Steve Peters Week II: Tales of Tails of Sparky

Hi, Everybody!

Steve Peters Week II continues:

Friend to the Blog: Steve Peters is running a new KickStarter to fund his latest project: Parallel Comicverses #1, which has a new story in it, WRITTEN BY DAVE SIM! And to celebrate, I'm doing STEVE PETERS WEEK II!

Steve Peters:

Today's topic is the Tails of Sparky series, which had some contact with the Cereverse in the past and will do so again in the future, God willing. For Tails #1, Dave did two jam drawings (along with a bunch of other awesome independent cartoonists, including students in a cartooning class I used to teach).
The first was for the cover. I was surprised that Dave decided to go pointillistic on this one, and therefore spending quite a bit of time on it. In case the signatures are too small to read here, they are (from left to right, top to bottom): Myself ("BEFORE reading the Bible"), my cousin, Argentine artist Daniel Sponton, David Mack, James Kochalka, E.J. Barnes, Max Ink, Lee Thacker, Dave Sim ("AFTER reading the Bible"), and Eric Wilmoth ("AFTER reading Peanuts!").

His other contribution to the issue was in an epic 4-page jam, which has a weird pedigree. Dave's panel and the two preceding it were from a jam done in 1996, while the rest was done 11 years later, with Lee Thacker's final panel being added on in 2008. It features my old Rabbit Hell characters, and Cerebus and Rabbit Hell go way back together as we will see later on in "Steve Peters Week".

Tails of Sparky #2 was a 24-hour comic (no connection to the Cereverse other than that I was first inspired to create 24-hour comics after reading about them in Cerebus), a magical realist autobiographical story like Chemistry. For Tails of Sparky #2.5 I added a second 24-hour comic to it (I felt the first pass ended a little too abruptly), creating a super 48-hour comic.

Tails #3 was another 24-hour magical realist autobiographical comic, done at a 24-hour comic event at a comic shop, which is much more fun than doing it on your own. The novelty with this one was that I did them on my sketch cards---I often include them as gifts to my readers. I did 4 cards to a page, so 4 cards X 24 pages = 96 cards. Here's a video of all the cards together before they were dispersed among my readers.

Problems viewing this video? Watch directly on YouTube...

The as-yet-unpublished Tails of Sparky #4 will also be a sketch card comic. Around 2010 I decided to do an ongoing sketch card story while taking requests from readers who bought my books. At the time my comics with jam drawings by Dave Sim and Sergio Aragones were selling pretty steadily on eBay. I would ask the buyers what they would like to see on their free sketch, then try to incorporate it into the ongoing story. Since I was mainly selling comics with Sim and Aragones in them, most of the requests involved Cerebus or Sergio or his character Groo. The story involves Cerebus in Rabbit Hell (the place where 'toons go once their creators stop drawing them), in a simulated Guys bar environment.

If I ever complete this one, the Awakening comics panel borders will be removed as I did with Tails #3. You can read what I've done so far here:

https://www.facebook.com/Steve.Peters/media_set?set=a.430900688888&type=3
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Well Thanks Steve!

As I must:
Rob Walton is doing a Ragmop Kickstarter too. (Where's HIS week here on AMOC?!?)
Vark Wars T-Shirt. Vark Wars T-shirt. Vark Wars T-shirt.
Vark Thing.

Next Time: Hobbs, and the beginning of a new Cerebus and Hobbs Saga, plus if Steve sends something, that...