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

Your Promiscuous Comic

So your into comics, huh?

The truth is comics have been around.

There's not one comic that exists that you can claim as yours. The X-Men issue #1 you own was handled by at least one factory worker, at least one distributor, and at least one retail worker before those perfect corners, luscious colors, white gutters, even staples ended up in your hands.This was before you sent it to CGC services to get it graded and slabbed.
Thank God, those CGC guys use protection when handling your book! Who knows what those other guys had!

Maybe you can claim the comic you wrote, or drew is yours. What about the copy that ended up with a 5 year old? She colored in the black and white parts. She showed her mom who congratulated her for a good job and asked for her autograph. The black and white parts were a snow scene in your story, now thanks to the orange and red Crayolas, there is a lava portion instead. Did you collaborate with that 5 year-old? Are you going to denounce her book as non-canon? You can probably claim it's yours, if you claim the child is yours.

Did you create the character that appears in a comic? Did you come up with the plot? What about the readers who offer their interpretation of what happened? What about those who assign a meaning, to what happened, one you never thought of? Are you going to disagree with them in public? Or secretly claim that was your intention all along?  That character has left your hands and has been handled by someone else. They've made stories you couldn't dream of. You'll still get credit. After all Icebox and Ovenflame wouldn't exist without your initial guiding hand. The sad part is when Alan Moore reinterpreted them and brought about their sexual awakening, where we learn Ovenflame is a pyro-sexual and that that's ok, fans have started to ask for the "realistic" version. Your version is the cartoon version. It's dated, and for kids. At least, to those aware of it. Most people won't ever remember you were involved. No one will say it's yours.

No. No comic is ever yours. But there is a time where you pick one up, read it, and get invested in the story you read. That's the only thing you can claim ownership of:

The moment.

It's also true for when you hit save on the Word document, or add that final touch of India Ink to page 23. That moment is yours and it's precious, and the only unselfish thing to do it to share it.

Check out the gooses in Greasers in Geese

A lesson about comics, and maybe life.

Agree? Disagree? Feel free to respond below.

Dimitrios Fragiskatos
Author and new contributor to this blogspot

Check out our comics at Gryphon Knights Comics

and patronize us here

The Resource Known as Patreon

Greetings and salutations!!!

I wanted to turn you guys onto a resource the small comic company I run with @DimitriosFragiskatos & @HarperArsenal have begun to use. 

Our comic company has expenses as any company or artist does. Website costs, advertising, convention costs, and (what is often neglected) pay for any work we've done to for our company. We weren't sure how to meet these constant costs, and for a long time these expenses came out of our own pockets.

Finally we found Patreon! Patreon is a crowdfunding service that functions similarly to other CF services, except this one donors can contribute per month, or with comic books can donate per page published. Its pretty handy especially if you have regular readership. Those who are already interested & investing in your book are likely to donate. While the rewards are more difficult to figure out, many users have dollar subscriptions that just support their comic and $3 subscriptions that allow readers to see extra content on the Patreon.

Visiting a variety of users can soon help you garner some ideas on how to reward those who are faithful contributors. Things from one time rewards like sketches to monthly prints of pages of the comic. Another way to garner contributors is using a twitter management tool like justunfollow.com or others to set up automated messages to new followers providing the link to your comic and to your Patreon!

In the end it also never hurts to ask for contributions from those who have expressed interest in your book!

We've had good success with it thus far, and have actually found other people on the site that we ended up donating too. Also at the time of this writing Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal (SMBC) Was making $100,000 a year. They are one of the most successful Patreon users there are. 

Finally if you haven't seen our work yet you can really our various webcomics on gryphonknights.com! If you have and you love our artwork & storytelling then please help by donating to our Patreon page at www.patreon.com/gryphonknights! Each donation allows us to focus more time on the comic, and will hopefully one day make us full time artists!

Tom Gryphon

PS. Hippopotamus Prime thanks you for any & all contributions you make!

Gryphon Knights at PETE's BASEMENT!

Last night we were invited over to Pete's Basement to talk about a bunch of our books, and upcoming books including, the soon to be published Frankenstein Vs. Dracula: Throughout the Ages!

We also got to discuss a bunch of indie issue ones, as well as some big events like Godhead, the female Thor, and the new Captain America. While they touched on certain things like the new Cap reveal, which was amusing because (spoiler alert!) Sam Wilson, acknowledged how much that it wasn't a surprise because of all the press and media in RL that focused on the event. 

However, I want to touch on something that I felt was relevant to the discussion but wasn't as light. I have mentioned in the past that its interesting how the mantle of our patriots passes on, and how our perspective of the Gods change, but how white, wealthy, Tony Stark is still white, and wealthy and in charge. Gail Simone recently asked on twitter "what hero do you not understand the appeal of," and for me it is none other than Tony Stark.

I have a lot more feelings on this topic which I might revisit later.

In the end the only thing that hasn't changed, and I repeat it here, is that the wealthy white guy is still in charge, and I would love for Tony Stark to be removed from the Marvel chessboard permanently.

In other news we had a great meeting yesterday with George Tsouris from GIVE UP GAMES, I believe we mentioned this company a bit on the podcast but I wanted to go in depth with our discussion yesterday. We talked to them about creating a fighting game for our recent franchise Frankenstein vs. Dracula. We brought some concepts with us, and he was sincerely excited about the concept. 

If you would also like to see a game like this let us know!

Parody & Radiation

Our one book, Meanwhile started because we all have a good sense for satire and parody. One day we were just sitting around having a few beers and discussing the real results from being bitten by something radioactive, or being exposed to serious radiation, or even getting struck by lightning around a series of chemicals. The results were amusing to hilarious, and I decided to draw up a few of the jokes we had made. Eventually these added up and we decided to share them as the book you now know as MEANWHILE...

The ideas continued, parodying other cliches and unwritten rules comics seem to be plagued with, but it eventually evolved into thinking about what certain characters would be like in different situations, including turning one of the seagulls from finding Nemo into an orange lantern. It was a perfect fit if I don't say so myself.

The name "Meanwhile..." was chosen, as these short strips would be interspersed between our more serious books, implying that these humorous tidbits were always going on in the background of our minds, even when we weren't directly considering them.

It was amazing how parody which started out as fun banter actually stretched our creative muscle and was very directly entertaining. People already knew the content from the mass media, so changing the context allowed them to understand the humor without having to stick with a story for ages. Some might consider it cheating because we are using someone elses premise to provide humor but humor can open people up to alternate ideas or complex ideas that are buried in the subject.

For example, poking fun at how a hero would more likely die from radiation, then successfully mutate also opens up the question of what would the probability be that someone could successfully mutate from radiation into an alternate species?

What would their abilities be?
Would they be able to procreate?

Perhaps our visions of superheroes isn't so unlikely after all, just very improbable, and that's what makes the situations humorous, or capture our imaginations, because we know that there is that slim potential.

I guess there is truth in humor, even when it is not purposeful.

Dollar Store Combine

     A friend posted a few pics of dollar store toys that he frankensteined one day and I was in love. I thought the concept the execution and the final product were amazing. They were so good I decided to draw some fan art of two of the characters from his lot.

 

     We eventually posted this image on our site with a title "Felix & Saw." It originally was an april fools joke as the image just seemed so ridiculous, but eventually it grew into something bigger--an idea, that my brother and I eventually fomented into an actually title.

     You can see all of Dollar Store Combine on their tumblr http://genustoys.tumblr.com/

T Gryphon

Location, Location, Location!

In a variety of our comic series we have locations that are drawn from real life. It is these locations that help give our fictional worlds life.

In the second issue of HERO we are immediately taken to a location called Mitchel Airforce Base. This was a real airforce base out in Long Island, NY. While it was viewed as a strategic launching point by the Germans during WWII the base was never really more than a distraction.

Another location featured was in the draft of WOW Signal issue 1. In it, there is a landscape that includes spaceport America in the middle of New Mexico, and behind it a fictional city called Branson City that grew up nearby. The writer felt that if asteroid mining took off it would cause a wave of industry and for people to travel there like they would any other port city.

It's interesting to note that on the day of the writing of this article that Richard Branson talked about delays in Virgin Galactic's first commercial space flight.

Part of the writers goal with the WOW Signal, is to create a book not so far in the future so that readers can become excited but technology featured in it that is in present just theory.

Finally the last book I am going to talk about today is Felix & Saw. This sci-fi, comedy, has one of the protagonist's emerge in a water reservoir by Kensico Dam. This doesn't play a huge role in the book except for the writers giving a nod to an area, and a landmark in which they grew up nearby.

You can read more about any of these locations by clicking on the links!

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

A GREASY Preview

Ever hear of Greasers in Greece? Well the best way to summarize it is if Zack Snyder directed Grease the musical. Time-travel, fighting, races to the death, & elements of the silver age of comics all blended into a smoothie of hilarity.

Now you can preview the first ten pages of the book on our blogger pages, or over at our official website www.gryphonknights.com! But that's not all! Their exclusive webcomic series, Greasers in GEESE has begun!

Following up their zany travel in time, they are now resuming their humdrum lives in their home of Logtown Ohio. However their need to prove the validity of their tale has them breaking back into nebula's lab. What ensues can only be described as a jaunt of miniscule proportions. What does this mean? FIND OUT IN-- GREASERS IN GEESE!

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

WOW! Signal Rebirth

WOW Signal was a fun title to create. I may have mentioned before that I started it to force myself to learn how to draw and color digitally. I started working on the computer about 8 months ago using both adobe photoshop and Illustrator.

Since then, from trial and error and watching tutorial videos online I've had great leaps in my ability. I finished work on the first issue of the Wow Signal which ended up being 15 pages long. I then started work on the second issue. Those first 3 pages of the second issue looked so much better then the first that I decided that I wanted to go back and re-illustrate the first issue of the WOW! Signal so that the style and the images were consistent. I also decided to tweak some of the story telling.

April 2013

If you check the images on the right you can see the difference from the first time I drew the starship Namalsadirah and the second. I also have become better at creating space locales and planets.

A lot of what I learned was often details can help create a complete and realistic image.

December 2013

Taking time to recreate the first issue, has helped me appreciate the amount of growth I've experienced and enjoy the new work that I have been creating.

You can see more of my artwork @ http://sirgryphon.deviantart.com/art/Rebirth-of-the-Namalsadirah-420593958

You can also read my book WOW! SIGNAL and other free comics at http://www.gryphonknights.com/

By George He's Got it

By George He's Got it

     So after 14 pages of creating a digital comic "WOW SIGNAL!"  I finally got a hang of the program I am working on. I have been using a mix of an Adobe Illustrator CS 3 (Which is very old at this point) and Adobe Photoshop Elements. 

1st page of Wow Signal

<<< So here is where I started out with the first page I created. It was kinda tough when I had never drawn directly on a computer before (I have colored pieces on the computer before). In fact the first panel of this page was a test to see what I could do when I transferred my pen and ink stills to the pixel realm.

     I was pretty surprised as to what I could do and decided that I would like to keep up with it. I started to create a story to help push me to craft images to go with the tale. Each page I kept adding to my ability of working with these two programs, until I was more adept at creating a more professional piece on the computer.

Page 1 of Issue 2

     After I got to this level I decided to evolve my style so it would stand out and add to the level of professionalism. I was heavily influenced by the artwork of Brandon Graham as well as other artists who worked on his book Prophet  which is a sci-fi tale that was adapted from Rob Liefeld's original story. What I ended up with I truly liked and after a few sketches I made two covers and then the first page of the second issue with this technique. It took me a long time to find a style that I was really confident and proud of, but now that I have you can look forward to some awesome updates of GryphonKnights free webcomics!

I have some demo and instructional videos on the Gryphonknights Youtube:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC44OoVir28whelh38eNrnHA

Stylistic Differences and Their Effect on a Comic Book

Today I was thinking about stylistic differences. In fact I was talking with my brother about that very thing. I had mentioned to him my need to refine my art style, and he commented that for the last book I illustrated the art was perfectly fitting for the content.

   
Greasers in Greece is after all a comedy and my style tend toward the cartoonish and silly. Its not that I can't do other styles, but this is the one that really fit the content. If you check out the image to the right you can see that this is the style that encompasses the Greasers and their universe.


One of the final things my brother had said was "imagine if the Greasers were drawn by anybody else?" after a paused he added, "Or more specifically what if it was done by someone like Rob Liefeld?" Its that final comment that got me thinking. Its true that style can totally change the feel of a story. And as is often the case, when a muse seizes you you can do nothing but obey.


For those that are not familiar with Rob Liefeld's style it is very different from my own. His characters are often tall have rippling muscles and more often than not have grim serious expressions on their face. He is at times ridiculed but he became popular and well regarded in the industry so quickly that his style became iconic. Liefeld changing his own style would be Jennifer Grey getting a nosejob all over again. Her look was iconic and changing it made her unrecognizable.

Understanding that detail I took my cartoonish style and replaced it with a more Liefeldian image. It completely changes the effect and the mood of the book.

Style can be intrinsic in creating the right pairing between art and writing. I had to be wary of this for the horror book called The Only Choice by Indie Comics Tracker. I used heavy contrast to set a dark and haunting tone to the book.

Next project you work on keep these concepts in mind so you might have great success!


Sir Thomas J. Gryphon is an artist and plebeian playing at making the next great comic, books like WOW Signal and others at GRYPHON KNIGHTS COMICS.

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!"