A new episode (Finally!), in which two sides struggle to make one coin…

Click on the above graphic to view Episode Nine of A Coming Out Story…or click Here.  Click Here to go to the series main page.

So I’m bumping this post up again for a couple folks who might be visiting here in the near future, who wouldn’t have seen it.. 

Episode Eight of A Coming Out Story…  Wherein our hero actually tries to say something…

Click on the image to go directly to the new episode, or Here, to go to the series main menu.

Just FYI for those of you waiting for another installment of A Coming Out Story…(and there are actually quite a few of you…I’m very grateful you’ve all stuck with it while I try to get these out…)  I just finished the pencils for episode 8 – Wherein our hero tries to actually speak to the object of his affections.  This one has taken me a while due to work pressures at my real job.  But I have the rest of the Holiday Weekend to finish this and it looks like I might have it up by the end of the day Sunday.  Stay tuned…

I could put a graph up on the right hand sidebar, showing my progress on these, like some other web cartoonists do.  One bar for the pencils, one for the inks, and one for the finishing up stuff (Photoshopping the captions, word balloons and touching up…)

I have another Mark and Josh one in the works too…

In which I am busy drawing a certain foxy boy, while reassuring myself that I’m not really gay.  Nope.  Not me.

Click the panel above to see episode seven of A Coming Out Story, or click Here to go to the main page…

I haven’t fallen off the edge of the earth…just hanging out with my brother in Oceano California and de-stressing.  Which is why I’m not posting a whole heck of a lot lately.  It’s very easy to forget the world when you’re walking the sands and looking out at the beautiful California coastline around Pismo Beach.  And the even more beautiful California surfer boys. 

In the meantime I’ve managed to finish the next episode of A Coming Out Story.  Yes, I brought my drafting supplies and a scanner along with me.

…in which our hero discovers that libidos aren’t easily dissuaded.  Click on the image to go directly to the new episode, or Here, to go to the main page. 

Finally…

Click on the image to go directly to the new episode, or go to the main page of A Coming Out Story…Here. 

This one was intended mainly to introduce my circle of friends and add a little to the setting.  I never intended for it to take so damn long to produce…I just kept hemming and hawing about how I wanted to do this one, which is a very repetative sequence of panels, and so I did other things and let it slide for far, far too long.  If I want to finish this thing before I’m 100 I need to be a tad quicker at getting these out.

This one is about a certain blind spot I had in my teen years, that drove some of my friends nuts.  They kept waiting for me to grow up and "get it" and I kept wondering why they often looked at me like I was from another planet.  Little did any of us really understand that I was growing up right on schedule, just on a slightly different course from theirs.  Paradoxically, had I a better understanding of my own homosexuality, I might have had a better understanding of their heterosexuality, and how hormones were jerking them around too, in their way.  And when a guy with a ‘C’ average at best said he was going to go help one of the foxiest honor roll girls in the school with her homework, I might have been able to read between the lines a tad better then I usually did.

I’m starting to get scolded now for not keeping my cartoon page up to date, and I won’t have this week’s political cartoon(s) ready until late Monday.  So just so you know that I’ve actually been somewhat busy in my art room these past few days, here’s a peek at the next installment of A Coming Out Story…

Click on the image for the full size version, if you like.  I have four more sets of panels like this one to finish, but I’m close.  I expect to have the next installment up this Saturday.  I think I’m getting my steam back.  The story gets a little fun-er now.  I have two political cartoons on the drawing boards that I’m almost done with too.  I should have them up late tomorrow.  I also have another Mark and Josh cartoon…two in a series actually…in the works.

Old friends of mine can hopefully see now why I’m being coy about names and faces.  I am as much a product of the 60s/70s as any other boomer child and I decided when I set out to do this story that I wouldn’t censor the pot smoking (among other things) that went on back then.  So the names, and a few faces, have been changed to protect the not quite so innocent.  And if my old friends want further inoculation, they can simply point to my introduction to the series, in which I plainly state that the story I am telling is one-third things that really happened to me, one-third artistic license, and one-third pure fantasy. 

I think I’m getting my steam back here.  I should be a bit more productive in the coming weeks.  Hopefully I can get back into some kind of rythm on my Coming Out Story.  I have something like fifity episodes scripted already  (and there are more I need to work out) and I don’t want to be doing this thing for the rest of my life, so I need to figure out ways I can get these things made faster.  Part of my slowness in getting this installment out has been in experimenting with new ways of working, both on the drafting table and in Photoshop.  I’d like to get myself to a place where I can turn out a new episode every two weeks.  Otherwise I’ll be decades finishing this thing.

[Majorly Edited…]

I haven’t abandoned my Coming Out Story…honest.  And I’m not going to make excuses here as to why it’s been since last November that I’ve posted an episode.  But I’ve got the pencils at least finished on the next one just now.  I think maybe another week on the inks.  This next episode is 17 panels long, and it’s about why my friends back then used to worry about me. Since I started this thing as a web comic, I’ve been determined to make the most of the freedom the web allows me.  Some episodes are kinda short, and some are pretty long.  Well…I let myself get bogged down on a long one and I shouldn’t have. 

I really want to get more episodes done and up, in part because I’m still a ways from introducing my two favorite characters in the series…

The one with the white shirt, tie and pocket protector (and jeans and sneakers) is my right brain.  The one with the peace symbol, beads, tie-dye shirt and bells is my left brain.  They actually have more on-screen time in this story then my libido, but they won’t get introduced for another…uhm…four episodes yet.  

I was also thinking this morning, about putting a couple of Mark and Josh mugs up on that Cafepress thing for sale.  I have a vague idea about the design.  And maybe some Busy Gay Mafia mugs…since that seems to be one of my more popular cartoons.