thank you to everyone who read it back in 2018! a lot has changed since then, but i'm still really proud of this thing.
miriambeach reblogged
thank you to everyone who read it back in 2018! a lot has changed since then, but i'm still really proud of this thing.
...aaaaand we're officially done! everything beyond the main storyline (i.e. the van yaks, the halloween special, and the point pleasant epilogue) has been uploaded. please let me know if any pages have been posted out of order or if there's anything else that looks screwy. thanks again, folks!
miriambeach reblogged
we're moving!
the wordpress site has been down for quite a while due to a deprecated theme or plugin. i'll be moving the archive to another platform—likely tapas—soon.
miriambeach reblogged
THERE WAS A MIRIAM BEACH SUPERVILLAIN AU ⁉️ oh my g0d i would love the hear literally everything abt it
YEAH THERE WAS AND STILL IS. i don't have anything written down for it but i add to it from time to time. there's even art, but it's all from 2018 so it may look a little crummy
mason is doctor quark, a mad scientist whose personality is the polar opposite of canon mason's. he was once a sweet, chipper kid who was really excited about villainy but has become something of a corporate puppet for RKC, the mysterious mega-conglomeration that sponsors high-profile heroes and villains alike. he used to be a henchman for count cadaverous and, before that, part of a villain mentor/mentee program with shep.
charlie is carlisle black/count cadaverous, nicknamed cad, a washed-up vampire supervillain who was a big deal in the 90s. he's got sort of an adam ant/new romantics look going on. he was also sponsored by RKC before his career imploded; these days, he gets his money working at a kind of host cafe for people who are into vampires.
he was friends with shep pre-villainy. they've had a turbulent relationship, but since their respective retirements, they're back to being friends. they even live together.
shep WAS the drip, a campy 60s-batman-esque villain with an artist gimmick. he's the only one allowed to do fourth wall gags. he was decidedly a second-string villain, so RKC never approached him with a sponsorship deal, but that was fine by him. he was (and still is) only in it for the chaos.
shep is still pretty angry at cad for sniping his protégé, mason, and then proceeding to treat the kid like trash, but above all, he just kind of pities cad. shep tried to step back in as quark's mentor after cad went supernova because he still had a great deal of affection for mason (he's known him since mason was just a teenager!)
quark no longer wants shep's guidance, but he's a fundamentally lonely person and shep is one of the few people who's still nice to him. he understandably resents his shitty former boss, cad, but shep loves them both so they have an uneasy truce.
ummmm anyway i still have to get into søren and louie's roles in this AU, and they're arguably the most interesting ones so STAY TUNED
søren is holo, dr. quark's smart home/lab assistant/emotional support AI. despite the name, they're not a hologram, but a hard-light construct, which i was once told is like "a hologram that punches things" and i'm not really interested in being corrected.
holo was INITIALLY created by quark, yes, but they were allowed to kind of build themself on their own. from their research, they concluded that the ideal evil scientist's assistant should take the visual form of a nerdy tech support guy because, in their words, "a tech support guy is the perfect mix of helpful and hostile."
they are an EXTREMELY advanced AI due to their own tireless research and self-experimentation. they don't experience human-like emotions (that's on purpose; they determined emotions would be "too much of a hassle") but they have developed their own likes and dislikes. they're even pursuing a relationship with cad (which they're keeping secret from quark for MANY reasons).
louie is nightshade, formerly heartstar, an ex-hero trying to make a heel turn after a bad breakup and subsequent ouster from a big, RKC-sponsored superhero team. she's seeking villain guidance from notorious washup count cadaverous (he was her fourth or fifth choice).
her power is that she can heal people, BUT she has to draw from her own life force to do so. however, after secretly taking some of cad's vampire venom, her powers are now the opposite: she can add to her own life by harming others.
oh yeah there's a LOT of worldbuilding around vampires and their venom but that's its whole other post
#HIIII this is i think the first time i've ever written anything extensively about this universe#feat. some art that is nearly FIVE YEARS OLD at this point holy hell#villain au#mason becker#doctor quark#charlie schwartz#count cadaverous#carlisle black#shep taggart#the drip#søren sørensen#holo#qing lu#nightshade#that enough tags for you?#long post#re-reblog bc i noticed a typo
we're moving!
the wordpress site has been down for quite a while due to a deprecated theme or plugin. i'll be moving the archive to another platform—likely tapas—soon.
the last chapter of miriam beach was originally going to be longer, but i’m finding that i’m no longer able to meet my own standards, so i think this is finally it for miriam beach, like, indefinitely. thanks so much for reading my comic and sticking with me through my ongoing battle with anxiety and depression.
i wish i could stay with these characters and give them the stories they deserve, but i think continuing this webcomic is just not in the cards for me at this point. i hope you understand this decision or, failing that, respect it.
i was a little surprised by how much this comic seemed to resonate with readers, especially since it was a college senior project that mutated from a domestic AU of a dungeons & dragons podcast (a fact i don’t love to advertise, because i believe and hope miriam beach has become comfortably its own thing, but i can’t leave without acknowledging the massive creative debt i owe to the mcelroy family. a million thank yous, mcelroys). but i think miriam beach was a lot more than just that, not just to me, but to at least—and this may be a very liberal estimate—several dozen others.
besides my readers, i’d also like to thank my academic advisors, chris perry and michele hardesty, as well as another mentor i had at hampshire, thomas haxo. i’ve missed you all in the year we’ve been apart. thank you for your encouragement, your guidance, and your support.
i want to continue writing and making comics. maybe with other characters, maybe (eventually) with these characters again, but i need some time to get my life in order. i love you all so, so much.
follow me on twitter here (or here, if you like non-stop posts about whatever sitcom or cartoon i’m obsessed with this week), and if you want, you can make a small one-time donation at ko-fi.com/brentraptor or commission me via twitter DM or email (brentraptor.art@gmail.com).
❤️🧡💛💚💙💜
this summer… qing “louie” lu IS… SPIDER-DAME
#sorry i haven't drawn my webcomic i've been too busy drawing spidersonas for my webcomic#qing lu#miriam beach#i don't talk about the miriam beach superhero/supervillain au much but louie's in it she's a former hero attempting a heel turn#the only problem is that her power is healing people so she doesn't make a very good villain. her tentative name is 'femme vitale'#anyway
miriambeach reblogged
If the main trio had super powers, what would they be?
i have an au in my head where they’re supervillains, but none of them have real powers, except charlie, who’s a vampire with vaguely occult powers and shapeshifting ability… mason’s a mad scientist and shep is a painting-themed batman ass villain
if the others had powers, mason’s would be time travel and shep’s would be clairvoyance
is it too late to change my answer because i think it would be cool if shep could talk to ghosts
If the main trio had super powers, what would they be?
i have an au in my head where they’re supervillains, but none of them have real powers, except charlie, who’s a vampire with vaguely occult powers and shapeshifting ability… mason’s a mad scientist and shep is a painting-themed batman ass villain
if the others had powers, mason’s would be time travel and shep’s would be clairvoyance
just curious: what pronouns does mason go by?
he, they, or she!
miriam beach briefly returns for a quick halloween special! expect more mb stuff in november in the form of short black-and-white strips on twitter.
heads up: this chapter is gonna be the last for a while!
as a recent college graduate and first-time adult, i’m suddenly having to contend with a lot of new challenges at once. it’s no secret that i struggle with anxiety—i worry that the stress of doing my comic on top of everything has started to negatively affect my health.
i’m not doing this because i want to, believe me. but something had to give. i don’t know when “season 2” will be coming, but in between i’m hoping to do a little halloween special.
ok, i gotta go before i get too maudlin, but thanks so much for reading my comic so far! everyone’s been amazing. during miriam beach‘s (and i hate this word) hiatus, i’ll still be posting art and jokes over at my twitter.