THE TAO OF IGOR: a new Dork Tower collection by John Kovalic

Counting Down
about 4 years ago – Mon, Sep 07, 2020 at 08:07:07 PM

Hi, all!

 First off, I was informed it's been over a month sine the last update, and I am *deeply* sorry about that.

Time moves strangely, these days. I would never have expected the weeks to clip by at such a pace, considering how slowly some of the days can drag.

To the main points, though:

The Tao of Igor is not yet finished. However, things are going well, here. It's just taken much longer than I imagined.

This is frustrating to me as well as to you, and I apologize for that. But the end is near. 

I'm crossing things off the Countdown To-Do list pretty much every day. Some days more is crossed off than others. However, there's been a welcome return to some sort of household schedule, now that school is back in session. Even thought Daughter, Age 11, is Distance Learning, it's been a significant change from the "What-Day-Is-This?" Summer brain-fog.

I don't want to guess at a publication date, because I've gotten that wrong before. More than once.

However, I believe a good way to handle the ticking down to the end would be for me to send out brief updates ever Friday, listing what was accomplished that week, and what is left to do.

With luck, some of these will include page samples (assuming they contain no spoilers - the last few pages I am working on  certainly do, but I may have found a trick that will let me get around that).

Right now there are about 40 pages left to letter, and 30 pages left to color. The coloring in particular takes longer than I assumed. But it's getting there!

These pages are from the last chapter (48 pages), and include eight pages that I need to finish drawing. I've left them until the end because - honestly - they were the toughest. But sometimes these can be the most enjoyable.

The book should come in at 210 pages. There are about 100 pages left to lay out, including the 48 mentioned above, plus the introduction and the afterword. This should not take much time, and simply involves boring slog work.

I'd like to include some personal notes, but I won't, if that would delay things further.

There are two surprise bonuses I've hinted at before, but I'll let you know about them once the book is completed.

All other physical rewards are printed, and I'll be signing those in the evenings and on weekends.

I would still like to include the Kickstarter Dungeon in the book, but that needs to arrive. So I shall email the author as soon as this  Update is sent off. The blame is on me, not him: I've been lax at keeping up on this. (I think it's little stuff like this I've been the worst at. I should have started with a project manager, but at least I have a to-do list.)

The Tao of Igor and the Dork Tower web strip remain the only projects I am working on. The web strip ran daily last week, and will do so again, this week. it then returns to its regular thrice-weekly schedule. The extra strips have not been a significant drain on my time.

The book will be printed in North America, so once it gets to press, it should be a relatively quick turn around time from PDFs to physical copies in the mail.

There really is not much left to do, and I believe the Friday updates will also help keep me focused on the finish line. (I know, being focused on that should go without saying, but...<shrugs vaguely at the world outrside>...2020, you know?)

The bottom line is, I feel we are not too many weeks away from the end.

And I'll try my hardest to be a better correspondent now that the finish line nears.

***

SPEAKING OF the 2020 craziness, some of you know that I participate an annual charity, raising funds for local farmers and low-income families. I call it INSANE CHARITY BIKE RIDE, as it's a stupid long distance (60 miles), and I do it with a Duck of Doom on my head (possibly two, as long as the goal is met).

This year, fundraiser has changed significantly. Instead of the mass ride, the delightful stops, and the party at the end, bikers will be cycling individually, in late September, due to COVID.

Obviously, ridership (and therefore fundraising) is way down.

The Fair Share CSA Coalition is a small, local charity, and this is a huge hit for them.

I *believe* the Army of Dorkness can still get close to what it usually raises, however. This would be massive. Usually, we raise around 30% of their overall funding. This year, that's critical.

If you have the time and the funds and the inclination, please do check out my ride page. There is some nice swag (including the Munchkin charity postcard, and original Munchkin art). Most importantly, you'd literally be making a difference to a wonderful local charity, helping farmers get fresh food to low-income households.

If not, even helping spread the word would be AWESOME! There are links on my Twitter account, as well as the Dork Tower Facebook page.

OK, see you...Friday!

- John

Old Pages and New
about 4 years ago – Mon, Jul 27, 2020 at 07:13:21 PM

Work on the Tao of Igor is going well.

Not well enough that I was able to get the book  to press by now, as I had hoped, a month ago. But it’s going well.

My only commitments these days are the Tao of Igor itself, and the Dork Tower web strip. It feels odd, but it feels…good.

These remain strange times to be working on a book that is essentially a celebration of gaming and comics conventions. I have no idea when in-person cons will begin again, and if they do, and if they are in Europe, I have no idea if Americans will even be allowed to travel there.

What a peculiar thing to type.

There are good work days, and there are bad work days, but there are more good days than bad days, these days. And even on the worst ones, when everything in the world – or at least this country - seems hopeless and overwhelming and so very sad, I can still get a little work done.

I can’t ignore the garbage fire that is this timeline, but I seem able to now compartmentalize it better. And working on the Tao of Igor, closing in on the finish line, makes me feel good: happy, even.

Some of the pages are taking more work to clean up than I had hoped: here’s a scan of one (I believe I already showed you its finished, colored version). Note the guidelines: they are printed in light blue, on the original paper, to supposedly not show up on scans.

They did, however, and cleaning up pages like this is just one small extra thing I didn’t anticipate.

I also re-drew some pages. Here’s one from ten years ago that was supposed to be a tracking shot, into another scene in another convention room. But the page is totally uninspired:

Here’s the new page:

(I covered up a spoiler in the second panel there. In the third panel, the character in the Sabine Wren cosplay is Stell, from the Dork Tower strip. Chronologically, the events of the Tao of Igor take place before she was introduced into the online comic. Technically, this is her “first appearance.” There are other fun cameos peppered throughout the book.)

I simply take more time drawing, these days. This is good and bad: I want pages to look better, to help tell the story better, but also just to be better. I spend more time on details these days. But I also want the book to be done (dang, I wish I hadn't thought of piles and piles comic books on Matt’s Artists’ Alley table).

Some of the linework on the old pages was pretty shoddy. I was using inexpensive paper and poor pens, back then. Bleed was a problem. So while this page was essentially the same shot as the original, it was completely redrawn:

Here’s a brand-new page. Any of you fans of early 2000s Indie comics may recognize the character – bonus points if you can name the book I stole him from (well, OK, I ran it past his creator, first), as well as his name. (No text here – this is a pivotal moment in the storyline):

Anyway, work is going well. There are good days, and there are bad days. But overall, we’re getting closer to the end. Much closer.

I’d rather not hazard a guess as to when PDFs will go out, as I was wrong last time, but it will be sooner, rather than later. I will let you know as soon as I know.

I hope you are well, and that you and yours are safe and healthy.

As always, thank you for your incredible support, and patience.

- John

Short and Hopefully Sweet...
over 4 years ago – Sun, Jun 21, 2020 at 07:17:23 AM

Hey, all,

Just a brief note (I spend too much time fretting about composing HUGE UPDATES, when just getting off quick-and-to-the-point updates would help me stay in touch much better).

Work is going well, again. Really well. Like, “back to my old self again, well.”

I’m not sure what happened - certainly, the world is still a garbage fire - but a couple of weeks ago, something snapped, and I just started getting solid work done again.

It's kept up, and it feels great.

Anyway, the current plan is to send the Tao of Igor to press sometime mid-to-late July.

That means PDFs should go out to everyone, as well, then.

No new art to share, because some of the pages I’ve been working on are pretty spoiler-y.

Instead, here’s July’s Dork Tower Patreon Collector Card, which I am in equal parts proud and ashamed of. 

(Some more nice new - the Dork Tower Patreon campaign has reached its latest goal, meaning that the Dork Tower comic strip will now appear three times, weekly!)

I hope you and yours are safe and healthy, and staying as well as one can possibly be expected to, these days.

Thank you SO much again for your support, patience, and general awesomeness!

John

Frightciting!
over 4 years ago – Fri, May 22, 2020 at 03:59:52 AM

Hi, all!

First off: Aieeeee!

Yes, I've been saying I'd post an update for a couple of weeks now. My apologies.

I wanted to show you a specific page from Tao of Igor, along with a bunch of other items, and was saving up for a huge post, when I should have simply popped my head up and said "all's going as well as can be expected, here." And then popped back down and kept working.

Anyway, all is going as well as can be expected, here...given the realities of the world.

There are good days, and there are bad days. The bad days are usually caused by obsessing over terrible news that seems to hit, hourly. The solution is to stay off the dang internet. But there are also "Pandemic Brain" periods, where life just seems to move at a socially-distancing snail's pace, due to general malaise and sluggishness.

There are good days, though.

My best guess is, on the good days, I'm probably between sixty and seventy percent of my old productivity, and that improves every week of "the new normal." The good days also occur with greater frequently.

The big change has been, I finished my most recent MUNCHKIN project two weeks ago. This means I'm now full-time on Dork Tower.

There's nothing on my plate for the forseeable future, save my own work. Literally, nothing. No travel, no deadlines, no projects, nada.

So, it's now the Dork Tower web strip, the Dork Tower Patreon, and, foremost, finishing the Tao of Igor.

This is frightening, but also exciting. "Frightciting"?

It's where I'd hoped to be, albeit not quite this soon. And certainly not under these circumstances.

I've been turning down other work for a while now, with the goal of concentrating on my own stuff. 

The tabletop gaming industry's been hit hard...along with everything else. For the first time in possibly 15 or 20 years, there is simply no new outside work on my schedule's horizon.

Frightciting

Anyway, here's that silly page I wanted to show you:

I've been plugging away at other pages and other aspects of the Tao of Igor these last few weeks - cleaning up and coloring this single page hasn't taken me 14 days...honest!

I kept the "Artist's Alley" or Mud Con scene to a single page. I'd have loved to have included many more pals, from over the years, but the in-jokes would probably have become tedious for others. Also: Mud Con is tiny.

The page says "11."  I'm laying the last chapter out as if it were an actual Dork Tower comic book. Issue #37, to be precise. It's actually page 200-and-something of the Tao of Igor.

Once the Tao of Igor is wrapped up, I'll send along the Dork Tower #37 comic book as a free PDF for backers. There'll be a letters page, and the usual backups.

If you collected the old comic books, this will keep that collection going. If you didn't, I hope you'll find it a fun little extra.

It is very odd working on a convention storyline, something celebrating cons and geeky gatherings, when every convention out there is (wisely) cancelling. I actually had my busiest con schedule in years lined up: many national and international shows, now all falling like dominoes.

Yet even though I desperately wish the circumstances were different, it's kind of...nice, being at home, just working on Dork Tower.

Businesses are slowly opening up, and I've started sending queries out to printers, for updated quotes and timelines. It looks like my original choice, a Canadian company, remains the go-to option, however.

The playable Kickstarter Map Dungeon is coming along. As soon as that's finished, I'll send it to you in PDF form. I hope also to have space to include that in physical version of Tao of Igor.

There's no actual publication date yet - that will depend on what I hear back from the printers, and attempting to estimate how Pandemic Brain will effect timelines. But the books will ship direct to Fulfillment Guru David once they're printed, and as soon as I come up with a timeframe that's more than simply guesswork, I'll let you know.

It's sooner rather than later, at this stage, though.

Anyway, as I've said before, I'm terrible at correspondence, and I am sorry about that.

I will strive to be better at keeping you up-to-date - especially as we're nearing this dang finish line. Even if it's only a short little note saying (I hope) "all's going as well as can be expected, here."

I hope all is going as well for YOU as can be expected, and that you and yours are safe, and healthy. These are strange, scary times.  Be well.

And thank you once more - deeply - for your support, and your patience,

John

No Kidding, Really, I'm Actually Alive
over 4 years ago – Mon, Apr 13, 2020 at 10:27:05 PM

Hi!

First, and most importantly, I hope you and your loved ones are safe and well.

These are odd, awful times. You need to look out for others, but you also need to look out yourself.

Secondly (but still importantly), I deeply apologize for the lack of updates.

Thirdly, the Tao of Igor is not a whole heck of a lot further along than it was several weeks ago.

However, for the foreseeable future, I almost literally have nothing else to work on, so that will be changing immediately.

It's been a bizarre, terrible time. The last four weeks have been the worst I can remember, save for the days immediately following 9-11.

I returned from Thailand, though didn't get as much work done on the Tao of Igor as I had hoped. I wasn't too worried - slumps happen, I've been through them before, and the finish line was in sight.

Then...well...everything...

March 11, 2020:

We had booked a hotel outside O'Hare, before a morning flight to visit my family in London. (It was still to be a work week for me, but I've worked well at my parents' place in Southwark before.)

Judith was driving, and I was checking Twitter.

That's when the president banned European travel.

We were staying in a cheap hotel outside the airport, and, trying not to alarm our 11-year-old-daughter, I showed my wife the news. Then I began texting with my parents and sister in Britain. The president had left Ireland and the UK off the travel ban, but the situation was fluid.

We were worried.

My parents are both in their mid-to-late 80s, and I try to see them every couple of months - the reason, indeed, I was in Thailand to begin with.

It was sleepless night.

Around 4:30 in the morning, we decided not to to chance anything, and - three hours before we were to leave for the airport -  cancelled our flights.

(The Delta phonelines were swamped, but my sister, who knows travel tricks the way she knows vascular surgery - she's the head, at Brighton - hooked me up with a European number that got us through).

That Thursday morning, when we should have been flying to London, we drove back to Madison.

It was the right decision, but it was a difficult one. My family is very close, and when the world goes crazy, you want to be with family. At the very minimum, you want to be somewhere with a decent public healthcare system...

So we're in Madison, self-isolating and adjusting to the new normal.

My wife, my daughter and I are safe, and in as fortunate a position as we could hope for, in these petrifying times. Our house is large, we have a downstairs freezer, and we have isolated trails we can walk or bike. My daughter and I can even take out taekwando lessons over the internet from out basement. My wife is a germophobe, and I'm the sort of person who obsessively stocks up on things when they go on sale. Our respective times have come!

Joking aside - it's been hard.

Really, really hard.

You know that, of course. Your're going through it, as well.

The next couple of weeks, I was pretty much in the fetal position 24/7, as reality got weirder and more awful.

I tried returning to a regular work schedule as best I could. But it wasn't easy. If I needed to look up an image for reference online, for example, I'd find myself sucked in top Twitter or Facebook for hours, staring at the screen as the news changed by the hour (or sometimes by the minute). Anger, sorrow, despair and occasionally hope would play Whack-a-Mole with my psyche.

Two weeks ago, I got a little work done.

Last week, I got a little more done.

I'm not sure my productivity will bounce back fully, this week, but at least I'm awake, and ready to go.

I'll post another update in a few days with more actual specifics of the book, along with some new pages. But I'm no longer in the fetal position, and that's a plus.

It's some weeks away, still, but I want to get the Tao of Igor out into the world as soon as possible:

(A) it's obviously overdue, but also

(B) the last chapter is a joyous one, and joy is a precious commodity, these days.

I've loved working on it, and appreciate your patience and support enormously.

Be safe, and be strong.

- John

PS: I've been trying to write this for a couple of weeks. Frankly, I've been trying to write anything for a couple of weeks. Many thanks to those who checked in on me. Let's all get through this.