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Bottom of the Deck – 2022/10/20

Posted on 20/10/2022 by Fifth Ace

Okay, second consecutive week blogging; that’s a good sign, let’s gooooo!

So, some of you may have seen the new comics that were uploaded yesterday; you’re probably wondering “What is this? A new series? What about the Showcase? Are you really abandoning it again?!”

Fret not, you bunch of cards; the Showcase is not over, I’m still hard at work on the current story, and others besides. However, due to the time and effort required to get full comic pages done, alongside the day job, I don’t want to push myself to crazy extremes and burn myself out again.

As such, I have decided that Fifth Ace Showcase uploads will only return in November. Which means we’ll be back from Monday 7th, and rounding off the current Agents of A.R.M.O.R. story by the end of the month. This will allow me to build up a buffer, and not sacrifice quality to rush the pages out.

But what to do for the rest of October? Let the site lay quiet with nothing happening but the weekly blog post? Perish the thought! Instead, in order to keep a little traffic flowing on Wednesdays, I’ve decided to upload something smaller, simpler, and quicker to create that I can reliably put out every week. Hence the new comic strip, Magic Beans!

I’ve had this idea kicking around for a while, and I’ve got several strips drawn and ready to go; I’ve uploaded the first three in order to introduce all the primary characters, and give you a little taste of the humour that is to come. Once the Showcase starts up again, Magic Beans will continue to run, a little extra nugget of content alongside the main stuff for you all to enjoy.

In addition to this, over the next few weeks, I want to add another gallery or two to the site, featuring some of the other stuff that I get up to in my spare time; I’ve got several projects that have been on the back burner for a long time, and while progress on them is still slow and sporadic, I’d like to show you what I’ve got going on. This will include stuff relating to animation, character design, traditional mediums, fan art, writing etc. Yeah, I have a lot of ideas rolling around in my head.

Any other new galleries that show up will also be updated sporadically; I don’t want to throw everything at you if there’s a chance they won’t stick, but eventually (next year, maybe?) I hope to be uploading something every day of the week, even if it’s just a doodle of some kind. Again, don’t expect it all to start churning out tomorrow or anything; this is just a direction I’m starting to vaguely saunter towards.

That’s all for this week; I hope that you enjoy Magic Beans, keep an eye out for the Showcase next month, and I’ll have some more stuff for you on here soon.

Ciao for now.

Bottom of the Deck – 2022/10/13

Posted on 13/10/2022 by Fifth Ace

Wasn’t sure if I was even going to post this, but here we go.

It’s been a while.

My unsuccessful attempts at blogging in the past notwithstanding, it’s been pretty quiet on this site for a little over a year. No news, no comics, not so much as a peep. Even my other social media posts have been sporadic at best. To be honest, I was hesitant to even look at the homepage myself; it’s been sitting there this whole time, a testament to one more unfinished project that I let myself start and abandon.

Except this project isn’t over; not by a long shot.

I won’t lie, there were moments in the past year when I wasn’t so sure about that. My creativity and motivation suffered a major blow last year; I lost my day job due to a company restructuring, and the idea of losing my livelihood and possibly my home sent me into a tailspin; having been retrenched before in the past, it was an old trauma brought back with a vengeance. 

I was fortunate enough to get my job back a month later, but I had fallen a long way in that time, and crawling my way back out of the pit was not easy. I was unsure of my position, feeling that at any moment they might turn around once more and change their minds again, and the constant paranoia added to a fresh wave of responsibility. It was a torrent of fear that threatened to flush me back down into the pit, and I struggled to maintain my grip on the ever-slick sides as I slowly forced myself back to the surface.

I think it was Comic Con Africa that was the final handhold that I needed to pull myself back out. Returning to the convention scene after all this time was like drawing back a curtain and seeing everything that I had been missing out on: the creativity, the passion, the joy for the characters and stories that we all love so much. I was even able to sell some of my art there that people liked and appreciated; it was a major boost to my self-confidence that I hadn’t felt in so long.

It made me remember why I wanted to do this in the first place.

I kept this website functioning because I fully intended to return to it one day; I didn’t know when, I didn’t know under what circumstances, but I knew I’d be back. There is far too much stuff that I want to put out there for me to give up on Fifth Ace Comics completely. I have so many characters I want to share with the world, so many stories I want to tell, and the only way I’m going to be able to do that is if I start posting again.

It’s going to be a gradual process, but consider this post my first step back on the road. This is a marathon, not a sprint; I’m going to be taking things slow and steady, and I hope that the work you’ll be seeing from me in the near future will be all the better for it.

Keep an eye on my socials for some miscellaneous art pieces, and (fingers crossed) I’ll be back next week with some official content.

Ciao for now.

Bottom of the Deck – 2021/03/14

Posted on 14/03/2021 by Fifth Ace

Only the second week of blogging, and I’m already off schedule. Guess these will just come out when they come out at this rate, whenever life allows.

Welcome back to Bottom of the Deck, my weekly blog about life, the universe and everything. Last week I had a bit of a rant about making mistakes and taking responsibility for them, because I felt a bit slighted over being blamed for something despite following procedure to the letter.

It’s been a week, and whatever consequences that should have arisen from said mistake have yet to appear; I don’t think I’ve been vindicated, but I’m not in a hurry to remind anyone of it. Instead, I’d rather focus on things that make me happy.

My latest viewing trend on YouTube has been watching reaction videos, which have not been my preferred videos in the past, but these specific ones have been people watching movies for the first time; the ones I intentionally seek out are Star Wars, The Lord of the Rings, and the Marvel Cinematic Universe. There’s a whole new generation out there discovering the things that shaped my childhood, my adolescence, and now my adulthood respectively. It’s simultaneously heart-warming and fascinating to listen to a fresh perspective on movies I have watched dozens of times, and see people’s eyes light up at all the moments that made my own eyes do the same years ago. It’s like a ride-along nostalgia trip; when a reactor chokes back tears at an emotional scene, I can feel myself doing the same, no matter how many times I’ve seen it.

Something else that has been keeping me looking forward every week for the past couple of months has been WandaVision (spoilers ahead, you have been warned), and now that it’s over, I can only say that Falcon and the Winter Soldier has a lot to live up to. WandaVision was a remarkably dark and psychologically disturbing series for something that embraces the sitcom format so lovingly; the underlying wrongness of what was going on behind the scenes of this idealized suburban environment kept me guessing from beginning to end. It was a tragic analysis of the effects of grief and the consequences of not properly treating it, set against the dual backdrop of Wanda’s private sitcom and Monica Rambeau’s efforts to reach her from the real world. The inclusion of Agatha Harkness was predicted long ago, but that didn’t make her reveal any less amazing, and her theme song is just so catchy; it’s been an earworm for me, as it has for many others.

As far as my own comics go, my schedule slipped a little on that front too earlier in the week; as a result of that incident at work, my motivation took a momentary blow, but I’ve been able to push through it. This coming week is going to be super busy with regards to that; I already have the next five pages pencilled ahead of time, so if I go all out, I can get the entire thing done by next week Saturday. In fact, I want everything wrapped up and complete by Friday night if I can, because I’m going on vacation after next week, and I’d rather not spend my time away working again. In a pinch, if I haven’t finished all the colours for all the pages, that I can still get done while I’m away, but I want to appreciate my days off, and spend some time with my parents, whom I haven’t seen in person for over a year. It wasn’t even due to the pandemic, we just haven’t had the funds to go and visit one another; I’m so keen to spend my birthday with them, you have no idea.

Speaking of birthdays, I’m going to be 32 years old a week from Wednesday. I’ve never liked my birthday all that much; in the past, it’s been a reminder of what I’ve failed to accomplish in my life, all my missed opportunities, and how little progress I’ve made. This year is going to be different, I think. Sure, I may not be exactly where I was hoping to be, but I’ve come a long way since this time last year. With the pandemic striking, I was being flung back down into a pit of depression that my therapist had spent months helping me crawl out of; I had just gotten new job, but between my bad living situation and then being forced to stay stuck in it thanks to worldwide panic, I was not feeling good about myself. But since then, I’ve maintained a living wage, I’ve moved into a new place with my partner, I have a pet cat, I have my new website, I have my comics, I have my health; I’ve come such a long way in a year, and I’m so grateful for everything and everyone that helped me make it this far.

Okay, time to call it, hopefully I’ll stay on schedule next week.

Peace, out.

Bottom of the Deck – 2021/03/06

Posted on 06/03/2021 by Fifth Ace

So, it’s been a while.

Welcome back to Bottom of the Deck, my weekly blog about life, the universe and everything ie, my life, my local universe, and everything that’s been happening in it. It’s been several years since I last blogged on a regular basis, but I think I’ve finally reached a point where I’m keen to share my thoughts, feelings and opinions again, if only in my own little corner of the Internet. This week, a musing on the nature of mistakes and responsibility.

I used to do this on Fridays, and I had been thinking of doing Thursday uploads instead, but something happened this past week that made me put it off until Saturday. While I fully intend to vent about it now, doing so on Thursday would have been a bad idea; my head-space at the time was frustrated, angry, and downright hostile. Having brought the boil down to a simmer, I’m more inclined to talk about it in a civilized manner.

To make a very long story short, I’m getting an official verbal warning from work; a mistake is being placed exclusively on me that cost the company a significant amount of cash. While I’m not going to deny, I did have something to do with it, I still followed company procedure to the letter, and if the client involved had bothered follow it as well, we might not have ended up in this situation.

I initially wrote a 700 word treatise to properly explain the whole situation, but looking back on the full page of venting made me feel even more exhausted; it would have been me just shouting my case to the wind when the final decision has already been made, so there’s not much point.

So I will take the verbal warning; I will accept responsibility for my mistake, despite my adherence to the structure of the work-flow where it was otherwise ignored, and I will hope for a harmonious work environment in the future. Though I know that the others in the studio have my back and HR fought to make my case, I have a feeling there’s going to be a stink-eye peering down at me from up on high for a while.

In the past, I would have been on the verge of an anxious breakdown because of my mistake costing the company money; today, it’s just one more check-mark on the tally of daily frustrations in the workplace. I could fill a dozen blog posts with that kind of thing, although I feel like most people could; that doesn’t mean I’m not still looking for a less toxic workplace.

Point is, I feel like I’m dealing with the situation a lot better than I would have before. Yes, I was angry in the moment, I’m still frustrated now, but by the time they give me that warning tomorrow, I’m going to likely be mostly indifferent. I know what I did right, I know what I did wrong, and I know that other people are just as much to blame as I am; I just have to make peace with the fact that not everyone is going to see it that way. Trying to argue a case when the decision has already been made is just going to be extra frustrating, and there are far more important things happening than stressing over something I can’t change i.e. other people’s minds.

I was going to try and segue this into something about the WandaVision finale, but I’ll save that for next week once everyone’s had a chance to see it or have it spoiled for them; if you’re still dodging spoilers by this time next week, then I can’t guarantee your safety.

That’s all for this week, I’m calling it here.

Peace, out.

Welcome to Fifth Ace Comics!

Posted on 04/01/2021 by Fifth Ace

This is it, this is officially it!

It has been a long time coming, but Fifth Ace Comics is finally in the form it was meant to be for nearly 10 years! Well, more or less, there may be some more set dressing going up in the coming weeks, but you get the idea…

Here you will find all the series, that fall under the banner of Fifth Ace Comics. This includes Fifth Ace’s first webcomic, Elements of Eve, which will not only be uploaded in its entirety, but will be continuing from where it left off all those years ago.

In addition, a slew of new stories is on the way, in the form of the Fifth Ace Showcase, featuring a 12-page tale every month that will introduce a stable of new characters to fill out the Fifth Ace universe. These new characters will form the foundation of future one-shots and ongoing series, and I cannot wait to share them with you.

So welcome, one and all!