Monday Comics – Fantasy Comic THE EVER ZONE

Week 14 of Hypertransitory Monday Comics is featuring an oldie but a goodie. My Fantasy and Sci-Fi themed comic The Ever Zone!

THE EVER ZONE

Time and space have existed for eons without too much trouble…until now. Some unknown force has torn a hole in the fabric of space-time. Inside is an apparently endless zone that can and does connect everywhere with everywhere.

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JG Creator Notes

So what the heck is this anyway? What’s going on with this comic?

Well, for the history buffs, here’s the tale…

I originally came up with this comic as a companion piece to my Fantasy Book Banner site, which I closed last year.

As I wrote in my Lloyd Alexander post, the gist of that site was to have self-published Fantasy and Sci-fi authors come and promote their works on the site, form a community and gain some authority, hopefully driving sales as a result.

What is the Ever Zone?

In the story, you’re kind of thrown in there and there’s no beginning. It’s easy for readers to be a little lost as to what I intend.

The basic premise of The Ever Zone is that it’s a shared Sci-Fi and Fantasy world.

Essentially all of these worlds were separate, until something happens and makes a kind of tear in reality. The inside of this tear comes to be known as The Ever Zone.

You can get to pretty much anywhere in the universe through the Zone, and all kinds of races and civilizations have the opportunity to meet and interact. Without the Zone civilizations could rise and fall without ever knowing the other was out there.

Jaiya and Flynn are sent by their respective peoples to explore the Zone and report back. They’re mostly out there to explore and make note of any places where trade or culture can be exchanged.

But there are also evil types roaming the Zone, thinking to use it for their own purposes.

PENCIL ACTION

This one is created a bit differently than the other comics we’ve seen so far. With Kid Hype! and JG’s Vacation, I draw in pencil, ink over the pencil, scan it in and color it in Photoshop.

In creating The Ever Zone, I skip the inking part and go straight to scanning/coloring in Photoshop. This means I spend more time putting detail/shading in at pencil stage instead of shading and such with only the color in Photoshop. All of my 28 Days of Black Superheroes drawing were done this way, too.

Alas, I don’t really save any time this way. Even though I skip inking, I spend more time shading in pencil and selecting in Photoshop (with the pencil smudging the way it does, you don’t have clean ink lines and you have to be more careful with the selecting).

Here’s a look at the raw pencil art for this episode:

Limited Editions

I only made a few episodes of The Ever Zone. The site tanked and I kind of lost interest in doing it.

Except now for a couple of reasons I decided I wanted to bring it back.

The first reason is that I looked in my stats, and the most popular Monday Comic by far is The Life-Taker, which is a fantasy-themed comic.

I was a but surprised by that, but you can’t argue with stats I guess.

Then, after posting the aforementioned Lloyd Alexander piece I really felt like doing some more fantasy. The Ever Zone didn’t gain any traction last time around, so maybe this time it will?

BUT…as I mentioned in JG’s Vacation part 2!, I thought people might be confused if I just jump in with a new episode and link back to the other ones as reference.

Instead, I’ve decided to work the ones I have done into the Monday Comics rotation, then continue on from there. That way it will be easier for new people to either check the Monday Comics category page or the Monday Comics Slideshow and read everything right in a row.

What do YOU think?

So now I’ve seen the stats and seen cold, hard numbers…what do you readers think is the best comic so far? Please do me a favor and take part in this poll, I’d appreciate seeing what people choose.

poll since removed

And don’t forget to tell me what you think in the comments! I’ll see you all next time!