Wordpress always bothered me. Since launching in 2011, managing the Wordpress file system, themes, plugins, and MySQL database seemed like an increasingly overblown solution to host comics. My being particular about markup and styles only added more complexity. I built a static HTML site as a local guide, pasting HTML content into Wordpress fields. This occasionally caused conflicts with various extensions and updates. Wordpress also generated too much spam comments and emails.

Without the dots, ink gain and absorbent newsprint, the colors are louder than intended. This was discovered during the economic and technological shift of the 1980s, when publishers actually printed 64 colors on nicer paper. That's when the industry went with full digital color, effectively ending the four color process era of comics.

I'm coloring the new version of "Six-Year-Old Horse Thief". Out of all the elements of comics, coloring's been my weakest (those who've read my dialog might have a different opinion). This is my first attempt of addressing this issue with history and objective analysis. In order to move forward in any mission, you have to (a) be completely sick of the status quo and (b) have some ideal to compare your current output.

In the pre-digital era of print production, there were a few ways to spice up single-color line art with implied gray tones. Along with crosshatching, coquille board and screentone (most commonly called Zip-A-Tone), the richest and most expensive method was Duo-Shade by Grafix.

The basic idea is (a) draw the art with Adobe Photoshop, Corel Painter or similar tools and (b) make an Adobe Illustrator file for each page, containting the art and lettering on separate layers. Gather those files in a layout program like Adobe InDesign, which in turn is used to create PDFs for print or e-Comics.

Art exhibition space of Agencyport Software. As part of the historic Fort Point Channel creative community, it promotes the work of local artists with monthly exhibitions. For some reason, they decided to hang my work for a month! See for yourself at the opening reception:

This is especially amazing because at that time I hadn't drawn or written comics in almost a decade. Why'd they let a rookie pollute their walls for a month?