Hello!
Thank you for being here and reading this first post, which is about what I’m planning to do with this newsletter.
For about seven years, I have spent much of my spare time trying to make comics. This means a lot of time casting about for cunning ideas, cursing that ideas aren’t so easy to come by, considering what kinds of ideas are “for me”, and how to do justice to the ideas that do come.
A big part of this searching seems to me to be organising the bits and pieces that are the byproduct (or main event?) What parts of stories are plots, and what parts are circumstances which have no plots? How far do I have to go with writing a comic before I know if it will work? Is it worth hanging onto that sketch of that psychic iguana?
I do a lot of pencil drawing on printer paper - these then get “filed” (stuffed) into folders, or into the recycling bin if they’re really heinous. Plenty get lost, never to be seen again. So my plan for this space is that I’m going to keep things together, put up ideas and sketches that feel promising, and generally have a nice old time with it.
I hope in the process that this newsletter will be an interesting and fun read for anyone who is also interested in story-telling and/or likes looking at drawings of disaffected animals!
And, to kick things off, a very exciting guest!!! In a semi-regular feature, “Ask an Intellectual”, “Oncle” Fabien Choucroute - French Left Bank thinker, raconteur, bon viveur and advice-dispenser to the hopeless - will be taking some questions! So if you have any problems for Oncle Fabi, please leave them in the comments, and he will answer them in the next newsletter. Mon dieu!
Until next time!
Oncle Fabien, two questions (if I may):
1. Do you have a favourite turtle neck?
2. How did you survive the recent, horrifying, No More Mustard summer?
Fabi, please share a childhood anecdote x