The Enchanted Dagger

Kalther week went well enough though it did turn into more of a week and a half.  Without too much strain I was able to finish off this latest story , bringing us to the halfway point of Golden Age Kalthar Redux!

Sigh.  I’m still fretting over having two commercially dubious products on my table while I’m chomping at the bit to get moving with PHM, who I feel exponentially more passionate about.  In fact I’ve been developing an outline for issue 2 already and I love where its going.  The idea that I only have less than an issues work on Meet the Purple Hairy Man #1 to draw up before I get to this new story pleases me.  But no!  I still have 3 issues of The Enchanted Dagger in the way, too!

I’m very hard on EDag, of course, always have been, but I still have a lot of good feelings for the project and I am determined to finish it.  When I decided to jump into it I thought of it as sort of akin to what Allan Moore had done with Miracle-Man in the years before he did the Watchman, which would be a fuller elaboration on the Golden Age theme and a masterpiece.  I wasn’t looking to make a definitive creative effort, I was just cutting my teeth and trying to get good so that when I did begin work a on PHM it would be solid.  I’m really glad I did that.

I was too uptight about MTPHM 0.5 to deviate from my current routine in the drawing phase, and I quickly reverted to doing things on the computer, which is fine.  I’m glad to say I’m very happy with how the art is holding up in my estimation!  But, I am still determine to get my hand drawn skill set back into gear.  So for Issue 7, which I’m starting as soon as i finish typing this, I will get that pencil to paper!

This isn’t something new to me or anything.  When I started back with the comic art in earnest (about 10 years ago, ugg) I was tearing through pages.  I would set them up small, 2 to a page on 8.5×11 paper, idea being that i could blow these up and transfer them to 11×17 paper with a light table.  I drew up an entire comic this way, my Sword & Sandal yarn, Angry Centurion.  At this point I decided to give working on the computer a try and I quickly came to dominate the process… to over all good results.

Anyway, I must be stalling with all this typing.  Here I’ll share some of those old pencil pages.  Now its on to issue 7.  I’m allotting December and January to get as far as I can.  Then I’ll assess what to do next.

 

And lets not forget about Kalthar!  This page was a beast, all of those men of Shem were a real chore, but it got done.