nerd

I decided to go out for a coffee break as I was prepping for tomorrow’s trip. I went to one with a killer reputation, a bit of a hidden gem location wise but not a hole-in-the-wall place. The coffee was exceptional, but despite it having a lot of space to work/study, I knew I would never feel at home there. The clientele were too young, too cool. Ever since I was introduced to the concept of the “gen z stare” – a general blank expression of social discomfort and irritation – I can’t unsee it. It’s the platonic opposite of the stereotypical millennial fawning social anxiety. I’ve been in coffee shops with a younger demo than me before and enjoyed myself, but something about this one was…cold. I was an outsider. 

The shop was pretty near the open air mall that I go to sometimes, and I remembered they had a comic store I wanted to go back to. They had some INSANE original inked panels that I stood drooling over for much too long. The shape language of the VFX! The momentum and movement! The expressions! HOW CLEAN ARE THOSE LINES??? It’s all traditional ink, none of this baby digital undo and retry. I’m trying to verbally do the will smith showing-something-off meme. 

It was a huge place, and in the back they actually had a coffee bar. I knew the last thing I needed was more caffeine but I wanted to at least check out the seating. I had to smile when I saw they branded their energy drink mixes as “rocket fuel.” (a callback to my last post, if you missed it). “These are your people, nerd”, I heard the universe say. “Why try to fight it.” 

I wanted to get at least one comic for inspiration and research, and this one caught my eye. I kind of hate that it did, because there is something that feels very superficial about being won over by a very realistically rendered face of a conventionally attractive young woman, instead of something more dynamic or artistically ambitious … .but I mean, it is gorgeously rendered. And given what I was confronted with on the inside, this could only be meant for me. 

I’ve been iterating on an idea for a comic that would be centered around an older couple – it started out as a witch and wizard, but I wanted to bring something a little less generic to the table. When I was watching the Disney Robin Hood, I realized I did kinda have the urge to do something with anthro characters. But what if instead of the same western european forest from wind in the willows, or winne the pooh, etc. we took it to the desert, where I live and grew up? What if we do like a….Rango situation. 

So how do I translate my witch and wizard archetype? If you do american desert + magic, it will naturally drift towards a native american spiritual aesthetic, which…I don’t want to completely shy away from, because that is a part of the southwest culture I was raised in, but I wouldn’t feel comfortable centering my main characters around it. So, I thought, let’s make them scientists. Maybe one is a geologist…a hydrogeologist! A western town could use a water specialist. And maybe his wife is a botanist, she helps cultivate and develop crops/plants that can be a sustainable food source. 

Here’s one niggle though – if it’s a western, if we are playing with the cowboy aesthetic….they can’t really ride horses, can they? That would be weird. Instead, what if we do…ooo motorcycles! What if we make Mad Max: Furry Road. It’s me so it’s not going to be as edgy as all that, but I could probably at least make it cool. 

I picked a Javalina for my couple. I saw one for the first time in the wild when I was in Sedona a few weeks ago, just running across the street in the middle of a neighbourhood at 5 in the morning. “Pig” is an epithet that has been thrown at me before, and it feels sort of nice to reclaim that – javelinas have a bit more swagger, and will absolutely cut a bitch if you get in their space. I need my protags to be rough, and old and wrinkly, and chubby, and feisty as fuck. I want to subvert conventional attractiveness in every way, so people like me can see themselves in something other than a side comic relief character. 

This is all well and good, until I started realizing all the vis-dev that would need to go into fleshing out the characters and the world. It was completely overwhelming. I’d been procrastinating on it for days.  After my trip to the comic shop, I decided to just rough out one of the scenes in my head, to get some momentum. Did I have their designs down? No. Do I know where this scene is set? Who that villain is? No and no. But the soul of the characters are here. 

If I ever get this comic off the ground and it gets popular, I want to see the freaks on furaffinity go wild with these two – that’s how I’ll know I’ve made it. If I can get furries making rule 34 art of chubby senior citizen javalina cowboys, we’re cooking with gas. Even if I’m not a furry, those – the universe would again say to me – are your people, nerd.