If you don’t know, I haven’t drawn a comic for Tic Toc Tom in a long time. In fact since 2012, I’ve done two. “A Day’s Work” in 2012 written by Chetan Patel and, a two-pager in 2014 that shouldn’t count because it was a part of a continued story.
So, let’s say I’ve done one. Now the unfairly critical and horrible of you might say that is a poor output. And you would be right! You’re still horrible but, right!
I’ve been doing the covers for the monthly book and the occasional one-off illustration but really, nothing sequential. And the sad thing is I don’t really have a reason for it. I just kinda of stopped drawing a while ago.
But unrelated to Tic Toc Tom, my good friend Yan Rozen got in touch with me a while back and asked me to work on something with him. “Asked” is my nice way of saying pestered but I’m glad he did. Because after much support (and hounding), I did break out my dusty drafting table and sit down to start penciling again. It was tough at first because I felt like not drawing comics for so long turned my hand into a ham loaf. But I fought through it and now it’s just a manageable hunk of SPAM.
Note to self: This story would make a great Lifetime Movie. A handsome young artist rediscovers his inspiration (change Yan character to Scarlett Johansson).
Which leads me to a Tom Yeo sketch I saw a few weeks ago. It was a great little one-off that I’ll not tell you about right now because my story is better if you don’t know. But, seeing it led to a bit of back and forth with Tom. I was trying to convince him that there was enough ‘strangeness’ in it to turn into a story. Tom encouraged me to go for it!
And I did. Or, am (I’m still working on it you horrible people). So it seems that after not doing anything for 4 – 5 years, I’m back.
Chetan was so excited that he asked me to write something up on the process. He’s not being supportive of me starting to draw comics again though. He just feels if I commit to it online, I’ll have to finish. Ha! Shows what he knows! Most everything I post on the Internet is unfin…
So here’s a sneak peak at the pencils and inks from page 1.
I’m pretty happy with it so far. It just goes to show you that inspiration can come from anywhere.
And then hell freezes over.
– Paul Marhue
P.S. Here’s a snapshot of me working on page 2. Chetan felt that people would want to see me in my gym shorts.
