Submission to Offlife 10

Click the picture for a version big enough to read the writing

I've been a fan of OFFLIFE for a while now, and have toyed with the idea of submitting something Intercorstal-ish for the past few open submission periods, although have usually backed down, pretty much convinced that I didn't stand a chance of getting in, down to the fact that The Intercorstal is like nothing they've run with before.

For their 10th issue I just went for it, though. I produced a brand new comic, which rips off its panel layout from a Ditko Amazing Spider-man page (which I have been reliably informed by Andrei Molotiu (here and here) that it's his best ever page).

What I instagrammed when I started on the page. Click the picture for the rest of my Instagram, which at the time of writing is very bird-heavy.

Knowing all along that the comic would be a longshot as it was, I decided that for the first time an Intercorstal page should have some text (I'd tried on previous pages to include text -- stuff about flapping listless and beacons dying and teeth teeth teetch, that sort of thing, but it never really worked). As Offlife is loosley based around subversions of real-life, I went with autobiog-comic style moaning, and chose the Internet as my target. I moan about the internet a lot, so it wasn't hard.

My attempts at lettering were WOEFUL and I said so on Twitter, at which point the extraordinary Jim Campbell offered to take a look and give me some advice, which I was bowled over by -- not least when he returned a completely lettered page, which he did, in his words, "in as close an approximation of Tom Frame's old school 2000AD lettering as I could manage." iceI'll be honest, I was amazed by how good it looked -- it had turned a page of swirly swirls into an 80s cosmic space battle. Even now I'm confused by how good it looks.

But long story short -- it didn't make it in. As you'll know if you've followed a link from Twitter or somewhere, because I'll have said so. But I knew it was a long shot, and I'm really looknig forward to reading the comics that did make the cut. And of course looknig forward to the next QuickDraw Live on the 18th, where I'll not have anywhere near enough time to do anything even remotely Intercorstal.