Blog

To all the Fathers out there, you guys are amazing, have a blessed day!! Miss u Dad and a special thanx to all my spiritual fathers Pastor Dwayne Speers and Pastor Eric Brockhoff thanx guys much love

I am doing lots of work right now and through the week I am working at my regular job and my comic drawing jobs so if you email me or message me I will get back to you or I will blog it on the weekends also if you would like to Skype and ask questions let me know and we can set something up once again that would be on the weekends. I am doing this because I believe when you are blessed with an open door you hold the door open and bless someone else.

Sometimes I just want to draw my family and friends in my comics. Here’s the first page of a short story titled "Dang Cabbages" (minus graytones and lettering). I first wrote "Dang Cabbages" in 1996. It’ll be part of the "Shinobi" story that takes place in AN ACT OF FAITH #10-12. "Dang Cabbages" will appear in AN ACT OF FAITH #10. Yeah, I’m jumping ahead a bit. The next issue, AN ACT OF FAITH #4, will go on sale in July through iVerse Media.
 
http://albert.nickerson.tripod.com/anactoffaith10dangcabbages.jpg

Well Orbis Mortalis Issue 1 is well on its way and should be released in July. Cover Art is finished and Page 1 and 2 are done. I am also super excited to share this: http://mortalcoilproductions.com/blog.html

There is a video on the first post of my blog. God totally blessed me with the Awesome privilege to do some art for Skillets new stage show this year. Featured in this video is the song Hero. I got to create some sketchy comic art for the main verses and chorus of the song. I also got to create a small comic for the song Monster. Hopefully Ill be able to share that video as well. Anyway here is the cover art for issue 1. ENJOY

I mailed AN ACT OF FAITH #4 to iVerse Media. This issue should go on sale in the first half of July.

Here’s a page from AN ACT OF FAITH #4. One of the villains should be familiar to those that have read THE ARGGH!!! CHRONICLES 2000 EDITION…

http://albert.nickerson.tripod.com/anactoffaith07pg8.jpg

I have a short interview in the FAMILY FICTION JUNE AND JULY issue. Scroll down to FAMILY FICTION JUNE AND JULY. You can read the issue in your browser or download the PDF. My interview is in the COMICS and ANIMATION section.

http://www.familyfiction.com/magazines/

What has happened to morality in our culture? What has happened to morality in our entertainment? Why do some of our heroes act more like villains? And why are villains and monsters in entertainment treated like the good-guys?

While teaching Sequential Art, the art of making comics, to college students, I often start a conversation about these very topics. I ask the question: “What has happened to our morals?”  Not too long ago, one student replied: “We have none.”

How scary is that; especially coming from a young person who stated it in such a matter-of-fact way?

I address a bunch of this stuff in my comic, AN ACT OF FAITH. I’m drawing the second-half of AN ACT OF FAITH #7, the third part of “The Return of the Green Knight” story.

My next issue, AN ACT OF FAITH #4, will go on sale at the beginning of July.

Here’s three pages from AN ACT OF FAITH #7 which focuses a bit on some of the things that I addressed above. (Nemish-Man is not having a good day.) Also, on the second page, you can really see a couple of comics’ great creators’ influences on my storytelling.

http://albert.nickerson.tripod.com/anactoffaith7preview.jpg

This Steam-punk style western features "The Chosen" a group of Christian Cowboys who are wanted men in a land where Christianity is outlawed. There mission is to spread the gospel of Christ to the lost land called Westerland. I pretty much have the story i just need an artist anyone who is interested please contact me via E-mail mar2262007@maricopa.edu

http://mortalcoilproductions.com

Hope you can get a small chuckle. Comments/Critique more than welcome.

-Mike

I made this little blog post when I was drawing a comic about a surreal world where people wash with poop, eat it as a topping on pizza, and swim in it for recreation. My initial desire was to create an allegorical series that shows how shallow and superficial our philanthropy and affections are. Given that I am a horribly lazy individual, I never brought that series out to fruition (perhaps someday!), but nevertheless thought that this preface to it would be of some passing interest and edification to someone here wondering about the doctrine of regeneration:

===================================================================

The dung beetle is a special breed of beetle, an amazing creature that feasts on feces like fillet mignon. What many people do not know about dung beetles - if they should condescend to know anything about these creatures at all - is that even the different types of dung beetle have different ways that they showcase their scatological love. Some graft themselves to dung, sucking everything they need in life from it like a tick. While others roll the refuse into a ball and bury it like some pirate's treasure. Still others find themselves so ingratiated by dung that they opt to live in it like a celebrity in his mansion. Whatever type of dung beetle it is though, their entire way of life centers on dung. And there is something strange and almost exhilarating about an animal that's whole life involves lifting up what others have laid to waste. Their very nature is focused on everything we would have flushed away.

Despite the reservations we might have rolling around refuse balls or sucking up nutrients from the droppings of animals ourselves, the dung beetle thinks nothing of it.  He goes on his work as casually as we might shop for purses or watch television while choking down Cheetos. While his very being impels him to the poop, most of us find his actions and affections revolting. And it is this relative sense of perspective that leads me wondering how we must be viewed according to the sight and standards of Heaven. If there is indeed a perfect God who wraps Himself in light and holiness, I suspect there would be very little within us He wouldn't be disgusted by and even less in us worth praising. We are, in our own way, bumbling around with our own balls of waste, infatuated by the smells and textures of things that would leave better beings hurling and heaving. I suspect we have underestimated how far we've fallen, and so miscalculated how much we have missed the mark - not only within our lifetime, but daily. Nevertheless, many individuals suppose that they can naturally love more than the excrement - so to speak - that they have been accustomed to love. They suppose that the dung beetle could with enough effort come to enjoy a nice steak paired with an aged wine. But it is not within the dung beetle's nature to love more than the dung, anymore than it is in our nature to love more than the World has to offer. In both instances, the higher things are not only abandoned carelessly; they're rejected outright.

In order for the dung beetle to enjoy steak and wine, his very nature must change. And for the last two thousand years, it has been the Christian church maintaining the same about humanity and its love for God. For a man to love the higher things, to love God and the holiness attributed to Him, the man's nature must also change. Unfortunately, a great number of Christian men and women today believe that for an individual to become a Christian, he or she must merely testify his or her allegiance to Christ and try to live an upstanding life. But this is not enough! It has never been. A dung beetle that pretends to hate dung is still a dung beetle. And a man that reforms his outer actions is no better off than when he started. Because the real problem is within. And it is a problem that Jesus maintains can only solved by being born again. Now, to be born again is not merely to make a choice to accept Christ into your heart, perhaps after some theological debate or emotional altar call. It is not a mere position you hold, like whether to vote Republican or Democrat. To be born again is to have your very nature miraculously altered, to have your direction and drive reoriented, to have everything you loved and everything you hated flipped about and addled like eggs. It is to become something new - like a dung beetle that has morphed into a fruit fly. Or a zombie who suddenly prefers broccoli to brains. To misunderstand this is to misunderstand a principal fact about the Gospel. Many who claim to have been saved by Christ have not been saved, because they have not been changed internally, which is the only way an individual can come to love and follow Him.

But how can a man change his nature? How can a "man who is accustomed to evil do good," anymore than an "Ethiopian can change his skin or a lion his spots?" How can the tares become wheat? How can the goats become sheep? How can the rocky ground become fertile? How can the blind see? Or the deaf hear? Or the lame walk? How can a bad tree team with good fruit? A million and one metaphors are presented in Scripture of things that have no capacity in themselves to change. And the truth is that nothing can change, that we will not accept Christ - for there is nothing desirable about Him to us - unless we are transformed by a miraculous work of God. Jesus says as much when many of His early disciples first left Him. These former followers supposed they came to Jesus and that they were ready to serve Him, but as they listened to Christ preach, they began instead to reject Him. And as they abandoned Him in droves, Christ concluded that "No one can come to me unless it is granted him by the Father" (John 6:65). Their rejection merely illuminated the fact that God had not prepared their hearts to hear Him. For the saved are not changed because they choose God, but because God chooses to change them. And in that change, when He gives His followers a new heart and a new spirit (Ezekiel 36:26), they can finally accept and love the Son who died for them. It is all very much a mystery though - this change. Christ likens it to the wind in that "the wind blows where it wishes, and you hear the sound of it, but cannot tell where it comes from and where it goes. So is everyone who is born of the Spirit" (John 3:8). God's method for initiating this change is beyond us. It is as if we could one day be walking idly along a city sidewalk, minding our own business, and without notice, begin to think thoughts that are not our own or feel an affection for things we've never loved. This change comes from God, and it is only through this change that one can be saved.

Nevertheless, everyday we hear individuals pledge some nominal allegiance to Christ, where no change of heart exists. There are individuals who attend church regularly, and give to charities, and pray every night, who can recite whole pages of the Bible, and who are kind to the worst of us. But no change of heart has occurred. There are men and women who sit sullen and somber in church pews crying out to the Lord, despite having no true desire for Him. They want comfort, or tradition, or the fellowship of good people, status, or proof of their righteousness. But they do not and will not desire Him. They do not hunger for Him. They do not thirst after Him. They do not treasure Him above all things. They may consider themselves Christians, but the actions of those who have been brought to life by God befuddle and betray what they know of themselves. They cannot relate with the figures of men and women that number the pages of the Gospel. What, after all, in the woman made her wash the Lord with her tears and brush His feet with her hair? What in the tax collector provoked him to cry to the Heavens lamenting his own unworthiness and depravity? Who is this man who would sell everything he owns to gain Christ, as if Christ were an invaluable pearl or treasure? Who were these disciples who left their homes, and jobs, and reputations to follow this Man? Who can say why those who are His blessed are the ones who are weeping, and are meek, and are poor in Spirit? How is it that many individuals today who adopt the label of Christian can find that self-deprecation so alien in their own lives? How is it that those same individuals can have so little desire for Him, when it is clear that the pages of Scripture indicate that the saints wanted nothing else? Who can explain this indifference and self-indulgence except that the follower is really no true follower at all, that the insect crawling in a bowl of fresh fruit only has an affinity for the rotten and repugnant?

And what of the reader? Do you thirst after Him like a fine wine? Can you even stomach Him? Do you have any love for Him at all? And if so, how does that love manifest itself? Do you search the Scriptures daily to discover more about this Man who died nailed to a tree? Do you yearn for the fellowship of others who yearn for Him as well? Do you speak to Him and about Him like you would one you adore? That is to say, do you do what everyone does when it comes to people and things they love? Or is your love for Him dry like a crusty lawn sausage left by your neighbor's beagle? Is your so-called love for Him merely superficial and shallow? Does He mean anything to you at all?

would anyone be interested in helping get a comic drawn the script is only 5 pages long of course free of charge thank you and God Bless 

May 12th, 2013

For Immediate Release

Contact

Justin Martin, creator, writer

rsquaredcomicz@gmail.com

www.rsquaredcomicz.com

Justin Martin of R-Squared Comicz

Announces the Release of Lightweightz: The Anthology Part Two

Justin Martin, educator, writer and founder of R-Squared-Comicz is proud to release Lightweightz: The Anthology Part Two, available today for purchase as a pdf on www.rsquaredcomicz.com. It is drawn and colored by Przemyslaw R. Dedelis and Lya, respectively. “Przemyslaw and Lya did an amazing job for [Lightweightz: The Anthology] Part One, and...are blowing my mind in new ways [with] Part Two,” says creator and writer Justin Martin.

Based on 1 Corinthians 12:7 ("Now to each one the manifestation of the spirit is given for the common good"), Part Two introduces readers to the remaining four Lightweightz, teenagers who discover they have unique abilities. As with Part One, Part Two focuses on the impact these abilities have on their lives, and their struggles in making sense of them. Each struggle is unique, and holds significant implications for who they will become.

It begins with Ayden the pusher, who begins to see just how much control he has over his situation. Next is Qasim the revealer, who's determined to use his ability to help others, despite the toll it takes on his personal life. There's Emi the adapter, who learns the hard way that it’s not about the ability, but about what you do with it. And finally there’s Gabriel the inscriber, whose ability makes him one of the most hunted and important characters for the events to come. “This time around, I wanted their abilities to be more central to their story, and for the stories to be a little more action-oriented,” says creator and writer Justin Martin. “Hopefully I’ve achieved these goals, and more importantly, convinced [readers] to care about each character.”

With Ayden's desire for significance, Qasim's commitment to doing the right thing, Emi's need to belong, and Gabriel's renewed purpose, Part Two gives readers a look into what motivates each character, and what lies ahead. And with a diverse group of characters and experiences, there’s something for everyone. So grab your copy, and let your light shine!

R-Squared Comicz was founded in 2010 by Justin Martin with the purpose of creating quality comics from a Christian worldview. Justin has a Master's in Education, and is currently pursuing his PhD in Education. His research involves the social and moral judgments of adolescents and college students. In addition to Lightweightz, he is working on other comics, which you can learn more about on his website.

"Hey Christian fam...Great News!!!! My first issue of my comic book. "The Whole Armor" is on Amazon for digital download on Kindle...if you don't have a Kindle...no problem download the app and download the comic there...for a limited time its only 99 cents,so make sure to give me a 5 star review...thanks all."