Well, Lum and Abner made it to #700!
To hear and see, plus to subscribe for free:
https://lumandabnercomics.com/

A few facial studies for my protagonist Olivia Trace (Liv) while we were trying to define her personality as a character.  The goal was to get as many non-Liv expressions on the page as quickly as possible, so I decided to limit the exercise to only alter the mouth, eyes and eyebrows. We're working on Liv's third episode now and are still finding her voice, but this turned out to be a fairly accurate window into her character.

See Liv in action in her ground-breaking, interactive webcomic, The Way (of Yahweh) at: grouplore.com/theway.

DON'T READ IT. BE A PART OF IT...

My wife, Denise, and I want to share this comics accelerator
opportunity with fellow CCAS members. We started a family-friendly, handmade comics
accelerator program. In total, $1,000 USD will be awarded to select
artists who release hand-drawn comics on the zeroone NFT minting and
collecting platform. Throughout this month (June 2024), we will choose
suitable applicant creators to receive $100 each. This will continue
until the entire amount is given away.

8 Steps to Apply:

1. Mint a family-friendly, handmade original comic on zeroone.art site
(which is free to join and free to mint NFTs on). This can be a
1-panel comic (such as those I often create) or multi-panel comics.

2. When minting the comic, set the Number of editions to any number
between 2 and 100.

3. Set the Personal editions number to at least 1.

4. Include in the Description at least 1 sentence about the comic.

5. For one of your tags, use the following: handmadehatchery

6. Follow joechiappetta on zeroone (otherwise the next step won't work).

7. After minting, go to Personal Settings, Reserved, and Transfer 1
edition of that NFT to the account of joechiappetta on zeroone.

8. Follow joeychips on Twitter/X and tag him in a post with your
submitted comic. That's also where winners will be announced.

Comics must be 100% hand-drawn, new work, made without any AI tools
and no tracing used.

Digital comics drawn with a stylus are acceptable, as are high quality
scans or photos of comics drawn on paper.

Theme must be family-friendly: safe and suitable for viewing by all
ages of people.

Happy comic creating!

Joe Chiappetta, 6/4/2024

I've been negligent in posting! I hope to do better!

My latest Lum and Abner comic strip and audio is available now! 

Lum and Abner #603!

And here is a page where you can access all 603 Lum and Abner strips to date!

Lum and Abner Archives

I hope everyone has a Blessed week!

Hello, all!

I'm still figuring out how to navigate around the site, and I'm not sure where the best locations are, to talk about subjects. If this wasn't the best place to stick this post, I appologize.

I am a Christian fiction writer. I co-authored two books with my mom, Susan Page Davis, who is well known in the inspirational fiction genre. I have a new kids' chapter book series coming out shortly with a semi-fantasy setting (ancient/biblical times). It takes place in the real world around 930BC in a fictional nation on islands in the North Atlantic. It's a pre-Celtic sort of a society, augmented with some anachronistic features including weaponry and technology more appropriate to medieval times.

While these books are strictly chapter books, I'm interested in having it adapted to the graphic novel format. If so, I'll need to get paired up with a great artist. I want someone who has a real heart for the Lord Jesus, because that is important to me. If we do a colaboration, the style will want to be a fairly realistic art style (for instance, much like Prince Valiant, though a lower detail level would be acceptable if necessary). If you enjoy drawing North Atlantic seascapes, sailing ships, castles, armored warriors, horses, wild animals, rural scenery, mountains, forests, and teenage heroes in old-fashioned clothes, this is where we're at.

Here's an excerpt:

....Rakell mumbled something he didn't understand and touched his arm briefly in parting. Suddenly, she snapped her head upward and gazed intently overhead. Nylo craned his head and looked up the cliff as far as he could see, but the uneven crags, bushes, and ledges formed a complicated scene. Rakell grasped his arm tightly, trembling. "Dakon," she breathed.

"Dakon?" Nylo couldn't see anything or anyone above them, only the varied terrain of this section of cliff—the virtues of which he intended to utilize on his way up.

"Dakon," Rakell said under her breath, but intensely. Her nails dug into his forearm. He looked her square in the face, disturbed by the sharp fear he saw there.

"Is someone up there? Because I need to go. It's getting dark." Nylo turned and started to climb up onto the first ledge.

"Lo," Rakell shrieked. She grabbed his shirt, pulling him back with such force it amazed him. Catching his balance, he turned and looked into her eyes, which burned with an intensity he had never seen before, not even in Aunt Elynir. She grasped both his hands and uttered a dark string of words, punctuated frequently by the term "Dakon." She exhaled firmly, glancing purposefully up and down the beach. She released Nylo's hands and stood with a renewed energy, searching around like a hunter testing the wind.

The waves pounded against the sand, lapping at their feet. Nylo was flummoxed.
Time was running out, and she wasn't letting him go. He wondered if there really was something spooking her up above, or if it was only her imagination.

She gazed intently at the sky, tears streaming down her face, but not sobbing. She looked suddenly to the north and took off running in that direction.

"Wait!" Nylo ran after her, but she didn't slow. He thought it absurd that suddenly she could run. He caught up when she stopped at a seemingly sheer section of cliff. She looked upward and then, incredibly, began to climb the face of the rock.

"What are you doing, are you mad?" Nylo wanted to grab her and pull her down as she had done to him a minute earlier, but something in the back of his mind told him to wait and see what she would do. He watched breathlessly as she found toehold after handhold, her booted feet adhering to the slightest depressions in the stone.

"You can't possibly get up that way," Nylo said when she clung ten feet above the shore. "Come down!"

She looked down at him, her eyes flaming. She tossed her head with an upward gesture and kept climbing.

Nylo wanted to kick himself for letting her begin climbing in the first place, but now there was nothing to do but follow her. This couldn’t possibly end well. A grim picture of S'Gomi finding their dead bodies washing against the cliffs in the surf flashed through his mind. Gritting his teeth, Nylo sought the same handholds and footholds Rakell had used and followed her.

When he had made it fifty feet or so, and had still not caught up to her, he began to really doubt his sanity. She was twenty feet higher and climbing like a determined squirrel. Gone was the limp, shivering girl he had tended on the beach. Rakell was not from around here—how could she possibly know how to climb this particular cliff? Perhaps it was a skill she had learned elsewhere, but even an experienced climber could not scale a new wall with such confidence.

She looked down, evidently to make sure he was all right. The twilight deepened, and it became more and more difficult to see. Nylo concentrated on his climbing and was repeatedly surprised to find a new handhold every time he needed one.

The next time he looked up, Rakell could not be seen. He gritted his teeth and kept on until he reached a deep ledge, where she waited for him. She took his hand as he crawled over the edge and helped him stand. The ledge, a feature probably not evident to those above or below, gave them plenty of room to rest and catch their breath.

Rakell looked out to sea, then north and south, and up and down the cliff. She muttered something about Dakon, but her language was still a mystery. Nylo supposed they were more than a hundred feet up. After a moment, Rakell turned back to the cliff wall and started climbing again.

After another hundred feet of climbing, Nylo began to wonder if this path was not actually easier than the one he had used to get down. Never in his life had he known about it. Rakell clambered up the rock as if she knew the trail by heart.

After climbing for more than an hour, Rakell came to a stopping place where she waited. Darkness nearly covered them now. The sky was cloudy. The waves crashed below them. Nylo could barely see a thing.

He caught up with Rakell on a narrow ledge, and they rested, panting, for several minutes. He wondered how far from the top they were. The wind picked up, chilling him. He could only imagine that Rakell might be colder than he. She reached for his hand and squeezed it. Then, with a huff, she turned and started back up the cliff, feeling her way. He followed her, the dread in his heart nearly as dark as the cliff face itself. There was absolutely no way to go back down the way they had come.

Nylo's arm and leg muscles began to cramp. His fingertips became raw from gripping the rock and scant bushes that availed themselves for hand holds. Groping for a new grip, his hand smacked into the heel of Rakell's boot. Above the howl of the wind and the pounding of the surf, he heard her gasping.

"We must be near the top," he cried out. He shinnied his way up beside her and peered at her dark form in the scant light.

The girl hung desperately to the rock wall, convulsing and sobbing. Nylo's stomach turned. Whatever burst of energy had brought Rakell up the cliff seemed to have deserted her now. Clammy fear clenched his heart. He looked above, trying to discern how far from the top they were. He felt upward for cracks, depressions, or bushes. The wall above was smooth and sheer. It seemed to go on at least another twenty feet, though the exact distance was impossible to perceive.

"Lo," Rakell whimpered. "Lo, lo, lo." She clung desperately to a crack in the rock, but Nylo doubted she could hang on for long. To let go would be a sure and unavoidable drop to the abyss. No one could hold on forever.

He felt utterly without options. What hope could there be?

He looked about, seeing little but remembering the cliffs, the clouds, and the sea below. Such cold, unfeeling elements--he would receive no help from them. But what about the One who made it all? The Creator was said to help those in need, if they called on Him. Would He respond? Nylo had doubts, but there were no other options. He focused on the hazy idea of the Almighty One he kept in the back of his mind.

"Creator, save me!"

               A gust of wind chilled him through, but in that instant he felt a surge of strength. He heard no words, but felt a strong sensation of the idea, Let go. I will keep you.

Incredulously, Nylo loosened his grip on the crack he had been clinging to. His feet bore all his weight. The wind held him against the cliff, but he no longer felt chilled. His blood coursed through his body like hot soup—his hair stood on end as he felt every pulse beat throughout his frame.

Beside him, Rakell sobbed, but it was a sob of hope, not despair. Cautiously, Nylo slid his hand toward her. It came to rest on the stem of a small bush growing tenaciously out of a crevice. His fingertips just touched his thumb as they closed around it. He changed hands and reached for Rakell. He found her hand and guided it to the bush....

Have a Blessed Father's Day! Here is my latest Lum and Abner comic strip in visuals and audio! Three of my former students join our voice cast this week!
Click here to read and/or listen!

Such drama! I suppose that if I had just seen a demon I'd be upset too.

"Our eyes still fail, looking in vain for our help. In our watching we have watched for a nation that could not save." Lamentations 4:17 WMB

Want more? Check out today's bonus panel at http://spiritmancomics.com
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While Scott and Everett try to contact Spiritman the demons have been hunting them. Where is Spiritman?!!!

"They come to you as the people come, and they sit before you as my people, and they hear your words, but don’t do them; for with their mouth they show much love, but their heart goes after their gain." Ezekiel 33:31 WMB

Want more? Check out today's bonus panel at http://spiritmancomics.com
#comics #comicbooks #christiancomics #christiancomicbooks #christiansuperheroes#indiecomics

Hi Friends of CCAS! 

The sequel chapter to my debut series Ultimate Millennium is available now! 

Since the publication of the first issue, I've made things much more accessible and grew as an artist since April of 2021. Anyone who is interested in checking out the series, I have it listed on my online store, ryderlcomics.bigcartel.com

At an affordable $3 for #1 and $5 for #2, all profits go towards reprints and printings of future issues. If you're interested in the plot, feel free to check it out.

The Daily Cartoonist's D. D. Degg posted this:

https://www.dailycartoonist.com/index.php/2022/05/21/fred-carter-rip/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email

New “Lum and Abner” Comic Strip #566!

We received another request for comics from a prison chaplain. Happy to support them in their ministry... we sent out 100 copies of Spiritman #2. Praying that it fosters a connection between the chaplains and the people they serve.

"Some sat in darkness and in the shadow of death, being bound in affliction and iron, because they rebelled against the words of God,and condemned the counsel of the Most High. Therefore he brought down their heart with labor. They fell down, and there was no one to help. Then they cried to the LORD in their trouble, and he saved them out of their distresses. He brought them out of darkness and the shadow of death, and broke away their chains. Let them praise the LORD for his loving kindness, for his wonderful deeds to the children of men!" Psalm 107:10-15 WMB

Read Spiritman comics at https://spiritmancomics.com
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“NOW WHAT!?” Chapter 10!

Cartoonist: Donnie Pitchford!
Audio cast in order of appearance:
Dr. Joe Oliver, announcer and Travelin’ Joe! 
Marc Ridgeway, composer/musician! 
“Singin’” Sam Brown as Dick Huddleston!
Donnie Pitchford as Abner!
Tim Hollis as Lum!

Please click here to read and listen - free!

Friends - brothers and sisters in Christ - this is my first post, and I trust someone will let me know if I've done this incorrectly!

I wanted to share my comic strip with everyone. I produce Lum and Abner on a weekly basis. It's family-friendly entertainment based on a 1931-54 radio comedy series (and 1940s-50s movies). The heirs give me permission. I have been at this for 11 years.

Here is a link through which you can check out the strips online - free! I offer free subscriptions and offer the print version to newspapers:
https://lumandabnercomics.com/

Also we offer a free audio enactment of every comic strip. This was started in 2011 for our blind friends but it's taken on a life of its own.

If you've never heard of Lum and Abner, the program and it's characters are warm, down-home, rural folks who live in a tiny community called Pine Ridge, Arkansas. It was the inspiration for many other rural characters in comics, films, and television. Lum and Abner predated characters the likes of Snuffy Smith and Li'l Abner as well as the TV series The Real McCoys, The Andy Griffith Show, The Beverly Hillbillies, and Green Acres. In fact, there are connections between L&A and some of those!

Feel free to contact me! 

May God richly Bless you all!

Argghhh! Take it easy on the paint job!

"Our pursuers were swifter than the eagles of the sky. They chased us on the mountains. They set an ambush for us in the wilderness." Lamentations 4:19 WMB

Want more? Check out today's bonus panel at http://spiritmancomics.com

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As promised... oh yeah, that's what's growling.

"The dragon grew angry with the woman, and went away to make war with the rest of her offspring,* who keep God’s commandments and hold Yeshua’s testimony.” Revelation 12:17 WMB

Want more? Check out today's bonus panel at http://spiritmancomics.com

#comics #comicbooks #christiancomics #christiancomicbooks #christiansuperheroes#indiecomics