December 2025: NewOldRare and Specifics

Watching: the Ferengi drama episodes of Deep Space Nine
Reading: Dungeon Meshi
Listening to: singles and EPs from Melbourne bands (2000 to 2006) on CD, because I got a discman for Christmas
Working on: my 2026 goals and plans document

2025 was pretty rough and art ended up taking a backseat a lot of the time, but I did finally make the chronological first part of my ongoing series NewOldRare, You’re So Cool. I wrote a vague outline for it a long time ago, before Neil and Louis even had names (then referred to as Video Store Clerk and Arcade Repairman) and when I just intended to do a bunch of random, mostly adult, illustrations of them. It could have been a one-shot but ended up fitting perfectly into their story. It was also originally timed out to You’re So Cool by Hans Zimmer, from the True Romance soundtrack, though it evolved. The initial “script” was a few bulletpoints and I did most of the actual writing while thumbnailing, which is different for me.

I like thumbnailing digitally, all on one page so I can see panel border/design patterns and keep everything balanced. This is the stage where I think the most, and try to preemptively solve as many problems as possible. I always draw out all the panel borders first, figuring out the design of the page. If I come back to empty panel borders months later to do the actual panels, I will still remember what I planned and go through it fairly quickly.

At 40 pages, it’s the longest part of NewOldRare that I’ve drawn so far, though not the longest I’ve written. I initially envisioned it as a beautiful full-colour watercolour comic because I often do, but after doing Diggin the New that way I realised it had shortcomings as an approach. My inks are quite stark and my watercolours are softer and looser, so they look washed out unless I use coloured pencil to ink – and I don’t always like that look. I like ink lines. Inkwash goes on vivid and you can get some very cool effects with it, and it layers transparently. It is considerably less forgiving/workable than watercolour and you need to be fast, but it’s a medium I’m comfortable with.

I tested a few looks – metal nib, brush, black pencil (top) and black undertone vs coloured undertones (bottom). I do all this on a type of hot press paper that spreads the pigment and lets shellac ink blend in very textured ways. I used white and neon orange gel pen in spots too, I wish I had a good electric blue gel pen but I haven’t found one yet. You can see that I thought about putting in a touch of red, but ultimately decided to stick to blue and orange with black.

The downside of working traditionally is that you have a lot of paper. These are 12×16″ pages and they spent two months pinned up on the wall next to my desk (barely fit).

I’m happiest with my comics when I opt for limited colour and focus on design over realism, and when I go in bold and a little loose with lines. It’s set at night in Philadelphia, though the orange cast of streetlights and blue depths of shadows could belong to any of the cities I’ve wandered around after dark, and it’s also a love letter to urban nighttime.

In the dream sequence when Louis plays out a fantasy of what could happen if he talks to someone he saw at a party (Neil), the city becomes increasingly nebulous as the fantasy progresses. Louis wants to go see bands with a guy, but anyone could fit into that, it’s nonspecific. And because it’s his fantasy, they go to the TLA in Philadelphia in 1994 and see Manchester bands that would not be playing there, some of which broke up long before.

The imagined city becomes an atmospheric blur, a collage, and the way they move through it is unreality in itself, more like the city rearranges around them and everything outside Louis’s field of vision doesn’t exist. Details don’t matter – Neil’s shark tooth necklace doesn’t appear because Louis hasn’t seen it yet, streets collage together into landscapes defined by internal mood. I mixed nine custom shades to fade the lines from black to blue across the eleven page sequence as Louis’s daydream moves further away from its starting point, until Neil and the indistinct surroundings match the ghostly Louis.

When they leave the party together for real, I paid a lot of attention to the sense of space and how they move through it. That’s how I used to change to the Broad St line at City Hall, that skate park exists, they walk down the waterfront and South St, the venue is an amalgamation of places I’ve seen bands, and they get off at Tasker Morris, one of my old stops. I looked at Philadelphia street pictures and I had locations in mind for everything, even if I tweaked things to work better in the comic.

Romantic fantasy is fun, most people indulge in it now and then, but it’s ultimately mirrors and shadows and projections. It’s not a relationship and it’s actually very unsettling to find yourself cast in someone’s fantasy, to feel like they want you to play something out as a character without regard for you as a reality. For me, the most interesting relationships deal in specifics, and this story is ultimately about fulfilling a fantasy in a satisfying and organic way that’s better than the daydream because of the details.

Louis and Neil like the idea of each other, and then discover they like the reality too. One of the most-asked questions I get about this series is whether it’s based on relationships I’ve had, and the answer is no, not at all. There’s a lot of autobiographical things hidden in there, a lot of references to my own life, but it’s twisted through the filter of fiction. If anything, it’s an exploration of the kind of relationship I want – in fact, the only kind I will accept: a very specific one. Neil and Louis are both like me in some ways, but also neither are me.

I penciled this all digitally and then lightboxed it straight to inks, which is something I’ve been trying out for a little while because watercolour paper hates erasing and I love complicated perspective. I fucking love lines, I love a bit of scribble. I want everything to have life.

I messed up a couple of pages and had to redo them, but the advantage of digital pencils is that it’s much faster. You can see the failures on the left and the do-over on the right. I don’t know what I’m going to do with the rejects, I’ll sell them if people are interested. I’m hanging onto the finals for now.

I actually like this failure a lot, but I needed the characters to pop more. The blue was a touch too blue for that stage of the fade.

I just didn’t think this through, should be light background with dark inset panels.

This one was subtly wrong, but still wrong enough that I redid it. Panel 3 bothered me a lot, but panel 1 was too dark and busy and panel 2 needed a warmer background.

I don’t know where the fuck my head was at when I did this one. The last two panels are okay but I totally lost the mood on the top four.

I also did an alternate version of the cover after second-guessing myself on the framing and the blue ghost. And I did the text digitally. Sometimes you just need the ability to fine tune, especially when you’re setting up for print.

You’re So Cool is free to read on my website and you can get physical copies (at a sexy 7.5×10 inch size) from Radiator Comics and South Street Art Mart.

2026 is going to be different, I’ve got a lot of changes coming. I’ve finished surgery, which had been holding me in place for a while, and now I’m ready to move forward. I’ve got plans. I’ve got ideas. I’ve got to buy a drop sheet so I can screen print t-shirts in my kitchen.