Trial of the Trolls Progress Report

Things are progressing with Trial of the Trolls at a good pace. Like many of you, the last year has been exceptionally difficult. Although I’m very excited and anxious to show you Trial of the Trolls, I haven’t always been able to work at a steady pace, let alone match my output under better conditions. It’s made scheduling updates difficult because my week-to-week productivity has fluctuated so dramatically. I don’t want delays or long hiatus’ when updating so it’s important to me to have enough pages ‘in the can’ to bring us to the close of Part 1 without interruption.

So, in lieu of a proper update to the story, I thought I’d share some more preview images. Enjoy!

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When Trial of the Trolls resumes, we’ll get a behind-the-scenes glimpse of the service bots that make the colony run. Here, one of the bots fires up the colony’s main power source, The Forge.

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This is a page revealing The Forge that will be key to the final stages of the Trial.

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Governing all the bots’ work is an Artificial Intelligence called ART-i. ART-i has all the bot behaviors working at peak efficiency.

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The Grand Magister’s parade elevates three candidates; this year’s Trolls for trial.

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The Trial has a few ceremonies building up to the Trial. Between each, bots must rush and prepare for the next event. In this case, bots scramble to serve drinks and hors d’oeuvres prior to the Night of the Trolls.

So there you have it! You know all you need to know, at least for now. Except one more thing; at the end of each update, you will find the following page alerting you to the date of the next update. Based on reader input, I’ll be updating weekly with each update being a nice morsel of 3 pages or more. Included is a preview of the upcoming action, a synopsis of the story so far and dates for subsequent updates.

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Look for this page to mark the end of the current update and alert you to the date of the next.

Thanks for following along on this adventure as we get rolling on Trial of the Trolls. I’m putting a lot of heart and soul into this and I’m hopeful you’ll see that on screen and feel rewarded for your patience. Thanks!

Trial of the Trolls

Trial of the Trolls is my next graphic novel project. I will be writing and drawing this epic fairy tale. Over the last few years, I’ve had to reorient my creativity into a solo writer/artist of comics. My first few stabs at creating proposals for publishing were their own uphill battle that helped teach me a lot about writing and developing story ideas. When your best opportunity for publishing is confounded because the approval team can’t distill your idea into something they’ve already seen before, it’s time to go on your own. If history teaches us anything, anyone with innovative ideas first has to take the risk themselves and prove it’s viable before anyone intent on making money can see any merit in it. As a result, Trial of the Trolls will be exclusive to this website, released in its entirety for free. Instead of using this story as a stepping stone for my career, it will be published here as a gift to all the friends and fans who’ve enriched my life with their support over the years. I wanted to be a comics creator when I was young and you all helped enable me to realize that dream. I offer it to everyone as a gift and I hope you all see the intent behind it.

Trial of the Trolls is a future fairy tale where a desperate family dynasty must struggle for survival after depleting their resources in their victory in the forever war with the Trolls. Responsible usage of resources is their society’s only hope for survival and must be guaranteed through selective breeding. Three girls of reproductive age must prove their humanity in an annual rite of passage known as The Trial of the Trolls. To pass, they must awaken to their human nature and live by the family’s core values of Loyalty, Courage and Love while living virtually as a real live Troll in their natural environment. If they can live in direct opposition to their life as a Troll, they can inherit the many privileges and riches of life as a family member beyond the Trial. If they can’t, they’ll be recycled for raw materials in the flames of the The Forge.
What these girls must endure to overcome The Trial of the Trolls will shock you.

Stay tuned to my Instagram, Twitter and Facebook profiles to stay up to date on the latest Trial of the Trolls info. In the coming weeks, I’ll be releasing the cover as well as more process art and promotional materials.

Black Socialists in America On Creativity in Late Capitalism

Does anyone even know why I write this blog!? I’m not writing to signal boost my fandom of ANYTHING. I’m not a fan first, but an artist, and I’ve been spending my whole life creating art through various media. What was consistent throughout all those years and projects was that I felt I had to say something. The whole point of it was to communicate. If you see changes in our world that signal deterioration, do you (as a creative) do everything within your power to adapt to these conditions, or do you use your powerful means of communication to expose the rot? If they lack the courage to buck trends in their art, what kinds of heroism do you think they’ll describe in their stories? Too many ‘creative’ people embrace these conditions in exchange for the material benefits of money. That is why the people that rise in this system are usually emblematic of the system’s failings.

This morning I had the good fortune of encountering this tweet by The Black Socialists In America.

How many of you artists/creatives out there have been wondering how/why it seems as though the quality of art and design with money behind it (in the mainstream) has lessened considerably over the years (saturation aside)?

Ever hear of Marx’s “base and superstructure” theory? 😏 pic.twitter.com/uOfMSFAyUV

— Black Socialists in America (@BlackSocialists) January 31, 2019

If you read through the entire thread, you’ll find a very thorough and concise description how the corporate golden umbilical cord for culture only creates stillborn ‘art’. The corporate patron is too risk-averse to allow any uncomfortable or challenging thought to enter into anything they are paying for. It’s not unusual that a patron of the arts has a say in what it is they are patronizing…in fact it’s normal. But when that patron is part of a larger corporate cultural complex that is inherently oppositioned to freedom and community building, they can limit the sorts of messaging that gets into the culture. The art coming out of this corporate system is always going to have messaging within it that actually does the opposite of what it purports.

Real art brings people together by showing that the concerns affecting them are felt by many; that we have more in common with each other than we don’t. Because corporations benefit from a divided and atomized society (better consumers, lower wages), the messaging within corporate-sponsored ‘art’ is actually delivering the message that you are above society/humanity. The best intentions of average folks towards each other get misdirected into Cancel Culture and Identity Politics that only increase the divide, and are fascistic in their dogmatic approach to people. When artists consume the culture produced from this system and draw inspiration only from it, they subtly learn the sorts of things that will exclude them from a book deal or gallery show. Those things just don’t get tackled in their ‘art’. The thing our soul craves from Art is absent. This probably explains how publishers are unable to sustain new comics series much beyond 5 issues. The people are not being given what they need.

To be an artist isn’t just to have some technical ability. If you are going to be a communicator under the umbrella of Art, you need to accept the responsibility that goes along with that. The true artist strives to be true to themself and listen to what their humanity needs in this world now. Once the artist understands the needs of their consciousness, they can then make Art to heal those needs in others unable to make art across the globe. It brings people together and makes anyone who shares this culture feel closer to their humanity and each other.

This is why I rant about Alan Moore, Frank Miller and others about their creative process: because their ‘formula’ for creating art is the only way through this. If people continue to live in a world devoid of empowering messaging, what kind of world do you think we are creating? Are you happy with the world as it is? No? Our silence and neglect of one of humanity’s greatest impulses has allowed our culture to be divorced from real human nature. What’s going to help the future understand their world? More Ghostbusters reboots? The art or comics that we are still celebrating 40 years after their creation are the product of real artists talking about their reality then. They are from a time when corporations saw commercial benefits of these stories outweigh the risk of including the messaging people needed. Now they often try to sell us on nostalgia but this time without the original context of the socio-economic conditions that inspired Ghostbusters. Meaningless ensues.

As a reader, if you find yourself dissatisfied or uninterested after 5 issues, it’s probably because whatever you are reading isn’t giving you what you bought it for; something that makes you feel less alone and less empowered to face reality. Something new that speaks to NOW. We all get so easily seduced by the promise of each new story’s novel premise but we realize it’s just trying to recreate the commercial success of something else, after we naturally lose interest. This is the deadening effect of editors and publishers unable/unwilling to take the risks needed to find something that really connects with people. Instead they prefer short-term profits and books whose shelf and mental life is no more than 2 weeks. How else are they going to keep you buying this shit?

I’ll pass on this. I’m holding out for “Action Hero”

The stagnating sales of comics is the message to corporate publishers that the stories are dead on arrival. Your hard earned dollars are worth too much to throw away on corporate comics/art that will never give you what you need.

Super Tuesday! Batman Vs. Superman

Welcome to the very first Super Tuesday post! From now on Tuesday's on Joe Infurnari.com are the domain of the superheroic! To kick things off I did this Batman Vs. Superman sketch. I particularly like pitting these two against each other because it's not only an occasion for some amazing fireworks, it's also symbolic of the dance of two opposing worldviews. Batman has come to stand for the world as it is (warts and all) where Superman reflects what the world could be (Paradise). I think we all have to juggle these two impulses in various ways so I think that's why these two seem like they could forever grapple with no clear winner.

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Dark Knight 3: The Master Race Cover

Bleeding Cool revealed 68 covers for the upcoming release of Dark Knight 3: The Master Race by Frank Miller, Brian Azzarello, Andy Kubert and Klaus Janson yesterday and my takeaway from all that amazing art was, "I want to do one!" Here it is! I tried to make a nod to the previous two Dark Knight covers as well as put my own spin on it.

Although my cover is completely unofficial it is cover #69. :)

Yoda's coming to NYCC 2015

Here's another sample sketch I'll have at NYCC 2015. Like all the others, this one's 9"x12" pencil and ink on bristol board. Stay tooned for the whole roster and price list.

Batman!

In preparation for NYCC 2015, I've created some sketches to have on hand. Most of them are already available to preview here, but I recently added this Batman drawing! All sketches are 9"x12" Pencil and ink on bristol board. Stay tooned as I'll be posting about prices etc. leading up to the convention.

Warmup Sketches: March 31-April 4

This week I started a new project. Every day or as often as possible, I will post up warmup sketches and doodles to my Tumblr. Already this week, I posted up three images from my sketchbook. They are Batman, Captain America and of course, DOOP! Enjoy and see you next week!