May 16, 2008 - In the span of a single day, Amal calls off his arranged marriage, comes out to his conservative parents, promptly gets disowned, goes on a bender... and wakes up the next morning to find TJ, a lanky, dreadlocked vagrant, frying eggs and singing Paul Simon in his kitchen.

TJ claims that the two have made a drunken pact to drive all the way from Berkeley to Providence. As it happens, Amal promised his sister he'd be there for her graduation from Brown University. And TJ, well... TJ has his own reasons.

The agreement is simple: Amal does the driving; TJ pays the way - but a 3500 mile journey leaves plenty of time for things to get complicated.

Is TJ and Amal available in print?

Yes; this story was intended for print from the start. The collected edition is available in softcover and hardcover, and PDF from Iron Circus Comics.
There are individual copies of Volume 3 left (at a heavy discount) in the TJ & Amal Store.

How long did you work on TJ and Amal?

I started planning the story in October 2007.
Comic pages started going up on the web December 16, 2009; the story ended on May 13, 2014.

Have you made/are you making any other comics?

Yes. I've done:
- PG Two full color shorts in the Homestuck offshoot Paradox Space
- 18+ A 22-page, full color adults-only story in Smut Peddler 2020 (Amal + an older gentleman, set before the main story)
- 18+ A 22-page, black and white adults-only story in Smut Peddler 2012 (also available as a standalone floppy) (TJ & a cute fat punk girl, set before the main story)
- PG A 44-page, black and white "three possible futures" sort of epilogue to TJ and Amal
- 18+ A 22-page, black and white adults-only limited run story set between Chapters 24 and 25 of TJ and Amal, available in PDF form through Iron Circus
- 18+ 150 pages of adult doujinshi (fan comics) for the anime series Yuri!!! On Ice, available in PDF form at itch.io.
- PG 40 or 50 pages of very informal doujinshi for the game Persona 4, available as PDF at itch.io.
- 18+ A 26-page, full color adults-only story in Smut Peddler 2016 (written by Spike Trotman, about a young woman magically avenging and briefly reuniting with her late soldier lover.)
- PG A 10-page, black and white experimental adaptation of the Japanese folktale Yuki Onna (unpublished; can be read here.)
- I'm also working on two other original comics, both PG, and one 18+ TJ & Amal side comic.

- My current day job is lettering and SFX on translated manga and other comics (both PG and 18+); please see my Carrd for titles and info.

Can I hire you to do an illustration/draw a comic for me?

I have a lot on my plate, but may be open to commissions, depending on complexity and time required. Please contact me for rates and other info.

I'd like to sell the TJ and Amal graphic novels in my bookstore/comic shop. Do you offer wholesale?

Iron Circus Comics handles sales and distribution of the omnibus edition; please contact them for retailer rates and info.

Why can't I leave comments on the comic pages?

Since TJ and Amal is a long-form story with lots of plot-important details, I prefer not to have extra material that will distract the reader from the comic pages.

Hey, on [page], is that a reference to [book/film/TV show]?

Quite possibly. I've compiled several pages of notes and credits; check them out if you like.

About translations...

If you want to try translating TJ and Amal, please feel free! If you would like to send me translated pages, I can put them up, or (preferably) link to the translation on its own site.
All translations are done by fans on their own time, for fun. Since I am fluent only in English, I am unable to make corrections or check for accuracy, and am not responsible for translated content.
An official French translation of Volume 1 is available for purchase through MXM Bookmark.
Official German translation of Volume 1 available through FireAngels.

How did you make the comic?

NOTE: the following was my process for TJ & Amal; current workflow and methods are very different.
First, I hand-write a script for each section - Dialogue still changes as the page comes together. Then I do a bunch of thumbnail sketches to decide on the layout of each page. After thumbnailing, I draw each panel to scale on a separate sheet of bright white paper.
I draw the first rough pass in Col-Erase Pink, the second pass in Col-Erase Carmine Red, the third and fourth passes in mechanical pencil and ink, then shade with 2B and 3B soft pencil lead.
I then scan the artwork and import it to Photoshop, where I extract the Red channel so that only the black and gray lines are visible.
After that, I piece all the panels together into a single page, do retouching and corrections, and add panel borders, balloons and lettering on new layers. Then it sits in the buffer for weeks and then I come back and obsessively fix the old art right before the page goes up
Original pages are 4125 x 6300 px. I drop the web-version pages to 700 px wide before posting.
A single page takes anywhere from 10 to 25 hours, start to finish.

What font do you use for the dialogue?

Cloudsplitter BB, from Blambot.

Can I make icons/wallpapers/sig images from your art?

Sure, have at! Just please use your own webspace (or a service like Imgur) for hosting them, and please give credit or a link back to tjandamal.com.
I'm generally fine with folks using my drawings for non-commercial stuff as long as they're not being sold or plagiarized.

E.K. Weaver was born during disco and grew up in a town full of rockets. She lives in Austin, Texas with her husband Brett, a big old dopey dog, a big young hyperactive dog, a cat who hates everything, and a cat who will not get off the drawing table stop chewing on my panel sheets no don't knock over that pencil jar awww crap

E.K. is a Libra of the cedar scrublands and has a +3 heat shield. Her weak points are used CD shops, font collections, and seeds.

TJ and Amal is her first comic.