"Testicles, testicles, give me your keys." - A Calamity Cash Update

Had breakfast with Justin yesterday, talked pretty extensively about Calamity Cash [re: The Town with No Name].

Justin recently finished his first [technically second] sketchbook, which you can see some samples of in the past several posts on his blog, and is looking at July as his tentative date to be *finished* finished with the artwork for Calamity Cash. This has been a pretty long-term project for the both of us, just a huge learning experience with a lot of unexpected bumps in the road [and very little of it having to do with the project proper - maybe my next comic should be about all the things that can get in your way when you're trying to be creative and clever in your 20s], but with even a loose date set, you'll probably be hearing more about the comic again.

Some decisions are going to have to be made, of course, as that time comes closer. We're definitely going to print some, and I personally am not... certain how I'll be budgeting my part of that, but we'll definitely figure something out. And the book's about as long as two of your standard, direct market monthly comics, and in a weird sort of twist you can sort of tell. Justin worked in grays a lot in the early parts of the book, but switched to a starker black eventually, and as I've mentioned on here, I took the whole second part of the comic back to my drawing board and re-wrote it. Talk right now is learning towards cutting the whole project in half, which wouldn't be the worst thing for it, especially since, right now, it's slated to be a hulking 52 pages.

Slicing it into two parts might give us more room to move, and make the markedly different halves a little less jarring to the reader. Still, we're not sure if that's the move we're going to make, and have a few other ideas we might employ [one inspired by those big discount packs of 20 or more comics you used to be able to buy in Walmart and K-Mart]. But we have a lot of time until July, and are planning to discuss it more between now and the time he's finished up the art.

I also have to stress that the summer deadline is not a hard and fast rule for either of us. It's just a good cap to set by Justin, and I'm more than supportive of. But Justin's also got some other commitments and plans in the works [dude owns his own home, after all - roofs gotta have shingles], and I've got some... uncertainty in the next couple months myself, stuff that I'm really not ready to talk about here, but might call for some drastic altering of the way I... well, live my life.

We'll have to see. It's all up in the air for now.

Still, big news, and it's exciting to think about having Momma Cash and her daughter Calamity finally ready for everyone to see.

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Something kind of unrelated, but still very important and topical. I've talked a lot about Amy Klein as of late [who was recently interviewed on the Village Voice website -- definitely check that out], but this post on her blog, about the recent string of disasters in Japan, was just really touching and I felt I should link it here. She spent a little over year in Japan after college, and her post talks about the music and the culture, while sharing a personal story of something that happened during her time there. There are also a lot of beautiful pictures of the country, a vision of Japan that is easy to forget with the images we're being bombarded with daily now. And the whole thing is, as always, wonderfully written.

Amy's also decided she's going to donate all the proceeds from her music to the relief effort, so if you've been waffling about checking out her solo album, or her side-project "Solanin," then there's no better sign to go and get them now at http://amyklein.bandcamp.com/ and http://solanin.bandcamp.com/ respectively.

One more thing, concerning Japan... quite a few people have asked me about my friend Ian Rogers, who was teaching English there until just recently, and whose blog I often link. Most likely, if you're following him on Facebook, you now know he's fine, and had left the country a bit before the disaster[s], but just in case, he is alive and well, and would probably love to hear from you.