It was so awesome to see that I got a DD award from deviantArt yesterday. Blix-it, the creator of Toilet Genie, recommended the DD. Reminder: Go vote for D00R: Toilet Genie on TWC. Srsly - I have yet to move her up the rankings-! And I will dig through all these new comments in a few weeks when I have more time.

Printing & Appearances

I am currently working on getting the final version of Maze ready for Ka-Blam. This is the standalone Book III that I am talking about, not the assembled 3-book graphic novel, which will have to wait (because I want to make it fancy with a new cover and stuff). I am also printing up some art cards and the like for my brief run of conventions coming up. Speaking of which, it sounds like I will be vendor-ing at Spocon on Saturday August 13.

SpoCon

Is anyone going to be there? It looks pretty cool - there are a ton of costume panels I wish I could go to. Anyway, I will post more information once I know where I will be vendor-ing and whether or not I will have Maze Book III in hand (POD delivery times are notoriously slow). I am still also scheduled for Jet City, September 24, and GeekGirlCon, October 8-9. And I will definitely have copies of Book III by then.

And the online store for The Locked Maze should be populated with more stuff in the coming month as well, with comics and bookmarks and cards and such. I am still working out the digital option - Ka-Blam is teasing me with digital distribution options, but for speed I think I may offer my own.

The Next Project

People who have asked what I am doing AFTER Maze (since it has obviously not really moved off my plate yet): I am working on two scripts, one of which involves a 25-year-old idea of mine and includes the characters being considered here. And I have some fan sketches to do, and general figure/scenery drawing practice. Because while it is true that I am much more comfortable drawing people straight out of my head at the present than I was when I first started drawing Maze, nonetheless, I still feel like a big clumsy hack and I need to figure some stuff out. :P

So that's it. That's what I'm doing. Busy. But I did sleep in on Monday. It was nice. I will try it again in ten years.

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?

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!

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. :)