The Locked Maze

Free Comic Book Day 2012

mleiv — Sat, 05 May 2012 01:00:29 +0000

I'm giving away all my digital copies for FREE today only to celebrate Free Comic Book Day!

The Locked Maze (normally $3.00)
Rotsterarsil 1.1 (normally $1.50)

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Webcomics Panel March 29

mleiv — Sun, 25 Mar 2012 01:19:13 +0000

If you haven't heard, The Locked Maze is being featured at the Henry Art Gallery's webcomics exhibit now through June 30th.

The gallery is also hosting a pre-ECCC panel this Thursday, March 29th, at 7:00pm. It is free for students and only $5 for everyone else. I will be there, although probably frozen in fear and mute with horror at the crowds (they are putting a MIC on me... eek!), and I will bring lots of free bookmarks and prints, so be sure to say hi after! :)

New Project: Rotsterarsil 1.1 Starts Next Week

mleiv — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 06:41:42 +0000

My new comic, Rotsterasil starts next week and I've posted the title page today.

GGC Wrap-Up

mleiv — Sun, 23 Oct 2011 00:17:21 +0000

GeekGirlCon was the most amazing convention and I felt so honored to have been a part of it (especially after they sold out BOTH DAYS!). I met so many people; I am still digging through business cards and scribbled notes. I sold a bunch of comics (and thanks to Ka-Blam for express shipping my order so it actually got here in time!). I hope most of those comics went to people who like the story: I know I have trouble summarizing it. @okbjgm bought a comic set and took home one of my Middleman posters, which was a huge honor. I was floating all day from that.

My next appearance will be at GeekFest ( http://www.sbcharities.org/events/geekfest ) December 4, a holiday geeky craft fair with music. I think that will be my last for the foreseeable future, though. I really want to focus on The Next Project now, and I am sick of having my attic full of boxes of prints and stuff.

I am still posting sketches to my tumblr account ( http://mleiv.tumblr.com/ ) from the next comic and I've started tentatively pencilling the first pages. I am also working on a set of Geeky Holiday Cards. I've been posting prints and cards on storenvy ( http://mleiv.storenvy.com/ ), but so far I haven't seen much traffic there so I don't know if I will bother selling the holiday cards there. You will probably have to come to GeekFest to get them. ^^

And although I know I will have some occasional Maze-related news to post here (particularly something happening in March), for the most part I don't know what to put on the site now that I am finished and working on other things. What do you guys think? Crickets? Anyone? :P Maybe y'all just need to come hang out on http://mleiv.com for the next few months until I have a new comic home.

GeekGirlCon 2011

mleiv — Fri, 07 Oct 2011 01:09:14 +0000

GeekGirlCon is this Saturday and Sunday (Oct 8th & 9th) people!!! I am on the center aisle, right in the middle. More directions are here: http://www.geekgirlcon.com/con/northwest-rooms-seattle-center-maps/. I will have lots of Middleman "Pike" posters and Firefly and Farscape fanarts and my typical overabundance of prints and charms and stickers. And bookmarks. No one ever buys the bookmarks, you know, so there will always be bookmarks.

And, if that wasn't incentive enough, I will be wearing my Wendy Watson costume on Saturday (Middleman in tow). It is an awesome costume. Seriously. You are going to want to see it. :D

Jet City Comic Show 2011

mleiv — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 02:28:51 +0000

Just a reminder that Jet City Comic Show is this Saturday, September 24th. I will have a table in the Artist Alley full to the brim with comics, charms, posters, cards, bookmarks, and whatever else I can scrounge up. Please come by! My table is right between Toilet Genie and Wayfarer's Moon (see map). There will be free promo bookmarks while they last and free digital download codes for any purchase over $10.

ShadowsOfFear’s Holly

mleiv — Thu, 18 Aug 2011 23:27:32 +0000

From deviantArt's ShadowsOfFear.

Book III: Page 49

mleiv — Sun, 17 Jul 2011 18:16:44 +0000

Please read this week's Promoting Other Artists (Kernan fan art!).

Theme Song:

Yes, my comic has a song. I listened to it every time I worked on a page for the past two years. If The Locked Maze were a movie, this song would be playing during the closing credits:

New Order, Temptation (YouTube version)

I know, I know, technically it should be an Oingo Boingo song (and trust me, there was A LOT of Oingo Boingo listening as well), but I never found an Oingo Boingo song that was specifically tied to my comic. Although Try to Believe is pretty close. :)

Final Explanation:

The Significant Other has said that none of you will ever speak to me again after this ending. Sorry. I know it seems pretty rotten (but I mean, when has this comic been happy? really?), but I had my reasons.

I have said before that I ended TLM with a Greek theme: the Marriage to Death (a sometimes metaphorical/sometimes literal theme in Greek stories). It recurs throughout literature in small and large ways, from Antigone to Romeo and Juliet, even in the popular Vampire novels of the last 100+ years. The simplest explanation is that it is a literal take on the idea that marriage IS death - if nothing else than the death of the maiden state - and to some extent I am sure the old world believed that, seeing as Roman girls were sent down the aisle in a big blood-red veil. Some people prefer the interpretation that women have a special connection/attraction to death, and in many cultures it was the women who were left responsible for the preparations of bodies for burial. But this wasn't really what captured my imagination. I was taken instead by the ideas in Johnston's The Restless Dead (a book which heavily influenced TLM). She discussed how all monsters are liminal in the Greek myths - half one thing, half another. For young maidens, killed at the cusp of womanhood before they could complete their role in marrying and having children, they became terrifying demons, perpetuating their grief by taking down other young maidens too soon, or targetting babies or husbands in an attempt to complete the part of their lives that was missed. But some of them also became powerful goddesses, like Persephone, who had the power to reverse death, to show mercy and reward love in an afterlife that was otherwise hostile and absolute. And I like that. I like the idea that some people acquire great power by experiencing something truly awful, and coming through it: broken, grieving, liminally stranded between the naive world of the optimists and the cold world of the dead. And in that between-state, they can accomplish things no one else can do. Holly's story is about that. She was broken, and she took it and used it as her power to defeat someone no one else could touch. She will never belong, anywhere she goes, but her outcast existence will also take her places no one else has been and teach her things no one else knows.

And if you want to imagine all the things that happen from this point on (since I will never write that story), just ask yourself these questions:

Why has Kernan never found his dead mother, seeing as he can come and go freely in the afterlife?
Who and where is Kernan's father?
What will happen to Anna, Lucky, and the others now that the Queen and Morgan are gone?
Will Holly ever learn to see things the way Morgan does?
What is on the other side of the Maze?

Book III: Page 48

mleiv — Sun, 17 Jul 2011 18:16:41 +0000

Please read this week's Promoting Other Artists (Kernan fan art!).

Okay, it is really weird drawing my characters kissing. Like I am intruding on something private, ha. :P

But I hope it was squee-inducing. A little bit. :)

And, incidentally, it is really goddamn hard to draw stylized cartoons kissing. I mean, realistic people, sure, there are reference photos all over google. But when you have huge eyes and pencil necks and horns... suddenly I am tasked with making it all up from nothing. As usual. :P The things I have learned to do, or pretend I can do, over the past three years, ha!

Book III: Page 47

mleiv — Sun, 17 Jul 2011 18:16:37 +0000

Please read this week's Promoting Other Artists (Kernan fan art!).

I think the bottom middle panel is one of my favorites in this whole set. I <3 kitty being put down. Although personally, my cats always stiffen up when I am setting them down, like I am about to drown them in cold water: claws come out at all angles. Nesbit is apparently a very trusting cat. :)