Thus arrives David: King of Israel.

I will remember the creation of this page forever. I had been looking forward to it for a long time. After page 10, I went right to work on 11 here and was chugging along with it rather quickly. Then, when I was about halfway done, my mother’s health took a turn for the worse. My father, my mother’s caretaker and I began a deathwatch that lasted almost a full week. During those final days I would sleep but not get rest, eat but not feel fed. I would pop open PhotoShop stare at David blankly for a few minutes, then I’d close it down and go into the other room to see if my mother was still breathing. When I finally returned to this page it was hard to look at, I thought about scrapping it and starting over, but that felt wrong. For an artist, at least for me, memory lives within the art. In the lines and colors of this page lives the end of my mother’s life so, yes, I will remember it always.

In many ways The Saga of Samuel exists because of my mother, rather I should say it finally exists because of her. I had been sitting on the concept of this comic for about 6 or 7 years. I would take it out, play around with it and put it away again. Eventually I started building the website here, around 2008 or so, but I was taking my sweet time on it. When my mother’s illness was determined to be terminal, her mortality lay before me, as did my own. You can’t help but examine your own life when you find out a loved one’s life is coming to an end.

 For more than a decade I’d been creating for other people, through graphic design or illustration. Bringing other people’s ideas and creations to life is great but, in the end, those ideas and creations aren’t my own. The Saga of Samuel IS my own. I enjoy the creation of this comic immensely, it feels “right” to me. If anyone who happens to stumble across it enjoys it too, well, that’s just bonus. Yet, sadly or ironically (perhaps both) I never told my mother about this comic or her part in it’s existence. I had ample opportunity. For most of her illness she was fully coherent with some small memory loss provided by the tumor in her brain.  So, I could’ve told her..I just didn’t. A webcomic is a small, frivolous thing when Death looms large between you. Besides, she was never even interested in comics. I’d have to explain the whole concept of a “webcomic”  and she’d probably just shake her head and not really “get” it. Then she’d shush me when Grey’s Anatomy came back for commercial. Yea, it’s better this way. Let God explain to her what a webcomic is.

On a final note: This month is actually the one year anniversary of my posting the very first page of Samuel. The grief, stress and fatigue generated by my mother’s illness played havoc with my ability to update with any sort of regularity. With her passing I have no obstacles before me now. Though wisdom and a healthy dollop of cynicism tell me that life can change in an instant, I don’t fear the future. I believe in an Almighty God and I believe my mother is with Him now. One day I’ll be with them as well (hopefully at least). With that, I don’t plan on talking about my mother’s death on this website anymore.  I made the long ardous trek and saw my mother to Death’s Door, she’s gone through and now it’s time for me to return to the land of the living.

On a final, final note:  I drove my 10 yr old beaten and battered Saturn down to my parents house to take care of my mother ‎4 to 5 nights a week for over a year. A 40 minute drive down at night and back home the next day with no problems whatsoever. A day after my mother’s funeral the car has stopped working altogether. That’s the stuff of legends.

I’ve added this new Samson coloring page to the Dowloads section. I was approached by a fellow about doing a life of Samson coloring book but, unfortunately, things fell through. This unused sketch was just laying around otherwise, so I inked it up added some text and here it is for someone’s coloring pleasure.

After a prolonged battle with cancer my mother has passed away. Except for this webcomic I, more or less, stopped living my life to help take care of her, alongside my father. Watching my mother die a slow, dwindling death these past 18 months has been a kind of living nightmare, a bad dream I was unable to wake up from. Yet, she’s free now, free from her broken body, at rest and restored before her Lord.

Despite the hardship and heartache of it all I would do it again. My mother needed me. I didn’t shirk my responsibility, didn’t force others to fulfill my task. I did my duty as a both a son and as a man.

I find that I have thousands upon thousands of words and yet I have none. My mother has gone to meet her Maker and I return to my life, battle scarred and weary but hopeful as well. A new chapter in my life begins.

I face it willingly.

This trailer for the new season of Star Wars: The Clone Wars was released recently. In it a character, who may or may not be Darth Maul’s brother, is introduced with the utterly ridiculous name of Savage Oppress. Now, the Star Wars universe is already filled with a host of horrible names that sound like baby’s first words, Dooku, Boba, Jar Jar, so what happens when they actually have to put some effort into naming a big, important bad guy? ..Savage Oppress?! Really? That’s obvious “character naming by thesaurus”.

I can use a thesaurus too. Here’s a list of other would-be Star Wars bad guys.

Harsh Murderous- A Gungan murderer who’s goal in life is to wipe out his whole race. He receives a massive amount of unsolicited donations supporting his cause.

Brutal Severe- Going against the pacifist ways of his people this Ithorian assassin kills his marks with crushing blows of his head upon theirs, forever earning his people the nickname of “hammerheads”.

Cruel Noxious- A savage Wookie bounty hunter who’s infamous stench is more dreaded than his raking claws.

Gory Harass- A pushy Rodian thug well known for the oozing sores upon his body rather than his skills as a fighter.

Nefarious Dire- This former Twi’lek dancer escaped her master to become a ruthless hunter of…escaped Twi’lek dancers.

Rude Callous- A former protocol droid turned ill-mannered mercenary and complainer.

E’vilo Deviltry- An Ewok warlord driven mad by fleas and endless tribal warfare with a conquering eye aimed to the stars above.

You can have those for free Lucasfilm, give your thesaurus guy the day off..

I’ve added a sparkly new “downloads” page. Right now I have posted there 6 Heroes of the Bible coloring pages that have been very popular for me lately. Eventually I’ll have some Saga of Samuel wallpapers available and whatever else I can come up with. Click the menu bar above or just go here.

Almost as much as I’m looking forward to this game..

I think your geek credentials get revoked if you’re not interested in at least one of these games.

Well, here I am finally getting around to part 2 in my Quest for the Lego Luchador. The second attempt at scoring this particular mini-figure was performed by my long suffering wife. I still haven’t been able to find these limited edition Lego mini-figures anywhere but my local Border’s bookstore. So when my wife took our rascally son to a Toy Story 3 event at Border’s (yes, these events actually took place a couple of months ago, let’s just say I’m going for the title of the internet’s most intermittent blogger) she decided to try and finish my quest for me. If you remember from the first installment these figures are “blind boxed” so you don’t know what you’re buying when you buy it. After my wife had bought about 7 or 8 packs, with no Lego Luchadors to be had, she called me up “spitting nickels” as old timer might say. No good deed goes unpunished I suppose. Anyway, here’s the new figures she managed to pick up for me.

..and here’s those figures,  the doubles she ended up getting and the original batch of figures from my first attempt.

I was really disappointed to have triplicates of both Divers and Zombies. At least until a 3 on 3 grudge match came to mind, leading to…

..DIVER vs ZOMBIES!!!

After this fight I was really liking the Diver team. So I fished out some different Lego heads, to customize the team a little, and ended up with…

The Brick Devils: Elite Lego diving squad (and occasional zombie fighters) From left to right we have Dash Deep-Six the reckless daredevil, Rick Riptide the Fearless Leader and Cid McCarbuncle the Master Mechanic. Lego’s are fun.

Next: The anti-climatic ending to the Quest for the Lego Luchador!

What’s this? I managed to get 2 pages done in the same month? That’s what I call progress. I tried to come up with some kind of heroic exclamation for Samuel as he leapt from the cave, something classic like Superman’s “up, up and away!” or the Sub Mariner’s “Imperious Rex!” but the only thing I could think of was him once again exclaiming that he was too old to jump out of caves, like say “…too old!”, but that wasn’t all that heroic so I just left him exclamation-less…for now.

With page 9 we’re finally leaving this dang cave. Man, I regretted having to draw those cave walls over and over again. Let’s just say that what takes place on the next few pages was originally set in the cave but I managed to devise a way out, so I went for it. Page 10 (maybe page 11) it’s blue skies and green grass..yay!

In other news: I created an official “cover” for the comic (not that a webcomic needs a cover exactly, but it seemed the right thing to do) The new cover page replaces the image I had there, which was a placeholder I put up when I was building the site. The cover was some art I originally intended to us as a promotional image but was never really happy with. Since I really wanted to solve my “cover” problem I revisited the piece fixed what I didn’t like, changed the layout and here we are:

Now, I like the piece so much I deem it worthy of being the first ever Saga of Samuel poster! Since the comic is still in it’s earliest stages I’m going with trusty (and less hassle for me) print on demand companies. In the future I hope to oversee the printing process and do limited edition prints and such but that time ain’t now.

If you would like to have for yourself a shiny, first ever Saga of Samuel poster you can buy one at either:

deviantART or Zazzle (click the storename you wish to buy from)

..or since Zazzle has the better ready-made promotional tools just click the image below.

The Saga of Samuel Cover by ArtistXero
View other artwork at zazzle.com