Backstage Pass: Bonus Extras

The Centaurs loveeeee you

You got Ari in your life, every day is Valentine’s Day. Even though they don’t believe in love (YET…). All drawings by me, no fuckin’ AI allowed in this house.

Friends! WRASSLIN’ CENTAURS officially debuted last week, and WOW. I was absolutely bowled over by the response! Thanks to all of you who commented and cheered the Creatures on; your support means MOAR of this sweet madness.

Speaking of more Creatures, the next installment of WRASSLIN’ CENTAURS comes Saturday, Feb. 28. We’ll find out what’s making Jerry so nervous about going out to get his triple mochaccino with hay milk. If you’re already subscribed, the Centaurs will be landing in your inbox automatically! If not…I don’t even want to think of the sadness of missing out. Subscribe now so you don’t miss a moment!

Until next week, here’s a behind the scenes peek at what’s happening at Creature Pro Wrestling, aka my studio…

Inking

Here’s how I make comics.

I wake up in the middle of the night because I’m that age. I return from the powder room and can’t get back to sleep. My escapist mind starts manufacturing daydreams, or, in this case, waking middle-of-the-night dreams, usually about the Centaurs.

When I get up—and DAYummmm, getting up is hard these days because winter and achy body and the world, etc.—I zombie-limp pre-matcha to my laptop and write down the ideas. This writing usually occurs in script form because THE CREATURES SPEAK TO ME LIKE THEY’RE ALIVE. ← What? You don’t have Creatures talking to you? Borrow mine.

One of the things I love about comics is that they force me to take a blah blah blah TL;DR conversation and brew it down to something sweet and meaningful. And blessedly brief.

Then I make a buncha messy sketches, usually on the back of printed out proof pages from books I wrote. LOL! Way to recycle!

I take a pic of those messy sketches, import into Procreate, and BOOM: I have the beginnings of a comic page. I look to the heavens, thank the gods for inspiration and leftovers in the fridge so I don’t have to cook tonight, and get to work penciling.

Preliminary sketch from the first installment of WRASSLIN’ CENTAURS. You can see how differently this page began from the way it ended up.

These penciled pages are then put in front of the eyeballs of my mentor, Hyena Hell. Their comics and artistry are the stuff of legend. They are gentle as they point out what must change on my pages (see example above). I thank the gods for this person and move on to more refined sketching.

Then I ink.

Oh, and I add shading and inked lettering over the pencilled lettering, and I see that I forgot someone’s arm or a crucial part of scenery, fix that, remove random schmutz, and, days later, I have (ta-daaaa) a page! A single page… One mere step on a journey of a thousand freakin’ miles. But it’s a page!

See? That’s all there is to it… * faints from exhaustion, with smile on face, because I love everything about this *

Thinking

Some random thoughts:

• Valentine’s Day: This should be every day. It is around here. The Centaurs love you on the daily, dammit.

• The Olympics: Dang, the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat, indeed. I hope Ilia Malinin gets the support he needs. Ditto Norwegian Alpine Skier Atle Lie McGrath, whose grandfather passed away on the night of the opening ceremonies, and who then headed to the woods after making a crucial mistake on the slopes. I learn so much from the Olympics; you can have a disastrous day, and then you can get up and get back to work.

• Analog delights: Instead of listening to streaming music, I raided our CD cabinet and have enjoyed hearing full albums, as the artists intended. Neato!

This week’s playlist: ACTUAL artifacts from the past.

Linking

Sketchbook artist Mike Lowery did these charming comics about his family’s adventures in Japan for Hourly Comics Day.

My rockstar friends are doing rock star things. Zareen Choudhury has been busy lately, editing a zine for Crucial Comix and doing a podcast with Graphic Medicine host Georgia Weber. It’s a must listen and see! And Mariko Abe just published the first installment in their Infernally Employed series: Cold Hands, Cold Heart is in glorious Riso color. Get yours now before this limited edition is snapped up!

The Mandalorian and Grogu official trailer is out! I know where my BH and I are going to be on May 22…

Happy new year! It’s the Year of the Fire Horse. There are a whole bunch of things you’re supposed to do and not do on the day it begins (Feb. 17), including not wash your hair, because that washes all the luck out of it. Which I found out after washing my hair. So I guess I’ve blown the year already. OH WELL. On top of that, the Creatures were confused about what this year was really about. It took me a minute to explain; everything is Greek to them.

That’s it for this week, my friends! I’ll see you later this week with another exciting, adorable, heart-clutching, fandom-inducing installment of WRASSLIN’ CENTAURS!!

Want to buy Ari a small box of Valentine’s Day chocolates, which are now on holiday-over sale? Click here.

Have you been watching the Olympics while you eat leftover Valentine’s Day candy? Are you watching anything else good on TV? Have you switched from Team Ari to Team Jerry, or vv? Tell me! I love comments!