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Welcome to the Flobots webcomic Beta launch– I call this the “beta” launch because there are still some things I want to add to the site before a bigger public push. Currently there are three updates up now, and the story will begin running daily, M-F this Thursday, June 12th.
I’ve met with Jonny 5 and Brer Rabbit from the band and we have many ideas we’d like to infuse into not only the stories here, but also the overall experience. The stories here are inspired by you, from tales the band hears while out on the road, emails we receive– they all go into a big melting pot of creative energy that we’ll remix and inject into the Flobots comic. The end result will be stories that not only entertain but make you think, feel, move and inspire you.
We definitely want to hear your stories. Was there a moment in your life where you decided to make a choice, a change, a difference? It could be in your own family, community or out in the world. Maybe you did something as simple as deliver groceries for that nice elderly woman down the road– Sharing our stories and communicating with one another is only the first step…
I wanted to post a few thoughts/notes about the current story. There had been a lot of misconceptions out there that the Flobots don’t support the troops because they speak out against an unjust war. Every now and then, we’d get an angry letter or comment from a soldier that we didn’t care or understand what it was like. This could be further from the truth. I’ve had long conversations with Jonny5 and Brer Rabbit on how to approach this issue. How do we let the soldiers know we love them and care about them, and respect them and what they do? We all know and have heard from many soldiers with many different stories, some want to immediately oppose the war, many want to go back over and over again. While I had plans to go onto other chapters, we decided that this issue was too important to put off and I ditched my other plans to make Chapter two about our soldiers.
In doing my research and referencing, I listened to a lot of Veterans and current soldiers stationed in IRAQ and Afghanistan. I took 2 days to absorb myself in the reference I had amassed, and tried like hell to put myself in their shoes, talk like them, think like a soldier. It was gut wrenching, and the first time I’d ever REALLY worked that way. When I first thought of doing a story about soldiers or IRAQ, I didn’t want to be pretending or making things up, so the events are an amalgamation of about 4 different REAL stories I was told from men and women stationed in IRAQ or Afghanistan. Really heart wrenching tales. I also didn’t want to be preachy. Soldiers don’t talk about politics, they do their job. They talk like those characters talk, to pass the time. (although they use much more colorful language!)
I, as well as the Flobots, have a profound respect for men and women in uniform, and I’m trying to tell their story and I hope in the coming weeks I can really put the readers out there who don’t know, into that soldier’s mind and shoes. It gives you a whole other perspective on the things we take for granted every day, every minute/second here in the States. If you see a man or woman in uniform, or hear someone is a vet, or see an oldtimer wearing a military ballcap…. tell them THANK YOU FOR YOUR SERVICE! It doesn’t matter what they did, or what they saw… they did it for all of us.
Sorry for the small delay in Chapter Two, I’m working on new pages now and this story is almost over. I will post them as soon as they are finished, so be sure to subscribe to our RSS feed or check back soon for that.
Behind the scenes I’ve been writing, sketching and designing the next chapter and future of the comic, which takes a dramatic change of pace and setting. I really can’t wait to talk about it or show some things off, but I don’t want to spoil it and I want the work to speak for itself.
Thanks for all the kind words about the stories here as well. It’s good to know it’s inspiring to other people, especially during this politically charged season. You are not alone… For better or worse, we’re all in this together.
Hey everyone! Just wanted to give an update as to what’s been going on and future plans. The last couple of months I’ve actually transitioned to doing more projects with the Flobots, from designing merchandise and posters to doing full on webmastering for the band as well as work for the non-profit group. I jumped in head first, so the comic took kind of a back seat on the priority chain while all this work has been going on. I’ve pretty much been using all of the skills I’ve learned from self publishing and the comic book market to help the band spread it’s message. To see what we’ve been up to, visit the new Flobots.com now.
To the fans of the comic, here’s where we stand!
A whole new comic will be coming soon, you can call it chapter 3 if you want, or it will actually be a relaunch of sorts with a very cool sci-fi twist in an alternate future. It’ a plot I’ve been developing behind the scenes since June and I really can’t wait to show it off. I’ve also brought on Brandon Carr to help out with coloring duties behind the scenes. Tentative plan is to begin running the new comic on a 3 day a week schedule, but we’ll also be releasing single issues for sale at shows and possibly through the website, with most of the proceeds going to benefit the non-profit efforts of Flobots.org — There will likely be a new website for the comic as well when we relaunch.
It’s been a CRAZY year for me personally, and I want to thank everyone here for the kind words and support of the comic. Hearing from troops and other flobot fans has been simply amazing and inspiring.
Stay tuned…. soon!
To help make up for the missed updated due to my other responsibilities, I thought I’d pop in some teaser art from the next chapter… Stay Tuned… it’s coming!
Welcome back to the non-beta launch of the comic. I’d like to share a few thoughts and answer a few questions that have come in.
I’ve begun an all new direction for the comic, but this doesn’t mean I’m not finishing the IRAQ story. Truth be told, there are 3 pages I had almost completed but they were a bit dark and depressing. Researching the IRAQ situation and talking to many troops left my imagination in a really dark place for that character. It frightened me to finish it. I had also been taking on more responsibilities for the band, designing their new website and taking over as the official webmaster, getting more involved with the great non-profit group, designing merchandise and doing a TON of stuff behind the scenes that conveniently allowed me to avoid finishing the IRAQ story. But YES, it will be finished, I just wanted to redo it on a more upbeat note. I’ll put all three pages up at once and announce them as a bonus update sometime in the near future.
THE LAYOUT- Instead of only updating 2 or 3 panels a day, testing the comic out in “beta” I liked the full page updates much better. So full pages, full color, Monday-Wednesday-Friday is the official schedule.
THE STORY CHANGES - (possible spoilers?? Nah, not really!) This is a biggie. When I FIRST approached Flobots about doing a comic idea, I had a very loose idea for this futuristic science fiction story with actual “FLOBOTS” being these advanced robots…more than robots really, but REAL “thinking machines” with souls. And the idea, or a minor spoiler here, was that beyond our own human brain which we only use 5% of, a Flobotic brain cell could actually “broadcast” or transmit messages from one Flobot to another, and also to human brains as well. So you could “hear” a Flobot talking to you in your head. All of these ideas I was inspiring directly from listening to Flobots songs a 1000 times over. In the song “JETPACK” there is a line that says “He’s hearing the words that occur to him for no reason…”—- And the super secret small spoiler here is that when these devices “broadcast” they’re not just broadcasting through regular time, they are broadcasting through “space-time”, which means that messages from the future (or the past) we might hear them faintly… some people’s minds are “activated” enough that they can pick up these messages randomly or in their subconscious, or attract certain messages by frequencies they are sending themselves and don’t even know it. Some are inspired by these messages, and others have been driven mad. Imagine a guy in the 1880’s hearing “There is a war going on for your mind” over and over? - So since June I’ve been developing this more Science Fiction story and making things make sense in sketchbooks…… and the more I told the band about it, the more excited we all got for the possibilities.
You may go back now and realize that the “floating words” in the previous chapters are actual “transmissions” from the far future that the characters (or YOU) are hearing subconsciously. I never spelled this out directly… but a general rule is, when you seel floaty words in that font, it’s a transmission. This was also a neat way to infuse the lyrics from the songs. One of my favorite songs is “We Are Winning”, which always seemed like a battlecry to me or call to action. It haunted my imagination from day one of hearing it. I envisioned a future where there might be a lone broadcast tower that renegade insurgents had taken over, and they were beaming a coded message out to “activate” minds that were once occupied by some evil government corporation.
WHAT ABOUT YOUR STORIES!? - Originally during the beta-launch, we had a call for your stories, and the idea was to draw out stories of people making change or taking a stand in their communities. It was to be more of a “slice of life” aspect here. There were a few problems not very well thought out on my end, one being the fact that even though I trust everyone not to do this, there could have been legal problems with other people claiming ownership to characters based on them. Plus, I felt that maybe the straight political commentary might have been a little heavy handed in a “Jack Chick” sort of way, and even though I was drawing from referenced people in my area, I was still accused of stereotyping “rednecks” and it wasn’t my intention to do so. — With this NEW universe I’ve created, we can still take trips to the past to tell inspired stories, but we can also amalgamate people’s characters or situations into this future world. So your stories are still inspiring us, and there will be an even COOLER way you can be a part of the FLOBOTS comic mythos very soon here…
This upcoming story is ambitious, and I wanted to spell those things out. I don’t think mentioning the “broadcasting” idea spoils anything, but I kept it under my hat until we launched that story. I’m also planning on doing some “live” drawing and behind the scenes creation blogs which I will schedule or post about here in the future. The best way to be alerted to that would be to follow me on twitter, http://twitter.com/djcoffman
