FIND X AND WEBCOMICS

I've written three multi-issue webcomics. They're detailed below in order of decreasing fame.

OCULAR TRAUMA (2004-2005)

I wrote and shabbily drew just over 200 issues of single-panel gag comic Ocular Trauma from 2004-2005. Issue 105 of Ocular Trauma was "Find x" which went on to become a forwarded-everywhere meme back when memes were real memes. Much later, one or two of the comic's descendants were worn by Peter Parker / Spider-Man in the movies Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017) and Spider-Man: Far From Home (2019). The original image is so simple, has such a folkloric vibe about it and was so easily hacked and altered that (a) people believe it’s been around forever (I published it on July 13, 2005) and (b) folks don’t realise the comic ever had an author.

You can read the more full Find x story on my Home of Find x site. The rest of Ocular Trauma is offline, now.

SCREENCATS (2019-2020)

While working at Screenrights, I drew Screencats (39 comics) which was themed around my workplace industry. I shared the issues with staff via a mailing list. Some of my colleagues said, "You should share this more widely," and since it contains no too-specific references to our workplace, I decided to do so. You can read Screencats in its Dropbox home through this link.

PLAN 10 (2002)

In April 2017, I discovered I'd lost my Plan 10 website and most of the comics. It must have happened during a backing-up accident. Issue 8 of the comic is on my visual art page but that's all I've got for now. If you're reading this and have any issues of Plan 10 saved on your hard drive, please contact me. Thanks.

I drew a zillion comic strips by hand during my youth, mostly with a biro and in black/blue on white, and part of me had always pined to write a long-running strip with higher production values. I took a shot at doing so as a young adult in 2002 with Plan 10. I drew most of it by hand, scanned the drawings then coloured them on the Mac using MetaCreations Painter 3D. Each issue took me an age to do and I was also dealing with RSI problems. What I discovered in doing Plan 10 is that redrawing characters over and over in different poses and still being able to make them look consistently recognisable is one of my weak areas. You wouldn't know this from looking at the published issues, but what you can't see in them are the scores of times I erased each character trying to get the proportions of their features right. It was so hard for me that I burned out after 11 issues. That said, I like the comic as far as it got (and in the story, the aliens had barely even landed yet!). I think the only weak issue is number 7, which was a water-treading one I did just for the sake of keeping up with my schedule at the time.