On Deceased Comics
The drawing above is a sketch of a monster for my graphic novel series with Victor Hao, King of RPGs! Although King of RPGs was canceled by Random House after 2 volumes, before that happened, I drew a ton of character sketches and outlines of stories for future books. I’ll be posting many of these on my twitter and Facebook accounts in the coming weeks — please check ‘em out! (And if you find King of RPGs in a used bookstore or on alibris, please check it out too! Each of the 2 volumes is a complete story, so it doesn’t end abruptly.)
While I’m looking back at King of RPGs, I have to look at another long-in-the-works comic project: The Stiff. It’s my sad duty to announce that the webcomic The Stiff is now canceled. This decision wasn’t an easy one, and I apologize to all the many readers and fans who were looking forward to seeing it drawn to its conclusion.
“The Stiff” is an important and personal story to me. Like my favorite long-running comics, it’s proven malleable to fit my changing interests and styles, from a simple story I conceived in college in 1994 (it was almost my first comics project before Dream-Quest!), to a new take on that same story in 1999, to the (sort of) final version I pitched to Joey Manley & Lea Hernandez’s now-defunct Girlamatic webcomics site in 2001. When I got frustrated with Viz and cut back on my job, I poured all my energy into drawing “The Stiff” from 2002 to 2006, 3 days a week (later 2 days, then ultimately 1 day). Through Girlamatic I met close friends, fellow artists who inspired me and many of whom I still I know. And the time I spent sitting at my drawing desk working on “The Stiff” — at its peak 12 hours a day, 3 days a week, plus miscellaneous storyboarding and plotting — level-upped my art & writing abilities many times.
But unfortunately I set it aside, and despite working on roughs and storyboards over the last two years, I haven’t been able to pick it up again. I envisioned “The Stiff” as a webcomic of leisurely pacing and tremendous length, in imitation of such creators as Dave Sim, Carla Speed McNeil and (pick-a-mangaka-any-mangaka). But like Sean Michael Robinson, who wrote for The Hooded Utilitarian about how he set aside his unfinished graphic novel Discards, I set myself up with an artstyle too detailed and a plot too long to finish in the format I chose. All this may sound a bit like a cheap excuse for not finishing it (“The film I want to make is a $200 million epic!! I couldn’t possibly make anything with a lesser budget, that’s why I’m never finishing my home movie”). I’ll try to compress a long and boring list of excuses into this: I bit off more than I could chew.
Years ago, I once scoffed at something Warren Ellis wrote in an essay, where he talked about how he had a dream story but he didn’t have time to work on it because of all the other things he was working on. “Whatever, Warren Ellis! If you really cared, you’d find time to do it!” I thought. Well, now I’m the one saying the exact same thing Ellis said. It’s not that I don’t still *like* “The Stiff”, or that I’m such a different person ten years later that it’s alien to me now. Like I said, a good long-running story grows & ages along with its creator. But, thinking of the tremendous time investment it would take to draw those 750+ remaining pages, I think of the dozens of other, newer projects I’d rather do with that time. And when I think of leaving the sad, dangling possibility that *someday* I’ll finish drawing it, I think of other unfinished-but-never-officially-canceled comics that have bugged me and my friends over the years: Rick Veitch’s Maximortal. Patrick Farley’s Apocamon. Martin Wagner’s Hepcats (I’m not a fan, but my friend was), whose creator has spent 20 years flaking out on finishing the same storyline, with two publishers and as a webcomic. Or in prose, David Gerrold’s The War Against the Chtorr—aaargggh! I’m sure there are many other examples. Inasmuch as possible, I’d rather not be part of such company, and have The Stiff be a dead webcomic rather than an eternally-waiting-to-be-finished comic.
But that doesn’t mean it’s the end, because I’m going to finish The Stiff as a prose novel. Prose has vastly different requirements than comics and the resulting work will surely be different than a graphic novel would have been, but at least in prose I can honestly say that it *will* get done. I hope people (including perhaps you, O blog reader) will find it and enjoy it in that format.
In the meantime I’d like to thank many people who were instrumental in making or writing about The Stiff: Joey Manley, Lea Hernandez, Shaenon Garrity, Derek Kim, Lauren Davis, Jason Shiga, Hope Larson, Alvin Lu. All of you encouraged me, and many other folk whose names I don’t remember, encouraged me and gave me the desire to keep going. I’m sorry I didn’t finish The Stiff as a webcomic, but I hope someday soon I’ll be able to tell you the complete story, albeit with less pictures and more words. The clock is ticking. The bell tolls. I’ll be with you soon.
Discussion (9) ¬
I was wondering what happened to The Stiff! I enjoyed it a lot, so I’ll look forward to the prose version when it’s completed.
I’ve been missing The Stiff! Looking forward to the prose version.
I am sorry to hear of its ending. I was liking how this was slowly developing layer upon layer till the final will be like at the beginning where we were shown the after math. I hope someday it can be revisited.
Will there be anything posted here at all other than what is already here? I do like your work and your interpretation of Lovecraft as well. Hope to see your work with Howard & CAS too.
R.I.P. “The Stiff”. Strange, just a few days ago I happened to be reading your projection of the remaining length of this web comic and wondered if anyone could finish 750+ pages while still making a living! Please don’t feel guilty–after all, you’re in good company, if you count all the creators who tried, and failed, to complete a cherished project.
Here’s a few, just off the top of my head:
Alan Moore and Bill Sienkiewicz–“Big Numbers”
Harlan Ellison–“The Last Dangerous Visions”
Jack Kirby–The Fourth World Saga
Gordon R. Dickson–The Childe Cycle
Stephen R. Bissette–“Tyrant”
And, of course, one of my favorite anime series, “Big O”, which drew from me a long, protracted “AAAAARGH!” at its ambiguous cliff hanger at the end of the second (and final) season.
Good luck on your novel project and let us know when your work will be published.
Thanks everyone! I’m really sorry to end the comic, but really excited about writing it as a novel.
@Ken – Thanks for the kind words. I’m flattered to be discussed in the same comment as “Tyrant.” :)
@Night-Gaunt49 — I’ll still be posting here! I’ll be putting up some new art from my forthcoming game “Dreamland” as well as from other projects. Please don’t be a stranger and come back! (and check my Twitter and the Mock Man Press facebook page, which I update more regularly)
Sad to see that the comic ended so abruptly. Saw an image of a page of the comic floating around the internet and it caught my eye. I traced it back here and ended up binging the entire thing. Can’t say what initially exactly drew me in and what keep me reading, but if I were to guess, I’d say I saw a lot of myself and people I’ve met when was the characters’ ages. There’s also something fascinating about the way you draw facial features and portray character interactions.
The way you paced and laid everything out really made it seem like it was met to go on for a very long time. I hope you continue work on the novel and that you are able to tell the story you wanted to tell. I’ll keep busy by looking through the rest of your work.
Thank you for creating this strange and wonderful webcomic.
@Kaiser – Thank you so much. Reading your post and others like it makes me sorry ‘The Stiff’ had to end. I’m happy that you enjoyed it, I tried to capture the flow of real conversations and give it a feeling of realism (sort of). I’ll post here if and when I ever complete it in another format.