What Did You Do For Halloween?
Yeah, I know it’s July.
But last week I was given a flyer (not by the author, but someone whose work I like and have written about previously) advertising a new webcomic called Haunted, by Joshua Smeaton. The copy on the promotional postcard asks, “What did you do for Halloween when you were 12? Trick or treating? Go to a costume party? Or run from psychotic ghosts bent on ripping out your soul?”
It’s a little too early to tell where the story’s headed since right now there’s only a few pages up–the first batch of which are in Latin–since Smeaton’s focusing on spreading the word about the project before he goes to regular once-per-week updates starting in August. So far I like it a fair bit; the coloring’s very compelling (especially on those exterior images of the house), the quirky font work reminds me of Sandman: Brief Lives, and the prologue caught my interest and I will check back see how it progresses. It was pitched to me as something for kids as well; there are a bunch of kids Scooby-Doo style on the front of the promo postcard investigating shadowy figures behind a nearby door so I’m guessing that it’ll be a kid-friendly comic. But it’s still early, so I can’t yet say for certain where it’ll go.
But in poking around the website, I found that this author also does a diary comic (an example of which you can see above)! It’s already pretty well established that I’m something of a soft-touch when it comes to diary comics. About his own work, Smeaton writes, “In August of 2002, I attended the San Diego Comic Con with my friend Dennis. He picked up a book called “The Sketchbook Diaries” by James Kochalka. I thought it was a brilliant idea & I’ve been doing my own Cartoon Journal ever since. My grammar is pretty bad my perspective is crap and my character likenesses are even worse. But I think it works. ”
I found it kind of weirdly charming, actually. The archives go back to January 2004, so there’s a fair amount to read since they update daily. It’s basically Josh’s life, complete with job stuff, housemates, a dog named Moose, travel, movies, drawing comics (it’s kind of neat to see the progress he makes on Haunted show up in the diary comics), and so forth. A neat feature that I haven’t yet seen with many diary comics is links to the actual pictures he’s referencing, or referring to within the strip. I certainly enjoyed the time I spent looking around the site, and I’ll certainly go back to check out Haunted when it goes to regular updating next month.
The above comments are owned by whoever posted them. The staff of Fleen are not responsible for them in any way.