Part 1.1: January 1998
Malarkey was, originally, a submission to an improvisational manga contest. When it lost I eventually took a whack at turning it into a standalone comic and experimented with a number of different ways of doing that. Here is the first bit.
01 - 02 - 03 - 04 - 05 - 06 - 07 - 08 - 09
Part 1.2: April 1998
Here's the next bit, after which it just sorta sat for various reasons.
10 - 11 - 12 - 13
Part 1.3: February 2000
A major inspiration for Malarkey was the approaching Millennium. The real-life year 2000 became the story's Hegemonic Year 1000, a thousand years since the formation of the galaxy's governing body in a blaze of religious fervor and a perfect time for various secret agencies and sinister apocalyptic cults to make their moves. The real Millennium showed up before I knew it, and I couldn't shake the nagging feeling that the now long-defunct comic really deserved some sort of closure to mark the occasion. I was a bit late, but I managed to pull it off. This is my favorite part of the story; the art and writing are nice indeed.
14 - 15 - 16 - 17 - 18 - 19 - 20 - 21 - 22 - 23 - 24
Part 2.1: October 2000
Of course, I couldn't leave well enough alone. The growing desire to do a comic again made be get my sketching pencils out and try to continue the story in scratchy Megatokyo-style gray'n'white. This particular section isn't bad, but...
25 - 26 - 27 - 28 - 29 - 30 - 31 - 32
Part 2.2: December 2000
...I eventually wrote myself into a corner and that was that. A major problem with Malarkey has always been a lack of clarity and coherence in the storyline. Various elements and characters came and went in my mind, and at some points I toyed with quite dramatic changes in the plot. The result was predictable. In the end, it feels kind of like (obscure reference alert) when Don Simpson continued Border Worlds in black and white and started severely changing the feel and direction of the story; something was irreversibly different, and not in a good way. If I ever try to bring this story back to life again, I'll probably abandon all of Part 2 and start from scratch. I'd say that's unlikely at best, but then it's careless to make too many assumptions about the future where Malarkey is concerned...
33 - 34
To Be Continued?