The Illuminated Traveller’s Tarot – launched and funded/

Fellow Traveller – my intention was to post that I had just launched the Kickstarter for this deck, but instead I find myself posting that it had been 175% funded and is almost at its first stretch goal in just 5 hours!

All of the discounted copies are gone, but there’s still time to catch the early backers deal of receiving an extra card – THE SUNRISE – which will be included for free to all backers on March 11th (and In counting that for as long as it is March 11 somewhere in the world)

So head on over to https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/rthomasallwin/the-Illuminated-Traveller’s-Tarot and secure your copy!

The UNDESIRABLEs

The UNDESIRABLEs have been a long time coming, but the Ashcan teaser is finally here – at least in digital form!

It has taken a long time to figure this comic out, plan and plot and world build and try to decide on what I should start with, and it took a pandemic-induced quarantine for it to finally see the light of day.

In figuring this out, I have written twelve short story scripts focusing on various aspects of the UNDESIRABLEs narrative and back story, before I finally settled on doing a scene from part way into the story.

What started as a four page scene quickly grew to six pages, and as I was done with those and writing the intro I opted to add a seventh page instead.

That seems to be the general theme for this project: constant escalation and a refusal to be neatly put in a box. At this point, I don’t know where it will all end up. But at least I’m not going to run out of ideas any time soon.

These pages took far longer than expected, mainly because I went in without a clear style in mind and – again with the theme – so they outgrew my initial intentions. There were also panels I redrew several times, because my plan for perspective or angle didn’t work as I wanted. But I’m quite pleased with the end result.

So, will this teaser be enough to get people interested in the UNDESIRABLEs?

I have no idea.

All I know is there’s something about this story that won’t let me compromise. I have tried to get this out of my head and on to the page in various forms for 15 years, but it has fought me every step of the way – until now.

Things are just getting started, and I know I have one massive project ahead of me – how I will manage to do this all by myself is a mystery to me, but I have confidence that the UNDESIRABLEs won’t let me fail.

Please, head over and check out the pdf – either here on the page or as a free download from my webshop – and if you like it and want to see more, head over to my Patreon page for updates and insighs and more (both free stuff and subscribers only) and see if you want to help me make my decade-long dream of The UNDESIRABLEs a reality!

patreon.com/rthomasallwin

Comic book cover story

I drew a comic book cover today.

In honour of Todd McFarlane hitting the 300 issue milestone with his comic book Spawn, I decided to make the first sketch cover for Lady Phantom issue 3 an homage to his iconic Spider-Man 300 cover. It is perhaps the most homaged, parodied and copied comic book cover in the history of comics, and for good reason!

Here’s the result : a one-of-a-kind hand-drawn comic book cover.


McFarlane’s Spawn blew me away when I was young, long before I ever seriously dreamed about making comic books, and here I am 300 issues of Spawn down the road, getting ready for my second year as an exhibitor at the Stockholm Comic Con, with the third issue of a comic book I co-created fresh from the printer (well, technically the fourth issue).

It feels surreal, and drawing this homage reminded me of all the comic book magic from when I grew up.

There is something humbling and empowering about following in the footsteps of your idols, and the journey I’ve had during the three years since I thought ‘hey, how hard can it be to make a comic book’ (hint: a lot harder than it seems) has been nothing short of amazing.

McFarlane has made a huge imprint on the comic book industry, through his art as well as his stories of course, but perhaps mostly as the co-founder of Image Comics: a handful of creators who took on Marvel and DC and not only persevered, but raised the quality of comics and changed the industry forever.

And here I am, on the verge of putting pen to paper in the creation of not only my own comic book character or comic book mini-series, but my very own comic book universe with a whole pantheon of characters and ideas for at least thirty issues worth of stories – an insane undertaking, to say the least, and something only a handful of comic book creators have succeeded in bringing home, but hey…

…how hard can it be to create a comic book universe?

Lady Phantom, Issue Two

This morning I put the final touches to the coloring and lettering of Lady Phantom Issue Two…

…and discovered that I had inadvertently missed an entire panel! When putting down a layer black borders on the ink, I accidentally filled in and convered one panel of page 23, and by the time I got around to colour it I didn’t notice my mistake.

It wasn’t until I was making the file for printing that I discovered a speech bubble sitting in the blackness, and so I had to quickly flat and colour it to match the rest of the page.

Hopefully, everything is now in order and the printer won’t serve the file back.

Making this issue has been a ride, and not a very pleasant one at that! I drew several of the pages for this issue over two years ago, and it showed. Trying to fix poor lines with ink isn’t my strong side, and in the midst of inking I suffered an eye injury.

The show had to go on, and my inking suffered for it…which in turn made flatting a challenge and a bit. As I went into renderinh, I desperately wanted to redraw at least half a dozen pages. Preferably more.

But, now that the colours are down I’m happier. Not as happy as I want to be, but I can at least and it out to you all without being totally ashamed…

…even though it’s four months late.

Lesson learned.

As I move forward with Issue Three, I will take all this with me and do a little extra work on the lines. A stitch in time saves nine, they say – and that certainly applies to comic book creation as well as clothes maintenance.

Now comes two weeks of preparations for the annual Swedish Comic Book Festival, which celebrates its 20th Anniversary.

If you are in our near Stockholm on the weekend of April 6th, come say hi and take a look at Issue Two in person!

Comic Con Stockholm

This past weekend I took myself and Lady Phantom to Comic Con.

I had my own booth, staffed by yours truly and two lovely helpers, and together we did our best to present Lady Phantom to the audience.

We had fair success considering that our title is still fairly unknown and illness had prevented me from going above and beyond in my preparations.

We met a lot of people, we connected with some who were already fans of Lady Phantom, and all in all we had an excellent time.

I had the fortune and pleasure to get personal meetings with both the editor-in-chief of Marvel comics and veteran comic book artist Barry Kitson – both really nice and helpful people – and thanks to their respective advice and input I now have a much clearer plan for my future as an illustrator and comic book artist.

All in all, it was pretty much the best experience I could have hoped for.

As we move forward with Issue Two of Lady Phantom, there are other comic book opportunities on the horizon for me and Chimaeral Creations, and as of this writing I have already started to make plans for next year!

Besides Lady Phantom comics and merchandise, I also had the pleasure to sell some original art and make connections which may give me other artistic opportunities in the future.

I was interviewed by one of the big Swedish newspapers and I talked to some other reporters, creators, retailers and people in the comic book business and other media production.

I want to extend a big thank you to all the arrangers, exhibitors, guests and visitors who helped make this an unforgettable weekend!

Closing Time

The crowdfunder for our Lady Phantom comic book mini series is fully funded!

We are on our last day with nearly $1,600 raised as of writing this, and it has been both nerve wrecking, stressful and a lot of fun. And now it is almost over…

…but really, it has just begun.

Now comes the past that will take the most work – fulfilling orders, creating custom rewards, getting the stuff out to our backers and finishing the next 150 pages of comic.

There’s A LOT to do now.

Me and Julie ate both very grateful of all the help and support we’ve gotten during the past two months, and it is really exciting to see the growing interest for Lady Phantom and what we do. Creating a comic book is hard work when you do everything yourselves, so every little bit of encouragement goes a long way.

We are also examining the possibility of taking Lady Phantom to a few cons over the next year and a half.

We are still very small, and cons can be costly affairs when all expenses are taken into consideration, but at the same time it is an excellent opportunity to get Lady Phantom seen by tens of thousands of comic book fans.

After all, we can’t succeed if we don’t try!

At the end of the day, we know that realistically or little comic book will barely make a dent in the market. But being realistic is not the way to acheive big goals.

So – thank you to everyone who has followed us and supported us so far, we hope you will stick around!

International Women’s Day

Just over two years ago, I got in contact with an amazing woman – writer Julie K Taylor. She had an idea for a new strong, black female superhero, someone young women of colour could look up to.

Now, two years later, we celebrate having released the first promotional issue of Lady Phantom.

We hope to make the Lady Phantom comic inclusive and diverse, focusing on deeper issues in addition to providing four-color superhero comic book action!