Herald_zlm.HisWords

Based on a true story.
Zero Like Me #101:
Zero Romance #20:
His Words Destroyed My Planet
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-First Comic-
Easter Eggs: Romance 20 on shirt. jack kelly is even worse than Jack Wills.

Fun Facts: Today's setting is jolly old JE, where many tragedies occur. Today's target is based on a composite of people.

Baa: In commemoration of the event that triggered this comic, every year around this time I update my status to say I'm "Cute Without the E," which is an obvious reference to being Cut From the Team. So this comic goes out not to any one person in particular.

Man, the Herald version isn't too flashy (I knew from the get go I was going to be pressed for time...)

Anyway, back to behind the scenes stuff... I was so thrilled when Motion City Soundtrack did a song called "Her Words Destroyed My Planet." I think I was in WLH waiting for Harold Bloom's class to start when they unveiled it on their website, actually. The reason I love that song is because it perfectly articulated what I've been struggling with for the past few years. So I was determined to do a comic after finally, clearly understanding the concept beyond an instinctual level.

If it weren't for certain happenings, I would not have had this push to do comics, and I have no idea what would have happened to me if I didn't have this outlet in the thick of it.

So although I may come off as a cynical turd, I'm actually pretty optimistic, and can see the bright side (and dark side) of most situations. For creative reasons I dwell on the parenthetical latter, but at heart I'm all about the former.

Anyway, to help celebrate the 100th/101st Zero Like Mes, I rallied up a lily-livered little fart named jack kelly to bust out some Herald action.

Hilariously, the little dork got cut because we needed another ad in the paper, but what makes me more furious than seeing him in print is seeing him online against his will.

So despite jack kelly's insistence that I not publish his comic on my site, just to tick him off, here is his comic, a Removal online exclusive called "conan twins," which looks like this:

Wow, wasn't that hilarious?

I didn't think so. Now beat it, kid, you bother me.

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YDN_zlm.FulmerNelson

WARNING! This comic has been CENSORED! Reader discretion is advised.

Teamwork makes the dream work!

[Update: Final Art At Top]

Zero Like Me #32: Fulmer Nelson
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-First-
Easter Eggs: "Yale" in panel 2, some dude who goes by "5," and Boucher. Zero's wardrobe brought to you by one hecka stylish German classmate, Nyao's costume's by some girl I saw in Commons.

Fun Facts: Although this is an original comic, Ned, the purple dynamo, gave me some courage after his ridiculous ordeal had finally faded for the most part. That fool jack kelly wasn't up for running it, so I told that yellow fellow I'd do it.

Baa: One night, my Freshman Year roomate tried to make an appeal to me that included mentioning that this girl was not an athlete, that "she got in on brains." I felt a little hurt that he thought that mattered to me so much, like if you're an athlete, you're automatically inferior and must earn my approval. My roommate was an athlete, himself, so I dread imagining that he thought I thought less of him just because he played a sport. To be honest, I feel I've become something of a "jock," except comics and illustration consume and overtax my non-academic time at Yale, so even if I did think like that, I'd have zero ethos at this point.

Towards the end of Freshman Year, he usually only talked to me when he was drunk and needed to be let in. I didn't really mind at first because I actually cared about making sure he was still just fine. But towards the end of the year, I realized I only ever interacted with people if they needed to be let in or if they were looking for somebody else. That very same night, my roommate told me something when he was drunk that I've always wondered about. I don't drink, so I don't know if being drunk makes you more honest or just incoherent, but in any case...I wonder if he meant it.

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UPDATE: Ever wonder what a toothless shark looks like? Check out the printed edition at left!

Fun Facts: Since this is getting printed on Thursday, ZLM has now been printed on every day of the week at least once! The comic started on Tuesdays, moved to Wednesdays, hit Friday earlier this year, and is now regularly on MWF.

UPDATE 2: Why It was Censored.
After getting the script approved by my immediate editor, I drew it up and anxiously checked for it Wednesday morning (didn't check online of course, cuz that would require the YDN to be honest about their promise to put comics online, as they used to last semester). After being graced with an astonishingly quick reply from the EIC about the sudden censorship (the first time I'd ever received a reply from any YDN EIC ever), he informed me that just before going to print, he and the editor just above mine deemed the comic "racially insensitive"(!), and the YDN "wanted to err on the side of caution," even though race doesn't exist, or at least it isn't allowed to exist so long as there are dialogue bubbles and pictures accompanying the discussion.

If interested, YDN EIC thomas.kaplan@yale.edu is happy to hear your opinion. And feel free to ask him to come through on the YDN's promise to put its comics online, like they used to last semester (but have somehow forgotten how to, even though nobody has changed staff positions yet). For all I know, there might be some comicser among us who actually wants to draw for a living and needs the potentially crucial visitors of the YDN online to see his or her work, in the off chance that it will somehow lead to employment or some sort of professional networking. If there even is such a comicser at Yale, that person is probably pretty frustrated with the YDN about this.

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Herald_Neener.df

Last find: Kelly agrees to chase down the thief and retrieve the mysterious relic for Mr. James. Now find 3!

I am quite sleepy. On the bright side, I got some schadenfreude action today, which I always get when a certain someone blows his money on really stupid, unnecessary things.

Anyway, this has been the most deceptively difficult comic to draw yet, even beating out last week. Even after all the planning, it still takes a while to execute the idea, since on top of the lay out, there's all the backgroundy stuff. While it's sad to hear about ghostwriters flooding Animorphs, or assistants working on One Piece and other manga, it's all making sense to me now. Having help isn't as heartbreaking as it once was. But Schulz did everything himself, so I prefer to follow his model. Granted Peanuts isn't One Piece.

Easter Eggs: Not only do we have stores named after my suitemates from last year, but my signature is apparently a store at the Milpas Mall. Also, the Ruemore's ID pose references Magic: the Gathering's Voidmage Husher.

Fun Facts: Finish time: ~7am. Sometimes it doesn't matter how early you start, it just takes a while.

Quothe the Robert,

But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,

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Fun_WhySoSerious_MO

Here's the Making Of the Joker piece I did last week. First we start with a very light pencil of our subjects. For more complicated shots, this step is usually preceded by an incredibly rough and almost incomprehensible draft of scraggly shapes that would indicate just to me how everything's to be arranged.

But I just cut straight to this present step because I didn't think I'd draw anything more than the Joker's head at first, but then it just spiraled out of control and before I knew it I added Harley and everything.

So after I knew I was going for more than just a head shot, I was extra careful to keep the pencils really light to make any changes on the fly. I used Picasa to darken the scan for the website, but if you were to see the actual drawing, you'd see it was pretty light (this is the darkened version of the previous scan).

Now we're ready to lock in the lines I want with darker pencil. I also plug in little Xs to indicate pure black sections. During this step, there are usually only minor tweaks here and there.

I wasn't sure if I'd ink this, so I decided to darken it as if I were only going to use pencils, so that if I liked it I wouldn't have to ink it. I dislike inking because it's like doing the darkening step again only if you mess up, it's a lot harder to hide since the ink doesn't erase. Plus I feel my inks aren't as expressive or as fun as my pencil work.

The only thing that really made me want to ink, though, was the impending heavy blacks I'd have to use for Harley's outfit, which can really tank in pencil. But I wasn't even sure if I wanted to "color" the piece at this point, either!

After seeing the lifelessness of the finished linework--just for fun--I tried giving the Joker's hair some "color," and then his lips, then his face, etc. etc. And here's the final piece.

Some of the most fun was with the pure black in Harley's outfit because you get to balance craziness with logic when following the dancing shine along her suit. The Joker's hair and bow were also fun, but his suit was just tedious because it was kind of a dull gray since I can't really convey purple through pencils.

As for the Easter eggs from the picture, although it's hard to see from the scan, they really are there. Here's a close up for each.

In order, they're from the Joker's poof.

From Harley's left-most neck-poof.

And from Harley's lowest poof.

So that's how I made the Joker and Harley. No inks, but maybe next time. I know I need the practice.

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Herald_SciFi

This week's comic points toward my goal: fantastical stories instead of gags with comedy as it happens.

So this is that prequel to last week's more universal horror story, only it's what I personally fear--isolation from the great people I've met. This one's more action adventurey feel.

Easter Eggs: My birthday; Jade's JCA catchphrase, Tch; my old room number; a lefty; Half-blackened spider insignia for JE's good times and bad; murky, darkness at the heart; courage-starved lion, from chickening out of the JE sophomore dinner; and futile, distanced communication.

Fun Facts: I sneaked in two screaming-guy shots (sorta) in one comic, pretty neat. To avoid confusion, I reluctantly replaced Mike with Allen.

Oh--don't forget to read Herald Comics' newest artist, jack kelly, in his series "note to self." His debut episode is called "colleges."

He looks like trouble to me.

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