Reservoir near Dahlonega, GA

Super chill paintin' times oooooooh yeeeeeeeeah. 

Northern Georgia, full of hills

You know how I mentioned by knee still being stiff from the crash and that I hoped it would be better by the time that I got to Dahlonega? Well, I got here, my knee works just fine for biking. Buuuuuuut my gear shift not so much.

I have no problem shifting into higher gears, but when I want to shift back down, it'll jump crazy huge amounts. As much as I want to fix the problem myself, here and now, I don't really feel comfortable trying it until I'm on flatter ground. Just in case.

I also had a small freak out when it started raining. Which was surprising. So I think I'm going to invest in some long sleeved biking gear in the near future, because I felt much more secure once I pulled on a sweater (the idea of tearing open my arm again really bothered me for some reason. My leg, not so much. I don't know, I don't know)

Today, despite the general rainniness, I'm gonna go paint this nice little lake that had some bridges over it and pick up a few supplies that I forgot the other day. If you want to eat sandwiches from little bags, you might actually want to purchase some little bags. Protip, that one.

Tomorrow is for slackpacking, the day after is for more painting, and then I'm on the road again.

The house that's not on the map, Columbia, SC

I had a hard time finding an angle where the sun wasn't casting my shadow on this one ): 

When I got to Columbia in the first day, I wanted to go north to explore because there were some interesting looking things that I passed on my way to the hotel. The only problem was that, y'know, bikes are not allowed on the freeway. So I took this one road out of the entrance to my hotel that I thought would take me north and under the criss cross of freeways. Instead, what I got was dead ends almost immediately and this broken down...I don't know what it used to be. A series of vacation homes, maybe? It was creepy and lonely and I could probably have happily done a series of paintings just of this place. 

After getting a whole boatload of bug spray, of course. 

Fenley Park, Columbia, South Carolina

I like Columbia. It has lots of interesting architecture and all sorts of things to see and good foods to eat. But it has NO PARKING THAT ISN'T FREAKING WEIRD. So tomorrow I'm gonna paint somewhere that I can walk to from my hotel. And then go for a walk. Except for a trip to get new brushes I intend to drive as little as possible tomorrow. 

I'd bike, but my knee is still a bit stiff. Too bad. I'm hoping I'll be ship shape by the time I get to Dahlonega, because I really want to conquer the Three Gap Loop. But even if that doesn't work out, there's still day hiking in the Appalachian mountains, so, gosh, hardship. 

fall down, go boom

Was riding around earlier today, crashed my bike.

Because of train tracks. It wasn't even that I was trying to go over them or anything. They were sunk into the road, but the road and tracks both curved (but in different directions), so that as I went along the curve of the road, the tracks ate my back tire, which threw me to the ground.

It was very very weird, and more than a little scary, and I left some skin behind and some gravel came home with me, but I am all ok. Sore, and I will be purple, but ok.

I paneled a comic about it at dinner, so that's happening.

whooooooo aaaaaaaaare yooooooooooou +doodle

Blogger has some really good analytics stuff attached to it. Maybe too good. I admit it, sometimes, perhaps too many times, I just stare at my stats, wondering who the hell you people are.

Like, for instance, who were the three people that accessed my blog from their Nokia phones? Who in the Netherlands clicked through to here? And, most importantly, do they think I'm doing a good job?

Oh yeah and have this doodle.

This is accurate re: my post-everglades experience. Except for that I do not sunburn purple. I just didn't have a red pen on me at the time. The very nice ihop employee laughed at me, though, but it was ok because he knows this feel. 

The Spirit reboot

Shockingly, there is a lot of driving involved in road trips in America, and somewhere at the beginning I had decided that instead of just listening to my mp3 player, I wanted to listen to radio stations. Unfortunately, this means that sometimes you hear the same two songs over and over and over and over and over and over again. And then once more.

Turns out that NPR is a great palette cleanser for your ears. And sometimes, if you are very lucky, they are airing a program that is super aligned with your interests. In this case, I tuned in at the beginning of an interview with a man who got his start in comics by inking The Spirit. (I wish I could remember his name, but I can't.) The program immediately following that was also about Will Eisner, and then after that was an interview with R Crumb and his daughter, which is when I went back to trying my luck with local radio stations.

Some things you just can't bring yourself to care about, I guess.

Anyway, I was thinking about all of this and also about the imminent arrival of Womanthology and also also about some blogs I've been following recently that concentrate on how women are portrayed in comics (usually how it's done wrong, but also how it's done right) and then I thought: I would kill to work on a female!Spirit reboot (I am also a huge fan of many fans' portrayals of female!Sherlock, so I know things like this can be done well)

The first sketch. The idea really came together while I was doodling this in a coffee shop, hiding from some rain.

cover idea sketch

Ink test. This followed lots of pages of me really not getting the look of the character right. This was definitely the point at which things turned in the correct direction

I thought it was going to be really difficult to get the 'Will Eisner' to look right. I was pleasantly surprised to find that it wasn't that hard. (and yes, as you can tell from this, I am aware of who currently holds the rights to the Spirit property)

More fiddling with her personality, making sure the character works in different situations. 

The first time I'd gotten Ebony to work. In my version, her last name is still White, but Ebony is a code name she takes for herself. She's a professor at a local community college with a heart condition (which is why she never took to superheroics herself.) Taking on the Spirit persona is all her idea. 

The thing I love about Eisner's original stories (or one of the things) is that against a noir backdrop, they're so slapstick and ridiculous. It's important to me to maintain that. (Darwyn Cooke got it right. Frank Miller didn't.)

Obviously this is not something that is going to happen any time soon if at all. Probably not at all. But it's an idea I'm going to keep tinkering with in the back of my mind for a while, I think. Or maybe I'll just do a crazy short fan comic, exorcise it from my system, and move on.

Either way, I think I'll color that cover and use it as a portfolio piece.