From the SLG Livejournal, Jennifer de Guzman writes -

Nowheresville, USA has a review of The Clarence Principle, giving the new graphic novel by Fehed Said and Shari Chankhamma three and a half stars: “It’s rare that I come to the end of a book (comic or otherwise) and just lose my breath from being astounded. I sat there dumb-founded. It was a good sort of feeling - to not really know what to think. I think it’s been a long time since I was surprised.”

Meanwhile, at SLG Art Director Scott Saavedra’s blog, he gives you a look behind the scenes at the process behind the design of the cover of The Clarence Principle. Writes Scott, “Sure, this a completely insane, backward way to produce a cover design but we’re all crazy here. That’s just how it is.”

Yep.

The image of Clarence’s face that was on the original cover is now on the spine. We don’t like to waste art here.

End of SLG Post.

In other news, Shari is still working her butt off on our upcoming 44 pager, ‘The Forgotten Incident of San Sabian’. She’s a trooper that one. Really, she’s been losing out on a lot of sleep and working non-stop all day everyday to get this done by the deadline, and she’s not cutting any corners either! Click on it for a larger more detailed image:

Shari has been getting to grips with the technical side of things in Manga studio. Our latest comic has a lot of scenery in it of buildings in decay. They’re not easy buildings to render either. There’s a lot of details going into them. Also, the perspective and angles are very important in this piece and thanks to Manga Studio’s features, as you see in the picture below, you have the ability to draw guidelines to aid in this.

Other tests one can try in Manga studio is to import photos. It’s great as a guideline for checking to see how to represent certain actions in your comic. Shari did a bunch of tests with this one till she settled on this particular angle. The attention to detail that’s gone into this comic even out does a lot of the scenes in Clarence. I just wanted to show how technical it all was ^^

Sometimes, I forget the world is a big place full of like-minded people from all kinds of regions. How many of us have sat down to consider who out there reads our work? Did anyone, for one second, think of countries like Africa? Jordan? India maybe? Are we all that naive as to think, that simply because a country isn’t Western, European or from the Orient, that nobody else reads Comics, let alone Manga?

Shari and I had received an email the other day from a Magazine that ran a feature on Best New Manga back in April:

I came across your work in the Mammoth Book of Best New Manga, and
simply loved it.

I’m writing from FIRST CITY, an independent arts and culture magazine
based in Delhi, India, that engages with changing thoughts and evolving
perceptions, and connects with the energy of the city. The variety of
interests and concerns that the magazine explores is reflected in the
extensive in-depth, monthly features on writers, artists, filmmakers,
thinkers, actors, dancers, musicians, activists, from India and
across the world.

They’re running a feature about artists they admire from both India and abroad and had asked us for an interview and some artwork to be included in this feature for their June issue. The questions they’d sent were very good. They really made us stop and think. For now though, I’m only going to share the BNM review from April:

Fehed Said (Palestine - UK) and Shari Chankhamma (Thailand) collaborate on the spell-binding (way past bedtime) The Healing, the story of a half-boy on his journey to completion, a Master pushing him, a wish-fulfilling angel waiting to be rescued, and a climax that is definitely going to be in the next Tarantino film.
# read full review

I’ll post up the interview excerpts once the Magazine is out in June.

Shari and I will be attending Comic-Con International in San Diego this summer. Mostly going there for kicks, but we’re also helping promote our book at the SLG Booth. For a complete list of Comic-Con attendees, see the Conventions and Signings page of the SLG website.

Kelsie keeps saying we need a gimmick to be remembered. I shall be the guy with the baby monkey on his head.

You may not remember my face, but you WILL remember the monkey!!

Rack Raids gives The Clarence Principle “Three and a half out of five Vikings”.

Suicide, as we know it in North American culture, is a dark, disturbing, and wholly selfish act, one derived from pain, often done to deliver more pain, and sometimes done to relieve it. It’s an act that’s not really very easy to make light of, and perhaps even more of a challenge to adapt into a “down the rabbit’s hole” type adventure. Yet, that’s what writer Fehed Said and Shari Chankhamma have attempted to do with their original graphic novel, The Clarence Principle, which explores a purgatory or restless wandering that resembles a landscape plucked from the Sandman’s Dreaming merged with the backdrop of a Tim Burton animated movie.
# read full review

I liked reading this review.