Launching Jitney with Jex and Ticca

This is the first page of “Mine: A Tale of the Jitney,” a short comics story I wrote and saw come to life through the artistic talents of penciler Tim Teague, inker Kendra Hale, colorist Reggie Themistocle, and letterer Alex Giles.

In this story, Jex is an orphan kid piloting his own spaceship. Ticca is the stickbug who keeps the ship in barely working order. Since no sane, upright person would hire their rickety rocket, they end up hauling unwanted freight and disreputable passengers. That offers a lot of opportunity for Jex and Ticca to get into and out of trouble, as in these five pages.

I created this tale for Wonderfunders, a comics-making collective organized on Facebook by publisher James Lynch. That group invited writers to script five-page stories with proposals for longer stories. Then teams assembled to complete the short stories.

“Mine: A Tale of the Jitney” is one of four short stories in this issue of the Wonderfunders Anthology series, available in digital and paper forms through IndyPlanet.