White Collar Assholes
The first appearance of Jeff James and Cayden Holsclaw, the CEOs of Emulsify and TRAKTSYEN, respectively. They’re assholes.
This is the beginning of a storyline that will play out over the course of many short comic strips like this one, featuring these disgusting and offensive idiots. I definitely don’t want to telegraph what I have coming, but will say my goal isn’t to just write a bunch of gross and offensive shit over and over. I want to make it more interesting than that, not only because being offensive is easy, but because what I love more than anything else is S T O R Y. I’m telling a story about these assholes.
I’ll be compiling the strips into a zine and selling it it digitally, though I want to print them at some point too , but as of writing this, my state, along with basically every state around me, has recently issued stay-at-home orders and shuttered non-essential businesses. The print thing might be a bit.
One goal I had in mind when doing these comics was just to make them, to not overthink shit, to go and do. It scared me at one point because I wondered if that meant I was making shitty work, but in the end I don’t think that’s what’s happening. I didn’t know how to sum up how it felt until I read something Michel Fiffe wrote in the back of his excellent book COPRA, specifically Round One.
He wrote: “I first heard of ‘breaking the Kirby barrier’ from Walt Simonson (who was a pretty slow artist early on). It’s an output thing: churn out those pages, keep moving and don’t you dare think of a rewrite, pal. The way I see it is not about rushing to produce some slapped together thing, it’s about not being so precious that it stalls you, not refining the work until it no longer has any life. It’s about catching the spirit of deadlines and working within limitations, moving quickly but steadily and never being half assed.”
He talked about loving comics that were less self conscious. And I think that’s what I’m trying to do too. I have a story, and I’m proud of this, and of what I have in mind.
So read this, download and share it if you’d like, tell me what you think of it through my contact page here, or on Twitter. It’s free, but I do have a donate button down there, if you have an extra dime or two, but that’s totally voluntary. This is White Collar Asholes 0.1 - A Rash Appears, written and drawn by me, lettered by DC Hopkins.
I really freaking love comics.
-austin