about

regret is a graphic novella (or long-form comic, if you prefer) written and drawn by ethan feuer (me.) the book centers on an amnesic murderer's bodily disassociation from his past intent to violence and the subsequent doubt it engenders.

when complete, it will consist of approximately 120 pages of written and / or drawn content, black and white (+grayscale.) physical drawing / inking of pages is nearing completion; following that will be a (shorter, i hope) period of editing and formatting (bleed, slug, trim sizes, etc.) finally, the printing, marketing, and distribution must take place. as of right now, i am not sure whether i plan to self-publish and self-distribute (or distribute through small press) or work to find a publisher and distribute through diamond; regret's publication method may eventually fall somewhere between these two poles.

please see the faq/bio or synopsis page for further questions or drop me a line if i haven't addressed one that you want answered.

synopsis

frederich, poised on the brink of gaining a terrible power through violence, hesitates and is betrayed by his predecessor and mentor (daniel). sundered into three physically separate segments of self (signifier, signified, and referent / shell), frederich is forced to progressively relive (and thus recover) his own past. unbeknownst to frederich, daniel's spell of sundering / imprisonment also threw all four survivors of the antecedent violence into a temporal stasis and illusion of place. aided by a silent survivor of his acts of violence (elizabeth) and the spirit of a forest infused with sentience by the blood of his victims (the lord of white ash), frederich is brought to fuller awareness of his actions and the choice that forced him into his crucial hesitation and subsequent betrayal. when daniel, elizabeth, frederich, and the last crucial survivor of the ritual sacrifice (gabriella) are reunited, the full significance of the power he was poised to receive is revealed. frederich's interrupted decision is again set within his reach.

author

if you are interested in contacting the author, please click here or send an email to hello(at)metafold.net.

i read all my correspondence and pretty much always write back even though it sometimes takes me awhile. here are some true things that make me sound like a clone of a cool person:

ethan feuer is a real live boy from connecticut, new jersey, texas, and wisconsin. he has stacks of drawings that predate his cognitive reasoning. some of them feature ninja turtles with limbs numbering in excess of four. in high school, he took some tests and learned things and stuff, which eventually led to being honored with the michael anzano memorial scholarship and a national merit scholarship.

ethan graduated with honors from rice university with a ba in architecture. while there, his design work (in collaboration with carrie gammell) and writings (in collaboration with jessica tankard) were published in the journals working and manifold, respectively. later designs earned him honorable mentions for the chillman prize and the william ward watkin travelling fellowship. he knocked about a bit and won the soon chan memorial scholarship, as well as the m.n. davidson fellowship. he is honestly super-grateful because rice is a terrific school filled with wonderful, brilliant folks and y'all should go there.

in addition to drawing and designing, ethan likes to listen to and compose music, build things out of other things, walk ridiculous distances for little or no reason, eat marzipan, set type, look at movies, take photographs, jaywalk, and climb tall things.

history

[2005] march - may:

regret begins. at the time, i had virtually no idea either (a) how long this project would take, or (b) how it would end up. at the outset, regret was an essentially lighthearted jaunt--furthermore, i intended to be no longer than a standard twenty-page marvel-length comic. in its original conception, virtually none of the themes which eventually emerged were present; the nature of characters has been altered or even (in some cases) reversed; and entirely different characteristics were salient for each. frederich, for example was far more quirky an' fun-lovin'. he was a vegetarian (demon.) in fact, he subsided entirely on cinchona (from which quinine is made) and would do practically anything for a tonic water. he was wrapped in bandages because undoing them would make is body fall into two pieces (cartoonishly, however, he did not bleed.) he was like a (sliced) loaf of bread. lord zero (now the lord of white ash) was the primary villain, rather than being an aid to the protagonist. elizabeth and daniel did not even exist. the transforming butterfly-sword, originally conceived of as a pun on the chinese weapon of the same name was one of the few surviving traits and became integral to the plot of the developed long-form comic.

[2005] june - [2006] november:

at this juncture (my first year of college), regret was put on the shelf. there it kept company with all manner of half-finished projects and short-term goals unrealized. i was no longer in the art class that required its completion. consequently, i put it aside as i moved forward in my architectural education. i was going to be practical. i was going to build buildings. right?

[2006] december - [2007] april:

during the winter break of my sophomore year at university, i happened upon a pile of old sketches, cartoony and exagerrated, anatomically impossible ridiculous in the extreme--yet, strangely compelling. heaped atop a white cabinet in the corner, i decided that i would take it ony myself to finish what i'd started. this compulsion, as it seems many do (at least for me) began with a simple passion to finish something. i felt it was my own kind of coming-of-age to complete a long-term project, to commit and push forward with it. regret (although it had yet to adopt the appellation) seemed ideal--having already been begun (in a dozen or so pages of rough pencil sketches on folded, yellowing 8.5 x 11.) i have the dim recollection that i (idiotically) thought it would be quick and easy to complete this project--a fun diversion to keep me busy and drawing during the two weeks of break remaining to me.

unfortunately, i was extremely wrong. in an impressive variety of ways. i continued working with non-archival pens on acid-laden 8.5 x 11, afraid of the resolution using more expensive bristol board would imply. it wasn't the money--it was the seriousness that using real materials connoted. if i drew on bristol board, i was married to this! i labored in the reverse of an intelligent comic artist's order: i began by lying down with a mug of tea (it was december!) and just drew whatever exciting action scene came to mind. springy, elastic characters danced ridiculously across the page, their vaguely-oriental clothing and ludicrous accoutrements jangling wildly. they stabbed each other and exploded. i deluded myself that there was a plot--to some extent there was--but mostly i just wasted several months. over that time (until summer when i began to give it real thought), i penciled about fifty or sixty pages; i inked, scanned, edited, and formatted about twenty of those (see the discarded section.) at a certain point, however, i was forced to confront the bad taste having a poorly-written, occult-tinted superhero comic left in my mouth. if i was going to have something badly written, it should at least be pretentious. i was, after all, nearly a college graduate!

[2007] may - december:

at the outset of this period, i launched on my first of several large-scale page-genocides and rewriting frenzies. i spent several fairly intense weeks hunched over a keyboard, typing furiously. i don't remember all of the changes that took place during this effort (since some of them have since been supplanted), but i do remember sacrificing the vegan-demon, the disassembling body, and dominic demonic (gabriella's original name). i first introduced the idea of the memory trees at this juncture and began to get interested in my near-obsessive incorporation of dream/waking and memory/forgetting motifs. the entire character of the work had changed--many of the protagonists' wisecracks evaporated into the ether, and the entire book began to take on a paler, grayer hue. uh...lack of hue.

over the course of the following months, i worked through pencils and inks on about sixty pages. i altered the art style to match more systemic changes in plot and mood. i abandoned the playful, earlier style of combining inked artwork (bare and white) with soft solids and cel shading, and did my best to avoid compositing in photographs in post. for a comparison, take a look first at discarded (the first incarnation) and then at inked work (the current style). i had gone analog.

[2008] january - april:

faced with another highly intense semester, a certain amount of project burnout, and the impending prospect of job applications (and commensurate necessity of preparing a portfolio and, possibly, a website) i was forced to take some time off from the graphic novel. i did not entirely stop working on it--and i certainly never stopped thinking about it--but the vicissitudes of life blah blah. as a result, the months were slow and by my birthday in late april, only five or so additional pages had been completed. if i wanted to try to close the gap, i would have to work hard during the summer.

[2008] may - present:

as of present, more than eighty pages of regret have been penciled and inked; there likely remain about fifteen or twenty till its closing. unfortunately, this does not mean the work is over. on the contrary, upon the "completion" of the pages remaining, i still have to return to the beginning of the story to illustrate the prologue (probably about ten pages.) further, i need to launch on a fairly extensive campaign of photography to illustrate the memories (if you see small, blank panels in otherwise finished artwork, flashbacks go there--and their means of illustration is through photography.) finally, i need to scan, touch up, and edit the inked artwork. as i said. i had no idea how long this would take at the outset--but i've loved every page of it.

sources

i have every intent of providing a more thorough record of my researches and readings at a future date. for now, however, please enjoy the following background / peripherally-related-but-nonetheless-interesting readings. i do not claim categorical knowledge of, nor expertise in, any of these works or authors--i only mean to give them the credit they are due. a special thanks to nana last, who introduced me to many of the authors that have been a formative influence on this work. they are listed in no particular order.

visual influences
• yoshiyuki sadamoto
• emmanuel malin
• enrico miralles
• charles burns
• käthe kollwitz
• eddie campbell
• josé antonio muñoz
• david hockney
• katsuhiro otomo
• todd mcfarlane
• will eisner
• albrecht durer
• dave mckean
• banksy
• jamie hewlett
• frank miller
• enki bilal
• tardi
• justin sweet
• gerhard

signs + semiotics
• charles sanders peirce
• giuseppe peano
• ferdinand de saussure
• émile benveniste
• roland barthes
• jacques derrida
• jean baudrillard
• gottfried leibniz
• roman jakobson
• umberto eco
• giuseppe peano

phenomenology
• roscellinus
• lewis mumford
• edmund husserl
• plutarch
• maurice merleau-ponty
• rosalind krauss

thought + dreams
• sigmund freud
• jacques lacan
• rosalind krauss
• erich fromm

writing influences
• alison bechdel
• stendhal
• hideaki anno
• tim o'brien
• cormac mccarthy
• susanna clarke
• george r.r. martin
• alan moore
• henry miller
• jorge luis borges
• tim rutili
• t.s. eliot
• j.d. salinger
• elliott smith
• e.m. forster
• art spiegelman
• emile zola
• wallace stevens
• adrian utley
• david zindell
• bill watterson

theology, occultism
• thomas aquinas
• giordiano bruno
• heinrich cornelius agrippa
• sylvester mazzolini di prierio
• pythagoras
• constantine
• euripides
• aristotle
• zuangzhi
• gilles de rais
• johann weyer
• the munich manual
• psuemonarchia daemonium
• helena petrovna blavatsky
• clavis solomonis
• abraham of the worms
• robert burton
• dante alighieri
• tacitus

self-publishing

um, it's been said before, but self-publishing is a ton of work. i'm not going to go into explaining how the whole process works from start to finish (as it's been done elsewhere and, no doubt, better), but i will walk you through all the mistakes i made how you can avoid (some of) them. all of the methodological (i.e. not factual) stuff below is just my opinion and i'm sure there are a million other super-awesome ways of doing things.

1. 1. write your book before you do any drawing.

   this may seem obvious, but i for one didn't do it. it may be fun to start drawing right off the bat and not think about all that boring plot stuff. if you begin by drawing, you'll find yourself wrapping a plot and cast of characters around your art. that works—about one in a hundred times. someone really smart once said something to the effect of 'good art makes people come, good stories make them stay'. in other words, you should be perfect. so, you know, work on that. seriosuly, though, you're best served by really sitting down and writing your characters and getting to know them really well before diving into anything more than sketches and concept art.

2. 2. choose your format before you do any drawing.

   in the same vein, once you've got your story figured out and maybe have some ideas of how you want it to look / feel in the reader's hands, go ahead an make some formatting decisions. go forth and learn (if you don't already know) what “bleed”, “slug”, and “trim” sizes are, set them, and stick to them. you'll save yourself the headache of resizing all of your art eleven thousand times and you'll avoid weird gutters and oddly uneven borders. while you're at it, if you're interested in traditional-style comics layout, pick your gutter sizes too (measure them!) and decide how much white space you want at the edge of the page.

3. 3. get to know your technology.

   you still aren't ready to draw! put down that pen! just kidding. draw if you want, but you should definitely get to know your technology before you go too far. one key point is to decide if you are printing digitally or with an offset press. i know this may seem insane at this stage of the project, but there is actual real, human reasoning behind it. mainly, offset printing is capable of tremendously hugmongous resolution and digital, by and large, is not. digital is catching up, but offset is still significantly more awesome. either way, you're going to want to scan your art at a bare minimum of 600dpi. but if you're printing offset (and you've got a 2400dpi press that you're paying cash money to use), you might as well scan at 1200 (or even 2400). a word, while we're on the subject of dots per inch and lines per inch and halftoning and dot gain and all that crap: bit depth. okay, that's two words. bit depth refers to the number of shades of gray (or color) which are used in the file. by and large, 8 bit grayscale is fine for most purposes, but you will see an uptick in quality at 16. color is another story. like resolution, bit depth is an exponential function and will increase your filesize commensurately. the other major criteria to keep in mind when deciding between offset and digital is print-run. offset only starts to become economical at around 500-1000 books. so if you only plan on printing 50 copies, make sure you plan accordingly.

4. 4. thumbnails / storyboarding / etc

   okay. you've got a “script” (kinda like a movie treatment), you know your characters, you know what you want to happen in the course of your story. you're ready to draw....thumbnails. yep. if you don't plan out what you're going to do with the space on the page (often several or even dozens of pages at once), complete with dialog, you are going to end up with weird rhythm. even if you are mr. (or mz. or madame or whatevs) awesomepants, eventually you are going to end up with a dramatic moment half on one page and half on the other or a cliff-hanger that's on the wrong side of your spread. oooonnnn the flipside, don't get too structured. you want to know what happens but (at least for me), sometimes the best artwork that i do sort of “happens”--it just fills a space creatively. so it's okay to plan, but it's also okay to go off plan. especially if you can stay within your page-to-page boundaries (i.e. keep the right content on the right page or at least a multiple of the right page). while we're on the subject, thumbnails or rewriting can be a great way to take a break from your artwork if you need to. alternate.

5. 5. prepress and printing

   if it is not white, printers (the machines, not the people) think it is some shade of gray. this is important because all those little pencil lines that you thought you erased are actually still there and will print disturbingly dark. go magic wand that shit and white it out like a gop golf club in an arctic blizzard on pluto. while you're at it, make everything perfect and purty and crisp and shiny. test-print it. on several different printers and stocks if possible. don't rush and only submit your files to a printer when you're sure that they're just right. otherwise you will just be really, really poor. ummmmm more poor. nope. keep going. while we're on the subject of poor, make sure you get quotes from a ton of printers so that you can pick the most competitive (and pit them against one another a bit). your business is a (small) commodity. treat it that way (i mean; be polite and all, just don't be afraid to pursue a good deal). don't forget to ask about hidden charges—find out how they treat proofs (flat rate or per-page?) and shipping and whose responsibility is what. find out what their lead time is start to finish. when you do get quotes, make sure you're on the same page about offset vs. digital and get quotes for several different quantities and paper weights. while we're on the subject, find out how to convert between gsm and lbs and choose a paper weight; read up on dot gain and halftoning; learn about different paper emulsions and what the difference is between acid-free and lignin-free papers. talk to some printers—they can be really helpful—and try to get free samples of their stocks from them. tell them you don't mind if they're just floor trimmings or failed proofs from other projects. finally, and perhaps most importantly, your print run should be inversely proportional to the distance you are from your printer. that is to say, if you are printing more than 1000 (150 page) books, don't work to hard to get quotes from people out of your home state or area (if you live in texas). shipping 2000 books can cost $500-1000. and that's pretty much enough to make up for the differences you will see among quotes. so opt for quality and proximity if you're printing in significant numbers. if you're not—go wild, i guess. print in zimbabwe.

6. 6. getting comics to people

   if you want to get your comic out to human beings, there are a few (billion) obstacles. one is money. make sure you have some. you can't make comics without at least a little. going oldschool: you can try to get a comic into mainstream venues in bulk. this is not very viable for a huge slew of reasons. for one, marvel and dc have kind of a stranglehold on the “traditional” superhero comics market and (by and large) people are going to buy the names they know in that market. to top it off, mass-market success requires immense funds (to print in immense volumes). so you need tremendous capital. if you're bringing an indie comic into comics stores the “oldschool” way (through distributors like diamond, haven, etc), you have to face up to the fact that not that many stores are going to buy your title. diamond is the biggest distributor in the game and it will probably reject your comic (sorry!). if they do take your comic on, they will require you to sell “x” number of comics per period of time (and will boot you if you don't). also, to apply to diamond requires several months lead time. so you will have a product you can't sell for months after you've finally finished it. blech. let's not forget that (as a new comics artist), diamond will probably take about 70% of the cover price (without helping you to absorb shipping or printing costs at all). so you will be making about a dollar per book (or less). going homeschool: you can opt for the small press distributors if you like. they're generally good news in that they deal to so-called “indie-friendly” retailers (who, truthfully, still have to make a buck). they will generally take your work on consignment terms and at only a slightly less insane percentage than diamond (generally 50-60% off cover price). by and large, they will only take between 5 and 50 copies of your book to start (usually 10 or less) and (even if they sell) you won't see your (depressingly small) check for a couple months. some indie / small-press distributors include haven distribution (which bought cold-cut), microcosm, last gasp, and ak distro. too cool for school: nowadays with you young folks and your interwebs and whatnot, you can sell your comic online. you can buy a website for a year for less than half the cost of warehousing your inventory for two weeks—or you can get an etsy account for free. either way, if you're not averse to licking (hopefully a lot) of envelopes and making trips to the post office with the frequency of a geriatric schnauser to the fire hydrant, that can work out great. if this doesn't appeal to you, you can always contract a fulfiller (which is basically someone who will warehouse your inventory aka books for you and then ship is out … for you). amazon runs a service for this (called, bizarrely, “amazon fulfillment”) which is pretty much far and away the best rates you're likely to find. it also lets you sell through amazon (which acts kind of a like a distributor in that they take your money for the service of getting your book out to human beings).

7. 7. causing humans to buy your book

   i'll let you know as i find out. ha ha. want to help? click here!

also, cats will puke on your artwork. mosquitoes will get swatted on it. that latte will magically fall on it. airport security will insist that you burn/devour/regurgitate it. so keep it secret. keep it safe.

faq

what's up with the pine thistle on the title page?

the image is meant to convey several dominant underlying themes present in regret. the pine thistles allude to the lord of white ash, who is a primary character and also the setting for the book. his actions are crucial to restoring frederich's memory and represent (in part) the conscious decision to return to nature. the spatter is meant to connote the blood (and responsibility) frederich carries attached to his past. the "I" is meant to signify both the subject (self) and the symbolic characteristics of the letter itself. the multiple meanings of symbols and images is crucial to the development of the plot.

how long does it take to write a page?

the writing (plotting) of the book has been a whole different kettle of fish. typically, it's something i do separately from the process of drawing. but drawing a given page, from thumbnails / preliminary sketches to a finished, inked product typically can take anywhere from 8 to 12+ hours of labor (actually time with the pen in my hand, not including peeing, sleeping, eating, writing faqs, etc.) before you ask: yes, you're right i should've drawn the whole thing in the clear-line style. i'm an idiot.

what materials do you use?

mostly, i'm pretty dumbed-down and cheap. i draw on bristol board, though some of the earlier pages are just on folded 8.5 x 11. i (mostly) use felt-tip pens (a sign of unprofessionalism if ever there was one), often microns or pigmas. once in awhile, i'll resort ot a grayscale brushpen if absolutely necessary (pitt), but i'm loathe to do it. sometimes i uses (real) brushes--for black ink, white ink, or mask. i use tape a lot. for more or less everything. i mean, it's even hard for me to make dinner without tape.

do you use photo references?

mostly, no. this is less practical for fantasy or plots which incorporate ridiculously difficult to arrange situations. still, my artwork would probably be better (or at least a lot less spotty) if i did.

why are some speech bubbles ridiculously big? what the hell is up with your punctuation? do you speak english?

some speech bubbles are big to make the words look small--i.e. they are spoken in a smaller voice. this is similar to (but not quite as effective as) a trick often used by walt kelly and (particularly) will eisner. eisner tended to make the letters smaller, but with the size of my lettering, i'm already worried about people being able to read it without eyestrain. the punctuation is usually very deliberate. if i leave a thing that seems like a sentence without any punctuation at all, it usually means that the statement is to be continued shortly. if there is an em dash to close a phrase, it typically signals an interruption by someone else. i use semicolons sometimes because for the longest time i hadn't a clue what they were for and was fearful of their use; i'm making up for lost time.