Rabbit and Robot #1

Published a week earlier than I expected, it's the first page of Rabbit and Robot, my new improvised webcomic (click to enlarge)!

What will happen next? I don't even know! A new Rabbit and Robot is published every sunday!

New Webcomic Coming Soon!

Starting Sunday, March 4th, I'll be posting a weekly webcomic called "Rabbit & Robot"! It's going to be improvisational, which means I'll create a finished page without any idea what happens next. All I know is there's a rabbit and a robot that look like this:

Rabbit

Robot

Improvised comics can be dangerous; these two characters may end up on a search for a rainbow polka-dancing squirrel in Tanzania for all I know. But it'll be a fun little project, and I hope you all enjoy it, because it'll be going on for the next few months!

NOTE: I am still working on Super Rooster, you know. Right now I'm in the scripting stage. I'll post more updates later on. Here's another teaser poster (click to enlarge):

Egg

Today I'm going to tell you the story of Egg. Once upon a time, in the summer of 2010, I was at a birthday party, and we were all sitting around in our sleeping bags. Some of them were playing video games. My friend Joey and I were drawing cartoons.

Joey drew a funny looking circle-shaped character with a feather hat. I drew him a little friend. The we drew a scientist, a giant robot, a construction worker, a police officer, and a Mafia group. They were all egg-shaped, so we called it "Egg".

Soon, I began drawing Egg comics in a lined notebook. The comics were random, silly, and usually pretty dark. (There's a one-pager where a two-man band make music with rocks, and the Mafia guy ends up shooting them because he doesn't like "rock music". In fact, my birthday card for Joey was entitled "How to Make Fried Eggs". You can imagine what the rest was like).

I wrote a lot of stories in there, and I liked them, but I still can't explain why they were in a lined notebook; it wasn't very professional, nor would I be able to ink them, so I called them "rough drafts", even though they were just as well-drawn as one of my final drafts might have been.

Joey didn't really make any Egg comics. We would occasionally design new characters together, but I was the only one writing the stories. As Joey slowly abandoned the comic, I grew closer and closer to my little Egg friends.

Then one day I created the spin-off webcomic Sheldon Yolks Private Eye, about a detective Egg who tried to find food-stealing criminal Gary Fudge. The comic was drawn on Microsoft Paint, and it was basically an experiment to see how good a comic I could make using a mouse and a simple computer program. I ended the comic in early summer 2011 (without finishing the story). I still like the story, but it needs an ending. Maybe someday it will see an ending!

I don't really make Egg comics anymore, but I just thought I'd tell you all their story. I still like reading them, and maybe, some day, I'll revisit the little guys and create some new adventures.

Super Rooster

I remember one day when I was eleven years old, I was on the bus to school, and I was drawing in a 4'' x 5'' sketchbook. I had created a new cartoon character, a little rooster with superpowers, and I started drawing his first story. The rooster, named Ronny, played "super heros" with his friend Mike, and landed in a pot of the evil Weasel's magic potion. I finished this story and wrote a few more. Super Rooster was born.

Some time later, I had a different idea of how he got his powers, so I rewrote the story (on a normal sheet of paper). In this version, Ronny's cape got covered in an alien substance when their spaceship flew over the farm. This was probably the strangest of "How Ronny Got His Powers".

Later that year I wrote a written story of Super Rooster. It retold the original plot (with the Weasel's potion). I ended up having to read it to my fifth grade class. This was the third version.

Also in fifth grade, a handful of teachers used a "classroom cash" system. Throughout the year we'd earn fake money for doing good things. Halfway through the year we had our first "classroom stores". We all got to turn our desks into shops and sell homemade stuff for other peoples' cash. I wrote a whole graphic novel: a collection of stories about Super Rooster's life before he had powers, which ended with yet another version of the origin. (This story had Super Rooster getting his powers in the same way as the first.) I sold a whopping eleven copies for $250 each.

Then came sixth grade. I continued to get more "technologically advanced", if you could call it that. I created a website (or a Wikispace that only I could edit) for Super Rooster. It had comics, news, puzzles, games, anything a Super Rooster fan could need! Ah... well, actually it only had two comics: "The Magical Appearing Weasel" and "A Super Rooster Christmas". I was going to write another origin (and a Thanksgiving story), but while I was writing, something happened to my account and I couldn't sign in to Wikispaces and edit anymore! You can see the old website here!

A year passed. I hadn't done anything with Super Rooster since. But after a whole year of roosterlessness, I look back at these comics and think of the fun I had writing them! I thought Super Rooster was over, but I can't just leave him standing in an unemployment line! I want to start over and re-create the entire Super Rooster series. In fact, I've already started. Yes, this will be the sixth "How Ronny Got His Powers" in only three years, but I'll assure you that if this works, Super Rooster will be at his highest point. I will continue to write stories (and with much better cartooning tools; not just copy paper and a Sharpie). So watch out! I've been making a bunch of teaser posters to get people interested, like this parody of Action Comics no. 1 (that is NOT a real cover). I hope to finish this comic near the end of Spring.

The Blog

Well, I've finally done it. I've made a blog.

I've been thinking about it for a while, actually. I wanted some online thing for my comics, but I wasn't sure what to do. I decided on a blog because it's the closest thing you can find to a "free website" (besides Wikispaces, which I've used before, but this seems more... "professional"). In fact, lots of cartoonists have blogs! Now I feel that I am one with them.

Anyway, I'll be using this blog for several reasons. I'll mostly be doing news updates on my latest comic projects, but I'll also post random drawings and stories for your entertainment.

Now for those of you who don't know me (how you got here, I have no idea), let me tell you a bit about myself. I'm thirteen, and I've been drawing cartoons since I was about six. I basically started off drawing Garfield and Bugs Bunny until I started creating my own characters. Over the years I've made many strange comic books, but I've never really thought about publication or anything until now. According to the cartoonists I meet at conventions, the easiest way is to make a blog or webcomic. Then once you catch peoples' attention, you may have a career ahead of you. I took their word for it.

- John Rioux