The Launch Comic

Experience producing original comics isn't a prerequisite for a career in comics journalism, but it does seem helpful and valuable. It also seems like a useful method for demonstrating Weird City's editorial strategy, which involves telling stories in both written and comics form.

But covering comics news in comics form? That sounds awful, like two mirrors facing each other. Or like the comics form of Inception (and not in a good way). Thus, my expectations for doing a comic about Weird City's launch were understandably low. Still, it felt like a good opportunity to practice. And I'm glad I did...

I shared these concerns with comics artist Franklin Chuhwemeha, and how I couldn't quite wrap my head around it. A few days and much ideation later, he came back with this lovely idea based on some prose I'd haphazardly pieced together during our late night text conversations.

I loved the initial art page. I offered some feedback about the LLM windows, and sent over silly parody AI brand files I designed during a lunch break (see above). I never imagined he would actually translate all of it into the page itself, almost like it was planned.

The end result, titled Collaboration, stands on its own as a perfect way to kick things off.