We’ve been teasing these pages for awhile now, but my creative team and I are finally ready to share all six preview pages for Gamer Girl & Vixen! These pages were written and drawn last Fall when we were trying to pitch to comic book publishers. That didn’t work out, so we’re forging ahead with self-publishing plans and a Kickstarter this Spring. The pages are going to be re-drawn, re-lettered, and even a little re-written, so what you see here is no longer the finished product — but it’s still a nice taste of what Gamer Girl & Vixen is going to be!

These preview pages are co-written by myself and Kristi McDowell, with art and lettering by Gemma Moody. Here’s the first page, which takes place in the middle of the first issue, with Gamer Girl and Vixen on the run from security.

Join me after the jump to see the rest of the preview! Some of these pages I’ve posted before, and some are brand new! I hope you enjoy. Anybody interested in following along on our progress and helping out with the Kickstarter can keep their eyes peeled to my blog. We’re currently in production on issue #1, and I should have some final project preview pages in the near future. So stay tuned.

We are also only 3 people away from reaching 100 likes on our Facebook page! So anyone who’d like to pop on over there and give us a thumbs up, please do! I’m pretty sure we get some kind of special prize when we reach 100 likes. At the very least, we’re all feel really warm and fuzzy.

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Gamer Girl & Vixen is a story about love and shenanigans. It’s a story about finding someone to love through all the obstacles that both we and the world put in our way — especially for same sex couples, for whom those obstacles are more vast and obtrusive than anyone else might realize. But those obstacles can be overcome no matter who we are or who we love. Whether it’s a disapproving parent or a misinterpreted text, women like Bianca Crowley and Liz Jaczynski can still be with one another.

When they’re not busy committing super-crime, of course.

All the crime!

Gamer Girl & Vixen is a supervillain lesbian love story. It’s about two costumed criminals whose crime spree turns to romance — and they just happen to both be women. It’s got burglaries, betrayal and superhero battles, but it’s also got a lot of love and tenderness.

The goal behind Gamer Girl & Vixen is to tell a fun and exciting comic book story — one that also just happens to be about not only women, but gay women. Because, quite simply, there aren’t enough of these types of stories out there, even in superhero comics. There is a strong movement in the comics community these days to feature more comics about women, to acknowledge that women and girls read and love comics. We whole-heartedly agree, and we want to get our comic in the hands of all kinds of readers.

That’s why we’re on the Road to Kickstarter later this Spring. I’ve written a lot about the comics making process on my blog, and now it’s about time that everyone got a better look at our characters and story!

Vixen

Name: Bianca Crowley

Age: 18

About: Bianca Crowley is gay, but it’s a secret. Don’t tell her boyfriend. And definitely don’t tell her mother. Mommy dearest doesn’t approve, and Bianca has locked herself in the closet since high school. Now in college, she’s a cheerleader, the darling of her sorority and is dating a track star. She’s living the perfect life, just like her mother always wanted.

But Bianca’s got another secret: she likes to steal stuff. Her father used to be a notorious thief, and her mother has a lot of rich friends. So most of Bianca’s late nights involve dressing in black and committing a little felony burglary. It’s her own little rebellion.

Bianca is about to embark on her biggest heist to date, and whether she realizes it or not, she could use a helping hand.

Gamer Girl

Name: Elizabeth “Liz” Jaczynski

Age: 20

About: Liz Jaczynski is an out and proud lesbian, an engineering student and a self-proclaimed video game fanatic. She resents the fact that Sega lost the original video game war, has started petitions to have a female protagonist in the next GTA, and is holding out hopes for an Angry Birds/My Little Pony crossover. She’s also a budding superhero with dreams of glory.

When she was younger, Liz’s dad was a bit of a con man, and she used to help out on jobs. But when he was killed in a grift gone wrong, Liz decided she had to do better and succeed beyond his wildest dreams. Liz designed a set of gauntlets capable of producing hard-light hologram constructs, programmable for whatever sort of weapons or equipment she might need. That she programmed in a bunch of video game weaponry is just how she rolls.

Now as Gamer Girl, Liz is ready to achieve the glory she was always destined for — it just might not be the destiny she was expecting.

Bianca and Liz are our two main characters, but the story isn’t just about them. Join me after the jump to meet the supporting players of Gamer Girl & Vixen, and learn a bit more about the story’s premise.

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Good news, everybody! This week, co-writer Kristi McDowell and I will have completed the first draft of our 100 (or so) page graphic novel for Gamer Girl & Vixen. We’d originally planned the story as a 6-issue mini-series, but minds changed, ideas shifted, and now we’re going to have it all in one big, wonderful collection. This tpb is going to sit proudly on my shelf — and hopefully yours too — for the rest of my life, a testament to kicking butt, doing good work and making your dreams come true.

So I thought this week I’d share with you all a little bit about the writing process.

The fan art that won Gemma Moody the job!

I can’t exactly post the entire script on my blog, that would give everything away! But I think I can share a page or two, along with the accompanying art, so you can see how we go from the written word to the drawn picture. It’s a neat process, and I’ve definitely learned so much about making comics just from doing it myself.

So join me after the jump to get a crash course in scripting Gamer Girl & Vixen!

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As I mentioned last week, the first issue/chapter of my comic, Gamer Girl & Vixen, is in full production. That means my artist, the lovely and talented Gemma Moody, is hard and work cranking out actual drawn pages of a script I co-wrote. I don’t know how often I’ve talked about this on my blog, but I’ve always wanted to be a writer. I can still remember writing fan fiction on my family’s archaic laptop back in the day, cranking out stories that I never knew if anybody would read. But that was years ago, and I haven’t written very much in the intervening years.

So this week, I want to tell you all something: get out there and write! If it’s your dream to be a writer, whether it’s comic books or movie screenplays or young adult novels, stop putting it off and just write it! I put it off for the longest time. More than a decade of my life has been spent not-writing. Last year, my friend Kristi McDowell helped me get off my butt and get writing, and we’re weeks away from launching out Kickstarter to actually publish my own graphic novel. It’s really happening and it feels great!

Seriously, I never knew how amazing it would feel to see pages of my comic come in from my artist. It’s a giddy excitement that more than makes all the work worth it. Check out this collage I put together of some of the great panels she’s sketched so far.

None of these are in order, by the way.

Just seeing my ideas come to life like that is mind-blowing. It’s such an exciting feeling. It helps, of course, that Moody is awesome, but I would imagine seeing any artist whip up my ideas would be great.

So consider this my PSA: Get out there and write. I know a lot of my readers are also comic book fans, and I’m sure plenty of you want to write your own comics. I’m here to tell you that it’s easy, it feels great, and you shouldn’t be putting it off anymore. And if you want any advice, I’m here. I’ll be retelling some more stories about my project in the weeks to come. I’m thinking next week I might be able to share some penciled pages, maybe even some script. We’ll see. Stay tuned.

And as always, please like us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter or tumble us on Tumblr. We gotta get the word out!

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