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Recommended book:
The Art of Osamu Tezuka: God of Manga

Someone tweeted a link to this book a while ago. It was cheaper then (under $10 -- right now Amazon's selling it for $15). As you have picked up from reading the last 15 or so pages of Broken Trident, I'm not the most talented artist in the world. I'm doing this because I enjoy it and have a story I want to share with you, readers.

So I thought I'd also share this inspiring book with you as well. It's a beautifully designed book, but even better it presents a lot of Tezuka's artwork from his entire career.

Another book that inspires me, although it's not as cheap, is The Art of Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind: Watercolor Impressions (how's THAT for a title?). Hayao Miyazaki is one of my favorite filmmakers. Every movie he touches is something special.

And every movie he touches has gotten some BEAUTIFUL art books. This Art of Nausicaä book is my favorite. I can just stare at these watercolours. I don't have the other "Art of ___" books, but I've looked at them on the shelf at Borders. They're all worth your time.

These are just two people who have inspired me. What about you? What inspires you? Who inspires you?

~ Ben

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Once more, apologies for the LONG time between posts. But, you know, life happens.

Thins like volunteering at a camp for a couple weeks, going to a retailer show, writing some pretty time intensive projects. But Broken Trident, for me, is a labor of love. And as such, it's something I'm going to be doing as long as I can and whenever I can. I've got a lot of story to tell.

~ Ben

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There! Now we've got something happening! No more swimming around chasing fish . . . now we're going to be swimming around underground!

Hm.

So I do apologize for the lack of posts. Interestingly, I was able to cheat because there have been four Wednesdays since I posted last and four pages I finished so if someone didn't read this comment and was just looking at my archives they'd find an uninterrupted stretch of pages here. Of course, you, my fine readers, know better.

In some ways, I almost like posting (and reading) small chunks like this, instead of a page a week. What do you think? It's one of the unanswered questions of comics on the web, I guess.

In the meantime, here's what you can look forward to . . . a return of an old friend, the introduction of a new character, and the end of the prologue, which will lead into something completely different.

Finally, thanks for your support, those of you who actually take the time to read my little webcomic. I know that art is in the eye of the beholder (and some beholders will be quick to say this is not art), but art is also an expression of the artist's "soul". I'm telling this story because it's a story I want to tell, and without artists who are interested in working with me this is my only way of getting this story out there. But that makes it a little more special to me, I guess, since it is important enough for me to go ahead and do it anyway. (Although some might argue I must not like my story very much to go ahead and do it myself.)

And my kids like it. So, that's probably the most important thing. Right?

Again, if you have any questions or comments, please feel free to use the comments section below. Thanks!

~ Ben

PS -- A sneak peek at an upcoming graphic novel, illustrated by the amazing Tim Baron and scripted by me, called "The Life and Times of Julius Destructus":

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And here we see what is either a brilliant strength in my style or a humbling weakness in my skill.

I keep meaning to build a clay Undinaeif for no other reason than to be able to have an actual physical round-head-with-flat-fin to use for a model.

Ah well.

As usual, I welcome your comments in the comment section below.

Thanks!

~ Ben

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Curious about what a "lollard" is?

I'll reveal it soon. This fine gentle-undinae is the last one . . . but perhaps only for a time.

~ Ben

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That image in the third panel of the last lollard getting up? That's how I've been feeling lately. Just tired and old . . .

Methinks it's time for some exercise. Now the last lollard has an excuse. He IS old. I'm just an overweight geek.

As usual, please comment below if you have a comment or question. I love hearing from you.

~ Ben

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Alas, poor fish with a light hanging on his head, we hardly knew thee . . .

It seems like a silly thing, but I really struggled with what he was going to do with the fish. There were a number of options, but I settled on this because it felt like the most . . . "natural" . . . in a more literal sense. When I envision this world of my little undersea creatures, I envision a world with a natural order. I like to think of it as Avatar . . . with stick figures . . . and not as scientifically feasible. At least the story will be better. It'd be hard for it not to!

Hey-o!

Yeah, I take the easy shots. (And truth be told, I liked Avatar, but I know that I wouldn't like it as much if I watched it again. Unlike Tron: Legacy. Both of those movies have some unique and beautiful visuals, but after I rewatched Tron: Legacy I wanted to watch it again . . .)

Anyway, if you get a chance to stroll over to The Fanboy Tollbooth, our most recent episode is about webcomics! It hasn't been posted as I'm posting these two pages, but it will be soon.

Oh, and in other underwater comic news (this can't possibly be a genre, can it?), check out this bad boy:

Andy Kubert's Aquaman design for the Flashpoint mini-series.

I'm very, very interested in Flashpoint. At one point, I was prepared to buy every issue of the series. Then reality set in and I realized that'd be silly. So I plan to wait until the series is collected in trade paperbacks. But I just may go ahead and buy the Aquaman mini-series. And after Flashpoint, Aquaman gets his own regular series again! I'm tempted to type "woot!" . . . but I won't.

As usual, if you have any comments please feel free to leave them in the comments section below!

~ Ben

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Because this page is LATE . . . and second page will be posted very, very soon. Like within a couple minutes . . .

~ Ben

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The last few weeks have been a bit crazy, which happens. I actually had a bit of fan mail asking me about my missed post. He said:

"You missed an update yesterday. How long can that little guy hold his breath?"

Answer: we'll actually find out later but, Steve, the guy LIVES underwater so I guess the better question is "how long can that little guy hold his water?" and, then again, no . . . that's not a better question at all.

In other news, Geoff Johns is writing the new Aquaman comic! Aquaman is the only DC Comics superhero I have a burning desire to write (although I do have a Batman story I'd like to tell). Of course, considering Peter David, Tad Williams, and now Geoff Johns (just to name a couple) have/are writing Aquaman, something tells me "Ben Avery" isn't on a hot list of writers to make the underwater superhero hot again. I do have my take on the character, though, and I've been trying to figure out a way to do a pastiche of the character in one form or another. (Interesting link: Can Geoff Johns Save Aquaman?)

Aquaman also figures heavily in the new flashpoint DC mega-event . . . something else I'm interested. But I'm assuming I'm going to wait for the trade/trades on that one. Trades look so much better on my shelf.

Well, as usual, if you have any questions or comments, click on the comments link below. I'd love to hear from you. Until next time, "so long, and thanks for all the fish."


~ Ben

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Sorry for missing last week's post. More about that in the following post. To make up, a double post this week. So today . . . he catches the fish! Yay! Something happened!

Next post . . . see what he DOES with it! Well, the beginnings of what he does with it, anyway.

~ Ben

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Will he? Won't he? And if he does, what will he do with it?

Meanwhile, in other news, today I'm performing puppets for the children's video series The Flizbins.

Comic books and puppets. That's my life. Wow. Life rules!

~ Ben

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New Wednesday. New page!

So what makes this fish the prefect fish? We'll find out soon.

I''m starting to regret the whole slow build thing . . . I like this story, and I think this is the best opening for the story . . . but while it's building up to a pay off, I'm thinking for a webcomic it'd be good to have started with a bang. I need to trust my first instinct, I guess.

As usual, I'd love to hear from anyone who is reading.

In the meantime, until next Wednesday, here's another webcomic from a friend of mine. I'm taking a lead from one of my other websites, WebComics.cc, which will not do link exchanging. I don't link to things because people link to me (not that anyone is linking to me) but rather I do so because I think it's worth linking to. So check out my friend Eric Merced's webcomic Ouch!, which is a fun sci-fi comedy comic.

~ Ben

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The Last Lollard continues his . . . whatever he's doing.

In the meantime, I've had two pretty exciting things happen this week. The proofs have started coming in for The Oz/Wonderland Chronicles trade paperback, which will include issues 0-4 as well as short stories with artwork by Hector Sevilla (the artist of the fantasy Lullaby, from Image, which I co-wrote) and Mike S. Miller (the artist of both Hedge Knights, again scripted by me, and co-writer of Lullaby). The publisher of The Oz/Wonderland Chronicles used those two short stories as back-ups in another series, The Oz/Wonderland Chronicles: Jack and Cat Tales, but they expanded a couple scenes from the main series so they were included in this collection. The book is due end of March, but I just may have MY copies next Wednesday. And visitors to C2E2 will be able to buy exclusive copies next weekend (although I will not be there).

The other cool thing was I had a story published in the Graphic Classics book Western Classics. I scripted the adaptation of a Robert E. Howard story, a fun follow up to the story I adapted for Fantasy Classics, which was a H.P. Lovecraft story (Robert E. Howard even made a cameo in the Lovecraft story, as a friend of the narrator -- Lovecraft and Howard being colleagues in real life).

I'll put links to these books below. I'm still trying to figure out advertising and if I plan to use it for this webcomic . . . but for these three books, Amazon really is the easiest way to get them right now.

As usual, to my reader, whoever you might be, I'd love to hear from you . . . drop me a line in the comments below, or through my Twitter (I'm @whisperingloon) or website (benavery.com). Thanks for reading!

~ Ben

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Speaking of aquatic comic characters . . . (and I hesitate to share this link because it's sending you to a place of awesome, incredible, stupendous art that makes me look like a 4th grader . . . a talented 4th grader, but a 4th grader none-the-less) (nothing against 4th graders, incidentally, I was one myself once) (and if I stopped providing links to artwork better than mine, I'd never post links here, would I?) Project Rooftop announced their winners and runners-up (runner-ups) (could I use more parentheses in one sentence?) for their most recent contest: redesigning Aquaman (one of the few mainstream characters I would love to get a chance to write) (managed to get another parenthetical in there!).

The contest itself is not big news, although I really enjoyed looking at the winners. What I was excited about was to see my good friend Mike Maihack was one of the runners-up. Runner-ups. Whatever. And I loved his interpretation of Aquaman.

The contest can be found here: Aquaman Sea Change Winners

Mike Maihack can be found here: his blog or his ultra-awesome webcomic Cleopatra in Spaaace! (which you know is awesome because by spelling "space" with three A's he's telling you exactly what you're getting: Cleopatra, space, and pulp adventure) (and I just got in a few more parentheticals).

If you're enjoying Broken Trident, I'd love to hear from you. I know, three pages -- especially three pages that don't reveal much -- isn't really enough to know if you like something. Still love to hear from you, even if it's to say "three pages -- especially three pages that don't reveal much -- isn't really enough to know if you like something".

~ Ben

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Who is the Lollard?

What is a Lollard?

All will be revealed soon enough. Not soon, per se, but soon enough.

Again, I wish I could post more but I really don't want to lose my backlog of pages. I'm hoping that in this case, slow and steady wins the race. Because everyone knows that the truth is FAST and steady wins the race.

In other news, today this page went live as well as the 8th episode of the geek podcast I do with my friends and colleagues Jeremy Zehr and Steve MacDonald. The title of this episode, "Emo Snorks", comes from my mentioning of Broken Trident on the podcast. (Although, I'm not using either the podcast OR my WebComics.cc website to push Broken Trident until there's more pages.) A friend of mine, though, responded to a Facebook post about Broken Trident. I called Broken Trident "part Fraggle Rock, part Dark Crystal . . . underwater" and my friend said, "Sooo, emo Snorks?" So, shout out to Scott for that one! You can get episode 8 here. Our podcast features some short sketches and discussions and interviews and all sorts of fun stuff.

~ Ben

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So this is the first real page of the comic. I hope you enjoy it . . . 

I'm very tempted to post more than just this page to let some of the story out faster, but I just think at this point it's better to keep those pages in reserve so I don't lose my buffer. So I'm taking the whole "slow burn" webcomic approach, and I hope you'll come along for the ride.

I'm a writer by trade, having been published by Marvel, Image, Zondervan, and a number of small press publishers. I'm doing this comic because I have a story to tell and want to have fun telling it. I've found that when I draw, I not only gain appreciation for artists, but I also gain perspective for my writing. Scripting a comic is, above all else, writing directions for someone else to follow, so when I take up pen and pencil (among other things) it's a chance for me to "walk a mile in the artist's shoes". I relish the opportunities to stretch and grow as a writer. And I recommend to comic book writers: even if you cannot draw, take the time to draw comic pages. You will learn so much from it. So, for Broken Trident, in a lot of ways you're seeing an exercise in writing . . . an exercise in writing that will hopefully allow me to grow as a writer . . . and an exercise in writing that will hopefully be a fun story for readers to follow.

To stay apprised of when new pages get posted, you can follow my Twitter account, Whisperingloon or you can "LIKE" my facebook "fan page". If you have any comments, please leave them below (keeping in mind, this is a family show folks) or drop me a line on Twitter! Thanks!

~ Ben

Prologue Title

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I thought a long time about the title of the prologue, and I think that, in all honesty, this is the best title for it. Not original, but the best. People who know me and my style and tastes will understand that I am a fan of circular storytelling -- storytelling that brings characters around full circle, but changed.

I'm not going to say much more than that regarding what this title means for the plot and characters, but I hope you're willing to take the circular trip with me . . .

~ Ben

Broken Trident

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Hello. Welcome to Broken Trident, a webcomic that is part Aquaman, part Fraggle Rock. Or part Lord of the Rings, part Snorks. Or part sea monkeys, part Smurfs. How about part Creature from the Black Lagoon, part . . .

Do any of those descriptions help? I didn't think so. But this title page pretty much shows you what you're in for:

Broken Trident.

~ Ben