It's June 15th and you know what that means!
Happy 12th anniversary to Gravity Falls
Happy birthday to Stan and Ford!
Last year for the occasion, I completed a simple comic about the two of them venturing in to the Pine Barrens of New Jersey in search of the Jersey Devil; whom they found (see the comic here). I'd originally meant that sequence to have two additional pics -- wanting to start it off with them paddling across Glass Shard bay and through the salt marshes to where the pine barrens would begin, and then having a pic of them pulling the canoe up on the river bank to start off on their mission. But, I didn't get those done, obviously.
I've talked before about my headcanon that Glass Shard Beach (their hometown) is likely a barrier island, with a wide bay between it and the mainland... even though I also headcanon the town as being in the northern end of the Jersey shore, where there aren't so many wide bays. (Well, that's what makes it a headcanon.) This notion is based on the scenes in the show with them on the swings, with the Stan o' War docked nearby; and with the sun depicted as setting over the water. In New Jersey, if the sun is going to set over water, a bay has to be involved. I've depicted Glass Shard Beach as having a bay before, both in this piece for the 10 Years Later zine, and this piece for their birthday in 2022.
For this one, I looked at a ton of photos of people canoeing; and for the setting, I gathered a lot of photos of the Mullica River estruary and the Great Bay, which has the salt-marsh channels I was envisioning. (Admittedly, my headcanons for Glass Shard Beach are heavily influenced by the Long Beach Island area, where I grew up.)