A word about Paraptoma, if you will

My new series of short comics, Paraptoma, has been running for a few weeks now and has developed into what I think that it should be. Paraptoma is another one of the root words for biblical sin, like its predecessor Parakoe (more on that in a moment), this time essentially meaning “falling where one should have stood”. I’m using it as a way to explore colour and composition, and the terror of improvisation. It’s like broken bits of poetry on a midnight TV screen. I’m enjoying it so far and liking the results. I hope you will too.

Why start a new story now, especially with Parakoe only a third of the way through? Well, I’ve not given up on Parakoe, and I’m still producing pages, but it wasn’t something that worked on the site. I think if the pages had been self contained units, or there had been more action, it might have worked better, but it’s essentially a story about walking up and down stairs a few times. The reader needs more to read in a chunk for that sort of story to work. I also wanted to get more out into the world than one page a week, hence the shift. It felt like the right thing to do.

So, Paraptoma for the time being on the site and over on the Tumblr, but I’ll still be working on Parakoe in order to get the chapters in great shape. Keep an eye on the Instagram feed for in progress pictures to get a taste of where the story is going.