I proudly present the first of the Abominable guest strips.
You may already know David Petersen’s work from his acclaimed series ‘Mouse Guard‘, which tells the tale of a group of mice struggling to survive and prosper in a world of predators. David manages to infuse his stories with such a sense of nobility and serenity that I find myself relating to the characters (and, subsequently, the author!) from the first few panels.
I knew he’d capture the tone of Charles Christopher perfectly and I’m honored to present his work here. If you haven’t read Mouse Guard, please do! There are two beautiful hardcovers available from Archaia Studios and you can follow David’s progress on his blog.
Thank you, David!

UPDATE: Some of you have asked about prints of this strip: I won’t be selling prints of the guest strips because I don’t think they’re mine to sell. They’re donated to me out of kindness and I won’t commercialize that. The best thing you can do is to buy a copy of David’s book, or perhaps commission a drawing from him directly.

And there’s an added bonus contest!: I’ve snuck our favourite dim-witted yeti into one of the episodes! I’m not telling you which of the twelve issues he’s in, but email me a picture of yourself holding the page and pointing to him and you’ll be entered into a draw to win an original sketch from me. Send mail to mail@abominable.cc with the subject ‘Wednesday Comics Contest’.

Wednesday Comics launches this Wednesday , so head on over to your local comic shop and let me know what you thought of it!

This ends Chapter One of The Abominable Charles Christopher.

I’m going to do something I feel a bit guilty about now, which is to take some time off. It’ll only be for a month, and that month will be put to good use as I prepare myself for the next story arc and do the layout of the first book collection (you’ll be hearing more about this very soon).
In the meantime, though, the Abominable site marches on! I have some incredible talent lined up to provide guest strips for you, and I’m really excited about them, so tune in every Wednesday, as usual, for more Abominable shenanigans.
I’ll be back before you know it.

-karl

UPDATE: I’ve added wallpaper of this week’s strip, as requested!

Secondly, I’ve been sitting on a couple of wonderful pieces of fan art that I haven’t had time to scan/upload. The first is a lovely digital painting by Chutkat and the second is an extremely cute Moon Bear drawing by Yuko Ota, which she gave to me at TCAF. Thanks to both of you and sorry it took me so long to post them!

While drawing this strip, I remembered that this marks two years of The Abominable Charles Christopher. I also remembered that in this last year I lost both of my grandmothers and that, perhaps more significantly, each of my parents lost a mother.
So this one’s for Ma and Pa…

Music for today’s strip: ‘Hoppípolla’, by Sigur Rós

Hi, everyone! I know I promised you a super-awesome double-sized episode today, but I’m afraid I have to do a bit of a take-backsie.
You’ll notice that today’s strip is sort of an ordinary size. But there’s a good reason! I did, in fact, draw the second half of what I’d planned for today, but found that I was cramming more panels than I wanted into the allotted space, and because it’s an important moment in the story I felt it was better to just publish this first part and then do a double-sized strip next week.
So, to sum up:
- Regular-sized strip this week,
- Double-sized, super-duper climactic episode next week (which is already half-done!)

Yay, right?
-karl

I know, I know. Another cliffhanger.
But I’ll make it up to you next week with a double-sized finale. Promise!

-karl

…to be continued next week!

This strip marks 100 consecutive episodes of ‘The Abominable Charles Christopher’ and I’m celebrating by riffing on Goethe!

I like the idea of using the Cedar Forest Players to touch on pop culture references I can’t normally address in the context of forest life, so I think we’ll be seeing more of these guys in the future. Imagine ‘Die Hard’ performed by a theatre group of animals…

Thanks to everyone who came out to see me in Toronto last weekend! It was the first show I’ve been to where the readers of The Abominable Charles Christopher outnumbered (far outnumbered) the readers of my Marvel/DC work, and it was humbling and wonderful to hear all of your feedback.
I sold small ink drawings of various animals (mostly plump birds) and a lot of t-shirts – so many, in fact, that I’m now sold out of a few sizes. It may be time to start thinking about a design for the next one!

The most common question, by far, was whether or not I was planning a print edition of the comic.
I am.
I’m looking at printing quotes and schedules, and I hope to have something available by mid-summer. So hang tight!

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I was going to post this as two separate strips, but couldn’t resist the storytelling impact. Enjoy!

-karl

Here’s a snapshot of the rough pencils for this strip. You may notice that I made some changes in the final stages of production to make things more clear.
I’m thinking of setting up a webcam soon so you can watch live streaming of the inking and colouring processes (for those of you who are interested in that long, tedious process. :)

Hi everyone!
Apparently, ACC got stumbled last week, so WELCOME to all of you new readers (and apologies if the site is acting funny)!
I’m just entering the home stretch for Year Two of the story (it started in June of 2007), so all of you plot-hungry commenters will have your hands full for the next twelve weeks.
Things are about to get tense…

-karl