Dope Rider in Saigon

 An Australian fan was in The JunkYard Bar Nha Trang in Saigon where the bathroom was wall-papered in artwork, including a widely circulated frame from an old Dope Rider strip, "Matinee Idyll."

Dope Rider, "Meditation"

 This is the last Dope Rider strip I had published in High Times magazine before it shut down shop (sniff, sniffle).

Dope Rider, "Some Realities"

I'm getting near the end of the one-page trips I did for High Times before it closed shop in July of this year. I had hoped they would last another two years so I would have enough strips to fill a follow-up collection to A Fistful of Delirium. My thought is to do a few long-form adventures, perhaps six or eight page stories each, in the coming year. I'm trying to figure out if there's a way to support myself while doing so through a Patreon or Kickstarter account. We'll see.

I had fun with this one, with the symmetry of the panel structure and the variety of fantasy environments and color palettes.

Dope Rider, "Dance"

 

You never know where you'll get an idea. In this case, I was inspired by a post I saw of page done by Gene Colan (see below). I liked the swirliness of it. I wanted to do something with that energy. The idea of having Dope Rider dance with a marijuana leaf popped into my head. I did a Google image search of all different ways people dance, picked a variety, and recreated them in pencil with our hero and his leaf. I scanned the sketches and organized them into a design on Photoshop layers. I then printed it out, traced it onto the Strathmore paper I use, and inked it in my old-school manner. The most obscure of the musical references is Mazzy Star's "Fade Into You" (1994), but I like the song and thought the title worked.

Dope Rider, "Alien"

I established a few recurring characters in the ten years I did the monthly Dope Rider strip for High Times. Sometimes when I'd be racking my brain for an idea, I'd think about bringing back one of the occasional characters and building a strip around him. One was an alien whose name is Martin, but with the letters turned sideways and upside down. It was a bit too much story to cram into one page, but one page is all I had.

High Times Magazine, 1974 - 2024, R.I.P.

This past July my art director at High Times informed me that the magazine was ceasing publication.  This was sad news for several reasons. For one, this is the 50th year of High Times and I looked forward to perhaps doing a longer strip in its 50th anniversary issue, which would have been November 2024. Also, I will no longer have the deadline and paycheck that motivated me to get a Dope Rider strip out every month for the past 10 years. (You wouldn't believe how motivating those two things are!) 

Since my 2022 collection, Dope Rider: A Fistful of Delirium, I've done an additional 46 strips. In order to get another book out, I need 64. I have ideas for two long Dope Rider stories, six or eight pages, and I'll probably think of a third. Having to work within a single page has limited the sorts of stories I could tell, so I'm excited about doing some more complex tales. I have a few more High Times one-pagers I'll be putting up at this site on a monthly basis.

As far as supporting myself while I work out longer stories and raising funds to get another collection published, I may look into the Go Fund Me or Patreon options.

It's been a great trip. Thanks for joining me on it.

Dope Rider, "Conflict"

This is one of my favorite recent Dope Rider strips. It expresses the fact that I always wanted Dope Rider to be a strip without stress, without conflict, without violence. Dope Rider doesn't look for trouble, he has no arch-enemies, he doesn't want to impose his will on others. He just wants to get along, hang out with his friends, and have a good time with some laughs.