Thom’s Crossworlds Blog

Let me start by thanking John Lotshaw of Accidental Centaurs for his guest comic this past few weeks.  Maybe Beazel & Ryndi aren’t the goof-ups everybody thinks they are?

Nah….

But…  Wow.  It seems like it was just yesterday that Darin and I put the first page of Crossworlds up.  And here it is, one year later.

How time flies when you’re getting older!

Even though the actual one year anniversary is this week, we have one more week of guest stories.  Then, Monday, August the 11th, Darin will post a special Anniversary bonus picture, and the following Wednesday, the regular story will start back up!

Thank you all for your great support of Crossworlds and here’s hoping to many more anniversaries to come!

It’s currently 12:05 am on Wednesday here in San Diego.  I, the Wotch’s Robin Ericson, and a whole slew of Wotchers here for both the “Ka-Vention” and San Diego Comic Con have just returned to the hotel room after seeing “The Dark Knight.”  Like many other things, I don’t believe the hype.

Or didn’t.

Christian Bale did another admirable job as Bruce Wayne and as Batman.  Maggie Gyllenhaal took over the role of Rachel Dawes from the Katie Holmes and made the role her own.  The supporting cast of top name actors (Gary Oldman, Michale Caine, and Morgan Freeman) had proven why they are some of the best.

And then there is the late Heath Ledger.

Ledger didn’t just try to make the Joker different from the previous ones.  He reached inside himself, drew out the darkest part of the human soul, and put that on display for all of us to see.

I amazed at some of the things that the Joker did that had the audience laughing.  They weren’t funny.  They were horrific.  The things he did that they didn’t laugh at were horrific.

And, yet, there was a fascination to what he did.

Cesar Romero’s Joker was comedic and campy.  Jack Nicholson’s was over the top but never really had a true direction.

Heath Ledger’s?

Whether you call him “Jack the Ripper”, “Zodiac”, “John Wayne Gacy”, “BTK”, or “The Joker”, there is a stream of evil that exists.  A temptation to see what life what would be like when you step outside of the rules and make your own, without regard to anyone or anything else.

Ledger’s Joker shows us that, combined with a genius and focus.

The Abyss has stared back.

And it scares me.

Not because Heath Ledger portrayed a comic book villian, but because images of that is truly here in reality.

Be good.

You may notice some slight — and some not so slight — changes here at Crossworlds!

We are no longer using the quickly cobbled together comic serving system that I wrote… No…

Now we are using the brand new CMXPress (mycmxpress.org) !  It’s an unbelievable system that we are currently beta testing and hope to soon make available for everybody who wants to do webcomics!

So, if you see any little glitches or problems, please let me know immediately and we’ll get right on it!

Wow, it’s purty…

As we bring you this specially formatted version of the first Crossworlds appearance, we will be posting it every day this week, including Saturday and Sunday!

Back before Karl and Kalif.  Back before Woodeye.  Back even before Nahrm, there was Samantha and Alex, the Accidental Centaurs.  John Lotshaw created them about six years ago now.  I enjoyed the stories, the humor, and the artwork.

Due to a confluence of events, I was fortunate enough to first wrangle both John and Anne Onymous into doing a crossover of their comics.  They punished me for it by making me plot it.  A great time was held by all and it became a friendship with John that I easure.

A couple of years later, John needed to take some time off.  I suggested that I could write a story to fill that time.  Again, luck was with me in the fact that I could get an artist that I had long admired — Darin Brown — to do the artwork.  This story became “Bride and Prejudice.”  The story was so well received, John decided to take another month off and left writing and art duties to me and Darin.  For those who purchased the AC compilation “Tales from otherSpace,” know the circumstances that led up to it, but I wanted to make a story that highlighted Alex’s character.  In this course, I created a bunch of throwaway characters based off of a cheap Cheers joke.  So, Darin and I had created a tall, muscular blacksmith character named Nahrm Maulin.  And with Nahrm, I had decided to have the bartender named “Wood-Eye” (Nahrm/Norm, Wood-eye/Woody.  The jokes just wrote themselves!)

And that was to be the last we saw of those characters.

Nahrm and Woodeye (who lost his hyphen…) made another return for a poker game strip in AC, along with new characters Karl and Kalif.  

And then Darin asked about continuing on the characters  in our own webcomic.

And so, Crossworlds was created.

And now you know.  And knowing’s half the battle…

So, go and visit John and the Accidental Centaurs at http://www.accidentalcentaurs.com.  And tell him that you came by way of Crossworlds! 

Today’s offering is our soon-to-be-seen Captain of the Crossworlds Militia, Lestra.  We have Gamera to thank for once again bringing his talents to the Crossworlds table.

Darin is currently in Washington, D.C., taking a rest (and visiting family) before continuing to NC.

Next week, we’ll be having John Lotshaw (of our parent comic, The Accidental Centaurs) present a side-story featuring the Alchemists, Beazel and Ryndi!

Talk to you all later!

So, we’re gonna do something different this time around!

This week, we’ll be having pinups (such as the one published on June 16th, from MSF High and Sailor Ranko’s artists Aakashi & Wraith!).  Following that, we’ll be running some stories featuring some of our other Crossworlds residents!  Next week we’ll be having a story of our amazing alchemists Beazel and Ryndi, brought to us by the writer and artist of our “parent” comic The Accidental Centaurs, John Lotshaw.

So, your thirst for the world of Crossworlds will not go unslaked!

Darin and I have just finished setting up the Crossworlds booth (Artists Alley #1710 — stop by and visit!) and boy are my feet tired!

As I”m typing this, we’ve had the usual Stormtrooper brigade pass by, and I’m surrounded by more goths, vampires, and hawkers of all wares Geek than i can ever remember (since the last comic book convention I went to).

Along with the usual convention sketches that Darin offers, we also have a number of other things available here, including the first ever ashcan print of Crossworlds #1! We’ll even autograph it for you!

I’ll be setting up my webcam and with extra attery power, we’ll be taking pictures and other things to go throughout the day.

Hope to see you there!

Which would seem a lot different if not for the comma there…Darin and I will again be doing the convention circuits, this time at <a href=”http://www.wizardworld.com/home-pa.html”>Wizard World — Philadelphia</a>!  May 30 through June 1st, we’ll be in the Artists Alley, with Darin doing commissions and me doing what writers do in Artist Alley…  Plus, we’ll be joined by Drowemos, the writer of <a href=”http://www.exiern.com”>Exiern</a>Stop by and visit us! 

Has it been over a month since my last blog?  So much to say and so little worth saying… 

Let me start off with saying “Congratulations” to Chris & Kristin Hazleton, my good friends who do  Misfile. If you’ve been following their comic, you know that Kris is expecting! So, help out with their “virtual baby shower” and stop by the baby registry at Toys ‘R Us.

next order of business is the sporadic updates with Crossworlds.

Darin is in the process of moving, so we may be throwing in the odd filler now and again to give Darin some time for breathing.