Mermaids were fun to draw, but sharks? Whole new level. Fun doesn’t begin to describe it. Suddenly I’m a six-year-old with a giant picture of a shark to copy from — save that I’m really a 40-yo with Google image finder at my disposal, and thus thousands of shark reference photos. Hence the bits of blood on the shark gums. My six-year-old son would approve.

As promised, here is Wednesday’s update on Friday. I feel much, much better, both back-wise and tooth-wise.

In case you were wondering, the song the merpeople sing here is a real sea shanty, called (what else?) “The Mermaid Song.” Below are the full lyrics, as found on Mark Gunn’s Irish Song Lyrics:

Twas Friday morn when we set sail
And we were not far from the land
When the captain, he spied a lovely mermaid
With a comb and a glass in her hand

O the ocean’s waves will roll
And the stormy winds will blow
While we poor sailors go skipping to the top
And the landlubbers lie down below (below, below)
And the landlubbers lie down below

Then up spoke the captain of our gallant ship,
And a brave old man was he,
He said, “This fishy mermaid has warned me of our doom:
We shall sink to the bottom of the sea!” chorus

And up spoke the mate of our gallant ship
And a well-spoken man was he
I have me a wife in Salem by the sea
And tonight she a widow will be

And up spoke the cookie of our gallant ship
And a red hot cookie was he
Saying I care much more for my pots and my pans
Than I do for the bottom of the sea

Then up spoke the cabinboy, of our gallant ship
And a nasty little lad was he.
I’m not quite sure I can spell “mermaid”
But I’m going to the bottom of the sea.

Then up spoke the cannibal who snuck aboard our ship
And a hungry mad invader was he
You can drown right now beneath the cold ocean waves
Or you can be dinner for three, your choice

Then up spoke the parrot of our gallant ship
And a smartarse parrot was she
Brawk, you’re going to drown, your going to drown, Brawk
And flew to the shore for her safety

Then three times around went our gallant ship
And three times around went she
Three times around went our gallant ship
And she sank to the bottom of the sea

Obviously, I condensed it quite a bit for dramatic purposes. If you want to hear what this song sounds like, you probably can’t do much better than The Clancy Brothers.

Hi all. Please accept my apologies for no new page today. It is indeed inked and ready to be colored, but back pain overcame me. I am still recuperating. Then I got my tooth pulled.

So I will post the new page on Friday. In the meantime, please accept my apologies and this silly doodle from my sketchbook.

Mermaids. Mermen. Merpeople. People of the Mer.

I’m a big fan of folklore, myths and legends, but merfolk freak me out. Greco-Roman myths are full of human-animal hybrids — satyrs, centaurs, minotaurs, and other -aurs and -yrs — all of whom I find charming and cool. Merpeople are creepy. Slimy, slithery, slippery… then sunning on rocks, combing their hair with clam shells. They live in an uncanny valley between lonely sailor fantasies and sailor fears.

And what do they eat? Well, they drag sailors down into the murky depths of the ocean, that much we know. So either they drown the poor saps and feast on them; or if the sailor harvest is scant, other fish? Fish eat fish, fine. Mammals eat mammals all the time. But even a fierce tiger about to eat you has some charm. Compare:

Image found at Sense of Things blog.

Found via Google image search

I’d rather be a snack for something cute and fuzzy, thanks.

Now that I have written the page, drawn the page, inked the page, colored the page and posted the page, it occurs to me that some people might not understand why Sheldon is spitting out the water his mirage mother gave him. FTR, salt water is bad for you when you are dehydrating. One of my favorite scenes of any movie featuring a protagonist lost at sea (like, oh, I dunno, Cast Away, to name one at the top of my head) is the ironic moment when they are sunburned, lips chapped and dying of thirst and hunger, despite an ocean of water teeming with edible sea creatures surrounding them. Oddly, TV Tropes does not have a name for that.

I think my favorite part of this page is the angry sun.

If you have not already — and if you are a big Facebook junkie like myself — become a fan of Wanderlost at the Wanderlost Facebook page. There’s a forum there, too, so feel free to launch a discussion of the story so far, the characters, comics in general, or whatever else floats in your brain. Just keep it clean, please. I know it’s not easy — believe me, I know — but I tend to think of Wanderlost as one of the few non-cynical places on the InterWebz.

Human literature and folklore is full of the romance of the sea. All those heroic deeds, brave confrontations with the elements, battles with fierce creatures, and always some strange symbolism regarding our unconscious state, or our subconscious state. I can never sort those out. If you are unconscious, that means you’ve been beaned on the head, right? Or taking a nap, to be less slapstick about it. The subconscious lurks beneath our conscious state, by definition; it informs our thoughts and motives and decisions and actions, whether we like it or not. So the theory goes, at any rate. Literature assigns our fears and desires monstrous manifestations in the forms of kraken and mermaids and Atlantis and angry squid that leap from the coast to attack cities of the North American Midwest. The hero emerges from the deep, dark underworld (or underwater) wholly changed by the experience. This can be pretty cool, or really tragic.

What does any of that have to do with our little pig? We’ll see.

Drawing giant violent waves is fun.

Hope y’all like the new site design. As I mentioned in the blog post announcing the redesign, I still have “future enhancements” — that is, stuff I still want to add to the site. Please let me know if there is something YOU would like to see.

Also, I’m thinking about creating a monthly newsletter. Anyone interested in that? Vote yea or nay.

Until next week, have fun!

The big changes are look and usage: navigation, archives access, tweaking the CSS, and converting to the latest Comicpress theme. Also, the “blog” part has been moved to a separate News page.

Of course, I’ve been designing web sites long enough to know that no redesign is ever truly “done.”

There are always “future enhancements” — for which I have a few for this site. Such as:

• Adding a games page: I want to learn how to create Flash based games. My kids play them all the time, and Sheldon’s adventuring, Chloe’s manic interest in everything, and Guzek’s inventiveness could all make great elements for an adventure game.
• A “coloring book” — really, a page of black and white drawings to download, print and color. There could also be a Flash version of that, too.
• The Store — more stuff to buy, but do it directly from this site.
• A newsletter — this will be coming soon.

All of that will take some time to develop and launch — certainly the Flash stuff — probably most of this year.

Hope you enjoy the new look. And of course, the comics!