Author: Fifth Ace

It has been… a very long hiatus, longer than I had thought, so this will be making up for lost time, strap in.

A lot has happened between the last blog post and this one, a whole eight months worth of stuff, and yet it seems like not that much has changed on the surface of it all. I mean, there haven’t been any comics updated on this site in a literal year, for a start. Chalk it up to the usual excuses; if the lack of energy and time wasn’t the issue, I can instead pin a lot of it on demoralization.

I once again lost my job in September last year, practically two years to the day since the previous time I lost it, from the same company, for the same reasons. To say I was surprised would be a lie, but I was still disappointed; you’d think they would have learned their lesson since the last time, but nope, the axe was dropped. When they came back to me a month later, just like the previous occasion, this time I said no, and not just because they offered me a bum deal that would have seen me working in those toxic conditions for even LESS money. Fool me once, and all that.

In the month or so that followed my retrenchment, I focused in on writing a lot more. Just because the comics haven’t been flowing doesn’t mean that they haven’t been on my mind; I threw myself into script outlines and plotting the overall arch of my continuity. Certain characters took greater prominence, new ones were inserted unexpectedly, and priorities shifted to form a more cohesive narrative. The outlines are all in various stages of completion, but I now have a total of 42 issues of my ongoing universe plotted out, with the aim to continue on afterwards. Just when I thought was going to be the next Jim Shooter and rival the Valiant Comics blueprint for levels of ambition, that’s when I got a new job in November.

It’s pretty much the same as my old job, but with better people, a nicer environment, a shorter commute and, most importantly, a higher salary. I’m grateful for the opportunity presented and I come home less exhausted than I did before (an hour earlier, too), but you’ll notice that there’s still not a lot of comics happening. Much as how I’ve been plotting out the continuity of my stories, I’ve also been plotting out how to encourage myself to keep working on the artwork in the face of a day job.

To this end, I discovered an art challenge on socials called the Gentle Comics Habit, a small, gradually escalating daily comics exercise that I plan to utilize and get myself back into the habit of drawing stuff in the evenings. Alongside my restarted exercise plan (yes, I’m trying again, give me a little credit for the effort), I’m hoping that this form of habit building will blossom into full pages eventually be drawn every night. Eventually being the operative word.

What does this mean for the release schedule? Well, Issue #0 of the Fifth Ace Showcase has been incomplete for too long, so I’m going to finish that off first, and I’ll be capping it at a grand total of… 10 pages. It was initially planned to be a lot longer, presenting a lot more characters, but through the process of my script outlines, I realised how much the characters were changing as I wrote them, and any further pages in Issue #0 would quickly become outdated or inaccurate. So in the interest of cohesiveness, I’ll be releasing what pages I already have completed next week, Mon/Wed/Friday and call that issue done and dusted.

I’ll also be uploading the results of the Gentle Comics Habit, in the form of blog posts rather than an archive of strips, just to ensure that I’m also getting in the habit of putting stuff online. Those should start trickling in from tomorrow, maybe with a day missing here or there at most, fingers crossed.

As for the comics I’ve been writing, I’m looking into ways to release those in a more structured way, preferably after they are complete; I don’t want to be soliciting anything that I can’t present to you, so I’m not going to talk too much about that. However, I’m hoping to have some kind of plan in place by the end of March at the latest, again fingers crossed.

In the meantime, starting next month, I want to have something happening on the comics side of things here, so I’ll be bringing back a weekly upload of Magic Beans! I sort of left it hanging after I went into it half-cocked, but I’ve been doing some plotting for that now as well; combined with the building of habits, there’s a good chance I can be a bit more consistent with the uploads, cross those fingers a third time.

That was a lot, unsurprisingly, so I’m going to call it here. Incidentally, if you came to this post from Facebook, don’t hold your breath when it comes to seeing more posts there; the whole Meta situation has got me avoiding that website like the plague, so consider this the one and only breach of quarantine. For more consistent notifications on what I’m up to, either check back here daily, or follow me on Bluesky.

Ciao for now.

Two months since there has been any activity on this site; one would almost think I’d dropped off the face of the Earth again. Not happening, people; I aten’t dead.

After my birthday in March, things just started happening that were too fast to keep up with, but in hindsight not worth dwelling on, so I didn’t bother to record anything for blog posts. I fell back into routine, just keeping my head down while still trying to keep it above water. I’ve been brainstorming, doodling, jotting down notes and concepts, but not a lot has manifested in the way I want it to, and despite the vitamin supplements I haven’t felt the right energy to create intensively. This wasn’t helped by the changing of the seasons and the workload at the day job playing up my anxieties. That being said, it’s not like I’ve been doing nothing at all.

The 30 Day JLX Amalgam Challenge during March was completed successfully; I was immensely proud of myself for finally finishing a month-long art challenge, having failed several times in the past. Here’s the full compilation of art pieces, stylized as trading cards and a fold-out poster; this was a very 90’s sort of challenge, so I went with the trends of the times:

It felt good to check off the first block of my Art Bingo card for the year. I also hopped onto the 100 Original Characters Challenge; that one’s taking a bit longer, but I’m 66 characters in and spacing them out so that they aren’t overwhelming me.

March in that regard was super productive. April… ugh, where to start with April… I think this is why I didn’t want to blog so much; April was when stuff started to go wrong. My car needed some major repair work, I had to take several days off work to accommodate it, and I cringed every time I looked at my credit balance. My saving grace is that with the end of the month came ComicCon Cape Town. While I was there primarily in a supportive capacity once again, and the stresses of making the convention work were relentless, it sorted itself out in the end, and the profits are going a long way to clearing our debts. Like I said, I didn’t want to dwell on it so much, but I inevitably did, and I think that contributed to my low-power, safe mode-bootup existence for the past few weeks. Prime example: last Saturday I napped from 9am to 1pm with a cat on my lap, then spent the afternoon painting miniatures and binge-watching X-Men ‘97, my brain effectively running on background power.

Through it all, my ambitions have only increased, and I may be making myself unnecessarily depressed by not being able to do all of the things, not having the time or the energy to create everything that passes through my head (and there’s a lot; I must have conceived another six different stories in the past month). In my mind, I feel like I could churn out so many comics if they were my full time job, if I could work from home all day, if I had a fancy Cintiq tablet to make the drawing more natural, if I wasn’t shackled by the constraints of the day-to-day, if if if if if if IF. All of the “ifs,” the “ands,” the “buts,” rattling around in my head and telling me that there’s no way I can do what I want, because that’s just the way things are. Well, in the words of a surprisingly eloquent duck: ““The way things are” stinks!” To change that, I’m going to have to make it happen; I can’t do it alone, but I’m going to have to be the one to take the first step. Once more unto the starting blocks, dear friends, once more; time to get a real routine going again.

First priority: clear the debt; that should be sorted come next month, but I think it might be time to open up commissions again. Any little extra income is going to help; I’m going to have to self-promote like never before, as well as set up a proper payment system. If you came here from Bluesky, my DMs are open; I’ll be posting a commission pricing sheet sometime in the next week.

Second priority: new day job; I’ve set up an account with a recruitment agency, so it’s time to follow up on every recommendation they send my way. Anything that I can find that is closer to home (or better yet, remote work) and can improve my net income for the month will be a welcome relief.

Third priority: get the comics flowing; I’ve been able to squeeze pages out in the past despite everything, so there’s no reason I shouldn’t be able to now. Even if I only get two pages out a week instead of three, or heck even just one, I need to start getting the stories out of my noggin and online.

Everything else is more long term; by the end of the year, it would be nice to buy something like a Cintiq tablet to make the work easier, or a Nintendo Switch to have something to play more casual games on in my downtime, but those are non-essentials. I can still do what I need to do with the equipment already at my disposal, so no excuses on that front.

Maybe one day I’ll have the time, energy and freedom to become the comic producing juggernaut that I’ve always wanted to be; if Jack Kirby could churn out six pages a day, why shouldn’t I be able to eventually as well? Until that day comes, the marathon continues; I needed to sit and rest for a while, but now I’m back at the line, waiting for the starting gun to fire. 

BANG.

Posting rather late tonight, it’s been a bit of a full day; the less said about the day job the better, but all I’ll say is that I only managed to squeeze in one character portrait, so you know it was packed.

The JLX Amalgam challenge is going great; of the 40 character designs due by the end of the month, I’ve gotten through 21, with the first 15 already uploaded. I’m having a blast drawing these things, and thanks to the layout that I’m using, they remind me a lot of the trading card collections of the 90s, which is very thematic with the era the characters hearken from. I mean, see for yourself:

Aren’t you lucky, getting to see the next six characters in advance? This is the quality content you come here for; I really should start that Patreon sometime, creative juggernaut that I am /end sarcasm.

Aside from that, I’m approximately a third of the way through the 100 OC challenge, the portraits of which I will begin uploading soon; I’ll probably wait until April rolls around so that I’m not clashing with the other art challenge, though if I feel that I can’t wait any longer, I’ll start uploading after my birthday next week. Oh yeah, that…

As of next Sunday, I’ll have spent 35 years existing, which I’m sure you’ll agree is a decently substantial amount of time to have been doing a single thing. I still don’t think I’m particularly good at it, but I’m continuously breaking my record for how long I’ve done it, pretty much on a daily basis as it happens, so that’s something. As I continue to exist, I also continue to have mixed feelings about my birthday, particularly as I’m now approaching middle age, numerically speaking. I tend to keep the occasion as simple as possible, usually just a casual meet up with friends or family, primarily the ones who won’t stoop to singing that bloody song at me, and I don’t encourage gift giving; I always feel bad that I don’t have the capability to reciprocate gifts on other people’s birthdays, so it feels wrong for anyone to spend money on mine. Give me a cake and a day where I don’t have to do anything, and that’s enough for me. I intend to keep this attitude until I turn 73, and that’s when the big party will be; the reasons are too complex to explain right now.

That’s pretty much it for this week; I’ve had a few new/old/revised story ideas knocking around in my head today, so I might see about jotting down a few notes for them this weekend since I’m ahead on character portraits. I’d also better haul out my D&D notes again; I’m returning to a game tomorrow night that has been on hold for most of a year, so who knows if any of the people involved are going to remember anything.

Ciao for now.

Okay, I’m not quite as buzzed this week; still productive, but not manic, so let’s actually talk about something this time.

I mentioned a couple weeks back about how I’d been watching some documentaries about comic books, specifically some of the creators widely regarded as the greats; some stuff I already knew, other bits were revelatory to learn, and all of it was majorly inspiring. I knew that Jack “The King” Kirby was a creative machine who could churn out a mountain of content, but I had no idea it was because he worked anywhere up to 16 hours a day; his creativity just couldn’t be stopped. I knew of Todd McFarlane’s decision to found Image Comics with several of his ex-Marvel colleagues in the name of creative freedom and intellectual property rights, but was blown away by just how fervently he believes in carving out a niche for oneself when the existing infrastructure doesn’t work the way you want. I learned, and was inspired by all these and more, but this morning, the news of another comic legend’s passing overshadows them all.

It was announced today that one week ago, respected manga creator Akira Toriyama passed away from an acute subdural hematoma, at the age of 68. Primarily a comedic creator, Toriyama was most well known for his distinctive art style that captured the hearts of a generation in the video games Dragon Quest and Chrono Trigger, and the powerhouse manga/anime series Dragon Ball and its sequels. To say that Dragon Ball Z was an influence on my childhood would be an understatement; the latest episode appearing on TV would be the highlight of my weekday afternoon, a microcosm of levity at the end of a long school day. The characters were well defined, fantastically detailed and unique in their presentation, and were outspoken in their message of becoming stronger to protect the ones they loved. Everyone in my school wanted to be Son Goku; the show was the ultimate unifier amongst nerds and jocks, preps and bullies, because there was no way you could bash someone for liking Dragon Ball Z. 

Toriyama had a reputation for being a “pantser” when it came to writing; he rarely, if ever, plotted out a full storyline in advance, preferring to throw characters into a situation and let them just keep going until they hit the few beats he had in mind. He also had a whimsy when it came to character design; characters could be anthropomorphic animals, hideous monsters, or sometimes just a dude with three eyes, and none of this was ever regarded as particularly odd in the world that he had created; it was just widely accepted that his worldbuilding ran on two rules: Weird and Cool, and Weird more often than not overrode Cool. Reportedly, this drove his editors nuts; they would instruct Toriyama towards certain character designs and plotlines, and he would turn around and just do whatever he thought would be fun instead (e.g. the God of Destruction Beerus was designed both visually and personality-wise on his own Cornish Rex cat, instead of the lizard-like beast design that had been lined up). Rather infamously, Toriyama had a tendency to forget a lot of his established lore, because he often didn’t think beyond what the next chapter would be; he took the resulting inconsistencies and rolled with them, so any continuity snarls that arose would just become terrifying new twist characters that broke the rules and were all the more popular for it. Despite it all, his storylines always found their way back to themselves, tying up loose ends and bringing the tale full circle; he was a true master of discovery writing.

Still writing and drawing up to the day he died, Akira Toriyama will be forever remembered as a creative mind and whimsical soul, and his work as a tour de force in the manga industry, instrumental as a forerunner in bringing the medium into the western public eye. Without Dragon Ball Z inflating the anime boom of the 90s, there’s no telling how different the landscape of comics, cartoons and social consciousness in general would look on a world-wide scale; it influenced a whole new generation of creators across the globe and is one of the defining stars of the shōnen genre to this day. On a more personal level, if not for Akira Toriyama, my childhood would have been a little less colourful, and a lot more boring; because of his work, I made new friends, I was inspired to create, and I can’t imagine how I would have turned out without it.

Thank you for the memories, Toriyama-sensei.

R.I.P.

I’m going to make this one quick, I’m having too much of a blast to slow down right now.

For the month of March, I’m going to be attempting to cross a box off my 2024 Art Bingo card by completing a 30 Day Art Challenge; I know my previous attempts at such things have failed, but considering how many character portraits I’ve been pumping out lately (I swear I have, you’ll see them soon enough!), I think I may just stand a chance this time. The challenge is the JLX Unlimited Amalgam Character Challenge, i.e. a mouthful; every day sees a member/enemy of the Justice League being melded with one from the X-Men, creating a series of amalgamated characters. I’ve already leapt into the challenge, intent on getting my weekend uploads ready in advance, and maybe even get a head start on some for next week. For those of you who take the time to actually read my blog, congrats! You get to see Saturday and Sunday’s entries in advance, as well as the first one today; check ‘em out:

I swear, those vitamin supplements must be doing wonders for me, I haven’t felt this motivated in ages. Once I’ve gotten another character or two out of my system tonight, I can use tomorrow to finally start catching up on Showcase pages again.

That’s all I’m going to say this time, too much stuff I want to get done. Have a great weekend!

Ciao for now.