Split/Betty

OK, so obviously there has been a lot of brainstorming going on for a new Rival Comic idea.  I never got an email back from Troy Duffy regarding the fan comic that I came up with a few days back, so I don't know if Rival will be continuing with that project, which is OK because in a brainstorming session last night with Rival writer M. Harris a new story idea has emerged.

The new story is called Split/Betty.  It's a conspiracy shoot 'em up about pharmaceutical companies, corrupt cops, and a psychotic, diseased, drug-addicted, vengeance seeking wife named Liz.  It takes place in Philadelphia a couple of years after the mayor started a drug crackdown similar to Juliani or Caldaran.  It's been highly successful in the two years that it's been imposed and nearly cleared the Philli streets of drugs, dealers and users, but it also basically militarized the police force and left the market wide open to new substances.  When a high profile researcher for an up-and-coming Philli based Pharmaceutical company  comes up missing right before his breakthrough drug gets an FDA approval and is distributed worldwide, the conspiracy story starts...and so does his wives violent vengeful rampage!  Keep reading this blog for details.  M. Harris will be writing the script and I will be doing the artwork...if we green light it at Rival, you will be able to follow the project at www.rival-comics.com!

Conceptualizing Murphy's Law

As you may know, I make webcomics for my online studio Rival Comics.  We at Rival have experienced a bit of a hiatus recently due to many things happening in my life that allowed me to become distracted and lose much needed motivation.  Well, I may have gained a motivation boost this morning due to an idea that I feel that I need to pursue.  You see, I've wanted to make a fan comic for Rival for quite some time, thinking that it may be fun to explore an already established property.  This would also be a fun way to reunite several Rival members that have moved away as the collaborative and writing process would be much easier to do using characters that we already know and love.  Original story lines have been very problematic for this reason and have become one creator ordeals.  Anyway, I've been on a huge Boondock Saints kick recently as I've always been a huge fan of the original film and recently watched the sequel several times.  The idea that hit me this morning was for a fan comic based on that franchise.

As I was taking my daily shower at a quarter after five a.m., I was hit with the idea for a comic called "Murphy's Law", which would center around my favorite of the two brothers from the Boondock Saints films.  I don't have the entire story fleshed out by any means, but I would like to pick up where the second film left off and have the two brothers sprung from the Hoag.  After which they begin doing what they do best by cleaning up remaining members of the Yakaveta family and going after those loyal to the Old Man.  The brothers would be a little more vengeful this time around with the loss of their father, but still maintaining the reasons they starting this killing spree in the first place.  But then, during their first large planned killing of the story, something is going to go horribly wrong and Conner is going to get shot the fuck up and captured by the enemy.  After which, Murphy is going to lose sight of all original reasons and ideals as he seeks to find his brother, if he's even alive (which he presumably is not), and avenge him if need be.  The line between the righteous and vengeance will become blurry and Murphy will inevitably cross the line several times during the story as I intend on upping the amount of bloodshed and gratuitous violence.

I plan on some fun stuff happening during the story such as the loss of support from the two remaining Boston detectives, and the razing of McGinty's bar by the Italian mob, but I don't want to stray too far from what is already established as I would like the comic to still make since if/when a new Boondock film is released.  To try to get this project off to the right start, I contacted Troy Duffy today asking for support or blessing on the project and am awaiting a reply.  Most people don't go to these lengths before starting a fan comic, but I want to do the story justice.  I am also seeking help, as I do not plan on tackling this project by myself, so I encourage all my fellow webcomic folks and Boondock Saints fans to contact me so we can build a team and write one hell of a story in the series.  I plan on doing the artwork myself, but am willing to take help in that department as well.  If anyone is interested in helping bring this project to life, contact me at stevensevert@rival-comics.com.  Since this blog is a personal blog where I chronicle whatever the hell I feel like, I will follow the process here, then transfer bits and pieces to the Rival site if the project gets a green light.  I will let you all know what happens if or when Troy Duffy writes me back!  Stay tuned!!

Finally got my dad to pull the trigger.

Well, I finally got my old man to go out to the range with me yesterday.  It was a blast for both of us.  I had been trying to get him out there to shoot for a very, VERY long time.  I was going yesterday, as I usually do when the weather warrants, and decided to give him a call before I left.  Naturally he was pretty busy, but he sounded interested and said he'd try to stop by.  I didn't know for sure if he was going to make it so I went ahead and split for the range to get some shooting in regardless.  After I was there a short while he called back and said that he was heading out to shoot with me.  Awesome.  In this picture you can see my dad shooting my Bushmaster M4.  I think he had a lot of fun with that and he did pretty decent at 100 yards.

I was still doing some adjusting for windage, but he managed to put several .223 holes in the red center of the target at 100 yards.  While it's always fun to shoot at 100 yards, it's becoming less impressive all the time.  I have a pretty cheap NcStar scope on that bad boy and can bulls-eye stuff at 100 yards all day long.  I think that I will soon be investing in a better scope for the rifle and getting my membership at the gun range in St. Marys, OH, which has a 300 yard range.  That could be tons-o-fun!

Here he is trying out my GSG5 .22LR.  I think he had a lot of fun with this as he's not an experienced shooter and it's very easy to handle.  This was the first time I brought the GSG out after adding the red dot scope.  I got to sight it in yesterday and it performed pretty well, which was surprising since I picked it up for a little over 20 bucks at MC Sports last week.  I had to wait to get it sighted in though because, after buying the red dot, I still had to order a rail to mount it to.  I was pretty stoked when it came in the other day.

Here's some of the damage my dad managed to do with the GSG.  Some of those holes were also 9mm that I put through it before he got there, and a couple of the 22 holes were from sighting it in.  The shots through this dude's head were all the old man.  After checking the target he was wondering if I felt that he did pretty well or not...I simply exclaimed "That's one dead insurgent!"

I also had him do some shooting with my new AK74, 5.45x39mm, which I think he also enjoyed pretty well.  He had already fired several rounds through the Bushmaster at this point, but seemed a little worried about the power of this rifle.  After the first shot with it's beautiful, non-existent recoil I think he was reassured and continued firing with ease.

He did quite a bit of firing at 15 and 25 yards with the rifle and did as well as could be expected.  In my experience with this rifle since I bought it last week, it isn't the most accurate thing in the world anyway.  I keep thinking about adding a scope or something, but I want to keep the classic military look and feel.  That's what the American rifles are for anyway.  I think instead, I will suffer the accuracy for the pure enjoyment of shooting and owning the rifle, and will continue buying parts to keep it classic.  I am currently looking for a wood pistol grip that will match the stock and handguard that I added shortly after buying the rifle.

The last weapon I had him try out was my Bersa Thunder 9mm.  My father is currently in the market for a pistol, and is seriously considering a 9mm so I figured this would be a good opportunity to get some experience with one.  He did pretty well with this too, but I think that the recoil and lack of accuracy surprised him quite a bit, especially after firing all those rifles.  After a couple of magazines he seemed to become more comfortable with a pistol and was really having fun with it...It's only a matter of time (a very short matter of time) until he's a gun owner himself.

The gun that he's looking at purchasing at the moment is a Taurus PT92 9mm, which is considerably different from my Bersa, but it should give him a decent idea of what kind of accuracy and recoil to expect from the 9mm.  Now I'm just waiting to see if he picks it up and continues taking trips to the range with me in the future, which would be great because I had a blast!

A day at the range.

So, with the weather getting warmer, my trigger finger has started to itch rather uncontrollably.  I planned on scratching the itch this weekend since I wouldn't be working, but then I heard the rain was supposed to start up again over the weekend..blah.  I pulled out my trusty Blackberry which told me that Thursday was going to be 64 degrees and sunny all day...awesome.  I took a vacation day and headed out the range with my GSG5 (left), my Bushmaster M4 (mid-left), my new Romanian Arms AK74 (mid-right), my Bersa Thunder .380 (right), and my Bersa Thunder 9mm (out of frame on right).

While I was there I met this cool guy named Lester (pictured above).  He was a talkative chap who distracted me from shooting at first, but I eventually warmed up to the fella as he had plenty of interesting stories to tell about shootin' Nazis with a Browning BAR back in the day.  He was also cool because he likes to pick up used clay birds off of the front part of the range where people trap shoot, and he gave me a big ol' bag of 'em to shoot up, which is always a good time.  I was kind of disappointed at first, though, because I went out to do some serious comparison shooting between my AK and my M4, but my ammo that I ordered for the AK hasn't come in yet and I only had 3/4 of a box of Wolf FMJ 5.45 stuff to go through, plus my GSG seemed to be out performing everything open sights up to fifty yards (after which my M4 took the lead).

Now here's where I started to really have some fun.  I was starting to run out of ammo and was getting close to being done shooting, as most of my targets were full of holes and I was out of Monster energy drink cans that previously littered the passenger side of my car.  I still had plenty of clay birds though and good ol' Lester challenged me to pick them off the hundred yard line.  I really didn't know if I was going to hit anything because my scope was sighted in at 75 yards and I really didn't want to take the time to adjust since I was about to go home.

So I didn't adjust.  I just hung five of those suckers up and started shooting.  To my surprise, every one of those cheap-ass PMC FMJ .223 rounds connected with the spent clay birds and they all shattered beautifully in my scope view.  Thinking it was blind luck, since it was such a beautiful, windless day, I ran back to the hundred yard line and hung up five more, then ran back to my gun and kept on shooting.  Same as before, each round connected sending lovely, blaze-orange shards spiraling everywhere.  That may have been the most satisfying part of this trip to the range.  The GSG may be fun as hell, but blasting those things effortlessly at 100 yards is almost like busting a nut.  Can't wait to get my ammo in for the AK though, because I think it will be shit tons of fun too.

Speaking of the new AK, when I returned home from the range, there was a package waiting for me.  Sweet!  My new wood stock, hand guard, and new pistol grip came in.  As if shooting wasn't already a worthy use of 8 vacation hours, now I get to tear a gun apart and add some custom flare.  What's great is, they showed up in great condition, which really cut out my expected workload of sanding and refinishing.  I just popped out of the box, sanded the edges a bit for a good fit, and popped right on.  Below are some before and after pictures.  I think it looks a hell of a lot better with the classic military furniture, don't you?

The top picture is my new AK74 as it was when I bought it with a Thompson style black handguard and black, US stamped polymer pistol grip and stock.

This is a picture after I removed that junk and added my new, classic Soviet military wood stock and handguard, and replaced the black plastic pistol grip for a brown one.  Awesome.

New personal blog.

Hello, if you are reading this then you probably already know who I am from my work at www.rival-comics.com, and you may be wondering why if I pay for hosting and run a somewhat successful website why I would be creating a free blog here. The answer is simple: Rival Comics just doesn't seem like the proper venue to host a personal blog, and I don't feel like paying to register a separate domain from my hosting service to do it. This seemed like the best alternative, plus I already know a number of people who are members here, and this makes it easy to follow their blogs as well.

The aim of this blog is completely different than that of Rival Comics. While Rival is my professional web presence, this is a personal one where I will talk about...whatever the hell I feel like. I'll rant at times or share pictures of my family, or maybe I'll talk about my work or work at Rival that I don't feel like sharing on it's official site. This will be my site to just have some fun with...and it's free, so I don't really have to care about an update schedule and such. I'll also put up the embedded player from the Rival Radio podcast that M. Adrein Harris and I do for Rival, so you can listen to the podcast here or from the Rival site. Well, that's all for now, hope you all enjoy my personal blog!