Creator Notes

This comic is about a hidden kingdom and its interactions with the outside world. In this comic I tried to experiment with the interaction between words and images, an attribute quintessential to comics. Through the narration, I tried to present the typical fairytale quest structure: king sends forth his knight, his journey is helped along by his helping of others, he performs trials to accomplish his task, and returns triumphant and a bit wiser in the ways of the world. At the same time, I tried to present through the artwork a more complex tale, where the knight's adventures take him out of the bubble of the kingdom and into the modern world. Were fairy tales of demons and stolen souls that much different from our modern day? Did Sir John regret completing his task and returning home to find himself swept into Triumphant Hero fate? I had hoped to end with a note of uncertainty and longing, but given the confused responses, it was evidently unsuccessful.

I started this comic because I was bored: on Thursday, our last day, all the students were working so diligently on their comics, it left me twiddling my thumbs. So I took the sample panel layout that I had made the day before and tried to make it a legitimate story. This is why the mood of the first page seems so incongruous with the rest of the story. I started by writing a few words of what I wanted to happen on each page. Then I wrote an outline for each page: what I wanted to happen, the words and images associated, and then I laid out the page. I wanted to complete the comic quickly, so I used a single black brush pen for outlining and a single gray marker for shading.

In this comic, I'm quite proud of how quickly I was able to finish all eight pages in about 10 hours, and I liked the 3rd and 4th page where the knight is on his journey into the modern world and the only "gimmick" was the contrast between the narration and the reality. In later pages, the tea "witch" and the tea ceremony unbalanced the fantasy/reality relationship. I was also trying to show too much. Perhaps a lesson here is to look for these moments of tonal imbalance and better plan around a single theme. Looking back now, I can see how much better it would have been to focus solely on Sir John's quest. Also, I didn't do any character designs, so the characters seem very generic.