There’s a meme going around on deviantArt in which you fill in a grid with pictures of stuff that inspires, informs or influences your work – the stuff that gets you fired up with enthusiasm to create. So I thought I’d give it a go.

Click to embiggen.

The influences listed aren’t all necessarily stuff that directly informs the style of the comic, but they are things that have had an impact on me and which continue to make my brain fizz. Some of them are old (The Flight of Dragons is one of my all-time favourite childhood movies), some of them are new (Brian Clevinger and Scott Wegener’s Atomic Robo is freakin’ amazing and everyone should read it), all of them have affected my development as an artist, and hence Dark Places.

I hope you’re enjoying Dark Places so far – I’d guess so, otherwise you wouldn’t be reading it, right? Right. I love being able to share these stories with you, and am deeply grateful for all your feedback, comments and company during Livestream sessions. Thank you.

So, if you enjoy the comic I’d like you to share that enjoyment around. This is pretty easy to do – updates are posted on the Dark Places fan page on Facebook and on the Dark Places Twitter stream, so you can like/share/retweet stuff from there. There are also little icons at the bottom of every single update that make it super-easy to share Dark Places on social bookmarking sites like Reddit, Delicious, StumbleUpon and Digg. It’s a matter of seconds.

As a reminder, there’s also the Dark Places Formspring page, where you can ask me… stuff! Whatever questions come to mind. I enjoy answering them.

Does Dark Places fill you with uncertainty and doubt? Do you lie awake at night, endlessly mulling over some tiny detail of the comic which you fear no one else even notices? Do you wonder where all this business with the eldritch horrors and Fair Folk and gnolls and kobolds and knights and castles is going? Yeah, me too.

Fortunately for you guys the answers may be closer than you think! I now have a Formspring page set up for the comic, I’d like you to ask me… well, whatever you like. Within reason. Mainly about the comic, for preference, since that’s something I know things about. Oh, such things. Such beautiful, terrible things…

Ahem. Yes. If there’s some point of plot that’s unclear, some detail of the setting that intrigues you, or some technical aspect of the comic-creating process that you’d like to know more about, this is your chance to find out. There’s a box, you type questions in it, I answer them. It’s pretty straightforward stuff. I’ll probably even add the especially popular questions to an FAQ on the About page, to stand as a shining beacon of enlightenment for all.

Click link, receive answers.