Bibliography part 7- The Center for Cartoon Studies Year 2

Senior year at CCS means it's thesis time!

This wasn't supposed to be my thesis. I'd originally planned to do the first two chapters of a painted graphic novel called Marya and Death. I was overly ambitious. I later tried to revive that story as a web comic, but that didn't work well either. Not sure yet if I'll ever pick up the story again, but ANYWAY

This is what started the whole mess. I was sick of working on my thesis, and one day decided to take a break and draw mermaids instead. Those doodles, along with a lot of encouragement from my classmates, turned into this 72-page story. It wrote itself- the first draft only took three weeks. Sometimes, you just gotta draw mermaids.

And after finishing that first story, I immediately dove into the second one. Probably a mistake, since this is my least favorite of the Tragic Relief stories.

I finished three issues of Tragic Relief that Spring, and decided to try and turn it into a bi-monthly mini comics series from there. I kept that up for a little over a year. Seven issues seemed like a good place to stop. But anyway, by this point I'd given up hope of ever returning to my "real" thesis and turned these three issues in as my final project instead.


I contributed a short comic to Side A: A Music Lover's Graphic Novel sometime during this year as well. It's in a similar style to the Tragic Relief stuff, only cleaner. I had used a Pentel Pocket Brush pen as my only tool during Tragic Relief, mostly out of laziness. For this, I switched to brush and ink. Made a huge difference.

SUNDAYS! This book was amazing, and it was a real honor to have been invited to contribute to it. I did one-pager about the Basket Ogress, who terrified me as a kid. And still does, a little.

More to come! The month is almost over.