Previously on Marooned…

While attempting to send a message to Earth, John fell ill. He returned to the Martian sanctuary Vita to administer antibiotics, which made him worse. Ugo has now brought him to the Volotrum (also called The Dark Ones), his only remaining chance to be healed, where he has been speaking to “She-Who-Hears” about his predicament.

Meanwhile, Asimov and Ril got trapped in a sandstorm and had taken sanctuary inside Captain John’s ship. They have returned safely and are now awaiting the return of John.

New Readers

The current storyline starts right here, or you can read from the beginning of the strip. Be sure to check out the about page, which explains the story and the main characters.

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The story is called “Green.” It’s a story about the robot in these panels. He apparently lives in this dreary place, and he is searching for something. What happens during and at the end of that search is real story - he finds more than what he was originally searching for. Can’t tell you much more than that without ruining it

The story is going to be part of an anthology by a group called Comics Care. There’s a lot of great artists taking part (including good buddy Steve Ogden) and the project will benefit cancer charities. Again I can’t say much more about it just yet, other than if you want to see the story (and some other amazing stories too) you’ll have to buy the anthology when it comes out!

Over the weekend I finally got a chance to get to the coloring on this (it has been penciled and inked for some time.) I’m pretty happy with how it’s coming along.

Here’s some teaser images for you.

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Ugo the statesman.

Previously on Marooned…

While attempting to send a message to Earth, John fell ill. He returned to the Martian sanctuary Vita to administer antibiotics, which made him worse. Ugo has now brought him to the Volotrum (also called The Dark Ones), his only remaining chance to be healed, where he has been speaking to “She-Who-Hears” about his predicament.

Meanwhile, Asimov and Ril got trapped in a sandstorm and had taken sanctuary inside Captain John’s ship. They have returned safely and are now awaiting the return of John.

New Readers

The current storyline starts right here, or you can read from the beginning of the strip. Be sure to check out the about page, which explains the story and the main characters.

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John has some interesting logic.

Previously on Marooned…

While attempting to send a message to Earth, John fell ill. He returned to the Martian sanctuary Vita to administer antibiotics, which made him worse. Ugo has now brought him to the Volotrum (also called The Dark Ones), his only remaining chance to be healed, where he has been speaking to “She-Who-Hears” about his predicament.

Meanwhile, Asimov and Ril got trapped in a sandstorm and had taken sanctuary inside Captain John’s ship. They have returned safely and are now awaiting the return of John.

New Readers

The current storyline starts right here, or you can read from the beginning of the strip. Be sure to check out the about page, which explains the story and the main characters.

Share

Previously on Marooned…

While attempting to send a message to Earth, John fell ill. He returned to the Martian sanctuary Vita to administer antibiotics, which made him worse. Ugo has now brought him to the Volotrum (also called The Dark Ones), his only remaining chance to be healed, where he has been speaking to “She-Who-Hears” about his predicament.

Meanwhile, Asimov and Ril got trapped in a sandstorm and had taken sanctuary inside Captain John’s ship. They have returned safely and are now awaiting the return of John.

New Readers

The current storyline starts right here, or you can read from the beginning of the strip. Be sure to check out the about page, which explains the story and the main characters.

Share

So, as I had said Lian has been waiting in the wings for literally 6 months. Way back when I began to think about how I wanted Marooned to be a story strip, I started to think that my cast was too male dominated. In some ways, Ril was a response to that (and even Atha to a lesser extent). But I really wanted a female Human character - I felt that a woman in the cast would help balance some things out. Obviously posed a problem because, well, John came to Mars alone.

When I began laying out the second story, that’s when I had the idea of how Lian could appear, and I knew that it would take awhile to happen. I also knew, if I handled it right, that it would be a real surprising and unexpected twist, and it seemed to work. You have NO idea how hard it has been in the weeks leading up to her reveal, with the conversations between John, Ugo and the Dark Ones to not give away any part of the secret. I even made sure I never said that the Listener was female - I didn’t want to give you any hints.

In any event, she’s here. But she looks a little different, no? Something has clearly happened to her. But at this point we know precious little about her. She’s female, human, and claims to have been captain of the Destiny mission. For those of you who pay real close attention, there’s at least one clue in that statement.

John says she crashed and died. So he clearly knows of her somehow from his time on Earth. And he also stated she’s wearing an NFF uniform. (For those of you who don’t know, NFF is the New Frontier Federation - the private company that has sent John to Mars.) Well obviously she didn’t die - and somehow she is living with the Dark Ones, and has even become the apprentice of She-Who-Hears. Well there must be a story there, eh?

Developing her as a character was fun and challenging. I’ve never really drawn women at all. And although I had 6 months to work on her, truth is I didn’t spend that much time, because frankly most of my time goes to the current strip. I have very little time to spend on things outside what I need for the next installment. My early sketches were different than she is now for sure. Now and then I would pick up the sketchbook and do some designs, but honestly it wasn’t happening.

Then a couple weeks ago I knew the reveal was coming up, and I had to figure it out. So I finally drew a couple designs that seemed to work, but that I knew would still need some work. I can tell you that you should expect her appearance to be refined over the coming months. She is already changing and solidifying as I work on Monday’s strip (in which she appears in all 6 panels). So the consistency won’t be there at first, but hopefully soon.

And what does a female character do for my readership? Well only time will tell, but the results this week were unreal. Now often I advertise on update days, spending $5 on ads. A couple times I’ve spend as much as 10 or 12 bucks. Monday I spent $9.50 on ads, so I expected a little bump - and I even figured because it was a woman in the ad that it would garner a few more clicks, but holy moly people.

Until Monday, my best pageviews reported had been like 6,500 on one day. Well Monday shattered that going to 17,150! Nearly triple the amount. Even Thursday, where I only spent like $3.75 on ads (what was left over in my Project Wonderful account) garnered 7,000+ views. It will be interesting to see if the trend continues. The return visitor numbers are up for this week too, I hope that continues.

So, what to expect from Marooned in the near future? Well, I expect we’ll soon find out what John’s fate will be - the poor guy is clearly on death’s door. And there’s quite a bit of mystery surrounding Lian, that you can bet John won’t let just slide by. And we’ve learned very little about the Dark Ones so far, including why they live separately from the rest of the Martians.

Meanwhile Ril, Atha and Asimov are waiting around at Vita, wondering what will happen to John and Ugo. Poor Asimov has angered the ladies with his comments about Ugo, and is now all alone in his room. I’m working on what I hope is going to be a really cool and unique strip for Asimov’s next appearance. It will be different, but will fit into the story as a whole. That will have to wait though, until we find out John’s fate.

There’s a good chance that exploring all these stories and mysteries could take us to the end of the year, if not farther. So I hope you are enjoying the strip and the story. I’m definitely having fun with it, with the new characters and the new coloring technique.

I got started on the next comic book, but I think I’m going to need to start over. My plan now is to recolor all the earlier strips up to a certain point (and then selective fixing from there). Then to produce a full-color strip reprint of Marooned in a larger book. I’m not sure what size yet, it depends on how many strips, but I will keep you posted. Ideally I’d like to make the book the opening two story arcs - the arrival and meeting with Ugo and the Saga of Bob.

I might potentially do a pre-order for the book. Doing it that way might allow for a higher quality book. A lot depends on how many readers I have when the time comes.

Lastly, I’d like to leave you with a little tease of the side project I’ve been working on. It’s going to be an anthology of children’s stories for charity, featuring lots of talented artists. It’s still a bit early to spill too much on it, but here’s a little shot of what I’m working on.

Lastly, if you like Marooned and you’d like to help promote the strip, the best thing to do is just tell people about it and have them visit for themselves. I really appreciate it. Have a great weekend!

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I guess she knows how Snake Plissken felt.

Previously on Marooned…

While attempting to send a message to Earth, John fell ill. He returned to the Martian sanctuary Vita to administer antibiotics, which made him worse. Ugo has now brought him to the Volotrum (also called The Dark Ones), his only remaining chance to be healed, where he has been speaking to “She-Who-Hears” about his predicament.

Meanwhile, Asimov and Ril got trapped in a sandstorm and had taken sanctuary inside Captain John’s ship. They have returned safely and are now awaiting the return of John.

New Readers

The current storyline starts right here, or you can read from the beginning of the strip. Be sure to check out the about page, which explains the story and the main characters.

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Well, that was unexpected. (I’ve been waiting 6 months to spring this one on you!)

Previously on Marooned…

While attempting to send a message to Earth, John fell ill. He returned to the Martian sanctuary Vita to administer antibiotics, which made him worse. Ugo has now brought him to the Volotrum (also called The Dark Ones), his only remaining chance to be healed, where he has been speaking to “She-Who-Hears” about his predicament.

Meanwhile, Asimov and Ril got trapped in a sandstorm and had taken sanctuary inside Captain John’s ship. They have returned safely and are now awaiting the return of John.

New Readers

The current storyline starts right here, or you can read from the beginning of the strip. Be sure to check out the about page, which explains the story and the main characters.

Share

Marooned Classics: #55

Rounding up Classics week is one of my early favorite strips. At least in my mind, this is one of the special few where everything just seemed to come together and work. The writing is good and interesting and it ends with a funny joke (a joke that is not too obvious up front). The staging is atypical and interesting. I like the perspective of Asimov’s screen, something of which I’d like to do more. And the “special effects” came out good, too.

The truth is, I’ve always had plans to do interesting things with Asimov’s screen. I’ve struggled with doing that so far. I mean, he’s got basically what amounts to a advanced HD monitor on his face, and nearly all I ever show there is his “mouth” line. It’s something I think about, but have not yet solved. The one thing I don’t want to do is get too close to what Evan Dahm did in Rice Boy with his character The One Electronic, where he often showed video stills in his “eye.” Something I am still thinking about.

I was actually pretty happy with the original coloring on this one for the most part, although how I got there was a bit of a mess in the Photoshop file. I decided to scrap most of it and give it another shot though for fun, and I like the way this came out.

You might notice I added tails to the Geborga speech bubbles. Originally I had felt they would communicate telepathically, but I later grew to dislike that idea. However, I do like the colored speech bubbles still, as I think it gives a sense that they are still something different.

We haven’t actually seen the Geborga in quite some time, even though they have been talked about. The next time we see them, they will most likely be modified from their current design. It won’t be anything drastic, but I think there are some issues with how they are now. In particular, I find it odd that the greatest Martian scientists have no arms. Do they do everything with their feet? I don’t know. It’s something I need to figure out. Like many things early on, their design was a bit rushed.

Well, I hope you’ve enjoyed this week’s look back at some Marooned history. We’ll be back to the nitty gritty with John, Asimov and the whole gang on Monday. See you then!

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Marooned Classics: #33

This was an interesting time in the strip. My buddy Steve Ogden had begun helping me out with working through some artistic and color issues, and this strip was one that he helped me out with. I didn’t actually do much to this one at all, other than add a sound effect and adjust the light by Asimov, as well as the speech bubbles. The light and shadow was pretty much fine.

It’s another strip where there are some weird drawings of John, I still was having some trouble working out certain poses, and his head again gets real thin in some spots.

One reason why I picked this one was that it was the introduction of Ril, one of my favorite characters, and one of the most popular characters in the strip. At the time, I felt the strip was far too male dominated and it needed at least one female. But I knew it had to be someone who could stand up to the stronger personalities of John and Asimov. Thus we get the hardened orphan, Ril. (And later, we got Atha as well - so now there’s two.)

Have you ever heard a creator (whether it be a writer or a cartoonist) talk like he doesn’t know why a character did something? Well, I’m about to do that now. I think it’s because we like to think that partly the stories and characters evolve on their own, and we’re just telling those stories as they come to us. It’s interesting. I’ve heard/read Tolkien and Charles Schultz reminisce about why one of their characters did something.

Anyway, I’ve often thought about why Ril decides to attempt to break John’s kneecap here. My initial thought was that maybe some other alien had done her harm. But Mars troubles are self made. I think now that the problem is she probably felt as though John were talking down to her like she was stupid, or a young toddler - which she is of course neither. She wasn’t going to bother explaining that to him, she just decided to let him know right away that she wasn’t some helpless little kid.

I think John got the point. Later they have their “orphan” discussion (where she calls him a “huge nerd”) and somehow they make a connection. Ever since then, John has had a real soft spot in his heart for this little girl. And certainly this is somewhat drawn from my own life, because I have two daughters, and I have two real soft spots in my heart for them

In the future, we will see more of Vita. It’s a pretty important place, actually.

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