Editing a graphic novel

I'm about to start the most daunting project I'm likely ever going to do: writing and illustrating a graphic novel. The project, titled The (Un)Holy War, is about a politically incorrect televangelist by day, caped crusader by night. The story will bring an element of dark comedy to a relatively satire-free topic.

The story is centered on a young televangelist with an ultra-conservative political and religious worldview who attempts to prevent society’s secularization and moral decay.

He decides to don medieval knight’s armor and embarks on a crusade to quash those he holds responsible for corrupting society and to create his ideal version of society – even if it means betraying his principles in the process. 

The project involves multiple drafts, and multiple edits of the story. I hope that the editing process will take me until the end of August to complete; however there is a good chance that I'll be editing beyond that target. 

In addition to writing and editing the story, I'll have to draw storyboards. This process will take a very long time as I will likely be drawing each page numerous times. The reason I will draw each page several times is because I'll want to have several different page layouts to choose from. Once these roughs are drawn out, they will have to be imported into Adobe Illustrator, where I will have to painstakingly ink each cell. 

In a project like this, the editing goes well beyond writing copy. You have to consider factors such as page layout, and editing illustrations. Although this project will be one of the most difficult I've ever attempted, I look forward to the experience I'll gain from it. 

New Blog

So, I decided to upgrade - kind of...

This blog is about to come to an end, to be replaced by a new one.

It's taken me forever to actually get around to creating the new site and getting it set up. Follow the link to view the new and (hopefully) improved Dave's News & Views. The new blog will feature articles I've written for The Projector, and will strictly focus on current affairs and politics.

So, you might be asking yourself: "What will happen to this blog?"

The short answer is, well, I'm not sure yet...

For the time being I will continue to use this blog to post miscellaneous articles of general interest, as well as school assignments.

That being said, content might be scarce on this blog while I rebrand it over the remainder of the summer. Thanks for your anticipated patience while I figure out what to do with this site.

For the love of God, edit your text messages!

There's nothing more annoying than writing a text message only to discover moments after you hit the send button that the built-in auto-correct changed a word within your message. Most of the time, the mistakes are minor, however sometimes those mistakes can be rather funny.

There are countless websites that display unfortunate auto-correct mistakes.

Luckily there are some online resources that can help you disable that pesky auto-correct.

If there is a lesson to take away from all of this is that despite software that's meant to prevent mistakes exists, errors still occur. It's still important to edit your messages before they get sent out, or you wind-up with an unfortunate spelling mistake and possibly embarrassing text message.

Strikethroughs in Articles

Editing within an article adds to comedic effect

Canada's newest "media darling" Brigette DePape

I was reading a clever editorial by Kelly McParland in the National Post about Canada's newest - and perhaps most famous (for now) - activist Brigette DePape and noticed something rather odd that immediately jumped out at me: a strikethrough in the copy.

McParland's choice to edit a word by adding the strikethrough was very clever and added to the comedic effect of the editorial. Although it's slightly out of context, the following is the paragraph which includes the strikethrough:

What next for Ms. DePape? Bungee-jumping from the CN Tower in support of more bike lanes? Careening from floe to floe as she personally rescues baby seals? Single-handedly storming the shores of Gaza carrying bullets  foodstuffs for the freedom fighters of Hamas? Anything is possible when you’re young, opinionated and inventive.


I've noticed more and more articles using this device. I suppose editing your copy in such a manner - whereby the reader can see what you intended to write - can be humorous depending on the subject matter.

Its use in McParland's article certainly aided in injecting a level of humour to the overall article.

Editing Yourself Online

There's one sphere of life that's becoming harder and harder to edit, your online life.

I was rather annoyed to discover several pictures of myself tagged in Facebook photo albums. Although the pictures weren't necessarily compromising, I was still rather annoyed by the fact that somebody else had the ability to dictate how others perceive me online.

There is no longer any effective method to edit yourself on social media networks. It's difficult to edit what others see about you, and even if you were to untag yourself in images, those pictures still float around online for anyone to see.

Your ability to edit yourself, not to mention keep certain aspects of your life private are virtually non-existant. In an article that appeared in the Guardian, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg said that privacy was no longer a social norm. I believe he might be right.

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg

We've forgone our ability to edit our online lives, not to mention our privacy the minute we signed up for Facebook.  Although the social media site is a great tool to stay connected with friends and family, the negatives are becoming all to clear.