Previously in STUCK…

Chapter One; Chapter 2 (to date)…

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Thanks for stopping by!  Two more pages and Chapter Two is history.

Tom & Vito

This week, Kevin takes a much needed break from drawing pirates and
teenagers and will return with fresh new pages next week. In the
meantime, we thought we might take a moment to familiarize you good
adventure seeking folk with the people you might see on the streets of
TODT HILL.

The Hill, as most realize, mirrors present day Staten Island but I’ve
often referred to it as Staten Island if it were OZ, the maximum
security prison immortalized in the HBO series of the same name. OZ
focused on the inmates of the Oswald Correctional Facility and more
specifically a forward thinking unit known as Emerald City. The show
broke analyzed the various societies in Oz, following them as they
intertwined and interacted with each other, usually with dire and
fatal results. There were the Gangstas, Aryans, Muslims, Christians,
Sicilians, Bikers and more and the fascinating moments were always
those that spotlighted the differences between them and what happens
when one society comes head to head with another - the regular joe who
wants to learn the Koran, for instance or the many
Aryan-Muslim-Sicilian or Gangsta-Latino-Sicilian struggles.

The streets of Todt Hill bring various societies head to head as well:
The Mafia, The Peruvians, The Pirates, The Cops and The Suburbanites.

THE MAFIA
“Johnny Boy” Paglia is one of the surviving members of the Bonnano
Crime Family stretching back to the formation of the Five Families.
Joseph Bonnano granted Johnny his own family in 1957, dividing his
responsibilities between Long Island and the burgeoning offshore
community of Richmond Island. The Paglias began with rackets and
gambling and eventually worked up to protection and miscellaneous
instances of theft. At the turn of the century, Lily Lips Paglia,
Johnny’s grand-niece, set the family up into the world of online
crime, spreading into credit card fraud, internet blackmail, pyramid
scams and more. When zombies appeared in Richmond in the late
Nineties, word got back to Johnny and rumors of hidden wealth inspired
him to transfer all operations and families to Richmond proper, taking
residence in the wealthy neighborhood of Todt Hill – which would one
day be a name the entire island would casually adopt. The Paglias
control all illicit activities on Todt Hill, fearing no repercussions
from a government that won’t step on the Hill to investigate their
actions. The local police turn a blind eye to their activities,
forming an uneasy alliance with the mobsters who help keep the streets
safe for a small fee. The Paglias know that the cops and regular folks
of Todt Hill are the side to fall on against zombies and money hungry
Pirates but the mob has spend a decent chunk of change trying to
uncover the one island secret they don’t know about – and no friendly
neighbor alliance is going to stop them from finding it. They’ve as
of yet been able to find anything and the police are becoming less
helpful and less trustful. Something might have to be done. Someone
might have to be made an example of. Maybe this new cop… the mouthy
one that hasn’t yet learned the way things work on the Hill.
Whatshisname? Tompkins.

THE PERUVIAN ZOMBIES
Their lands were raided, women raped and treasures stolen. Shamans
were burned at the stake and burial tombs defiled. Now, centuries
later, they have followed the trail left behind by the vermin that
swooped in on the ocean waves and killed their way of life. They can
feel a siren song calling them back from the land of the dead onto the
islands of the devil. Single-minded in their search, seeking out coins
whose curses failed and sacred idols to gods that did not help them
survive the storms, they are driven by all-consuming passion: revenge.
Until their treasures are returned, no man, woman or child on Todt
Island is safe from their grunting, prodding, poking and weekly
prayers to the gods above in Hill Harbor Park… to the dismay of those
who live there. At first the Peruvians were violent and pushy –
demanding virgin sacrifice, claiming offerings to the gods would help
them find the treasure, avenge its loss and allow them to continue to
Paradise. But it’s been ten years and during that time they’ve gotten
a little lazier… more accustomed to their surroundings. They found
homes and took jobs to pass the time. One drives a local bus and
another operates a well-liked candy store. The police have forced them
to stop taking human sacrifice and the mafia supplies them with cattle
they can barbecue to their gods instead – for a price, of course,
forcing more of them to take jobs. Most of the zombies cannot
communicate in more than two syllables but some of them – like their
grand shaman, learned the language by finding living accommodations
near libraries, universities and local college professors. The shaman,
Sunder Sulah, is their liaision to the other societies – not because
he can talk but mostly because he smells the best and has taken care
not to let his body decay too much. They try and live by the rules but
push a zombie and he’s going to push back. Sometimes he’ll take a
bite, too. But if you’re smart and careful you can avoid that by
offering him a Krispy Kreme donut. Peruvian Zombies love Bavarian
Kreme. With sprinkles.

THE PIRATES, CORPORATE AND OTHERWISE
Once their fathers sailed the seven seas, raiding shores and stealing
booty from noble, law-abiding suckers. Now generations past have
returned to claim their rightful inheritance – the vast and
inexplicable treasure secreted away beneath Todt Hill by their
great-great grandfathers, step-fathers, uncles and more. Piracy is in
their blood but rather than swing from ship to ship on riggings and
masts, sabers clutched in teeth, they perform their raiding tactics
from offices and boardrooms, flashing subpoenas and work orders in
their well-manicured hands. Some display their familial legacy like
kitsch, using their pirate background as a form of eccentricity, and
others shun it, claiming they’re just after what’s coming to them.
They are Pirates all, occupying well-to-do areas of the island and
fighting with the mob community for more acreage while defending
themselves from Peruvians set upon taking revenge on the sons and
daughters for the sins of the father.

THE SUBURBANITES
They’ve been living in Richmond since before the freaks arrived, drawn
by something they could never put their finger on. Who would want to
live on Richmond Island, anyway? Two bridges and heavy tolls in both
directions to a landfill at the bum end of New York? How
geographically undesirable can you get! For that time and money you
might as well live in Jersey or Brooklyn. But something called to them
and now they know what it is: the treasure. Surrounded in the only
gated community in the area to be gated by the Marines, the residents
of Richmond Island try to make what sense they can of their towns and
communities while enduring mafia-pirate knife fights, weekly zombie
barbecues, interminable supermarket lines brought on by ebb and flow
of supply and demand and constant police presence on every city block.
For the most part they haven’t let it get to them. Oh, there are the
occasional nut jobs like Old Grinning Bastard, the guy who runs the
only gourmet deli on the entire island since the meat drought (where
does he get his meat?!!); Mayor Theodore Huxtable Bailey, youngest
Mayor in Richmond County, brought up by parents who let television
affect their life way too much; Shana McSeamus, Realtor extraordinaire
who can sell a fabulous studio with dim lighting to a Peruvian zombie
who just needs a place to rest his head; Often Johnson, Todt Hill’s
resident superspy and master of intrigue; and Mister and Mister John
and Johaan Todt, gay undertakers with mortuary chains all along the
island.

Welcome to Todt Hill. Population: Fifteen Men on a Dead Man’s Chest.

See you here next week with more pages.

-Kleid

From The Library is a series of interviews with some of my favorite storytellers. For the latest SCHEHERAZADE update, click here. For NIGHTVISIT, click here.

SCHEHERAZADE returns next week.

Jen Caban, better known as Molly Crabapple, is a burlesque dancer, a talented illustrator of twisted yet whimsical Victoriana (yeah, top that), proprietress of Dr. Sketchy’s Anti Art School, and a total babe. Her first book, Dr. Sketchy’s Official Rainy Day Colouring Book, drops on December 1.

I think I remember reading somewhere (oh wait, it’s on your website) that you learned to draw in a Parisian bookstore. That’s pretty great. Explain.

When I was 17, I graduated high school early and slummed my way across Europe. It was the usual course in poverty, skullduggery, and bathing once a week. I found Shakespeare and Company in Paris. Shakespeare and Co was a gorgeous old English language bookstore staffed with backpackers, who manned the till in exchange for sleeping upstairs.

I was flirting with a rather disreputable older gent (probably an alcoholic), who gave me drawing lessons. Having neither job nor responsibilities, I drew hours every day. My style, detailed as it is, was honed over in Paris.

I’d imagine that, like the rest of us, you have a lot of influences. If you could have dinner with one of them, alive or dead, who would it be and what would you talk about?

Me and Colette would talk about getting pasties to stick.

Got any tattoos?

Not yet.

Name a favorite book (this is From the Library, after all).

Low Life: The Lures and Snares of Old New York. An amazingly detailed history of gambling, prostitution, cops and Tammany Hall, years 1840-1890. For instance, I learned that Boss Tweed was prevented from fleeing to Spain by a Spanish border guard who recognized him from the Thomas Nast cartoons. Hark, illustrators, and learn how to do a likeness!

You pimp yourself very well. Give us your top three self-promotion tips.

1. Don’t be afraid to email your idols. The arts are a bastion of low pay and crushing ego blows, so many of your favorite creators may love to hear from you.

2. Getting into the media isn’t a mystery. It’s a science- and there’s a whole section of Barnes and Noble devoted to it. Grab a frappucino and study those books in PR section.

3. Get a website. The internet is this generation’s Gutenberg. If you’re not online, you don’t exist.

Name a guilty pleasure.

Grabbing some sugar- caffeine-whipped-cream concoction, doing nothing, and reading biographies.

Last week, we met Dom and Charon, Styx Taxi’s answer to Abbott and Costello… this week, Circe enters the picture, a driver who cares a little too much about her fares…

THIS WEEK’S EXTRA: Jeremy (THE BUSHWICK CHRONICLES) Arambulo weighs in on the making of “Pastrami for the Dead”:

“STYX TAXI: Pastrami for the Dead” was my first attempt at serious comic work. I met Steve through Craigslist and he dug my style enough to hire me, which saved me from a torturous job as a collectibles painter. As a rookie cartoonist, I was fortunate to work with someone as focused and determined as Steve: he even did all the legwork in providing me with photo references for the specific Brooklyn and Manhattan locales! Overall, I’m proud of it as a first step in my cartooning life.

See you here next Thursday for more of “Pastrami for the Dead”!

The idea of depicting a comic about a band has been something that’s followed me around for years… since 1995 to be exact. Not realized until 11 years later in my collaboration with Daniel Warner in 1 Way Ticket, those years did not hamper the image but colored and added to it. In those 11 years I’ve been in three bands, played 60+ shows, and went to thousands of band practices, wrote lots of comics, wrote lots period, and saw from the inside and outside the unique relationships brought about by being in a band. Getting that kind of feeling, those stories, into comics form is is both a challenge and a promise not just for music fans or for comics fans.

As a purely visual medium, comics would seemingly be an improper medium to depict the exploits of a group of people producing music: that which cannot be heard in it’s depiction. Pushing past that, the problem lies with how to visually, staticly, represent music. One of the earliest, and most widely recognizable, attempts at this would probably be Charles Schulz’ Schroeder in Peanuts.

Depicting musical notes and sheet music, even if people cannot read music, is commonly used to denote the playing of music in comics. While it does allude to music being played, I think everyone agrees that it falls far short of evoking the intended results of simulating music. Sound effects are also an option, but that effect has almost become a cliche of American comics and it’s hard to shake their influence and their hints at the 60s Batman TV series.

Trying to reach this synaesthesia of using static images to evoke music was one of the big concerns in making this comic, and one of the reasons I approached Daniel Warner to do it. Stoked by his artwork in the Cocopiazo miniseries from SLG, our initial conversations consisted of me and him talking about ways to depict music. Using music notes or sound effects weren’t discussed much, but it was more about reaching to the primal part of comic illustration: using color, lineweight and perceived motion to act as building blocks to get people in the mindset to imagine music. Probably the closest example to what we’re talking about (minus color) would be Bryan Lee O’Malley’s Scott Pilgrim series.

We’ve teased our technique in chapter 1 of 1 Way Ticket, and the upcoming chapter 3 (in 2 weeks) promises to show this off in full regalia.

But what do you think are good examples of music in comics?

What Came Before: Catch Up Here.
And now, on to Page 8:

Next Tuesday, November 21: the conclusion…

Previously in STUCK…

Chapter One; Page 13; Page 14; Page 15; Page 16; Page 17; Page 18; Page 19; Page 20…

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Thanks for checking us out.  3 more pages until we get to Chapter 3.  Also, be sure to check out the CATCH UP PAGES on the right.  They’re real handy if you missed a week or if you’re new to the Chemistry Set.
Tom & Vito 

TODT HILL, an adventure strip by Kleid & Colden, updates here every Friday. Enough of this flashbackery! Next week - we let Colden take a small break and rest his widdle head as Neil offers a lay of the land. Heh. We said “lay.”

View the Hunt Thus Far

Join the Crew at

Part 1.
Part 2.

I love panel one on page five (top page). Because you know that girls put their jeans on like that.

There may be an interview next week; I may be taking a break.

Welcome, Steven!

Cabbies around Manhattan don’t talk about this much, but sometimes… they disappear. Their dispatchers, their wives, hell, their mistresses… no one knows where they go. You ask, and no one wants to talk about it.

All I’ve ever gotten out of a driver about the experience was two words: “Styx Taxi.”

These stories are the artist’s and my imagining of goes on during these disappearances.

First up is a story I like to call “Pastrami for the Dead,” concerning Styx Taxi’s version of an office contest, the Soul Drive. Art’s by Queens native, rocker, and creator of his own webcomic, THE BUSHWICK CHRONICLES, Jeremy Arambulo.

See you next Thursday for more of STYX TAXI!