Black Flies Good Bye

I hated to do it, especially after the work that he, and we had put into it, but I told my partner I felt I needed to drop out of the Black Flies project. The propagating reason was simple enough... I simply don't draw good spaceships nor the industrial tech feel that we wanted for this project.

I don't like failing to complete a project, or failing to make a deadline even, although our only deadlines here were whatever self-imposed ones we chose. That attitude is needed to get things done. It takes a long time and commitment to draw comics, especially long comics. I've been doing short comics the past few years as I recharged myself to do another long one.

Black Flies isn't an especially long project, although it took longer to get rolling than I expected. But it was a project that I liked very much, and I think it could be a success, but it won't be, it won't even draw eyes, if the critical space hardware looks bad. And no question, mine did.

So why not buckle down and simply learn to draw better space ships? I tell myself that I want to re-invent my style into something more careful; why not carefully draw the spaceships? Just no feel for it, I suppose. Is that the same thing as I don't want to?

Maybe so, in which case I am catering to my whims.

Or its part of me changing and events not keeping up. Head Mechanics seems to be dead as well. I haven't heard from the writers in months. My enthusiasm has waned there as well.

I've told myself and others that I wasn't going to wait for others to give me permission to draw comics. I've always meant publishers when I've said that, but it applies to creative partners as well, I'm realizing. TD is making no real progress drawing a story I wrote for her. Black Flies and Head Mechanics have lingered for six months or thereabouts. I'm waiting on a writer for Redbone and Bluetick and considering doing The Great Gatsby right now, and my enthusiasm for that is high, but its going to take time.

Meanwhile my personal projects linger. Will Not Wrapped Tight die on the vine?

Gatsby 001

So I finished reading Gatsby last night.

An offer has come up to pitch a graphic novel adaptation. Gatsby is still under control, so rights would have to be obtained. The publisher would have to like our pitch. Contracts arranged. Then we would have to do it.

I haven't read the book since high school, so I down loaded a copy to my wife's nook e-reader yesterday and read through it. Its a short novel, 114 pages. Hard to get it published today at that length. Seems like everything has to be 300 pages anymore.

The following are some of the thoughts about adapting it I just sent to the writer. Its a start.

***

For purposes of adaptation it does have the virtue of being short. I should think that the first step in adapting it would be to go through it and determine what to eliminate, or compress and what to use. And then, what should be described in narrative captions, and what should be illustrated.

Nick's visual descriptions will have to go from the narrative, of course. How Gatsby looks in his blue suit on the white steps; how radiant and endearing his smile.... I have to capture these in the art, and not compete with verbal images. On the other hand, some passages seemed to go by in a blur (perhaps it was simply late, and my attention wavered) but Myrtle appearing from the garage and getting run over seemed a bit vague. That may have to be elaborated a bit (and I'll need to re-read that.) On the other hand, these kind of transitions might best be handled by lifting Fiztgerald's passages almost verbatim as narrative captions and allow the dream-like passages to stand.

How to portray Gatsby's energetic, nervous motion, the foot tapping? This might be a little of both, verbal and visual. And of course the prudent use of silent panels... Gatsby looking at the stars from his porch, Nick entering the room where he first sees Daisy and Jordan lounging on the divan in white... this is where we can capture much of the mood. This is a book with ample room for silence.

In B&W, I've been drawing a lot using low cast light, shadows to one side of the body, light on the other, and this has translated to the colored marker drawings I've been doing. I like this for Gatsby, it suggests twilight and crisp early mornings and that seems appropriate for the era, this late partying crowd and the themes of end of the day and new starts.

Color Sketches

Some of the colored marker drawings I've played with these last few days. Its promising, but needs refinement.

Daily Grind

The cover for a just finished small project, and very short story with an esteemed collaborator RL. Good little story, tightly written, and smoothly executed.

WonderCon Report

I went to WonderCon over this past weekend and have a few things to say about the experience. It was the kick-off for a new push in comics. I've been laying low for the past couple of years, going to school to re-train for a new job, and while the job I found isn't quite what I was training for, yet I am excited about it, satisfied, and ready to re-invent myself, yet again, artistically.

RL has been pulling me out on some small projects, and I thank him. Its been a good collaboration, but... but I'm anxious to begin working as a sole creator. And with a newly evolved style. I've been playing with markers lately, inspired by Darwyn Cooke's PARKER (see a previous post.) I've worked with markers in the past, and abandoned them. But this approach is different... not quite the way Cooke does it, but that's to be expected. My way will invariably be different. But it also seems to be working for me. I like the results I'm seeing, and it seems to be drawing attention while sketching at the Con.

One of the other great things about being there this year was that I actually had three of my books in front of me, and a poster for the fourth. the poster was a free giveaway and went over very well. This final book, The Grave Doug Freshley has always had the potential to POP for us, and I'm more optimistic about that after seeing the response.

I saw a number of people I knew, and met some new ones... you never know what can come from these things, nothing most of the time, but then it can't all happen or you'd be overwhelmed. If a few connections develop into something, that's serendipity. But it only comes from making the effort.

One possibility was a tentative invitation to come to Brasil as a guest of Rio ComicCon Int'l. It probably won't happen... most likely the contact will go home and come to his senses, but how cool if it does!

Comics Review; Echoes

Went to WonderCon over the last week end. I didn't really do any shopping, but I picked up to promo comics from Archaia. Cyclops #2 from Jacomon & Matz, the folks who brought you The Killer didn't quite hit the spot for me, but the craftsmanship was impeccable. No reason for you not to like it.

I picked up the third issue of another title and anymore than this is best left unsaid. OK I will say this... there was product placement (bad enough) and it was so screamingly poorly handled, that I wasn't sure if the writer was completely incompetent, or it was a fuck you for being forced to include it.

What was good, very good, were the first four issues of Echoes (Minotaur/Topcow) by Joshua Hale Fialkov and Rahsan Ekedal. I think they pitch it as a crime book, but for me it is crime slipping into horror. The pitch? A man learns that his recently deceased father was serial killer, and then the crimes start again. Is he doing it? The man has schizophrenia, as his father did, but he is managing it with meds. Or is he? By the time the big plot twist arrives at the end of issue four (of five), I'm not sure if its real or imaginary. Doubt is everywhere.

Ekedal's art is outstanding in black and white and gray all over. His drawing is naturalistic, and appropriately detailed where it needs to be, and his mastery of washes and tones is a master class.

Its not a particularly comfortable world to visit, and that's very much to Fialkov and Ekedal's credit. Bravo!

L'ange Promo

L'ange de Bastogne is coming soon.

Not Wrapped Tight_006

Taking a third look at NOT WRAPPED TIGHT. Which is to say, considering a third character as the lead. Perhaps too influenced by PARKER at the moment, but the tough guy male lead is well trod ground and easy to make work.

I have characters and back story...its how best to play it I ponder. Of course, I've ignored the project for a week, but time to get back to it tomorrow, I think.

Parker: the Hunter

I've been meaning to get to Darwyn Cooke's Parker books for a while now, and finally picked up the first one, The Hunter.

What a joy!

The story's good, but its based on solid material, so why not?

Of more interest for me was looking at Cooke's drawing, and his narrative techniques.

Cooke successfully transfers his cartoon/animation oriented drawing style to this hard-bitten crime story very successfully. The look recalls Eisner's The Spirit more than a little. He combines simplified rendering with a keen eye for detail as on the first page of Book Three. Its a single panel page showing a few items on a counter top. Cooke remembers to include wet rings from where glasses had been set. Nice touch.

The tones for the art are in blue, and maybe a bit too dark. Occasionally text is overprinted on the blue, and becomes a little hard to read. Part of what is nice about the way he approaches the tones is that they sometimes are captured by the black line work, and at other times are not... on occasion even becoming the lines, often for a woman's hair, giving a softer look. In another subtle usage, he draws the hinges for a door in the blue tone. Another example of a detail appropriately downplayed. It seems likely to me that he planned the tones right from the beginning, rather then coming back after to find spots to place them.

Narratively, Cooke blends dialogue, silent pantomime panels and lengthy narrative blocks to vary the texture of the story. Art can provide lots of information about setting and tone in a compact and dense way, but text can present activities, especially those designed to transition from scene to scene, in an equally compact manner.

Many writers want to "show" every bit of business in the panels and some of its just not worth showing. But combining these techniques a comic can be dense and compact, and not just something to flip through, done in a few minutes.

I recommend this for anyone who wants to see how a master cartoonist tells a story.

Newsarama Interview features DOUG

right here

The article itself is about web comics and digital delivery, but Archaia, and The Grave Doug Freshley feature prominently.

Not Wrapped Tight_005

I outlined the first chapter/story. Sixteen scenes intended for thirty pages. I left space for some of what I had written before, but mostly this was just about the action. The real story will take place in the narrative blocks. Not the dialogue really, although that should deliver some backstory, but the first person narrative of the lead character, Virgil DeBluer.

Not Wrapped Tight_004

I need to hold myself to some of the same standards I hold my writers to. Do I know what this story is about? Do I know the theme? Do I know what is to be learned in the story?

I am thinking to break my newly revamped premise into maybe 6 stories. They could be considered as chapters in the larger story,but each one should contain its own three act structure and its own theme and resolution.

STORY 001: Why does the nebbish bachelor Virgil DeBluer offer protection to the young and lovely Egyptian princess Irisi, despite knowing of her crimes? I think the answer is evident in the phrasing of the question.