published in 1998 by Black Eye Books
What it’s all about
My first book-length comic. While I hadn’t yet discovered constraints and Oubapo, I did give myself what I thought of as “parameters” at the time:
- brush entirely in ink, even panel borders (with a #4 Kolinsky sable brush)
- no voice over narration
- stick as much as possible to a 9-panel grid
The original back cover copy:
Carl is one of many embracing the latest in modern employment opportunities: professional guinea pig. But when the side-effects of the mysterious black pills he’s been given begin to worsen, Carl starts to worry. And when one of the clinic’s nurses contacts him about shady goings-on at the lab, Carl begins to wonder whether he’s gotten in over his head.
Get yourself a copy!
Black Candy is long out of print and kind of hard to find but not impossible. Try Partners and Son or e-Bay (don’t pay a lot for it, please!) and you can even ask me.
Reviews
“The worst nightmare you’ve ever had, made vividly real.”
—Dylan Horrocks, Pavement Magazine
— Amazon.com reader review
Interviews
At the end of 1998, I did an interview over email with Xavier Guilbert for the French comics site, du9. Here’s how I described my process for developing Black Candy:
Like many writers/artists, I have both a sketchbook and a small memo pad and I am constantly gathering sketches and notes, some of which are eventually collected and arranged into a story. When I write comics, I write in thumbnails ; that is, I try to write the verbal and the visual simultaneously, allowing the two elements to play off each other. I find that this method produces ways of expression that would not be possible through writing a script in screenplay format first and then breaking it down visually. As for drawing and writing style, I certainly have my influences, but I try to let both skills develop as organically as possible, and I adjust them according to whatever story I am working on. The only generalization I can think of is that I like to keep things simple and economic, both in art, design, and writing, in order to leave as much as room as possible for the reader to had his or her own meaning.