About the comic Fabulous Clem was a webcomic I created in 2005 and 2006, updating with a new page each Thursday. I penciled and inked it by hand, then colored, lettered and touched it up digitally. In all, I posted thirty-six full-color pages, all while logging about how difficult the process was, why I made the creative choices I did, and why I was constantly updating late. I'm still proud of what I made, but I've never been much of an illustrator, and the strip's rough appearance exhibits my amateurish approach to digital image creation. The comic was my response to animal fables and how easy it is to view them on contradictory levels - compelling in their moralistic clarity on the one hand, but full of silly and irrational characters on the other. Clemens Rowley, an English fox living in a national park and my main character, was going to be hired as a vision quest animal in America. To get there (and to accomplish his training), he was going to have to travel through the World Beyond, a place created by people's collective need for stories. And he was going to get mixed up in every fox-featuring fable I could find along the way, acting as a straightman with realistic sensibilities and solutions. Eventually, French folk hero Reynard was going to become a terrifying villain. But the strip never got to its own meat. What I gave any readers I may have had was a rocky vulpine relationship, a trio of infant kits managing to hang on, a job interview, and a fox culture that uses draughts, or checkers, to establish generational dominance. I like to think that much is intriguing enough, even if my pacing and exposition were also a little rocky. One of my better friends was a regular reader, providing feedback on the art style, which he liked to imagine could have been found in some random journal that someone found under a tree. (For that reason, he wasn't fond of the digital lettering.)  I think a handful of people I know also gave the strip a glance. Otherwise, I don't know whether I had any readers, despite getting Fabulous Clem listed in a webcomic registry and trading links with Faux Pas. It was certainly an educational exercise in imagining I had an audience, however! Near the end of the run, I decided to start alternating Clem strips with a new project I'd started called The Seven of Hearts. Somehow, I imagined they would be easier to produce, but the images were still elaborate and that turned out not to be the case. I only created four SoH strips, which I've linked to at the end of the archive. Why did I stop making Fabulous Clem? Well, I was putting in six to eight hours on each page, when I would rather have had it take only four. I was working an exhausting overnight job at Target at the time, and also helping run a popular and high-maintenance roleplaying world called Endless Round with some of my friends. With any possible success for the strip far in the future, it eventually seemed clear that the effort was , like the plans of certain figures in fables, ill-conceived. Yet here it is, a fragment at the beginning of something, for your enjoyment! I wonder what you'll think.

ARCHIVE 1. A Higher World 2. Let There Be Lights! 3. The Oldest Company in the World! 4. Fabulous Clem 5. Death 6. The Rabbits 7. Ill of the Dead 8. Father of the Afterlife 9. Clever, So Clever 10. Play Here Often? 11. See You Around Maybe 12. It's An Addiction 13. You Guys Know I Love You, Right? 14. The Hungry Fox--Part 1 15. The Hungry Fox--Part 2 16. Kit Dreams 17. The Argument 18. Unique Opportunity 19. Cousin Glynis 20. G. B. Corp. 21. Janitor's Entrance 22. The Receptionist 23. A Good Memory 24. The Director of Counterintelligence 25. A Painful Conversation, Part 1 26. A Painful Conversation, Part 2 27. Niles Durnham 28. A Higher World--Reprise 29. Honey, Come Home!! 30. The Job Description 31. The Dome 32. It's More Convenient This Way 33. Especially The Healthy Ones 34. Family Men Are Nothing But Trouble 35. Curran Family Reunion 36. Deirdre Curran Special strips: The Seven of Hearts

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