I’ve started a new digital DIY self publishing venture, and right now, you can get a deal on most of my self published print on demand books and prints!

Magcloud is taking 25% off all orders, not just bulk [over 20] items, until may the 13th! Mothers Day! 

Makes them just $4.88 & $12.15 each!
They come with a free digital issue too for your devices.
Or just get the digital edition for 99 cents.
Full free previews on site of both issues.

You know how you always try to tell your mom how comics are not just superheroes and tights?

Well RevolveЯ is a great way to make the point and get her an interesting gift. And if she’s already a convert then all the better.

Several short stories appear in both issues, along with sketches, pin ups, poems and old Comic Jam pages.

There are tales about facing mortality in the form of a aged downstairs neighbour.

Dreaming you lost you’re imagination and finding it again on a planet of bird aliens with fingers for plumage.

Finding yourself in a strange city in the sky, and making a new life as a watcher of people while you flip eggs.

Or finding yourself falling between the cracks of society and becoming homeless.

And that’s all just in RevolveЯ One!

Sequential tectonic shift:
RevolveЯ One by salgood sam

“Salgood’s drifting vision has an incredible sense of space and freedom. Your eye moves across the page continuously, an angel floating through worlds. Usually the dynamic movement of the images themselves direct your vision, like little signposts that bounce you around the worlds Sam has created. The narratives sometimes unmoor themselves from everyday reality, moving into poetic or existentialist territory, but never loses its grounding in very concrete images. RevolveЯ plays with how we perceive things, and where we anchor ourselves. This is reflected in the way panels bleed into other panels, if there are panels at all. It suggests that sometimes the dream world or the worlds we create in our narratives appear realer than our actual lives, that the membrane between the world we live and the worlds we see ourselves living in is very thin.”

First impressions by - Sherwin Tjia

RevolveЯ is my personal anthology project. Like Acme Novelty Library, 8 Ball, that sort of thing. A place to put whatever I’m working on at the moment. I’ve relaunched it last fall in a new full colour format, and a second small digest issue was published this past winter. You can get both now for cheep, with credit card or paypal. The quality of printing is first rate, the work nominated for several awards.

Retailers, Hi! This is an ideal opportunity for shops to try stocking the new full colour edition of RevolveЯ with an initial order of 5 or 10 issues? The 25% off leaves you a nice margin even with shipping to add your mark up. I left off the price from the covers as well so you can set one that works best for you. My suggested are $20 for book one, and $8 to $10 for book two.

You can order bulks of 20 or more copies any time with that discount but right now till the 13th the sale will let to test them out in your shop, show to your more discerning customers and try out their legs as strong sellers. I always manage to sell 20 to 30 a day at conventions and festivals so I’m confident RevolveЯ will sell well for your shop. And if you do order some let me know, i’ll be posting a listing of places carrying it!

www.magcloud.com/browse/magazine/275860

Thanks!

PS, there’s a deal on my prints, free shipping till Sunday too! One day to go on that!
society6.com/SalgoodSam/prints

So this is a story idea i had for a comic some time ago, you will recognize the first part as a version of Pin City.

I’ve decided to work on it as a prose project for a while, going to post it here as I go. I welcome feed back in the comments, and yes do mention suspected typos! I’m dyslexic and could use the help!

Hope you find this mildly entertaining. No promises about when the next part will post, very much a on the side thing. First wrote this bit about two months ago, been noodling with it since….

The New Armageddon Blues

by Salgood Sam

Prologue

~~~

Joseph’s first memory of the City, was also one of his first memories.

From the porthole of the airship, sitting next to a satchel of a few belongings he later discovered were his own, he looked out–the clouds parted–and there it was.

Not long after he found himself in the reception area of the aerodrome, with no idea of anything other than his name.

Who is Joseph Cotton?

He was told that his ferry had arrived from the bridge – but he did not know what or where that was.

Someone had see to his basic needs, he was expected at the immigration office, a notice of welcome awaited him from the city council, with his papers and permits. He was told this was an honour. Held aloft in the sky on a silver spire–with no land to expand into–very few new immigrants were welcomed to the city normally.

A list of potential job openings suited to his skill base–limited it seemed–was provided to him by the ministry of labour.  In his bag he found money, keys and an address to an apartment in the west quarter. Some cloths like the ones he wore, and the blank red leather bound notebook. No one know who had made arrangements for him, or what might have happened to his memories. They seemed unconcerned he had none.

Feeling he needed to create some kind of record, he started to fill the first notebook almost right away. Its leather was warm and molded itself to his hands. The paper was soft yellow and crisp. When one was filled he got another and filled that. They were not thick, he filled them fast.

The stacks of them on and next to his desk helped mark time. Without them he wound not know it had been years he’d been there. The feeling of being new, of being out of place, never left. Originally a life raft, they became a security blanket. Something as assuring of his own existence as the mirror. A meditation of sorts. A still point around which his day was built. A moment that spanned the days. Maps, records of his continuity.

On his days off he would explore new corners of the city, drawing and writing of its places and people. Just as he thought he’d discovered everything the finite city had to offer, a arch or stairway would lead him to something new. Life in the City was different he felt from whatever it was life was supposed to feel like, it followed its own rules. Not that he could be sure of that, but somehow…

He had taken a job cooking at Lover’s Diner. A nice little formica palace tucked in the base of the Great Architect’s Tower.  Mr. Ganz was a good employer. And the diner felt familiar, like someplace he never left. Four days a week he rode the tube to work, recording the journey in his notebooks. His observations of others–the people he saw on the train, on the streets and the regulars at the diner in particular–reminded him that he, who was no one, was the center of nothing. The old florist who ran the shop next to the diner once told him he had become wiser from his practice. He agreed at least he’d come to know his new home well.

So Joseph lived, happily, for a long time it seemed. He sometimes wondered though, what his life was like when he went to bed, and woke up.

Act 1

~~~

Mount Royal is all you see now–the great Saint Laurence Sea Wall never held back the Waters. Its empty towers stood surrounded by the invading Atlantic. A valiant effort was made to keep it out of Lower Canada, but a crashing world economy and spiralling energy budget bought it to a stop before the first gate could be manufactured. So where a large island city had lain, now the old rounded mountain top at its heart poked out alone, in the fiord the Saint Lawrence seaway had become.

Like many inundated metropolises Montreal gave up its lowlands, built over the water where it could. A forest of platforms girdled it 4 miles out on all sides. At the center where had been a great park and cemetery, the new urban center had rooted and rose as high as the winds of the super cells would allow.

A million people call it home, packed in close quarters the new City State of Mount Royal was a cooperate democracy with social left leaning tendencies. It had carried on the tradition of hosting a large arts community, and was proudly quadrilingual now. French English, Spanish and Icelandic.

On its south east face stood one of the older buildings. It dated back to before the flood. Was once a hospital, its oldest parts built in a Gothic stone. Later expansions had made the complex a sprawling mash, the gaps between now filled with pre-fab plastic and bamboo structures and the whole converted to cabin apartments.

Affordable housing provided by the company state for workers, maintained by custodians from state run care in the community programs. The care and upkeep of wing F22 of the McGill apartments the responsibility of enrollee 23-786. Joe.

He was tall, fair haired, pale, and generally expressionless. The auto doc on his left arm kept him dosed and managed, receptive to the demands of the auto nurse built into his cabin wall. He unplugged toilets and patched laminate-board without complaint or care. And spent the waking hours between watching old public domain streams on his cabin wall. So when the black case with the hand attached came through his door, it was probably the most excitement he’d experienced in a long time.

The noise had been tremendous, enough to pierce the veil of the auto doc’s drugs a full minute before it calibrated its doses to counter the adrenalin & anxiety that threatened to be real like nothing else in a long time had been. The briefcase had bounced off the other side of the cabin with enough force to damage the screen, and after another ricochet off his side of the room came to rest near the auto nurse on the floor.

Joe just stared at it for a while, the hand held his attention.

“Why would you chain a hand to a case?” he wondered through his personalized custom fog. “How odd.”

“What sort of things would a hand take on a trip?”

The smell of smoke and fire started to fill the cabin, the auto nurse wanted him to relocate to evacuation centre. On his way to the door he stopped and stood over the case and hand. He just had to know.

Inside was a white cube. A holographic memory unit. He liked the movies he’d seen on those. He put on his headset and jacked in.

~~~

George C. Armstrong found himself in a small room. The walls were lit from within, the one he was looking at flickered like a monitor on the fritz. There was a single bed on the other side, door panels at the far end. Some kind of intercom on the blinking wall in front of him, a door behind, and an alarm rang out somewhere close by.

The smell of war was in the air–explosives had been used–when he looked around to the door, a large frosted pain of glass of some kind mounted in its brushed aluminium body had a large hole in it.

He was squatting, with his back to the door. In front of him was a very modern looking briefcase, with a custom interior holding some electric gear he half recognized–it had the look of the stuff his Pentagon hackers used but more compact. Attached to the briefcase by a brushed metal cord was a disembodied hand. The stump of the wrist had been torn from the limb clean, red but cauterized. A little white cartilage from the joint showed.

George glanced at his own hand to make sure. They were there. But they were not his. He felt that he should be alarmed by this. But he just felt, calm. That’s when he felt a pinch on his arm and notice a device around it.

The intercom spoke.

“‘Please evacuate. You are directed to shelter 5B. Do not stop to pack, this is an emergency. Please evacuate.”

George stood, but then paused.

“Um, hello?” He said.

“Yes enrollee 23-786?” the disembodies and slightly synthesized sounding woman said.

“Where is shelter 5B?”

The blinking wall took on shards of red, looking closer it appeared to be trying to display a map.

“I think..  the screen is broken! I can’t read the directions?” George started to feel anxious, but then the pinch at the art again and everything was a wash of cool and calm. The intercom spoke evenly.

“Turn left outside your door, do not take the front stairs. The front stairs are unsafe. Walk to the east doors and go 2 flights down. The door to the evacuation centre will be on your left. look for the yellow hazard marks.”

George started to leave the room, but the thought that had been ringing loudest in him mind since he opened his mind, screamed through to the language centres of his brain.

“What the hell is going on, where is this? Where is the war room, the hud?!”

The last thing he recalled was losing the platform over the east seaboard. The geeks told him something had hijacked it over the network, which was supposed to be impossible. The he was here.

He thought of the geeks with their trod sets and vr glasses. The stuff in the briefcase was pretty fancy, someone was a real information junky. What George needed right now was information. So he put the cube in its little custom cut slot, left the headset plugged in and closed the lid. The hand, with no arm attached, was easy enough to pull off the cord. The metal of the cord was strange. it looked like the ones he used to lock up his motorbike but the seems were almost invisible, smooth. The cord bent like rope, rather than a hard chain of metal. It was not soft, he’d never touched anything that felt quite like it. It distracted George for a moment ’till the wine of the alarms sharpened his attention.

There was a leather jacket by the door on a hook, he took that, and some odds and ends on a ledge by the door–a pass of some kind, a wallet? Some tokens.

Out the door George found he was on the ground floor, the room he had just left nested under a large staircase. The front entrance of the building was in front of him. But the windows of the entrance were blown in, the framing of the front door bent inwards. Directly outside at the curb was a burning hulk of steel blocking the way. So George C. Armstrong, “The Last American President”, made his way left down the hall.

~~~

There were a lot of interesting details on the two flights down, that came to George’s attention in an uncharacteristically level-headed way. That in of itself was interesting, connected to the pinching somehow.

Also the lights. There were none? It was, the paint? Some kind of OLED maybe? His shoes too. They had a spring to them? A strange softening and kick back in the stride, he was finding it easy to get used to. His wallet was some kind of compact electronic he was not familiar with – very light looking, wood? But strong. With a thin brown leather case. Everything from the hide to the screen was, different. Better.

The door of the evacuation room had recognized him, called him Joe 23-786 like the intercom machine voice.  

Inside were three other people.

A young woman, a boy, and an Asian man.

George could never tell how old they were.

He was not really young…

“Joe, are you ok? You must have been very close to the explosion, what was it? I swear I heard a rocket just before!” he said.

“Uh, I didn’t hear anything before it.” George hadn’t even heard the explosion. The Asian man seemed to know him, this, body’s name anyway.

“Do you, do you know where I am?” asked George.

“oooh, he got hit on the head!” remarked the young woman. George thought she had very nice smiles. Both of them.

“I don’t think so, but I don’t know how i got here exactly. Or where here is?”

“His auto doc might have been damaged.” the Asian said.

“Auto doc? This thing?” George pointed to the high tech wristband.

“Maybe it died? I always wondered how out-to-lunch you custodians are on those things.”

The pinch again. And he didn’t seem to care this thing might be controlling him mind.

“No, I think it’s working.”

“Is this, am I still in Washington?”

“Washington! which one?” the girl laughed.

“The one the sea washed away or the one the UN melted?” the boy with her piped in.

The pinch again. And everything was not ok. But he didn’t care. What a horrible thing this auto doc was.

More pinching.

~~~

Henry was pleased thought Liz. Ann was happy, and when Ann was Henry would be. They were a little creepy that way thought Liz.

The RPG had hit exactly where Ann had painted the target for her. It was a needlessly exocentric shot she thought but Henry would have his reasons.

“Very nice work ladies.” Henry said in her earpiece. “Come on home.”

She knew it, Henry was always happy when Ann was.

~~~

It took a few days for George to get all the main, big facts sorted out. After the fire dept came and cleared up the mess in front of the building. George overheard more talk of rockets, and terrorists, and that a Hacker living upstairs had been killed when the cab was hit.

Workmen came and took out the damaged front doors, replacing them with a temporary pressboard facade. Orange and opaque, the lobby outside George’s room was really dark now. No one came by for a long time to check on him. He had lots of time to ask the nurse questions.

When an attendant finally did check in on him, he managed to work up the drive to lie, claim the auto nurse and auto doc were malfunctioning.

After the attendant removed them to inspect for damage, it took about 3 minutes real time for George to work up enough steam to do something. It felt longer. He moved slow at first and the attendant didn’t seem to really take him seriously. Then he did.

George found what looked like money, a couple more interesting devices, and a change of clothes.

He left the attendant in the room in his cloths. He considered putting the auto doc on him but thought better of it, wraped something around his arm and then laid the auto doc over that so it looked like he was wearing it.

Looking at his own arm now he could see the ring of needle marks where the thing had latched on to him like a leach. Maybe it could tell them apart, might set off an alarm? No one deserves that thing.

He left the young man tied up in his bed like that, knocked out, and went out into the City to learn how he had traveled 100 years into the future, and into the body of a stranger.

~~~

I’ve ordered a few sample shirts i made for myself, been refining the details of the designs so things will come and go as an put up new versions. Man, i’ve wanted to make tshirts for so long. Don’t know why i waited. Now wait, i do, to busy! But this damn site makes it kind of fun. I’m wanting on a few things i ordered to check out their goods before i give it the 100% thumbs up, but I’m optimistic.

There will be shirts and prints first, and i’m leaving them all highly customizable so you can tweak things to suite.

You can even take off images [like if you want to save a few bucks you can delete the branding on the back.], and add your own text even! So like, for the Spock hand, you know…?

Also it’s stupid easy to put my images on anything on their site, so If you have a request for something else from zazzle catalogue with my art on it let me know, i’m keen try try but i don’t want to flood my store with too much stuff no one wants!

View more gifts at Zazzle.

A classic MMCJ page, this one with Peter, Santos, Jesse, me, and Rupert inking Rick! I think. Or it might be the other way around.

Pardon the weenie!

The old MMCJ site is down for the count, i’ll have to build a new one.

Hy, speaking of, I did just do that for Dream Life! Cleaner look, easier to navigate I hope.

Was very pleased how it all came together. Dead Beat Dan’s rant was some silly I wrote, I ran it through babble fish several times and used the most amusing or interesting distortions that coughed up.

Dead Beat was a character I co-invented with George, he’s the older brother to a comic character George draws called Cheese Boy.  We once shot a thanks giving story about the two hooking up in Windsor Ont and getting into trouble.

The “after” note is not literal, I didn’t base it on anything either did so much as have them in mind when is was working on the pages and story. I do think you should read it in Tom’s growl though! I do.

Consider picking up the winner of the 2011 the Harvey Award for Best Anthology. It is awesome!

For this story i wanted explore page designs inspired by the way Diego Rivera structured his murals. I first saw them on a visit to Windsor Ontario, Sandra took us for a drive over to see her favourite spots, and spent a good long while in aw of Rivera’s work on the walls of the DIA.

Consider picking up the winner of the 2011 the Harvey Award for Best Anthology. It is awesome!

The bit about the shop was something i heard listening to the radio, a guy who used to work the California highways picking up lost hub caps and selling them out of a shop down town.

The two guys on the bottom right are my two best buddies, Jonathan Sugerman & George Rizok.

Consider picking up the winner of the 2011 the Harvey Award for Best Anthology. It is awesome!

Full tittle : Honolulu Lorie’s Lava Love Lounge and Poodle Emporium

“Big Al Baboo liked to drink his booze and lose his keys in the pondering pool at Honolulu Lorie’s Lava Love Lounge and Poodle Emporium, where the green halvah is half priced on Tuesdays.” - I wrote that one night on a bar napkin, and did a little doodle. For a long time i wanted to write a story around that, eventually when i was asked to contribute to Popgun I did.

This shot is done from memory of the bar back station at the Cameron, where I worked in 95 for a summer. The fountain, and the rest of the bar is made up but very much in the mold of it and other places I’ve haunted.

Consider picking up the winner of the 2011 the Harvey Award for Best Anthology. It is awesome!

A classic comic jam from the old MMCJs.

This page starts off with another impish panel by Peter Ferguson, followed by Artist, gallery owner, and local organiser Billy Mavreas, the surreal and silly Carlos Santos [D.Bilos], a very nice panel for the wittiest Hawaiian I know, Jesse Bochner aka Young Adonis, and then me!

—

In other news, this month i have the pleasure of bing involved in two major, even historical launches in November. Read all about it on my Blog.

And Dream Life page 88!