Webcomics Review: Fighting Stranger

I draw a lot of webcomics for GryphonKnights Studios  but on my down time I also like reading and discovering new webcomics. Sometimes they really pull me in and I find myself waiting for the next update. Usually it's only a one page update; the story doesn't progress much. But once in a while that one page changes everything.

Fighting Stranger written by Adam J. Monetta & Illustrated by Juan Romera, starts off with a beautiful splash page; A man in a cloak finds himself standing over a city remembering no more than the city's name. He wanders into the tiny cramped metropolis, and finds it to be a  mostly, deserted wasteland. He's tries to kill a fugitive mutant and is led out of the city towards another.

A man in a cloak finds himself standing over a city remembering no more than the city's name, This purposeful repetition and mimicry of the event that starts the book is what immediately sets Fighting Stranger apart from any other dystopian sci-fi. When I came to this point, I wondered if I accidentally started the comic over, and my sense of disorientation and uncertainty at this moment made me realize that I was sharing the feeling of the main character of the series. Arriving at a similar point, not sure exactly if we've been here before. It's this ability to allow the reader to empathize with it's protagonist that made the series go from entertaining to riveting, as you begin to wonder and read as the mystery of these cities and the stranger slowly unravel.

The Stranger isn't a very compelling character. He is a worn rugged mercenary archetype. The supporting cast, however, kicks ass! The citizens of this world are constantly trying to manipulate the stranger for their own ends. The Strangers stoic persona, is countered by these characters from C4D to Lacey, whose rough existence creates entertaining, dark humor which immerses me in their world.

The art and coloring of this gritty, arid planet draws you in. The colorist is excellent at conveying texture on every element of the set, from the cold metal of a gun to the rocks to the red sky. I am also a fan of the lettering, particularly  the robots' font.

I would be loath to forget mentioning the action sequences. They are amazingly story-boarded! The fights with the mutants each is laid out like a video game boss-fight, as certain mutants only have a couple of weaknesses.

So step into the rough world of The Fighting Stranger and then let me know what you think of the series, and we can theorize together!

Signing off!

T Griffin would also be remiss to forget to mention his own sci-fi, non-dystopian works WOW! Signal and Felix and Saw

Crowdfunding on Patreon

Things with crowds can be a lot of fun, crowd surfing, protests, crowd funding, mob rule... well not all of those things are a lot of fun but it does show that people en masse can make huge changes.

That's why GryphonKnights Comics have started a crowdfunding page on Patreon. Patreon is was created to enable fans to support and engage with the artists and creators they love. Empowering a new generation of creators, Patreon is bringing patronage back to the 21st century. As a small comic book company it was our desire to be more receptive to our fans and contributors.

Our goal in making books is two fold. We have printed books that we sell to try make profit, but we have our webcomics to be available for everyone to be able to read. Having free webcomics was very crucial to us as no matter how large we get we wanted to have free content for anyone to be able to enjoy. I know that when I was out of work I curved my buying habits because comics were very expensive, whether it was trades or single issues, during that economic trial comics was something I just couldn't do. That's when I began discovering loads of webcomics.

There were so many quality webcomics out there, Ava's Demon, Calachurras, The Fighting Stranger, Hench girl & many others, that our team decided to take some of the books we've been working on and adapt them for web viewing, and then make other books better adapted to the webcomic format.

Gryphonknights was a great experiment to see if a comic publisher could function paperlessly, with mostly webcomics. Garnering books, artists, and writers as we grew. One of our recent editions to the site is Tony Wolf's Greenpoint of View. Greenpoint of view was his autobio created as a comic book. Tony is one of the many artists who has done work on our book Frankenstein vs. Dracula. When we saw the work he was doing the webcomic we really wanted to showcase it on our page. 

Currently we have 6 titles on our site, with the addition of two printed graphic novels. Our first book Greasers in Greece is in print, we have a second about to be printed called Frankenstein Vs. Dracula.

Please check out our work and consider becoming a patron, so that we can continue to cut the middlemen out of creativity & to help us allow comics to be available to everyone!

T Gryphon

GRYPHON KNIGHTS: The Blog

For those without flash, we decided to upload our books to ol' faithful; BLOGGER. Its on this platform that we hoped that those who weren't able to read our books, for whatever technical reason, on our website could instead access them here.

Blogger allows us to do a few things. One is get more direct reader feedback through the comments, to give you our thoughts on our books as they develop, as well as explain any delays, and so that if there is any technical problems with our site so that you can still tune in to see the latest pages.

True to form of trying something new, you might see that we still have some tinkering to do.

In the Meanwhile feel free to browse around and read the first chapter of our book HERO. Just one more note, we appreciate your readership, as well as any other help you can provide through resources like Patreon, or any time we have a Kickstarter!

Til next time.

Stay Zazzy

Sincerely Sir Tom, D Frag, and Sean Grizzle

EVOLUTION: Uniforms

First page created on computer

When I first started Wow! Signal, I had a very good concept of what I wanted to write about and where I wanted to go with it. What I didn't have was any designs for the book, and very little experience drawing on the computer.

My first attempt at a page was alright and in fact this page was a test to see how my abilities reflected to the computer and was later integrated in the story. My control was really thrown off as I was used to working with pen paper and marker and paint. However,  having a story that continued and a deadline that I was supposed to meet pushed me to keep creating pages.

The one thing I decided, since this was a free comic was that I would allow the design of certain elements to evolve. The most major example was in the uniforms. In the book the uniforms were a different shades of purple and that was it. I understand that consistency is great to have, but evolution I feel is also good. I feel like sometimes books can get stuck, and some books retcon too much. All I wanted to do was allow my designs to grow with my ability. As you can see, I really got the knack at working on the computer, and not only that, but I allowed myself to refine and improve the designs of the uniforms.adding a mix of the violet, and a Gray-blue color for the majority of it as well as cybernetic boots. My feelings were that I wanted the uniforms to be more modular so you could equip them with whatever you needed for the task at hand.

I've been playing around with growing from this as well but I don't think its necessary at this time. The ship the Namalsadirah also changed over time but I will talk about that another time. I hope you continue to enjoy The Wow! Signal.

An Introduction & a WIZARD

So I've been an artist with this team of Gryphon Knights Comics for about a few months now and we've gotten some cool stuff done.

We've redesigned an old site, we've got a Twitter up and running, we have a vibrant facebook with lots of extras and images, and then of course there is our website for Gryphon Knights Comics, to which we have recently added another comic. All in all its a fun gig. I feel like the coolest thing about our site is that we offer most of our books for free to readers with the exception of Greasers in Greece.

My contribution to the site is illustration for the book HERO, and I write and draw the Wow! Signal and I co-write and illustrate the Meanwhile books. You can also find a bunch of my other artwork on my deviantART page.

So introductions aside this blog will be run by the three owners of the company to talk about it, their influences on their art especially what has helped inspire them to create the books they have.

With that said let me impart on you a little advice the Simpsons once gave me: If you are ever in trouble, just blame The Wizard...

Tom Gryphon

"A WIZARD DID IT!"