We had ourselves a big adventure last week. Sarah had been in the LA area the last few weeks helping to take a care of a sick relative. By the 9th she’d decided she’d done everything she could do and it was time to come home. While she was down there she had lost her ID. She talked to the airlines and TSA and was told that she could fly with a photo of her ID if she had other documents that also established her identity. What they failed to tell her was that she’d need to answer some background questions as well. Questions like being able to recognize addresses where she’d lived over the last 20 years. She’s brilliant but her memory for dates and numbers has never a strong suit. Trying to answer those questions in a crowded airport with a bunch of people waiting behind her was a recipe for her not remembering.

TSA told her that she could try again later. We decided she’d been gone long enough. I bought a one way ticket to LA on Wednesday. I met her at the airport, we picked up a rental car and we spent the next 22 hours on the road. I did all the driving. We did stop for food and bathroom breaks and a couple of times so I could grab a quick nap. We were home before midnight on Thursday.

Friday we slept til almost noon and then spent most of the rest of the day watching episodes of The Good Detective, a South Korean cop drama on Netflix. Leaving the house wouldn’t have been safe. It snowed during the night and continued to snow all day. We live on a side street in Burien. No snow plow would be clearing our street.

Saturday the sun came out and the snow was gone before dusk.

By Sunday we’d started to get back into the swing of things. We’re not quite in a routine yet. That probably won’t happen until I go back to delivering mail but life is feeling more normal.

There’s a big difference between reading a story and writing a story.

As a reader, I’m a tourist. I travel through the world as it is written. I might not like some of the story, aspects of the plot or a few of the characters but, unless the story is really boring or really poorly written I take the good with the bad and enjoy the ride. I laugh or groan at the stupid bits but I keep going.

As a writer, I’m a god. As a god I have responsibilities. Give the reader an engaging ride but also make it make sense. I do that according to my own sensibilities and taste and I recognize that my taste and sensibilities won’t work for everyone.

When I read Morgo the Mighty I enjoyed it enough that I thought I wanted to adapt and illustrate it.

As The Surrilana Depths has become more and more its own thing I am recognizing how much of Morgo I need to abandon. I’m altering names, expanding old characters and creating new ones, changing protagonists, finding motivations, world building and …

Last week I finally recognized how much attachment I still had to Morgo. Every time I tried to plot or outline the story I kept trying to attach it to the events of Morgo. I felt like I owed it the author to retain some essential part of his story that was inspiring mine. The trouble is, Morgo reads like a first draft. It reads like O’Larkin got the job to write a pulp serial and just keep writing until he’d made the word count. It reads like O’Larkin had maybe read a couple of Tarzan and Pellucidar novels and tried to duplicate the premises but he lacked the imagination of Edgar Rice Burroughs so Morgo lacks the crazy confidence needed to make it really memorable.

I can’t claim to be a better writer than O’Larkin. But I know have read a lot more fantasy and science fiction, most of it written since 1930, the year Morgo was published. My imagination has more elements to choose from. My sensibilities are different from O’Larkin’s. So, last week, I said a silent thank you to O’Larkin and gave up the need to retain any part of Morgo. The things that will remain in Surrilana are the things that fit. One of the things that doesn’t fit is the plot of Morgo.

This is freeing. It does mean it will take longer for me to start drawing the graphic novel. Oh well. So it goes.

Over the last few months I’ve been doing a lot of background drawing – character designs, creature designs, world building stuff. It’s time to share some of it.

The fellow above is Jerry McRory. He was the protagonist of Morgo the Mighty. The story was told first person, his point of view. I demoted him to a supporting character when I decided to do Surrilana as a graphic novel. Now that I’m weaving a new story I’m unsure what part he’ll play.

The fellow above is Gram. I changed the name because he’s not really same character as Morgo. He’s younger. More fun. And he’s now the protagonist.

More next week! Thank you for reading.

Touch grass. Punch a nazi. Stay well!

Daylight savings has been inflicted upon us once again. Or maybe it has been removed. I never remember which. Nor do I care. This is the 21st Century. Make it go away. The only good thing out of this is that the clock in my car will now only be 14 minutes fast instead of an hour and 14 minutes.

I’m making progress in physical therapy. My right arm is getting stronger and getting better range of motion. That’s something. Sarah will be coming home tomorrow. That’s a more fun something.

The spreadsheet shows no more finished work. All my work this week has been in writing and world building and character design. I will be posting much of that over the weeks to come.

I needed to feel like I finished something so I spent a day doing a couple of illustrations of my favorite giant ape.

Kong has been in the public domain for awhile. Sort of. The novel, King Kong, based on the movie’s script, is in the public domain but only the novel. Someone can retell that story or write/draw their own version so long as they don’t include anything that is original to the movie or any of the other versions of the Kong story that have appeared since. The 1933 movie hits public domain in 2029.

I don’t remember when I saw the 1933 film but I know I was pretty young. It might have been my first monster movie. I’ve enjoyed other Kong movies but, for me, that first movie is THE story of King Kong. There’s an island full of dinosaurs. There’s the giant ape who gets possessive over the blonde sacrifice. There’s a bunch of sailors who get killed by Kong or the other wildlife on the island. Kong fights some dinosaurs. Kong smashes up the village to get the girl back. Kong gets knocked out, dragged to New York and put on stage. He escapes, grabs the girl, goes on a rampage and climbs to the top of the Empire State Building. A bunch of biplanes riddle him with bullets and he falls off the building. And dies. It’s a tragedy. And no, Denham, it was bullets and a 1000 foot fall, not beauty, that killed the beast.

I’ve rewatched the movie more than once as an adult. I still enjoy it. The effects are of their time. Denham is a scrappy dude trying to make a buck during hard times – not the villain he (or his surrogates) is portrayed as in later versions. Anne never comes to love Kong. As a kid I could sympathize with Kong –  nothing like being king of the jungle and beating up dinosaurs. I could be sad when he got killed. As an adult my sympathies expand to the humans as well. Kong kills a bunch of people. He is possessive of Anne, not loving. King Kong is a monster movie and Kong is one of the monsters.

Later films present a sympathetic Kong. A gentle Kong. A heroic Kong. I enjoy those because, honestly, I’ve never met a monster movie I didn’t somehow enjoy. Most of those Kongs survive their movies’ story. I’m glad for them. But those stories are not THE story anymore than any Frankenstein movie has been THE Frankenstein story. (Only the 1818 version is THE story.)

I’d love to do Kong comic series. It wouldn’t be THE story either. Just my version. But I have a lot of other projects to finish first.

I hope your week goes well. I hope you have the patience to be kind to the universe and it succeeds at being kind back. See you next week!

With Sarah down south helping out her brother and with no job to lock in a chunk of my time every day my sleep schedule has gone wonky. I used to go to bed at about 7 pm and wake up at about 3 am – enough time to do some art and chores and eat and shower before going to work. The cats would usually wake me up once in the middle of the night to be fed but I’d just go back to sleep after filling their bowls.

I’m still going to bed at 7ish but when the cats wake me up for food in the middle of the night. I’m not as inclined to go back to sleep. I can do a little artwork. Catch up on a chore. Do some physical therapy exercises. I can always take a nap later. I love a nap. The cats love it when I take a nap. They climb on and fall asleep with me. I’d take naps on my work days if I had time. My only rule is that can’t nap between noon and seven. I’d never get anything done then. Uh. Right.

Initially I planned to remove projects from my work-in-progress spreadsheet. What’s done is done, right? But, when I went to remove the Colonial Cthulhu covers and the Observations entries I changed my mind. Having some finished projects on the chart is more satisfying than just seeing all the work that still needs to be done. I already know I won’t get everything done this year (not even close) but it can’t hurt to remind myself of what I have managed to complete.

And speaking of complete – Adam Crossingham, the necromancer behind Sixtystone Press has given me permission to share those cover images on social media. I did that last week. If you follow one of my feeds you might have already seen them. Posts/newsletters are more permanent (as if anything online is permanent) than social media feeds so I’m reposting the illustrations here.

This is the cover illustration for the ashcan edition of the Colonial Cthulhu Keepers Manual.

And this is the cover illustration for the ashcan edition of the Colonial Cthulhu Companions Manual.

Both of these books are in the process of being written and edited. I did some interior illustrations for them awhile back so my work isn’t just on the cover. I’ll post links when they are available for purchase.

Stay frisky! See you next Monday!

It’s going to be just me and the cats for awhile. Sarah will be down in LA managing medical and financial bureaucracies for a family member for the foreseeable future. She’s really good at working her way through the labyrinths that are designed to make people give up and let the powerful, the lazy and the greedy refuse to help.

Me? I’ve got five weeks of physical therapy ahead of me. No mail delivery. I’m filling time where I’d otherwise be at work by making art, doing light chores and catching up sleep. And trying to keep the cats amused. One of their favorite activities is sleeping on Sarah’s lap while she kicks back in her recliner. I haven’t given them much laptime and they seem a bit disgruntled because of this.

I’ve finished a couple of projects! Only a few hundred pages to go!

So. The Surrilana Depths. In the past, whether I’ve planned to do a comic, I’d write a script, then do thumbnails, then rough out the pages, and then finished pencils, lettering and finally inks and, maybe, shading. I’ve got a lot of scripts waiting to be thumbnailed and another lot that made it to the thumbnail stage before being set aside.

Once I’d decided to do Surrilana as an original graphic novel I planned to write a script. For me, any long form writing requires long stretches of quiet without interruption. I haven’t had much of that in recent years. I also don’t make physical art much. I make art using Clip Studio Paint and my Wacom tablet. Digital art can be easily changed in ways that are frustrating or impossible with physical art.

So I just started. I’m not going bore you with every little step and action. I’ll just say that I finished 9 pages and roughed out at least a half a dozen more before I decided that I wasn’t satisfied with the working method or the results. I like and am proud of most of the finished work but I was doing too much winging it. Too much going back and changing things to make older drawings and characters consistent with the latest drawings. So I’m starting over.

Character sketches. Environment mapping. Script. Thumbnails. Roughs. Finished art.

Anyway. Here are the ten pages I (mostly) finished.

May your week be fruitful and fun! Onward!

It’s just me and the cats this week. One of Sarah’s brothers had a heart attack and she’s flown down to California to be with him. From what we know, it’s serious but no longer immediately life threatening. He will be in the hospital for a while.

I’m still off work. I’ve got appointments for physical therapy and acupuncture this week. My right arm is improving but I’m still being gentle with it.

Beyond is this week’s progress chart. I’ve added a new project and done a bunch of work on both Abyssal Saints and Observations. If I tracked general progress this chart might look more impressive but I really only want to list pages and illustrations when they are complete.

My plan for The Surrilana Depths started out simply – I intended to illustrate Morgo the Mighty. That’s it. I was just going to take the text as is and do a series of illustrations to accompany it. Once I was done I thought I might publish it as an ebook or a print on demand title.

Unfortunately, I have a tendency to make my projects more complicated the more I think about them. Morgo is almost certainly in the public domain. It was published at time when copyrights needed to be renewed and, given that both the publisher and the author are long gone, it’s unlikely that said copyright was renewed. I initially serialized the novel here on Skookworks. I copied a copy of the manuscript by typing out each chapter as a post. When I first read through the story and then when I typed it out I took in the fantasy elements more than the mundane details. Like the pointless racism.

There are some stories where the racism is an integral part of the story. The racism justifies the white hero’s awesomeness in the face of other, usually lesser, races’ awfulness. Cowboys against Indians. Gone with the Wind. Fu Manchu. And many, many more. Without the racism, those wouldn’t be the same stories.

Morgo, however? The author, John Larkin (aka Sean O’Larkin), has his characters regularly proclaiming the virtues of White Men. This is weird because there are only White Men in the story. (Yes, the first chapters take place in Nepal and feature cameos by brown people, along with a few racial slurs, but it’s not meaningful to the plot that they are brown people.) Most of the action takes place in Surrilana, a system of ginormous caverns under the Himalayas. There str no native homo sapiens in Surrilana. Intelligent bats, intelligent ants, scaly protohumans and primitive prehumans but no human beings. Crowing about the White Men being The Best comes off, to me, as really weird. It could be removed without changing the story at all. (Racism is bad. Period.)

I figured that, before I started illustrating the story, I could edit out all the racist bits.

I did some practice illustrations –

And then I thought I’d do a little rewriting – not much! – to make the plot work better.

And to eliminate the parts of the story that seem like filler.

And to make the flora and fauna of the caverns more fun to draw.

And to make the characters more interesting.

And …

Ultimately I recognized that I was less interested in adapting Morgo as I was interested in the setting – a series of caverns filled with a lost world of weird and wild creatures menaced by a madman with arcane powers. And, if I was going to toss out most of the original novel I might as well give it a new title and, what the heck, make it a graphic novels so I’d get to draw all the new cool stuff I was thinking of.

Ultimately ultimately, The Surrlana Depths will be its own thing. I’m keeping some of the names (not Morgo – he’s getting renamed) and the basic idea and doing a new spin on it. No racism. New creatures. Characters who are more than cannon fodder. A villain that makes sense to me.

It’s going to take awhile.

Yo!

Happy Birthday today to my darling Sarah! She’s been putting in a lot of work setting up a dedicated print on demand store for my art. And she’s writing. A lot. Go. Read.

Sick leave continues. My right arm and shoulder are in less pain than they were at the beginning of the year but I’m still not ready to go back to delivering mail. Getting doctors’ appointments scheduled has made getting treatment very, very slow. I finally got an MRI week before last but I wasn’t able to get an appointment to see an orthopedist for a diagnosis and treatment plan until this week. At this point I’m not expecting surgery to be necessary but … going back too soon could end up damaging me so that I will need surgery.

I am making progress on my projects. I’m mainly concentrating on Goblin Alpha Seven but, when I get stuck on it, I hop over and noodle on something else. There’s never not something I can do.

You can see that I haven’t listed any progress on the three projects at the bottom of the chart. Partly that’s because I want to finish the smaller projects first. That will be satisfying. It’s not as if I haven’t done anything on the big projects. I’ve done a lot of preliminary work – sketches, character designs, plotting and … stuff. Enough stuff that I can write about those projects now.

Let’s start with The Surrilana Depths, shall we?

To get to The Surrilana Depths I need to tell you about Morgo the Mighty. To do that I’m reposting the entry I wrote about it in 2012.

———————————————————–

Earlier this year (2012), I started seeing these cover images online. They started popping up on some of the blogs and tumblr accounts I follow. The paintings are beautiful. If there had only been one of them I probably would have noted the story that the painting illustrated and then quickly forgotten about it. Seeing three covers for Morgo the Mighty piqued my interest enough that I wanted to find out more about the story.

 I looked. There’s a mention of it in an essay about Hollow Earth stories. It’s discussed in a few paragraphs at the end of a long article about Tam, Son of the Tiger. Otherwise, there’s really nothing useful. No fansite. No wikipedia article. No author’s bio. No Gutenberg Project e-text.

There’s not much online about the author, “Sean O’Larkin.” I’ll return to him later.

The cover illustrations are by Howard V. Brown. Him you can find info about, and most of it includes examples of his lovely art.

Morgo the Mighty was serialized in four issues of The Popular Magazine. Interior illustrations were by Clarence Rowe.

I may not have been able to find much about the novel online but I was able to find someone selling a facsimile collection of it on ebay. I did find out enough about Morgo to think it takes place in a lost subterranean land populated with prehistoric monsters, so I knew it was a representative of a genre I have affection for. So I bought it.

The seller seems to have scanned and cleaned up the original printed pages from The Popular. Instead of just reading it and keeping it to myself I retyped the story and posted it, serial style, on my blog. The entire novel is 26 chapters. There aren’t, technically, any prehistoric monsters in the story. There plenty of other sorts of monsters so I didn’t mind. We’ve already got Pellucidar; a little variety in underground realms is appreciated. I  posted the story over a three month period.

I don’t know if this novel is in the public domain. Since it was published in 1930 it’s possible that it’s under copyright. The copyright lockdown that the Disney corporation engineered has prevented many works published after 1928 from entering the public domain. If J.F. Larkin is still alive somewhere or has heirs who have renewed the copyright, please let me know. I’d like to talk about what to do with this story.

Originally, I’d intended to donate the completed manuscript to the Gutenberg Project. Then, a gentlemen named Andy Beau helpfully compiled all the online chapters into a single file and sent me the file as both a Word doc and a PDF. I’m making those files available to you. Just click on the links below to download the version you prefer.

Morgo The Mighty – PDF
Morgo The Mighty – WORD

For those of you who would prefer a print version of the story, Adventure House Press has collected the novel in High Adventure #173.

“Sean O’Larkin” was a pseudonym for John F. Larkin Jr. I couldn’t find much biographical information on him but John Gunnison of Adventure House Press pointed me to his IMDB page. He was born November 30th, 1901 in New York, NY. He passed away in Los Angeles, CA on January 6th, 1965. After a short stint writing for the pulps and the theatre as Sean O’Larkin he seems to have moved to Hollywood and concentrated on writing films. He married a fellow writer, Eunice Chapin (1893-1978), and they had twin daughters, Morgan and Bourke. He mostly seems to have worked as a writer but he did direct a couple of films. He finished his career as a producer and writer in television.

Sean O’Larkin Bibliography

* The Arson Mob, (na) The Popular Magazine Jun #2 1930
* The Devil’s Widow, (sl) The Popular Magazine Aug #1, Aug #2, Sep
#1, Sep #2 1929
* Exit Laughing, (ss) Cosmopolitan Jan 1931
* Flaming Ice, (na) The Popular Magazine Dec #2 1930
* A Hollywood Murder Mystery, (ss) The Popular Magazine Mar 1931
* The Jade Blade, (na) The Popular Magazine Oct #2 1929
* Morgo the Mighty, (n.) The Popular Magazine Aug #2, Sep #1, Sep #2 1930
* Morgo the Mighty, (sl) The Popular Magazine Oct #1 1930
* On the Spot, (ss) The Popular Magazine Feb #2 1930

God Save the Queen!  a farce in 3 acts
Sean O’Larkin pseudonym of John F. Larkin Jr.
copyright Aug 21, 1930

John F. Larkin Filmography at the Internet Movie Database

——————————

Still here? What does Morgo the Mighty have to do with The Surrilana Depths? If you’ve been reading my newsletters over the years you’ve read that I’m adapting Morgo as a graphic novel. I’m making enough changes that I’m giving it a new title. I’ll write more about the process in another newsletter.

How much progress have I made?

That is what this newsletter is supposed to track isn’t it?

First off, I finally copy edited my Morgo manuscript. The two versions linked above are the uncorrected original typings. The version below is a PDF of the novel sans typos, missing words, misspelling and other embarrassing things. Hopefully. It does still contain every word of the pointless racism of the original story. I thought I should warn y’all about that.
Morgo the Mighty – the corrected PDF

How is Morgo becoming Surrilana?

I will go into that next week.

In the meantime – take care of yourselves. Breathe. Touch grass. Touch sand. Have a sandwich. Do whatever you need to get by. If that whatever is illegal – ssssh!

Greetings and salutations! I hope your week went well!

My right arm is still healing. At least I hope it’s healing. It’s in no condition for me to go back to delivering mail. I’ve gotten an MRI but it will be another week before I can see a doctor to find out how to manage it. I did have an acupuncture session two weeks ago that seemed to make a difference so I’m trying to schedule another one this week. I’ve run out of muscle relaxants and will be out of one of my pain relievers shortly. I have a few weeks of sick leave and annual leave still available so I’m not worried. Yet.

I’m managing to get a little art done every day.

Right now I’m bopping between the Mighty Nizz Tarot Deck and Goblin Alpha Seven. Mighty Nizz seems like she has more commercial potential than Goblin. The elevator pitch for Nizz is simple enough – she’s a little girl raised by a Sasquatch in a magic forest. Goblin is … I’m not sure what Goblin is. I haven’t come up with a simple way to describe it yet.

Below is my scan of a page of the original thirty plus year old art.

Below this is the revised art with the new dialogue.

I do know what will happen in the story but most of it is unscripted and still needs to be sketched out.

Above is my progress chart. I’m going to keep it as simple as possible – just list what I will expect to be in the completed project and what’s actually finished. As you can see, I have a lot of work to do.

I hope your coming week is a good one! See you next Monday!

My right arm is still not up to delivering mail. Or much else. With pain relievers I’m able to do some drawing and some typing. But progress is slow.   

Jake Parker’s number one rule for making comics is FINISH YOUR COMIC. I have violated this rule as many (possibly more) times as I have followed it. One of my current goals is to finish some of those stories. 

Late last year I collected a stack of stuff that my brother in California had been storing in a closet for far too many years. Besides the original art for Misspent Youths, there were prints and portfolios by artists that younger me had admired, some sketchbooks from my high school years and about a dozen pages from a comic I’d started drawing in, I think, 1992.

I don’t remember a lot of details about the project. It was being written by someone that I collaborated with fairly frequently over the years. He didn’t finish scripting this one. Based on the dialogue in the existing pages the story seemed to be about some folks facing an impending apocalypse. I like the art. I love finding new uses for old work.

The writer and I are no longer in contact. With past unfinished projects we had agreed that I could do whatever I wanted with the art, including writing a new story using it. So …

“Goblin Alpha Seven” is the project’s working title. (When I first started scanning the old art my working title was “Revelationaries”. I didn’t like it but I needed something to call the files.) I renamed the characters, rearranged the pages and wrote a new script. Now I’m finishing the old pages and drawing new ones.

This is one of the original pages.

This is the page updated. I’m not saying the page is finished yet. I’m still working on the story and the script. I may make changes.

Last week I listed the projects I’m going to be tracking. I’m not sure how to break down progress on them. Some sort of spreadsheet would be the most detailed and accurate method but, at the moment, I don’t know how to format that into WordPress. One more thing to figure out on the fly.

Goblin Alpha Seven (comic) – 40 pages
John Bell’s Oz Book (illustrations)
Mighty Nizz: Getting Dressed (comic) – 18 pages
Mighty Nizz: Tarot Deck (tarot deck) – 78 cards
Skookworks Webstore – 248 designs
Observations (comic) – 8 pages
Sunk Cost Elegy (comic) – 120 pages
The Surrilana Depths (comic) – (200 pages)
Daughter of Spiders (illustrated short story series) – number of stories, word count and number of illustrations to be determined.

Have a great week! See you next Monday!

These Days …

The year winds down. The holiday season winds up. With it come many, many more parcels to deliver. In the rain and wind. Hopefully not in snow. My current route has lots of steep streets and driveways. Snow and ice would make attempting to deliver on them very dangerous. I’m hoping I won’t have to deal with that sort of weather.

I’ve now had days where I’ve had to deliver more than 200 parcels. I never had that many on my West Seattle route. One of the guys who had my current route in the past says he had days with more than 250 parcels.

Yay.

However many packages I have to deliver, I still consider myself lucky. I have great views of Puget Sound. There are lots of trees. I get waves and smiles from people walking their dogs. I live on my route so going home for lunch is easy. If all goes well, this is the route I’ll have until I retire.

This will be the last monthly newsletter. Next year, starting on the 1st, I’ll be posting weekly. I’ve got a lot of projects in the works and I think the best way for me to make progress on them will be to report how little progress I make each week. I’m only sort of kidding. By knowing I’m going to be publicly charting my progress I know I’ll spend less time getting distracted by interesting youtubes and substack rants.

I will have a list of the projects I’m tracking in the first newsletter of 2026.

Nine Panels – People to Avoid in Dark Alleys and Bright Thoroughfares

Where the Elves Come From
Story by Charlie Wise
Art by David Lee Ingersoll
Published in Last Dangerous Christmas in 1997

And that’s it for me for this year. I hope your holidays are warm and happy and filled with as much joy as you can absorb! And cookies!

See you on January 1st!