Shadownet: A Cyberpunk Melodrama

“Shadownet represents the terminal artifact of humanity.”

Depicting a bleak dystopian future where the low-life analog world has merged ideologically with the high-tech digital world, Shadownet is both a real and a digital place where seemingly anonymous users live out their lives.

Maria and Victor are two remote users whose contrasting belief systems are exposed through the different ways they search for happiness, freedom, income, and love within a corrupt society.

Within the dark web of these pages, readers will see literary references to classic speculative writers such as Fyodor Dostoevsky, Franz Kafka, and Philip K. Dick as well as many other cultural representations found in weird fiction. The affect of these references is meant to suggest that these stories, and others like it, are historical artifacts that reside within the collective consciousness, and how today’s shared understanding of social norms is anything but a new phenomena.

What is weird about this terminal artifact of humanity is how moral attitudes about what is real and true versus what is inevitably digital and artificial, brings people together, often, through opposition.

Shadownet: A Cyberpunk Melodrama is my first full-length comic book. This story contains some mature themes, weird imagery, profanity, and challenging intellectual topics. This book is recommended for ages 12 and up.

Shadownet: Dierdre’s Story

“It is the system that is broken.”

This side story takes place in the dystopian world of Shadownet and follows the mundane daily life of another one of its characters.

Shadownet: Dierdre’s Story is a short story published with Ink & Drink Comics St. Louis in their catch-all anthology Too Hungover: More Stories From The Bottom Of The Barrel. “From surreal dreamscapes to space-faring heroes, from vicious vampires to monsters that go bump under the bed,” this book is compiled of a variety of stories by local creators from the St. Louis metro region.

This book contains some mature themes, graphic imagery, profanity, and challenging intellectual topics and is recommended for adults ages 18 and up.

Lonely, Among Us: A Haiku-Comic

“Aliens walk in secret, lonely among us.”

A haiku is a Japanese poem of seventeen syllables, in three lines of five, seven, and five that traditionally evokes images of the natural world. (Oxford English Dictionary)

A blind contour drawing is created by pushing and pulling a markmaking tool such as a pencil across the surface of the page while studying the subject of inspiration without looking at the drawing. The artist’s intent is typically to capture the essence or gesture of the subject while becoming more sensitive to the touch of the hand on the paper. Emphasis on the variety of line quality, layers of tone, and dynamic movement across the composition become more significant than accuracy or realistic rendering.

Alienation can be used to describe one’s estrangement or withdrawal from society. (Oxford English Dictionary)

For each panel, I created one blind contour pencil drawing while watching a full episode of from the first season of Star Trek: The Next Generation. After completing season one, I then experimented with the layout and aspect ratios of the panels and edited the titles of each episode to describe the poetic feeling of alienation using the haiku format.

Lonely, Among Us is a haiku-comic published with Ink & Drink Comics St. Louis in their 13th annual FREE COMIC BOOK DAY minicomic called STLiens.

This book is for all ages.

The Art of Weird Images: A Reflective Essay on Visual Culture

“‘I know it when I see it’ is the most normal reply. It is unusually difficult to find the words to define hallucinatory phenomena that exists beyond the scope of common knowledge or the real world.”

In this reflective visual essay, I take a critical look at the formal, conceptual, and social implications of creating weird art.

The Art of Weird Images is a short visual essay published with Ink & Drink Comics St. Louis in their non-fiction anthology Relapse. This book is compiled of a variety of stories by local creators from the St. Louis metro region.

This book contains some mature themes, graphic imagery, profanity, and challenging intellectual topics and is recommended for adults ages 18 and up.

Tales of Maleficium: Part I

“At what point did intellectuals shift from their godless pursuit of science and reason to, more or less, putting their faith in collecting telltale ephemera and fantastic literature from the past?”

In this vignette of a young warlock’s quest for hidden knowledge and magical power, I experimented with the format of the traditional comic book by mimicking the old style volksbuch (German) or chapbook (English) from the mid-16th century. These early paperbacks were precursors to the modern novel, were highly affordable to produce, and became widely circulated booklets that distributed folkloric tales and romantic literature to the middle and lower classes. In this particular legend, allusions to the origin story of Faust become part of the tale as well as a historical reference to one of earliest chapbook publications.

Tales of Maleficium is a short comic published with Ink & Drink Comics St. Louis in their fantasy anthology Smashed. This book is compiled of a variety of stories by local creators from the St. Louis metro region.

This book contains some mature themes, graphic imagery, profanity, and challenging intellectual topics and is recommended for adults ages 18 and up.