THE CRYPT

Welcome to "THE COMIC CRYPT.'  This is a weekly feature of the website where we dig up old comics that were probably better off left dead and buried. These are all old unpublished comics that died for reason. These are not "good" comics. They are experiments mostly from my student days. The art is less than stellar and the writing is clunky at best. They are the work of a younger artist still trying to figure out how the comics medium works. Embarrassing as some of these comics may be, I still find them somewhat amusing. I do believe I was at least trying to make something worthwhile with each of these attempts. And that has to be worth something.

JACK B. NIMBLE P.I.

this was my first attempt at a long-form comic. The concept of a nursery rhyme private investigator is a little hackneyed. I thought it was a completely original idea when I conceived it but I have since seen it done many times. And often done much better. Neil Gaiman wrote a short story called "The Case of Four and Twenty Blackbirds" that's quite good. Frank Cammuso did a wonderful graphic novel called "Max Hamm Fairy Tale Detective." But my all-time favorite Humpty Dumpty Murder Mystery is probably Jasper Fforde's novel "The Big Over Easy." 

Jack B. Nimble was written to be a 4-Issue comic book miniseries. I drew the entire first 24-page issue. Later, I converted the first 8 pages into the webcomic you see below. The strict 4x3 grid layout was an interesting experiment, inspired by Bill Sienkiewicz's work on "Stray Toasters."