COMICS

“Refuge”

This is a stand-alone story centering on a character named Ivan, who is newly employed in the business of refugee smuggling, partnered with a more nefarious smugglers than he first realized.

This is the first of three short stories I produced with three artists over the course of 2019. In fact, they were three of the first short comics I’d ever written. Being as such, I wanted to cultivate a voice in writing for sequential comics, so all three stories are silent by design. No dialogue, no captions; only panels.

Soo Lee did all the art for this story. What drew me to her work was what I would call a ruggedness to her style: heavy, expressive inks that palpably convey the texture of place and the raw emotion of the characters. Soo did an absolutely marvelous job on this story.

“Eyes”

I wrote a couple dozen short stories under the banner of a larger concept that I am currently pitching to publishers, and this story was one of my favorites. The concept focuses on characters who suffer a specific loss and have to come to terms with its ramifications.

This story is about a woman who sees a physical change in herself and explores how she responds to that change. She tries to reclaim a semblance of her former self, and when those efforts prove disappointing, she makes other drastic changes.

I collaborated with Rio Burton on this story. Rio took a clean-lined approach and created a very muted setting to help highlight the color of the character’s eyes and the various sets of lenses she goes through in search of the version of herself she wants to see.

“Stir”

This is another in the series of short stories I wrote about characters dealing with the ramifications of personal loss.

I grew up with superhero comics and I’ll probably grow old with them too. Of course I’ve always wanted super powers, but I started to wonder about characters who have always had them and how they might cope with losing them. I started creating characters and writing short stories about them.

I wanted to work with my friend, Dez Pittman, and this was another favorite story from that series, so I asked her if she would draw this one, and she did so spectacularly. She imbued so much energy into the story with her inks and drew the character with such compassion. The story arrives at this fantastic, and rather peaceful, final page after a series of destructive incidents that illustrate how this character is coping with her situation.

This is the first page from a comic book series that I’m pitching to publishers this year. My creative team consists of Serg Acuña as the interior artist, Gabriel Cassatta as the colorist, and Steve Wands as the designer and letterer of the book.

This is the first comic book series I’ve ever pitched. We’re shopping it around to publishers now. I can’t wait to see this series on comic book shelves. I love the concept. I think the pitch turned out great. I’m very excited to tell the story of these characters.