Hey Jim - night and day are very important to the ocean world. Take squid: they rise to feed at night and descend during the day. Also, sunlight feeds all the phytoplankton, without which you wouldn't be breathing yourself right now. And, I don't have to mention tides, do I?
(These are just a few serving suggestions for you).

Llyn and Jim,
Those are all great points (some of which hadn't occurred to me!).
This is a hard question on answer without revealing some ... hmmm ... minor, I guess, plot points.
As you will see in future episodes, celestial cycles, and indeed all things pertaining to the heavens, are known to Atlanteans, and hold particular interest to both Attilus and Llyr.

This must be the second or third time I've had to tell Jim, "as you shall see". So, thanks Jim for your attentive reading!

Thank you, sir!

oh, pshaw!
Thanks Joey!

Thanks!

This is knocking my socks off.

Question - "Where are my wife and child?"

Answer - sleeping with the fishes.

Thanks dude!

Very cool, action packed posting. Love panel 3. And glad to know they'll finally be able to talk to other people...

you killed the kraken on purpose didn't you.....just to hurt me.
I'll remember this Michael,oh yes, I'll remember this!!!!

pppffffffttttt!! - no excuse!! No one kills off DeNiro do they??!!!
No.
No they do not.

Would even Llyr miss a pair of soggy slippers?

Wait, which ring?

Meaningful stories come in all shapes, sizes and disguises.

I like to tackle as many different styles as I can, both story-wise as well as drawing-wise. It's a challenge everyone may not be able to appreciate, but as long as it's my art, my time, and my efforts (for free!), it's my call.

I have more projects in the works than you'd believe. LOVIATHAN is only one, and I intend to have fun with it, which was the whole idea behind it.

I hope one of these future projects will turn out to be more obviously appealing to you.
As always, thanks for reading :) !!!

I'm probably a lot older than you think.
Actually, I've been working in comics and animation for about 17 years, so I'm not exactly new at this.

No, I wasn't trying to imply that free comics are beyond criticism.
PARADE (WITH FIREWORKS) was a free comic, debuted here on AIV, and received tons of reviews, both good, bad and in -between. People are going to have opinions and reactions about stuff, just like I do, and that's cool.

Speaking for myself, I'm fascinated with the work of past artists and writers because it's their work that inspired me to pursue this career and to spend hours and hours, day after day, thinking up these stories and drawing pages of comic art.

Without them I wouldn't be here.

The same way aspiring musicians learn the classics by actually playing them, the way actors still bring Shakespeare to the stage, and painters sketch the work of the masters, we comic artists have a lot to learn from our predecessors, and as such the homage can be a great experience.

As far as LOVIATHAN specifically is concerned, it's sometimes necessary to frame a story in terms of the overblown or fantastic to get to the big topics.

So far we've seen two brothers with a mysterious past and an obvious rivalry arrive in NYC, where they have to learn new customs and re-establish themselves. One seems to have suffered a great loss, and the other may have been the cause.

I find that to be an interesting set up. We've barely seen the first chapter. It's got a ways to go, and it may be easier to judge when more has unfolded.

Or not.
It's unfortunate that this isn't your cup of tea, but if you do stick around, your comments are of course welcome.

Hmmm ...
That sounds like something Dean might be interested in ...

I just wanted to add to this very interesting conversation, a few words someone relatively uninitiated to comics...

Something that perhaps goes hand in hand with the horizons being wider for comics is that the audience is also wider. As a newer fan of the form, something that's really great about reading a comic like Loviathan in a forum like Act-i-vate is that one is exposed, concurrent with reading the comic itself, to informed commentary and a description of the older artists to whom it may make a nod.

There are a ton of new comics fans out there (and I would bet this includes a sizeable segment of women for whom comics were a purely "boy" thing at the time we were growing up) who would probably never, on our own, pick up an old Jack Kirby comic and read it.

However, if we, as part of a new comics audience, are reading Act-i-vate, and we see that a newer comic we enjoy may have even a vague connection to something older, I would venture that those new fans would be much more likely to have their curiosity piqued and explore a history we would otherwise be unaware of. I can think of many fiction writers who were "gateway" authors for me to the authors they admired. In my opinion, everybody wins in a situation like that, both the readers and the writers. Same goes for this .

In short, thanks, Mike, for your stalwart commitment to the liberation of women comics readers everywhere. It's too bad you had to publish "Charlie the Chauvinist" and "Glass Ceiling/Iron Heart" under a pseudonym, but, y'know, still great work.