Welcome to our first special issue of the Winterwind Papers...

Halloween 2008

We've never done a "special" issue before but about a week before Issue 10 went online, I got the idea of doing a Halloween issue.

I must confess, the origins of that idea are... well, geeky I guess.

A friend of mine has started collecting Doctor Who figures. In fact, he's amassed quite a collection in a short time and he's given me a few as gifts. He liked my first (and what I thought would be my only) web comic and he's been encouraging me to write more. Some of the figures, particularly the witch, coupled with the season, naturally suggested a Halloween story and thus, this issue was born.

Not wanting the issue to be just the web comic, I immediately looked for some contributors on short notice.

It turned out that I didn't have to look very far at all.

Our profiled artist from Issue 7, Lina Broström, is a woman of many talents.

Not only is she a gifted artist but she's also a writer.

I'd initially asked her if she could come up with some art for the issue. That was before I knew she was a writer and in this issue, we're twice blessed with her gifts.

She painted the cover for the issue and wrote a fantastic short story with what I feel is easily the best ending for any story I've read in a long time.

She also did the backgrounds for her story and she's definitely left her mark on our first Halloween issue.

As for my contribution...

I just really don't know how I feel about a web comic with action figures. Part of me had a lot of fun. I like the story, I like the idea. And my roommate, Stacy, was an invaluable help in making the miniature sets.

Who knew you could do so much with shoe boxes, toothpicks and popsicle sticks. We had fun building them even though I started feeling like I was back in kindergarten, gluing macaroni to empty soup cans that the teacher then spray painted gold.

And that leads to the part of me that feels a bit silly. I'm a grown man trying to do forced perspective photography with action figures... in public. And I've got a few teasing emails from Lina about that.

At the same time, there are plenty of other people doing web comics, some of which are damned good as far as writing or photography or both. And I don't see those creators as geeky. I just feel it a bit myself.

In the end, I simply tell myself that's it just another artistic medium and I can, most of the time, look in the mirror without wondering about my maturity and sanity.

So I hope you enjoy this issue and the two stories within. And if you can identify the text of the letter I put on the staff page, without using Google (or any other search engine), you get a treat.

Happy Halloween (Samhain)