THE DAYS of SANGRIA & FANTAGRAPHICS

The drawing on the left is from a small pile of panels that didn't make the cut for the November issue of Fantagraphic's anthology: Mome. The panel in question is from a scene that eventually features two jealous sisters scoping out their other sibling at a dance. There's another two panels from this scene that didn't make it either- the reasons being that the viewpoint of the story had changed from the mother, to the surviving son, back to the mother and then, well, to an outside chronicler. That particular scene required that you saw both sisters. Oh well, corrections have to be made, and if it makes for a smoother storyline, I'll redraw it. Another story involving shuffling panels from this deadline, a gag for The New Yorker, and a preview of Mome 13 is available
here on the Fantagraphics website.
But I'm getting ahead of myself- allow me to back up. I had it figured out. Finally. For around twelve bucks I could buy apples, watermelon, real fruit juice, and a cheap bottle of red wine (cab) for some real lethal sangria. I needed it, I was falling behind on my second deadline. But, thanks to the copious consumption of coffee, green tea, cokeacola, crappy cigarettes, and the aforementioned jugs of sangria- I pulled through. And just as I turned that puppy in (for issue 13), my first story (in issue 12) was coming out. I can now say with a terribly huge grin, that this month marks my debut with seminal & influential publishers- Fantagraphics Books. The story I presented for their anthology "Mome" entitled Parallelograms, was completed three months ago but the genesis of the project took me a long time to throw down on paper. Coming up with a story is one thing but then there are the more troubling issues of who's going to tell the story, is there text, layout, etc. After getting the initial ok using some panels like the one presented above along with a brief summary, I began to flesh out the characters in my sketchbooks, and tried several different angles with the art and narrative. I got stuck and alot of time passed probably missing a deadline in the process. I went back to my original notes and sketches and hammered out a simpler idea that wouldn't take thirty pages to tell and completed the story. Previews and ordering information are available at the Fantagraphics Books link provided above.