed", which was a 18-page short story which made the circulation of fan websites and was generally well received.

I relaxed, I didn't panic when I completed BHRS but I decided this was going to be the end of this do-one-thing-a-little-and-move-on thing... I was going to do a full "episode" of this Star Trek thing... Not for the Star Trek part... but to prove that I could do more than 20 pages. So, in January, I started writing a script... and then ran out of steam... I put "Tamerlane" on the shelf.

That was stupid, I know it... I got my head screwed on straight and then in August, I picked up the pieces of Tamerlane, refubished the script, and began work on it again...

A couple of weeks ago, I started drawing "The Champion", the first "episode" of the Tamerlane comic... I put pen to paper.

This is the "Splash" page at page 21 (Not 20 of the first comic, page 21 of this new comic). I completed it just after penning pages 2-5 (Scene one).

This is important because now there are, technically, 23 pages of Tamerlane.

I have broken the 20-page-barrier, something that has haunted me since 1995...

---Gleeful. :D

P.S. If anyone is interested in reading "By Her Reason Swayed", or see "The Champion" when I finish it in a couple of months (Hopefully...), I made a forum for my little comic over at: http://www.usstamerlane.com Just click on the picture and look in the first forum marked "Episodes"... It's the "Omake" (Omake being Japanese for "Special" or "Extra"... it's not a main-story event... it's a side-story). If you register in the forum, I have to approve you (Because forums are the new place for spammers, and they automatically register, post pornographic pictures all over the forum and are really nasty... so now I have to manually approve everyone)... anyway, if you register (And I would love it if you did!), please put "Star Trek" at the very first place in the interests field so that when I purge the user database of the spam bots I can see who is a real "Human" and who isn't... (If you want to know why I do this, look at the member list... there are 10 real members at my site now... everyone else is an automated bot... and I purged that list 10 days ago). I'll try to approve folks quickly, but I don't check Tamerlane every day anymore (I have had the site up for two months, and only 10 real people have registered... but more than 1,500 spam bots have registered... I really just don't get excited anymore about "You have a new registeree at your forum!" messages...)