For those not in the know, Sketchies was my first project with Flo. Originally meant as a video series, it was retooled into comics form, most of it with artist Ryan Estrada. Xan is a refugee from that series. He might be considered an alternate version, just as Shanna is not the same Shanna as in Fans, or he may just be a bit older and a little more refined in his obsessions.

In Sketchies, Xan and five other students are attending cartooning classes at Topffer University. Xan is a digital native, and sort of leaning into that identity, though he mellows a bit as he and one of the other students hit it off romantically. The vogue for remixed video-game imagery meant that, among his classmates, he was the most successful in terms of gaining readers, but totally unprepared when Nintendo sent him a cease-and-desist order. (And here he is again, going up against The Man in the form of a billion-dollar video-game publisher.)

I got a bit depressed when I started casting around for the current online presence of Sketchies and realized that it doesn’t really have one. We made ebooks of it available as part of the Kickstarter, but that was ages ago. I thought Flo was doing something with it on Gumroad, but if so, I can’t find it. In any case, I’ll see if I can bring it back for your consumption in some form before these annos are over.

(With the caveat that some of it would probably embarrass us now. It was earlier work and a different style of comedy, and I do recall one character named “Wasp” who basically lived to offend people. Even Xan is probably best read as trying a little too hard to “be himself” rather than quite as oblivious as he appears. I think that’s more or less how we wrote this version of him, as will become clearer in a page or two.)