I found out about this Canson paper called “Mi-Teintes” - which must be some foreign language for “high-falootin’ construction paper.” It’s colored paper with a real nice tooth to it. You take some china markers or colored pencils (I ended up using white charcoal and watercolor pencils) and you come up with a really neat effect. Here’s my first attempt, came out fairly decent. I’m thinking of doing more of these and maybe auctioning this one off on e-bay. Here it is:

Edit: Put this one up for auction - if you want it here it is:
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=120277774964

Just wanted to drop a note that I’m continuing to work hard on the refresh of the old strips. As I mentioned this is somewhat necessary for me not only in regards to the artwork but in making sure things that are coming up in the story make sense with respect to what has gone on before. I had made some mistakes early on simply because I didn’t have enough of the story prepared.

So if you’re bored and looking for some time to kill (or just interested) shoot back to the start and check out what’s been done so far. While some of the early artwork had character, it was pretty bad. Ugo was this floating dude with antennae, then he had big dark green horns… John was fat, then thin, then fat, etc.

The first two strips were redone earlier and don’t have the current style, but they are in line to be done (but they look better than the originals).

In addition, I’ve improved some of the strips where the artwork was just bad, or I didn’t have enough time or I didn’t draw something right. I think the best example of this is the one I just uploaded:

http://www.maroonedcomic.com/more-to-the-mission/

Here’s the two for comparison:

The original had no backgrounds and the “construction” panel was very basic. I’ve fixed a lot of continuity stuff, as mentioned, plus fixed a couple of punchlines that were just pretty bad. I’m about half finished with the project, I hope to have the whole archive settled within a month.