Never-Ending Comic Hearthstone Cards

I've really enjoyed Hearthstone for the past year that I've played it, and since it came out with its latest expansion, Goblins vs. Gnomes, I've been thinking a lot about the game's mechanics. After finding the Hearthstone Card Generator online, I got the idea to make cards based on the Never-Ending Comic. My goal while making these was to both do justice to the comic and create mechanics, minions, spells, and hero powers that I wouldn't mind seeing in Hearthstone someday. I didn't worry too much about balance—the majority of the cards are Epics, for example—but it was interesting to think about how these cards would work in a real game of Hearthstone. I wish the game had a game editor like all of Blizzard's other games.

Ancient N.E.C. Facsimiles

Whenever I stay over at my parents' house in Idaho, I try to find time to look through the archives of my ancient tablet stash. In these two or three large boxes are contained the vast majority of my best doodles that have been preserved for decades. There are standalone pages of graffitied classroom notebook pages, actual formal colored drawings on printer paper, and makeshift "tablets" made from the backs of hundreds of used worksheets stapled together (my dad used to be a 5th Grade teacher). It seems like every time I skim through this treasure trove I find memories inscribed in markers, ink, and colored pencils. This time I found these gems, and I figured if any of you have read through the Never-Ending Comic I uploaded this past summer, they may be interesting to you.

Some of these color schemes surprise me. Zabo, for instance, I thought would have an inverted form of the color scheme that he has above. And Manto looks more like Mewtwo than I think I intended with those gray colors. You can also see an interesting assortment of characters that were never seen. Mercu, which appears to be the Chaun-evolved form of Geo, as well as Red Zabo, "Pall" (an obvious clone of Palmon from Digimon) and Spikehare.

Anyway, it's mostly just fun to speculate what might have continued on on NEC. It's interesting that these drawings seem to be from when I was at least in 7th Grade, which was a year after I stopped making new comics.

More episodes of N.E.C. online

Episodes 19-36 of the Never-Ending Comic are now up for you to read. This part of the story doesn't really round out the plot very well, but there's some good drawings in there, as well as some interesting battles and whatnot. Above anything else, I'm just amazed I was dedicated enough to draw so many pages of the same story. Continue reading the story here!

The Never-Ending Comic!

Ladies and gentlemen, the Never-Ending Comic is open to the public for the first time ever! Join Austin and his friends Nathan and Dustin with their host of monster friends (sounds like Pokémon or Digimon, doesn't it?) as they battle monsters, learn friendship, and go on an adventure that literally never ends!

For information on the origin of this ancient story, click here. For a spotlight on the premise of N.E.C., click here.
To start reading, click here!

I would love to hear your feedback, and because of the limitations of blog "pages" as opposed to "posts," feel free to post comments about the comic on this post.

Spotlight: The Never-Ending Comic

I have always, always loved to draw. I don't think there's a memory early enough that I don't remember doodling. My mom has little drawings in my scrapbook that she says I drew when I was two. In 5th Grade, a number of influences (the most influential was Digimon: Digital Monsters) inspired me to begin writing a comic about me and two best friends at the time, Dustin and Nathan. I worked on the comic at school during my free time, reading it with my two friends on the bus ride home each day. It was quite the attention-catcher for my classmates, though I don't remember how much of the story was read by them. I remember bragging that the comic was called the "Never-Ending Comic" or "N.E.C.," and that I would never stop drawing the story until I "got a job" (presumably, this indicated a commitment of roughly 6 years or so). This, of course, did not happen; I think I got bored as soon as summer vacation rolled around.

More likely a cause than my boredom, however, was the story's premise. It was never really going anywhere. It starts off rather excellently, initiating a quest for my character with conflicts along the way. However, eventually the story becomes swollen with characters and unexplained events, and most of all, battle after battle with implausibly hostile monsters. Furthermore, my age-old obsession with food spoiled the urgency and conflict of the story when the characters would spend several pages preparing a meaningless feast and eating it.

Nevertheless, I have recently reread the comic after at least a five-year break, and have been immensely impressed the illustrations and humor of my fifth-grade self. The story becomes mundane after a point, but before this point it is engaging and full of good ideas. It is something that I seem to have grown out of—creative ideas—and something I wish I could recapture.

I anticipate scanning the Never-Ending Comic (aptly named, however ironically) in the near future and releasing it publicly for the first time. Provided with each page will be commentary, and I hope that you will all enjoy an impressively prodigious accomplishment I am extremely proud of.
Stay tuned!