Well, guys, the first comic is online. The second one is in the works. The site is still technically in beta cause Tony and I have some things to finish, but it’s live and you can read the comic. I”ll try to have the next one for next month.

http://www.kappacino.com/wishfulfillment

hope you guys like it. ^_^

Remember that part a few entries ago when i said “it’s time”? …

Well, that time is June 22nd, 2008.

yes, I realize it’s super present day, and I realize that it’s also my 30th birthday, so I couldn’t think of a more fitting day to do this.

On June 22nd, I will launch my comic. It’s online in a seeeecret, it’s being proofread, and it should be ready to go by then. Knowing my luck, though, i’ll say a day and then that day won’t end up working out because the tubes have exploded or clogged or something. Afterall, the internet IS just a series of tubes. In fact, I am having my own personal internet delivered to me by my staff TODAY!

Anyway… this is my dream, guys. This is something that i’ve wanted to do for a long time. When next sunday comes, I’ll have a new link up on my Kappacino website and I will probably post something here, directing people to the comic. I plan on trying to update almost every month, but work and life might get in the way.

I do promise this though. I will be better about this than i have about everything else I’ve ever done. I tried so hard to be interested in all the stuff I did and remain interested, but as I have stated numerous times, they have all been distractions from what I’ve really wanted to do, and that is this comic. Unless I die in a moose attack or bear mauling, I WILL FINISH THIS COMIC!

And, in a strange turn of events, I have changed the name of the comic to something that I think is very fitting. It is now called “Wish Fulfillment”. Everyone will see why when they read it. It’s about crystals and ghosts and … I’M SO EXCITED ! WAAAH!

It’s a strange feeling… one I really can’t describe. I’ve talked about this comic since like 10th grade, but I’ve never had the means to do this before now. And it could be really bad, and everyone could totally hate it… but that’s a chance I’m going to have to take.

Anyway, thanks to Tony (for programming the site) and Larry, Pat and Fatt (for helping me brainstorm) and the unexplainable power of Mark’s grandma’s garage… I’m going to be getting the best thing I could for Super Present Day … ^_^

my wish… fulfilled.

Well, it’s time.

It’s been too long, if you ask me. 18 years to be exact. I’ve been writing it in the background all along, but not too many people even knew. This comic isn’t just another silly Sword That Cuts Things. This comic is my life.

I started writing Nothing Exciting Ever Happens Around Here in 7th grade. It wasn’t even close to what it has become. It started out as a silly comic book that was about me meeting rock stars and going on MacGuyver-esque adventures with them. On one occasion, Sinead O’Connor wanted to kill the band Nelson, so she dressed up like Cindy Crawford. A cartoon version of me and my friend Tracey assisted Matthew and Gunnar Nelson in saving the day.

Think I’m kidding? Well… uh… yeah… I’m the one with the bow >_< :

Well… now that I got THAT horrible secret off of my chest… ahem…

I did the comics throughout my experience at Meyers High School. Since I didn’t have too many friends, I would draw them. We would go on adventures, save the world, you know, the standard stuff that you do when you’re a comic book character. ^_^

In 1994, I got a computer, and then I really went crazy! Below is the first picture I can find that I did of my characters on the computer. I used to do these things in pencil in these sketchbooks that I had, but I taught myself to draw with a mouse so I could make covers for them. This was an era before scanners, teh internet, and rickrolling, kids. ^_^

Here’s another one that I found. These were all in some weird like… clarisworks format or something, but thankfully appleworks let me convert them to jpegs. My obsession with crystals plays a big part in my continuing to do this comic, and you’ll see that as you read my comic, i’m certain.

My senior year was when I was absolutely positive that I’d be a cartoonist when I got out of highschool. Two papers interviewed me and I was…. I was just so positive. I toyed with the ending of my “series” back then, even though there were only a handful of coherent comics. This is the cover of the last comic which I never finished cause stupid Kutztown got in the way. This one is also drawn with a mouse:

Over the years, the comic has struggled to survive my many creative distractions, the sickness of my mother, and the Kappacino and Sword That Cuts Things animations and my rib injury that both delivered a near fatal blow to the comic.

I’ve been very reluctant to begin this comic for several reasons, the first being that this comic is a very personal comic. It’s not as laugh out loud funny as my animations are, even though there are some humorous moments. It’s very… different. I’m not sure how everyone is going to take to it. I’d compare it more to “A Specter in Albertville” than to any of my animated works. Heh. Animated works. I’m talking like I’m some big name animator… but believe me, I know better.

Another reason that I have been reluctant is that this comic is about me. It takes place in 10th grade, and … well I guess anytime someone writes about themselves, they get nervous. Since this character that I am writing for essentially IS me, I have to take extra care not to come off to the readers as being stuck on myself. I know that sounds silly, but I am one of the LEAST stuck on myself people in the entire world. Seeing how I am the main character, however, it’s hard not to focus on my awesomeness. LOL… just kidding. In all seriousness though, it is awkward developing love triangles around a character that is supposed to be you when, quite honestly, you have the least self esteem in the world.

There are other things that factored in to why I waited so long. It seems like every time I tried to start this thing, something would come along to wreck it. I tried to start actually seriously doing this the year I got out of college, after doing the first comic in the series as my senior project. Here’s the cover of that. This was when my comic really took on the form of the story that I’m working on as we speak:

Here is the cover of the second comic. I did this in 2001, but it says 2005 because I had to reprint the cover for my portfolio a few years back:

I was ready to go with this one… ready to send it to publishers… but…

Nearly a month after I started, my mother got a brain tumor! I tried again a few years later. Rib problems. And then again… STCT got in the way. … It was frustrating.

I guess another big part of the problem was that everyone throughout my life just assumed I’d be doing this comic for a living and … well… no one ever bothered to tell me that… well… it’s really HARD to get a comic published. I got out of school and was absolutely positive that I’d just walk up to one of the major manga publishers and say “Hey, here’s my comic” … and they’d say “All right, we’ll publish this AS IS and you’ll be a kabillionaire” … That idea had been drilled into my head for so long that I actually believed it.

I submitted A Specter In Albertville to Antarctic Press. They told me that my story was hilarious, my facial expressions were priceless…. but… that I couldn’t draw. …Naturally I was destroyed. I continued to draw, but… I gave up on my dream of ever being published. … I still wrote Nothing Exciting in the background, but … it just sorta seemed useless.

Kappacino happened shortly after this. I never expected it. It was very strange having people ask you about your stuff. It was very strange having people CARE about your stuff. As much as I loved doing Sword That Cuts Things, though, it was an accident. I’ll be the first to admit that. It was an absolute, complete and utter mistake. … It was supposed to be one animation, with a SHORT cut scene with Albonshasta, Wally and Mrs. Jimmy having a conversation. … you all know how it ended up.

After four years of doing the Sword That Cuts Things, I was tired. One day at work I was scribbling a picture of my character Jeremy and I drew a word bubble with him saying “Sara, you’re letting me die. I won’t forgive you if you let that happen”… and then I realized what I’d been doing. I got so caught up in trying to please everyone, so caught up in the fact that people were actually paying attention to and caring about something that i’d done, that I forgot what was really important to ME.

So, I’m doing Nothing Exciting Happens Around Here. I have updated my site with a new link. My friend Tony is helping me with the site interface, which is awesome, cause I don’t know the first thing about programming a site. It will be a mixed media comic, using pencil and computer techniques. Larry and I are working on finalizing back story so I can start drawing this thing. There are no words for how overjoyed I am to finally be doing this. Well, I guess there is a word for it. Overjoyed. Heh.

This comic will be a long undertaking for me, but I intend to see it through until the end. Unlike the other things that I have tried to do and failed miserably, this is something I care about more than anyone would ever know. That was my problem, I think. I would start these creative projects that would take me away from this comic, and I would get depressed, because I felt like I was just wasting time when I could be writing Nothing Exciting.

All of that being said, I hope you guys will give the comic a chance. I cannot promise that it will be a literary or … comicular masterpiece (hey, if our president can make up words, so can i!) … but it WILL be something that I have poured every portion of my heart and soul into since the time I was eleven years old.

I will begin drawing very soon, and Tony said the site will be done soon as well… I fully intend to have this up in the next few months. I will be posting regular updates on the status of this.

Here are a few more recent images I drew of my characters (within the past year or so). Hope you like ‘em. Stay tuned, I promise I won’t let anyone down this time. I’ve never been this excited in my entire life ^_^ !