Page 50! I can’t say I planned for this page to just happen to post the week before the Superbowl, but it works.
A couple things… First, you may have seen my Facebook post asking if people would be willing to pay to be in Bearmageddon as bear attack victims. There was a huge response and, frankly I need the income! Between Christmas, a couple large surprise bills, a long time without a very lucrative con or sizable check… these comics just aren’t paying for themselves like they usually do. So this is what I came up with as a way to monetize Bearmageddon: pay me and I’ll put you in the comic as a bear attack victim. Mike, the Bearmageddon webmaster dubbed them “bearicatures”. Details are on the page, I tried to make different price levels to give most readers an opportunity. The only catch is there is definitely a limited number of opportunities, so if you want a spot, buy it up! I thank you in advance if you are one who chooses to buy one of these.
Next, Doug TenNapel and I were interviewed by Jason Brubaker on his Making Comics podcast. Jason has only posted the first half of the interview, and it is an hour! This was one of the funnest and most in depth interviews I have ever been a part of. We really got lost in it as it went along. This was a live, in person podcast. Doug and i went to Jason’s home and recorded this in his studio so it is not your typical skype call podcast. There is definitely material in there that you will have heard before if you follow this blog, but I still recommend it especially to anyone who has aspirations to work in comics and related fields.
Also, if you didn’t see it yet, here is the TMNT cover I did with Noah Maas. It is a variant cover on the April issue of the new IDW TMNT series. This was a blast to draw.
That about covers it for today. We have officially made it through the first bear attack of the comic!
Ethan
That was awesome… and just a little bit crazy, but living in the woods will do that I suppose, I’ve been pondering what today would bring since friday, and it was brilliant and unexpected!
Why is there no arrow in the bear’s butt in the first four panels?
Good catch! I didn’t even notice.
Lets go with “just off-panel”?
It’s a… quantum arrow. Probabilistic, you know.
Also, congrats for page 50! 🙂
You mean like this? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CPkvcTEqq4U
I was going with Schroedingers’ arrow, but quantum works as well
Wow, this went through me inking it, Matt or johnathan flagging it, Noah coloring it, back to me editing and lettering it… And none of us caught that. As you can see we aren’t the most observant bunch, especially me.
I guess one good thing about doing this as a webcomic first is that your readers can point out the mistakes so you can fix them before it goes to print.
Dickinson pulled it all the way through, then fashioned his knife out of the arrowhead. Duh.
ha fixed it, this was all a dream you guy never experienced arrowless butt.
Must be
That just rocked my world!
Brilliant. Simply brilliant.
Gogs totally has a case of Man Crush going on. Bearicatures is a great idea! Interactive comic booking!
my original line for Gogs here was “I think I just turned gay” but it felt too far haha.
The “that completed me” line is definitely funnier simply because it implies that on some subconscious level, Gogs has *always* wanted to see someone spike a bear head like a football.
If that were me I’d have danced with the head around a bit to celebrate. I guess Dickinson’s done this many times before that he got over it so quickly.. 😉
Thanks for the nice comments at the previous page! If it seems to get more traffic than usual that’d be me when I’m having a rotten day.
If you danced around with the head you might get penalized for excessive celebration. You would not have to fight that bear again, but the next one would have a five yard advantage. New season, new rules.
+ nice picture.
No problem!
And the award for most disturbing page so far goes to… that!
Daaaaaaaaaaammmn.
Hell yeah, that was awesome.
Once again, best page yet! I love the decision to have the reaction be the big panel on the page. The traditional approach would probably have been to have Dickerson with a big splash pose with the bear head. This multiple small panels take really brings it back down and shows how crazy this is to the other characters. The craziness of it all to them is the real point, not how awesome Dickerson is. At least that’s how I take it.
Thanks, and spot on. I wanted it to fell like the viewer was watching this all from Joel and Gogs perspective.
High-five!
correction, high-paw!!! its gotta become a thing!! anyone else?! HIGH-PAW!!!
Awesome page! I also just paid for a mid-tier Bearicature. Ethan, I’ll send you some pictures when I get off of work 🙂
Really awesome sequence, but i’m actually looking foward to the exposition, I want to know more about Killdeer.
Wait…Nigel was JUST sick. 🙂
It will have to be a dry heave
That was the manliest thing I’ve seen since berserk.
Would have been much more epic if he wore it like a hat, lol.
+1
The tongue was a nice touch.
Burton has that classic Far Side “oo” face.
exactly my thoughts while drawing it!
With most webcomics, I’m kind of like “Oh, I think such-and-such updated today, I’ll check it later.” With Bearmageddon, it’s: “Come on! It’s Bearmo day tomorrow! I can’t wait twelve hours!”
This page cements it. It’s bloody and awesome and hilarious, exactly what I come here for.
haha awesome glad I can make the comic that has that effect.
I guess the bears ate the only other girl in the group? The thin one in the red shirt …. oh man, …. she wore a red shirt.
she’s somewhere off screen I am guessing.
Aw, poor bear. Still awesome.
This comic is CRAZY. I don’t want to love it, I don’t want to be hooked on it, but that’s just my inner snob. I love it and I am hooked.
haha. I broke your snob.
I signed up for a BEARICATURE the second I saw it.
An idea I had though for making more money on this though, I would totally buy a shirt for the people that signed up that said
“I got Mauled by an Octo-Bear and all I got was this T Shirt”
Or something similar. I’d buy the sucker in a heartbeat and sport it all over the place. Pretty sure other people who put in money to get mauled would too.
I KNEW he’d survive. That was so cool!
I AM ALSO COMPLETED
It seems that Gogs raised his goggles up to his forehead as he saw Dickinson go down, and then placed them back over his eyes after seeing Killdeer rise in triumph.
He must not be completable with out them.
Which I totally understand, by the way!
ha! man another continuity fail!! I lose.
That was badass beyond words. It defies characterization.
Haha, I was totally about to grab one of the premium bear kills but your already sold out! I’d be disappointed but that is SO GREAT that they are selling so well for you! I’ll try again when they you have more spots open again. (I hope you do take more at least, it said it was only ‘temporarily’ sold out)
And oh yes! This is one of my FAVORITE pages so far! So freaking EPIC!
*you’re
*ignore the ‘they’ of when they you….
I need to be less excited when I type things…
Where’s all the blood? Dickinson should be covered in it, it should be gushing all over the tree like a fire hydrant. MORE BLOOD!
it actually blends in with the dirt and fur really well. I splattered it all over him but it sort gets lost in there.
Blending like a ninja. Its there but not…
man these bear icons are just great
No slam dunk into a random basketball hoop?
I was thinking more boot it into the trees. It IS Superbowl.
Oh, God, Micheangelo’s trollface.
If an old fart of a failed cartoonist could kvetch, though, you ARE still drawing hands holding things as if they are making a fist, though. Just a personal pet hate of mine. Not that anybody editing a comic book notices such things anymore, in the post-Liefeld apocalyptic endtimes of comic book art we find ourselves in.
Oh Jesus, I’m Edward G. Robinson in Soylent Green, trying to explain to Charlton Heston what a steak tastes like when all he’s ever eaten is plankton. SOB SOB
Seriously? No you couldn’t be? Although framing it with irony indicates that you are likely to be serious in your criticism but padding it out with humour in an effort to appear to not a mean as you are actually being. What you think?
Nah, I’m pretty mean. Grr!
Ethan’s still doing better than Rob Liefeld, though, he used to draw Shatterstar as if the hilts of his swords were piercing his hands.
And Ethan gets OLD SCHOOL points for all red masks, no initialed belts, and Batman eyes on The Boys. Ahhh, my shriveled black heart quickens.
But srsly, God gave you a left hand for reference while you draw with your right. NO, NOT FOR THAT!
I don’t claim to be an amazing artist, and Leifeld gets crapped on a lot more than he deserves. But I keep looking at my hand, then the drawing, then my hand, and I can’t for the life of me figure out what you’re trying to communicate to me here.
Are you talking about when he is holding the bear head? Imagine how you would do that. It is far to large to easily hold the head with one hand, right? Instead, you have to hold it by the hair, and to do so, you grab a clump of fur into a clenched fist. If that is not what you were talking about, oh well.
I think if I’m parsing it correctly, Lord Morgue is referring to Killdeer’s knife-holding hand in panel four, in that it evidently is drawn more like it is making a fist than it is gripping a knife – as if the hand/fist were drawn first and then the knife was drawn into the fist afterwards. Its something that Rob Liefield (from what I’ve seen, anyways) did quite a bit, and noticably so.
Personally, I don’t think its that bad, and not only did I not notice until it was brought up, there was NO WAY I could have possibly paid attention to that on my first (second, third) read-through given what the rest of the panel was depicting.
Food for thought, however!
There’s also something to be said for how a hand that is gripping something very, very, VERY, death-grippingly tightly (as I’d imagine is likely the case here) can eventually look like a fist if the handle is proportionally small enough.
Whether that can fall on the line of excusing a way something’s drawn or explaining it, is a tossup.
This is one of the best webcomic pages of all time.
I decided to get with the bear pics theme
(not even going to mention comic because awesomeness is beyond words)
try again
nope?
fml
yay it worked in retrospect!
haha
That reminds me, will you ever start making some Bearmageddon-specific avatars, or will you stick with these normal-bear avatars only?
I don’t know I like the bears their pretty cool.
I think Killdeer could simply walk into Mordor.
Hell yeah he could XD
Bravo sir, bravo.
Ok…this guy is simply superhuman, possibly an unwilling participant in whatever mad science initially created the octo-bear. HE SAWS A BEAR’S HEAD OFF WITH A MACHETE. Fast enough that the bear is dead before it knows it. Perhaps he’ll leap a tall building or two to stretch out afterwards.
I can really feel the shock and awe of that last panel