You know what….. its time for ANOTHER post– this wasn’t originally a post I was planning on making any time soon, in fact I was half-tempted with posting something for Prism Knights since the Kickstarter was on for the last few weeks but I was GRIPPED with the sudden urge to talk about this comic since my partner got a funny little email the other day asking what comic these two characters were from:
And colour me shocked?? I haven’t thought about these guys in quite a long time, even though pre-pandemic these two were the only thing I thought about for years as, some of you might be fascinated to know: I did have a webcomic… once.
Its probably not THAT surprising, considering how many folks online had webcomics (and have webcomics even now) but I’m not even sure how common-knowledge this is for most who haven’t followed me for (what feels like) eons now…. the last time I even worked on BadMouth was back in 2019… almost… 6 years ago…
Alas…. she’s unfinished (picture me saying this derisively). I know more than anyone at this point that some stories just don’t quite make it to the finish line. I won’t say that I’ll never go back to this one… but it certainly will not be a webcomic…. hell it might not even be a comic at all by the time I crunch my hands into it again.
ANYWAY this isn’t about what-ifs. Its mostly about the fact that the website for BadMouth is in a bit of a disarray right now (my wordpress shenanigans aren’t updated or whatever so I need to fix that). But I thought it wouldn’t hurt to honestly share the entire project here anyway. That’s right all 80-some-odd pages and everything.
BUT FIRST lets go back to the beginning. In 2017 I started a webcomic called BadMouth because I wanted to be a Cool Kid and get into the Cool Crowd of folks making comics. I was glittery-eyed for a small group of artists making: THE SANITY CIRCUS, BACKLASH, PARADISE, POSTCARDS IN BRAILLE, APOPPYTHEOSIS… and honestly a lot more I’m personally forgetting right now.
So what can I say other than I started doodling these friggin bozos:
(Again with the lack of proper visual development on my end. There ARE more doodles of these guys, unscanned in sketchbooks somewhere, though, I know that for sure).
And then with little to even less planning I just fuckin’ jumped right into it!
Here’s the prologue or “Ouverture: What’s the Word, Bird?” at 68 pages:
And a part of ACT I: The Ghost Walks
Yeah this entire comic was drawn and inked traditionally, hand-lettered… also traditionally. The colours were done by my partner, Tas (absolute fuckin’ lifesaver not gonna lie. I think their colour work really made this comic better then it ever could have been….)
I know SOMEWHERE… I have even older pages of a teaser I made up for the comic itself. Admittedly I don’t know where they’ve gone to. Probably lost on my old laptop. Which is (in part) why I felt compelled to make this post in the first place, cataloguing something before its completely lost. I wish I’d done a bit more of this personally in the past but we’re here now so we’ll start now, yeah?
If… i find the old pages I’ll post them here maybe… or just make a new post… probably make a new post… we’ll see.
BadMouth is a bit of a funny little beast for me. I remember being exceedingly insecure about it and I think it shows in some of the pages here, more than the gumption I had with Little Mad Hattie which is a couple years older than this is. I think if I were to re-tackle it now it’d look and feel a lot different… but I also think it’d be…. a LOT shorter than the original plan. Or maybe it’d just be prose?
The story was supposed to be a story told in a series of acts like it was going through a circus show… because it was about a circus, and gods, and death and rebirth and ghosts and– it sure was about a lot of things, but at its core it was about a funny little bird-guy named Pippin whose life was ripped apart by circumstance and things beyond her control.
Which was a pretty apt thematic tale for my life at the time, at least sometimes it sure felt like it.
Anyway, document your shit if you can. Even if it feels silly at the time of you doing it. It’s worth it in the end.
I haven’t really dabbled too much into these two in a while but both Pippin and Matty (the moth with the white hair) crop up every so often when I’m doing oc-tober hehe.
Not gonna lie… I’m vibing a lot with the evil-Pips look in the third image hehehe. She was gonna fuckin go Through It in the comic and have a whole villain Moment but y’know. Impatience and self-doubt and all that. I’m feeling a lot more confident in my self-publishing these days though… I’m half-tempted to revisit old ideas and give them a new life without going through the comics route…
Mostly so I can get a few of these bouncing thoughts out of my brain!
Anyway! Thanks for reading, toss me some questions about these guys if you’re reading this and have any LOL. I never know how to end posts.
Toodles!
I’m looking at these portraits of Pippin and I’m seeing the proto-Ovoe in them omg! Also the paneling on these pages are so good! I would not have read insecurity in the way these pages are laid out at least. I see a lot of skill and some measured restraint, if that makes sense? I really like them. Also Tas’s colours continue to be epic af.
Haha! Yeah the colour pallet certainly doesn’t help! Pippin is definitely a lot more chaotic-goofy than Ovoe turned out to be–I think Ovoe’s original design wound up becoming Gideon?? LMAO The brain works in mysterious ways.
Also thanks so much friend!! It definitely makes sense. I think my memories are a bit clouded because I knew I was really insecure about it when I was working on it (sorry Tas sorry Tas– they definitely were the one dealing with my madness on the back-end).
And yeah Tas’ colours are absolutely insane everyyyyy tIMEEEE!!