Hey all.

So, by now you've heard of Wowio, that online book service where you can download a variety of books for free. They've been including comic books lately, and that's where this message comes in.

SELIG: The Second Coming is my first comic available on this service, through Steve Horton and Smashout Comics. The first issue is now available, and I'll update here (and other places) as more go online.

This is a four-issue miniseries where...well, I'll just post the blurb that I wrote for the Wowio site:



This is a project that I first began thinking about back in 1993 - I was sketching, coming up with ideas for a Champions character, when the design for the main character Selig just popped out. I found the design compelling, and started coming up with a back-story.

I completed this first issue (with much brighter colours than appear today) in 2002 or 2003 (after several false starts and rethinkings), using a style of artwork that is very different from the other work that I normally do.

Here is the cover to the first issue. I hope you all log on to Wowio and download it, and stay along for the entire four-issue run

...did I mention that it's free to download?

.... a comic about the baseball commissioner?

If you live in the United States. Otherwise you can't join up.

Yeah, I know. For now, anyway.

I'll be posting a few pages of it on either iPOP or my ComicSpace page...or maybe my website. I'm not quite sure yet.

I do want to encourage all the Americans to go get it on Wowio, though, 'cause it makes me money there

Luckily, Canadians can be creators on the site, so that's something!

Awesome. I WILL download this. Can't wait.

I may take you up on that.

Let's sticky Ian for the weekend and get him some major downloading action. (I will be very disappointed if someone doesn't suggest "Major Ian downloading action!" as a forum blurb by morning ...)

How copies did Civil War sell? I want to see MORE downloads than that by Sunday night. I want to see Didio on his hands and knees begging Ian to sign an exclusive contract.

Thanks, Linda

I just set up a six-page (well, cover and five story page) preview up on my ComicSpace page, for those of you outside of the US who can't get a Wowio account.

I will most likely put more of it up there at some point - the problem with only putting up the five pages is that it doesn't show yet how I'm playing with panel structure in storytelling.

See, the entire story (and this will be consistant throughout all four issues) is being told from three different perspectives. And each of these narrators has a distinct panel structure.

The opening sequence is narrated by the character of Selig. All the pages (except for the single splash page) use four horizontal panels, a very wide-screen feel to the scene.

The second sequence is narrated by the character of Neiclid, and all the pages here use three vertical panels, giving it a very narrow-focus feel.

The third sequence is narrated by the character T'nnique, and all the pages here use three diagonal panels, a somewhat skewed perspective, like the slashing of claws on a page.

I am keeping this pattern throughout the story, acting as a guide to the pacing and mood to the book. There will only be one major departure (aside from each Act having a single splash page), and that will be in the epilogue in the final issue. This epiloge will also not be using the monochromatic colour palette of the rest of the book.

Trust me, this all serves a purpose

Hey, really, he doesn't have to be on his hands and knees...

Excellent Work Ian, a good read, I love the setting and subject, first rate!

Thanks very much!

Get all your friends to download it too

Very glad to have Ian with Smashout Comics. Our lineup just keeps getting better!

Not being in the States i can judge only by the 6 pages preview, but it looks great

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all convictions, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

---William Butler Yeats

I know Ian is annoyed at me for posting the Yeats poem, but
I just downloaded his comic and will read it shortly. Might as
well ask the first obvious question---is "Selig" inspired by Alan
Moore's V?

Damn good story! Will all the chapters be free or will we be able to purchase the rest on-line or at our local comic book store?

Thanks very much

I intend (if there is enough response to this) to post the rest of the book on Wowio - in theory, this should do as good or better than most independant publishing outfits, so we'll see how it goes



Well, since I have still never read V for Vendetta nor seen the movie, I can safely say 'no'

I keep meaning to, but have just never gotten around to it.

Well, Selig is clearly a different protagonist. For one thing, he's sane.

heh heh heh ... well...........

Oh, I've just created a MySpace page just for SELIG

http://www.myspace.com/seligthesecondcoming