When Rick Smith and his wife Tania headed for Morocco on a well-deserved vacation, it wasn't just to get away from the hectic dot-com world he inhabited. It was a chance for them to see the world, to meet strange and interesting people, and to write comics about them.

BARAKA AND BLACK MAGIC IN MOROCCO is Rick's first sojourn into online comics. It is a fascinating depiction of the many little stories that made up Rick's adventure in Morocco, and each page works individually as well as within the context of the greater story. The comic is illustrated in stark black and white, offset by a deep orange shading that brings the pages to life. BARAKA is not only a wonderful story, it's also an education - from a million and one uses of Majoun to why you should never accept tea from strangers. That the events in the story actually happened just makes it all the more compelling.

"It seems from letters I've gotten and the stats I have that BARAKA AND BLACK MAGIC IN MOROCCO has two different audiences: comic book readers and independent travellers," Rick claims. "Feedback has been very good from both. A number of alternative publishers have shown interest, comic book readers enjoy it and one guy - who seems to have travelled in the past - said he 'may have caught the travel bug again' after reading it. I like that people who have an interest in travel, but may have never picked up a comic book, will read the thing."

Graduating from the University of Virginia, Charlottesville, in May '97 with a degree in Sociology, Rick found himself being drawn into the world of web design. "About halfway through my program I started getting disillusioned with the academic community, though the subject itself still intrigues me. A professor I was working with in the Soc department asked if I could learn some HTML and put together two web sites for him. It was the exit from academia I was looking for. My wife had a good job offer in Dallas, Texas the next year so off we went."

Rick's web design work soon became a full-time job: "I designed sites for Fujitsu Network Communications while I was a consultant at EDS in 1999 and sites for a design firm in Dallas in 1998." When his own e-commerce site was caught in the dot-com downturn, it allowed Rick the chance to follow his two great passions: comics and travel.

"We had planned to travel for six months covering Western Europe, Morocco, Nepal, India and the Middle East. Until we ferried from Algeciras in Spain to Tangier, I was kinda bored with the trip. Not that Western Europe doesn't have interesting finds and things to do and see - but I had embarked on our travels for a bit of adventure."

It was only when they arrived in Morocco that the feeling of being Strangers In A Strange Land kicked in for Rick and his wife. "I wanted to be challenged all the time. Where do you get something to drink? What does this hand motion mean? What did he say? Are there phones here? Does that bug bite? Should there be mice under the bed? All of which would result in becoming immersed in an environment not of your own making." For Rick it provided an impetus to re-enter the comics medium: "I guess I wouldn't have started to draw if I hadn't gone on the trip," he explains.

"I drew a comic strip for a newspaper at the University of Virginia while I was a graduate student there. But I'd get hung up on panel borders, or having to erase pencil lines or whatnot. I got bogged down in the details and I think it's because I didn't have a story I was committed to." After returning from his holiday, he found himself filled with a new fervour for the medium. "I think the trip knocked away a lot of 'pondering' I do while working on projects."

Hearing about Scott McCloud's 24 Hour Comic challenge, Rick decided that it was now or never, and sat down to draw. "I got through the full script and five pages before falling asleep. The next morning I was disappointed that I hadn't finished the 24 pages in 24 hours, but I went ahead and continued to work on it. And I finished it - probably because I was writing about something I knew about - travel in Morocco."

Keeping a detailed journal throughout his trip, Rick had more than enough material. Using his numerous and varied experiences of Morocco, he began putting it together in a narrative form. "The trip was like living out a story - especially after Europe when we hit Moroccan turf for the first time - so the pages really wrote themselves."

'I think it would be great if a travel publisher put out a monthly anthology.' When it comes to online comics, opinion is split heavily on how to best utilise the advantages of web-delivery, a subject Rick has a strong opinion on. "I'm not trying to break down panel borders in a digital environment with this project. I'm using the web site where BARAKA is posted to market the comic to a public and to publishers in hopes of gaining an audience and seeing my work in print. If anything, I tried to make the online pages look like paper pages. I wanted my reader to want to see this thing in print. I'm not against experimentation in comic form, especially on the web. It's just not what I was trying to accomplish with this book."

Rick has carried out extensive marketing to get his website out to as many people as possible. Not just in the usual independent-friendly places, but on sites that wouldn't normally hear of his work: travel sites and the more mainstream comic sites. It's another example of Rick's dichotomous interest in comics. "I read Marvel growing up in the early 1980s. I also collected back issues of Kirby stuff from the 1960s and then found his FOURTH WORLD stuff from the '70s. I had HEARTBREAK SOUP by Gilbert Hernandez, those large books put out by Charles Burns... I haven't seen those in a long time and I'm actually surprised my parents bought them for me considering the mature content. I think I was 12 when I read them for the first time."

"I quit reading until about two years ago when I walked into a local comics store and bought everything alternative in sight. I don't know why I did it. It just felt good - like I needed to. I haven't stopped since." Rick's influences are also wide and varied. "The colour scheme in GHOST WORLD was an influence, as were old 1950s advertising pamphlets and children's books like CURIOUS GEORGE." His interest in comics is as long running as his interest in travel. These two concurrent threads have become deeply intertwined in Rick's work; his fascination with foreign lands and his background in independent comics.

Using his sequential skills to tell the world about his experience in Morocco has inspired Rick to seek alternate approaches to publication. As well as approaching independent comics publishers such as Top Shelf Productions, Fantagraphics, Alternative Comics and Drawn & Quarterly, Rick has also approached travel guides such as Lonely Planet and Rough Guides. "I think it would be a great idea if a travel guide publisher put out a monthly anthology of comics focused on travel. Lonely Planet has a fiction imprint called Journeys where a comic like BARAKA would fit nicely. So would Tom Hart's RAMADAN, a book about being in Morocco during Islam's most holy month."

Rick's belief in the fabled New Comics Reader is an important part of his vision. "They're out there, you just have to put it in front of them. Think about Joe Sacco's work in Time magazine a couple months ago. Eight pages of full colour journalistic comics in the middle of the most read news magazine in America!" It's just more evidence of the possibilities for new readers. "The work probably convinced a number of Time readers that comics actually 'weren't just for kids anymore'. It's just a shame they have to be reminded sporadically over the years of this fact."

Rick isn't resting on his laurels. The fourth part of BARAKA will be updated at the beginning of August. After the Morocco stories finish, Rick will be moving straight into the Nepal arc of his travel tale. He's also involved in a piece for The Comics Journal Message Board's SHIOT CROCK anthology called SHUCK IN HALLOWED SEASONINGS. "The SHIOT CROCK work will be a full twenty-four page comic with a Hallowe'en theme," Rick says. "It'll be the first fictional comic I've done, so I'm a bit nervous about it. But work on it is going smoothly and I get to draw lots of zany characters in costumes, which is easy and fun." (Rick's SHIOT CROCK story can be viewed here.

Already receiving attention from Top Shelf, he has been headhunted into joining the ranks of a new 'DotComics' section on the Top Shelf website.. Described by Rick as "an online anthology of 12 comics creators displaying various projects on a monthly basis", the site is now publishing BARAKA AND BLACK MAGIC IN MOROCCO.

Though Rick has made on-line publication his home, he still has his eye on print publication. "Once I get something published on paper I'll probably feel like I've been released from some weird paper and ink burden I've been carrying around."

John Fellows works in the television industry providing assistive services to the deaf community.

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