For many years Arsenic Lullaby has been a proud exhibitor of the grand daddy of all comic book conventions...Comic-Co International. 

There's our booth looking all pretty before the doors open and the choas starts...




Being a cutting edge maker of a cutting edge comic, it's not THAT suprising when I am first to do something...but it is a bit impressive, even to myself, that Arsenic Lullaby is the first to make/mint a NFTart piece exclusivey for Comic-Con.

But...here we are.  NFTart history, Comic book history coming together under one of the strangest brand in all of comicdom...the Eisner Award Nominated Arsenic Lullaby!

The NFT I am ( or have, depending on when you read this) minting on Makersplace exclusively for Comic-Con International has a bit of history behind it that shows the advantages and possibilities of this new medium.

One of the more iconic covers of the Arsenic Lullaby comic book series is no.2

It featured the first appearance of VooDoo Joe and his zombie fetus henchmen! 

A cover, while formidable and loved by fans, breaks my heart a little when I see it.  I made it very old school in hopes of a specif visual effect. The hand and zombie were made like an old animation cell...the inking and coloring on a transparent  sheet, while the background was painted on a separate layer. The top was then tacked onto the painted swirl , the goal being that the dark think paint swill would contrast starkly with the layer the character was on.  and it looked pretty damn cool.

HOWEVER...the numbskulls at the printer decided to physically take the two layers apart and shoot them individually so they could ( for reasons they had to good answer to) "color correct" the painted swirl...lightening it up, ruining the whole point of me doing it that way in the first place.

Maddening...

aside from that...there's only so much movement and whimsy you can convey with a static image.  The viewer would understand that they eyes are swirling, blood is dripping, and possibly that the swirl in the background is also...swirling. But understanding it and seeing it actually happen are two different things.

So...with this new medium at my disposal, I decided to recreate the bugger.  

Drawing and inking the cells was straight forward enough, although they eyes took a couple of tries to get right.  Yes...I still do all the inking with a brush.

after that it was a lot of trial and error as far as the animation of the...uhm...let's call it "cartoon layer"

Emphasis on "a lot"...





It's not maddness that I'm being so particular, but there's a case to be made for it being madness to do it over and over again via tradiional art tools. ah well...

The spiral background took a few tries...maybe.  Probably any of the attempts would have been fine since it's a "shut off your brain and go on instinct" type thing.

well...any of THOSE would have been fine, but this attempt defnatly was not usable because I dropped it and i hit the floor face down and collected a bunch of debris...

anyways...then I try to give the whole thing some harmony, and that is that...



Much closer to what I had in my head than the original cover, even if the printer hadn't botched it.

This is a one of one, and the first NFT available from an exhibitor at Comic-con international!