Greetings, and welcome to Morley’s Tales. I’m Charles Morley, and this site will feature my tales. Go figure.

I’ve been writing and drawing since I was just a wee little Morley. Inspired at an early age by Marvel Comics and Star Wars, I began creating an extensive universe. During my mid-teens I was became enthralled by the universes of H.P. Lovecraft, Michael Moorcock, Douglas Adams, Frank Herbert and many others. In my late teens and early 20s it was primarily Alan Moore, Dave Sim, and Vertigo, with some Shakespeare, Umberto Eco and others thrown in for good measure. Each phase had me build upon my universe and shape the tales I wanted to tell. Unfortunately, I took a very long hiatus and my tales became covered in an ever-increasing layer of dust.

Recently I’ve hauled out the vacuum, filled buckets with bleach, rolled up my sleeves, and started cleaning up my tales for public consumption. The tales in question are in the speculative fiction vein; that is, a bit of horror, a bit of sci-fi, a bit of superheroics, a bit of humor, and a bit of fantasy all blended together into one delectable frothy drink. I’m working on three tales right now, both comics and stories. I hope to get the whole project started summer of 2007.

In the meantime, I'll post odd pages here and there, rants, musings and advice for the lovelorne (such as: people are evil, you're better off alone). Join me, won't you?

I think...

I wasn't going to release anything until August, and I wanted to get more done with the Masks, but I think I might have enough material now to actually layout the first issue of MT.

That makes me happy.

Still not going to release anything until August. Suffer! (All the comics are here anyways.)

Now I have to work on my web site. That makes me less happy.

I apologize to my 6 readers. I've really been struggling with The Masks (which is so not its name anymore, just like Jorthi isn't the name of this thing) lately. Add in some sickness and a sudden, apparently temporary desire to practice coding again so I can get a real job, and I forgot to post the rest of Pirates. And I now remember that I have one more panel to ink and two pages to letter. Then we're done with part 1.

In the meantime, here's number 9... number 9... number 9... number 9...

We're nearing the end of "Good Girl (part 1)" and "Pirates of the Rings Star (part 1)" Afterwards I plan on taking an extended break, working on The Masks, and figuring out the next step.

Livejournal was always going to be an intermediate step. I honestly think my tales would flow better as 10 page chunks, rather than a page every third day or so. Face facts, my pacing is pretty slow. What I'm planning on doing is releasing a combo PDF for free download or a hard copy for purchase, your call. Each issue will serialize the three storylines.

I'm also considering having an annual reprint edition, where the stories are compiled into one book. I'm not so sure about that one though.

So my question is: would there be an audience for a PDF comic? Anyone have any opinions on this?

Not only did I gank Jayalalita from Section 18, I now ganked Max Geisert as well.

I think his character will be much more interesting here.

Now, I just need to gank Phyllis. But not Rick. Rick is gone, retired, dead, finito. Gavin is sort of taking his place, in that he's male and has facial hair. Everything else is different.

Alcohol is your yoga, baby.

Der! I knew I forgot something. Pirates of the Ring Star, page 6, by your command...

Sorry about the lack of piracy this week. I've been fighting a cold... and still going to work. Ahhh, yes, good times, good times.

Anyway, I did get Pirates page 6 through 9 mostly completed. After I scanned them in I took another look at them and realized... well, my ink skills are pretty damn sucky. So I hauled out my pens and took another pass at them. My inking skill are still pretty damn sucky, but at least I'm *trying* to add shading and depth now.

Plan is, those pages will start running next week, and that will conclude part one of "Pirates of the Ring Star". Then I'll finish up part one of "The Good Girl" and then I'm going to take a break; partly to work on the Masks, partly to work on some long-neglected household chores.

In the meantime, here's page 5 of Pirates...

More piratey goodness (with no pirates yet, only spoiling spleens)...

I wanted to get a bit more under my belt before really advertising, but I do think I need to expand my fan base past my 6 LJ readers. Anyone have any ideas?

I think this is the first time I've ever used the word "fuck" in a comic. *sniff* Our little boy's all grown up now.

I started watching my language long time ago, when I was using foul language to show what a badass a character was. Thing is, after I put pen to paper, it reeked of being a cheap plot device. So I challenged myself to show he was a badass a different way. The character then became pretty much insane.

I kept doing that to keep my work "all ages"... More of a way of increasing audience than anything else. Plus, things like Comicspace have language restrictions. (Whatever; I've seen boobies on that thing.)

But, times change. I didn't even realize I had done it until the page was complete. So, break out the party hats and cake! (Mmmm, cake!) It's a "fuck" party!!

Whoa. That could be taken... um... Yeah.

And here we go with a completely different Tale I'm doing right now.

Unlike the Balahzhar or Masks stories, which are pretty damn dark and depressing, the Jorthi (jyo-rr-thee) stories are more on the light and fluffy side. The stories focus on a diverse group of alien traders, building a business in the wake of a war and a subsequent collapsed Galactic Empire. In this episode, the crew of the Jorthi get tangled in a pirate's web. Will they escape with their lives? Find out!!

Yeah, yeah, okay... my blurb writing skills need some serious polish.

Taking a break from some of the most boringest pages I've ever drawn. Dum-de-dum, talking heads, dum-de-dum. Ahhh, and I'm not drawing right either. And I'm drawing so slow! Ah well, this is just getting the ball rolling.

I've had this song stuck in my head. I could swear I had this song on a CD or mp3 somewhere. Ahh, here it is. "Rattle and Hum"?? Why the hell do I own...??? Ahhh, well. It will remain stuck in my head, and maybe now it will be stuck in your head too...

"No reason to get excited," the thief, he kindly spoke,
"There are many here among us who feel that life is but a joke.
But you and I, we've been through that, and this is not our fate,
So let us not talk falsely now, the hour is getting late."

I'm leaning more towards the one on the left... What do you guys think?



I know I've been neglecting MT's comics lately. I'm going to try and make up for it by having a "Page A Day, Until May" session. Of course, whether I actually do that or not is another story. I've really been wavering in the plot department, which has left me unable to continue along my previous path. Basically, I realize I'm not the writer I thought I was. I need to really concentrate on the story and plot, not just string a bunch of events together.

Ayup.

PS: Ahhh yes, NOW I remember why I vowed never to cross hatch again.

I assure you, reports of my death were... only slightly exagerrated.

I had a little problem with the "Jorthi" books. Jorthi was suppposed to be a series of graphic novels about a group of people on a spaceship (original, no?). I had started penciling the first one when an idea for a prologue sprang forth. I spent an afternoon creating a script for that and, at the end of the day, realized that it was terribly wordy, not very exciting, not something I wanted to spend the time drawing, and something I needed to tell as the first Jorthi story.

The solution? Write it as prose! The next weekend, I wrote a 10,000 words, which I tweaked over the week. I'm currently missing the happy ending, but the story is essentially done. I don't think it's going to see the light of day for a while, but I got my prologue and it makes me happy.

Next, I did some more thumbnails for Good Girl, and advanced the script a bit more. It's starting to click in my mind that this is a story, not a bunch of pages. That's good. I'm excited about where it's going. But then I watched the last two episodes of 'Heroes.'

Last fall I wrote the first act of the first book of my grand superhero saga. Watching Heroes got me thinking about that again. So I started re-reading the book and realized it was boring and emo. It needed something; needed something bad. That's my current project, to figure out where to take this thing to point B, which I'm itching to get to, but the story needs to build up to the action.

All this is to say that, yes, I have been working on Morley's Tales. However, it's all background stuff and nothing that will show on LJ, Comicspace, or my web site. I still need to work on those, I realize they're suffering, but I need to get these done too.

Damn, there's a lot of work to do here! Why am I tackling three projects at once??

Ah, I've been slacking. All pages of Good Girl point to an empty URL, and I didn't want to padvertise that beyond the confines of my very small group of LJ friends. But, I got challenged on Comicspace and I decided I really needed to start circulating these to a larger audience. So this weekend I cranked through a rudimentary webpage at...

http://www.morleystales.com

And then uploaded the Good Girl to my gallery on...

http://www.comicspace.com/morley/

So if you want to read the pages a bit more sequentially than LJ allows, there it is. I'll be getting a gallery up on the MT site, as well as a blog and all that good stuff, but I want to get back to drawing for a bit longer. Finish off Good Girl part 1 (which I just extended a few more pages) and then ink what I have of "Pirates of the Ring Star" even though I kind of want to start on the prologue I came up with "Escape from the Red Rock." Regardless, cool confusing stuff is coming soon! Woot... Yes, woot!

I don't know how else to say this...

PAGE DUMP!!!

Posting Good Girl pages 5, 6 and 7 today. Here's 7...

I don't know how else to say this...

PAGE DUMP!!!

Posting Good Girl pages 5, 6 and 7 today. Here's 6...

I don't know how else to say this...

PAGE DUMP!!!

Posting Good Girl pages 5, 6 and 7 today. Here's 5...

Today, as I waited for the bus, I was accosted by some Jehova's Witnesses. This is pretty much a weekly occurrence. Today, however, I got a young 'un.

"Um, Hi. How are you today? How are you today? We're just going around talking to people about, like, the Earth?" And here he waves a copy of the Watchtower. "And about how it's just right? About how, like, if we were any closer to the sun, we're burn up? And if we were any farther we'd freeze? And stuff?"

I really had to clamp my mouth shut to keep from laughing. Ahh, alas the bus within visible range, otherwise I would have nodded more enthusiastically and said, yes, we’re 143 million kilometers from the sun in what's known as the "Goldilock Zone." Not only that, we have a magnetosphere to shield us from solar flares. And... well, here's where the real reason I don’t debate anyone rears its ugly head: I have no memory for this stuff. Sure, I know basic concepts, but the details escape me constantly.

Anyway, it made me giggle internally.

Changing the subject slightly, the "Word of the Day" is grok!

Now, this is all well and good, but what have I done for MT lately? I resized the images from 450px to 525px which, let me tell you, will help tremendously with the next few pages. I’ve tweaked page 4, and I re-did a stretch of verbage on pages 5, 6 and 7, which I'll be posting here shortly. I haven’t begun inking “Pirates” yet, unfortunately.

I also got challenged on Comicspace to get a gallery up and running. I obviously have the pages, but I’ve hesitated displaying this to a large audience because each page advertises a URL that is, to put it mildly, not functioning. So I may put “Pirates” and “Good Girl” on hold for a few weeks and get a rudimentary site up. I have to eventually anyways. But there will be four more pages of “Good Girl” to post before that happens.

And that’s a progress report. Peace out.