I may have explained here once that the name for this blog-slash-professional handle came from a short-lived effort at turning myself into a better artist. I called myself the “ersatz artist” and set out to blog on a series of self-imposed art lessons. It flopped, as most any effort at publicly exposed self-education is bound to do, but the effort resulted in (a) this effort herein that you are currently reading, and (b) the lingering feeling that I should probably work on that art-and-drawing stuff anyway. It hung there for a while, stewing in my big mental crock-pot as ideas occasionally do, and about a month ago emerged in a flash of congealed insight as I was walking the dog. Ten strips — five practice and five story — later I’ve opted to just today step-up the publicity campaign for the results of that effort: a fledgling effort at webcomics I’ve called (after a half dozen mis-naming snafus) mezzaverse beta. And with mostly all of Chapter One in the hopper, you won’t be left hanging if you head on over to http://mezzaverse.ersatzowl.com/ and start reading.

What is the mezzaverse?

While that’s not exactly an easy thing to explain — nor do I want to give too much away — for those less inclined to go blindly reading a novice attempt at webcartoonery I’ll give you two assumptions you must make to enter this particular narrative:

1) Assume that the world in which we live is nothing much more than a vast piece of computer software and data, and;

2) Assume that since this software must execute on some kind of hardware, that somewhere outside the scope of our perception lies a vast, possibly infinite, jumble of circuits, chips, resistors, wires, and connectors.

Now, populate that jumble of circuitry with characters and a quasi-philosophical storyline and you have the foundation for a weird — and potentially wonderful — graphic narrative filled with crisp and surreal imagery provided by yours truly.

What is the grand plan?

My humble first steps on this project are going to be not much more than attempting to stumble my way through some (admittedly) formulaic stories that set the stage, establish characters, and let me both practice my drawing-slash-vector-image-puppetry, hopefully building up an ever-more extensive library of poses and models as I weekly (for sure on Saturdays, and occasionally when I’m working ahead, on Wednesdays) release a new strip to an ever-growing audience. At least, that’s how it’s lingering in my head right now.

While I do plan on some behind-the-scenes “ersatz artist” insights for each strip/panel, most of the discussion of the process I’ll be reserving for this blog. So… share and enjoy, and I’m sure I’ll have more to write later.