I wish there was an manga/anime series called "Magical Drunken Deejay Angel", and I wish I could write for it.

Nothing like having a total stranger tell you that you suck...

Another groovy night at the Broken Door, the main club that Roxy spins at on a regular basis. I chose the name in the tradition of bars and clubs being named after what's in them, i.e. broken door, tile bar, green door.

The un-enviable job of spinning at a gallery opening, where everyone is talking over the music and no one is looking at you.
The gallery features the paintings of some sap named Pablo Sizer, who just ran some traffic light photos through a PhotoShop filter and now charges $5000 a piece for them, because now they're "ART".

Meet Dominic Rogers, who's an engineer in a large Manhattan recording studio. I've imagined that his day-to-day job is to fix the crappy vocals of an endless line of pre-fabricated pop stars, making sure that Britney gets correctly pitch-shifted so that she's in tune, etc.

And Roxy, you better start treating Hannah better, honey...

For my own orientation in this comic world, I always like to do big establishing shots of my main character's living spaces, so that I can move them around the space in a realistic fashion, and not forget that there's a chair there, a bed there, etc. Roxy and Hannah live in a second story large studio apartment on Perry Street, in Greenwich Village. Like I said, the more specific I make it for myself, the better I am at keeping the rules for a location in my head when writing the book.

Like ships passing in the night, we meet Roxy's cool stylish girlfriend Hannah, who works as a graphic designer at Interbrand, a huge real life corporate international branding studio.

The Empire Diner, a favorite after-clubbing hang out for the club kids of NYC. Cool old style diner car near the edge of the west side clubs.

In the booth, with Roxy and Atsuko, reigning over a sea of gay men dancing their asses off.

The last panel on this page was one of the first "test images" I made in trying to figure out how to composite with light and drawn images, using layer effects in PhotoShop and really trying to mess with the lighting as a compositional element in the book.

(Sorry folks; no more comments here for the time being, the spambots have tagged this page! dorks!)

New York City, Times Square, through the lens of a really crappy old digital camera.

Welcome to B.P.M., my new multimedia graphic novel project. I say that because this graphic novel has forced me to pull more outside data, images, music and links to outside sources than any project I've done previously. It IS multimedia.

Although I originally thought this would be a shorter, one-off quickie project for me, it grew into more than that and took on a life of it's own, which is a good thing. I had more to say than I thought at first, so I decided to push myself with this book to really explore ways to better tell stories, use new technology better to make images, and to challenge myself to write, draw, design and self-publish a better book.

Have I succeeded?
That's where you come in; the reader, the music lover, the comic fan. I will be uploading the first two (of three) acts of this book online for everyone to see for free, for reviewers to look over, for new and old fans to check out. Here's the first 12 pages of the book, with more uploaded every week. Help me dispel the myth that free web content kills book sales! I'm keeping a little of the ending for the actual book, but you're still getting a lion's share, upfront, for free.

And I want comments. Lots of them. Positive. Negative. Critical. As long as they are well-intentioned and well thought-out, send them my way via the comments on this blog. I'll be uploading new pages every week on Wednesday, up until the projected sale date in late September, so check back every week for new content. I am also making a promise to be on these boards as much as I can, answering questions and talking to you if you talk to me. This book got where it is now by having really smart and creative people toss in their two cents on what works and what doesn't work, so I'm ready to hear from you.

B.P.M. will be for sale in book form in late September of this year (it's currently overseas in Malaysia, being printed in full color, just as you see it here) through Cafe Digital Studios, and through all of your usual comic, bookstore and library Diamond Distribution sources. As I get closer to publication, I'll make sure to put up all the codes, numbers, everything you and your retailers need to get the book ordered.