Jon Cairns
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Alpha Flag: Alpha - PDF Download
🕑 Added 2016-12-20 16:25:00 +0000 UTC And finally the last one! The beginning.2010 was a year of change for me. I'd finished college in 2008 while working an office PR job alongside it. With my studio art degree in my hand, I was kind of thrown out into the chaotic economic landscape of the Great Recession. I clung to the PR job because I had no idea how to even start my career in comics. Or art, or whatever. I was living with my ever-supportive mother in Southern California while trying to wade my way through the post partum life of finishing school.
So I ended up sticking with the PR job all through 2009, and not getting any comics drawn. I was really languishing in an environment that wasn't helping me escape the gravity of settling. All I was doing was saving money so I could get the hell out of Dodge. I rallied all of my friends for editing advice and kinkos courage, banged out a concept and an outline for a new series I'd pitch to a bunch of companies before moving to a different state to try to escape the ennui that was crushing me. That series was Alpha Flag.
So in January 2010 I found myself in Tacoma, Washington with a handful of rejection notices for my story. Too long, untested talent, etc. In retrospect they were very right about its marketability. That particular element of the comic has long been a thorn in my side. But I figured I wouldn't improve my comics skills if I weren't actively producing comics, so I embarked on Alpha Flag pages anyway. Even if I couldn't sell, I knew it would find some semblance of an audience on the internet (hey guys! Thanks for the support all of the years. You keep us going!).
So here we are with the first pages. Pages 1-8 were drawn in 2010 before the comic launched, and the remaining four of the chapter after we launched in January 2011. Knowing that, you can probably see the seam between pages 8 and 9 where I had spent the intervening time practicing. Maybe not. It used to be a lot more obvious to me, but now that it's so far in the rearview mirror, it's not so stark anymore.
In these pages I was still terrified of perspective, couldn't see the most obvious proportion mistakes and had very little consistency in the faces I drew, but there's still something to these pages. I'm very glad things turned out the way they did. Despite all of the setbacks I faced in that period, that Alpha Flag still emerged from it. Makes it seem all very worthwhile.
