The Overlord.

So I'm writing a play. Yes, a theatre play for the live stage with actors and stuff. All of a sudden I'm doing it. I don't have an explanation - the muse just shot me in the brain and now I'm writing it. I've already made an application for the Atlantic Fringe Festival, so it had better be ready by September. Sometimes, I just need a fire lit under my ass to get things done. I have been falling into a funk of late, and this is just the thing to help me get my groove back. And I think the play will also be quite awesome.

The play is called 'The Overlord'. I don't want to say too much more about it, lest I expend my creative mojo. I'd rather actually do this, instead of just describe it. Once the project is a bit further along I will share some details. For now, suffice it to say that this is comicbook-inspired. I'm looking into getting some stage pyro...

Uuna on Zuda?

I sent in my first entry to Zuda - now I just wait to see if they like it. I'm not sure about the rules for what you can say about your project off the Zuda site, and I don't want to pooch myself. I can say it's called Uuna and it's a Tolkien-esque fantasy adventure. I convinced my good buddy Graeme to draw it, and I hope he doesn't end up regretting it. I have a twisting, action-packed plot, a very in-depth world and background created for this, as you might expect, and of course none of this really gets revealed in the eight pages of the Zuda submission. That's the nature of the beast.

I'll just keep my fingers crossed and hope for a chance to share it with the public - assuming they care.

I have another Zuda thingy in the works - this one's a sci-fi that I'm drawing myself, with colours provided by Lucy, a very talented internet-acquaintance of mine.

yeah

I've been busy. What else is new? Bad news is I'm still poor. Poor as in, 'I have a few months left before I totally run out of money and have to sell my house to avoid bankruptcy'. So I'm busy all the damn time but still poor. What's the good news?

Well, it looks like the end is in sight. I've been plugging away at my projects, and chatting them up and believing in myself and working hard, and I've learned something - that's all a waste of time. What counts is 'finishing things you can show to important people'. Let me capitalize that so it looks the way it sounds in my mind.

Finishing Things You Can Show To Important People.

Hmm. Not mighty enough.

Finishing Things You Can Show To Important People.

Almost... still needs something...

Finishing Things You Can Show To Important People.

...not quite...



That's better.

Year of the Awesome: 2009

This is it. I feel like all my ducks are finally lined up. Fasten your seatbelts, chums. This shit's about to get real. I just know that this is the year where I work really hard and it pays off. I'm gonna get a lot of my projects finished. Things I've been chipping away at for years, and never really getting enough momentum to finish.

I don't think it's just me. I'm seeing a rising tide of optimism from people. Maybe it's Obama-fever or something. I think we're gonna see a lot of awesome this year.

What awesomeness will you see from me? For starters, there'll be 12 reviews of really cool webcomics, as well as my own fascinating rantings about various topics of epic importance. I'll be scripting more issues of Hero High, and doing more weekly HH:Origins strips as I continue to search for a home for it in the professional publishing/producing world. I've had a few nibbles already - I think I've got a good shot at getting it into development for a TV show. As soon as I know anything for sure, I'll share the news. Crackwalker has entered a new phase, with a new approach to the artwork and writing. The story that has been ambling along randomly for so many years is starting to develop some form. As a writer, I've been learning a lot over the past couple of years, and Crackwalker is reflecting that progress. My recent TV writing and my work with Diego on Hero High has pushed me into a place where my ego steps back and I can see my writing with a better perspective. I can make better decisions about how to craft a story now, I think.

So I'm feeling focused now, and my daughter is old enough to go to daycare; this is like the stars coming into alignment. I suddenly find myself with stretches of time where I'm not making lunches and snacks, or making sure she makes it to the toilet, or dealing with so many other little wonderful distractions. Wonderful? Yes, my kids are wonderful, and I wouldn't trade my time with them for anything. I'm not sending her off to school for my own benefit. She's at an age now where she needs that stimulus of other children around her. The benefits for me are just a nice bonus.

It's like my life has reached a new plateau. I've been out of work for a while, and living off of lines-of-credit and so on, really trying to get it together as a writer while the wife goes to grad school - I've just about reached the end of the road in terms of paying the bills, and now the phone has started ringing. I'm having some really exciting meetings with people about my shit. It's really too early to say anything for sure. Experience has shown me that I can't count on anything until the contracts are signed and the cheque clears the bank. But things of this nature should be happening this week. It's like the tide of evil has turned.

So for those of you that are interested, check back here in the weeks to come. I'll share the good news as it starts to come in. And please share any good news of your own. I'm interested to know if this really is going to be the Year of the Awesome for everybody.

003 Bigness

This was not a great month for me - I won't bore you with the details. Suffice it to say that money problems came along and stole my mojo. I didn't know what to write about for my column this month. I was just feeling empty. Then I saw the trailer for Repo: The Genetic Opera. At first I disliked it, and after I thought about it for a while I hated it.

It's good to feel inspired again.

So to be clear: I hate the trailer. I haven't seen the movie, so I'm not offering an opinion about the movie itself. The trailer fails to make me want to watch this movie. This trailer has convinced me that the film is a waste of time - a misguided effort.

Why? It's about the sense of scale. Repo is a rock opera - a musical. It is all about grand gestures, and soaring emotions and larger-than-life characters. It seems to be in the same vein as successes like Jesus Christ Superstar, Moulin Rouge and Rocky Horror Picture Show. These were grand productions. They achieve the scale necessary to pull it off.

What did I see in the trailer for Repo? I saw a stage production that was simply shot to film. There were no panoramic shots of huge sets or large outdoor vistas. It was all soundstage - claustrophobic and small. Unforgivably small. (Sorry, bad CG exterior shots do not count)

I know nothing about the history of this project, but I get the feeling that the maker of Saw went to a production of this musical and was so moved by the experience that he wanted to make a movie out of it. It looks like someone just went into the theatre where this was being done and shot it by the seat of their pants without any re-imagining or re-envisioning. It smacks of hubris and laziness. It demonstrates an ignorance of the differences in media (film vs theatre)

It's easy for a group of actors to create magic in person. When you go to a live theatre show, the personal energy can blow the roof off the theatre, and make you sweat in your seat. I'm sure the live show of Repo did just that.

But that is just not going to translate into film without a visionary director taking hold of the material and using the medium to its fullest. Rocky Horror was a stage show first, but when they made the movie, they went to locations, they had exteriors, they had special effects, they had great musical numbers, photographed like a musical. They achieved bigness.

There are creators out there that understand their medium. Jack Kirby was one - he told some of the biggest stories ever - so many that have come after are standing on his shoulders. The second Fantastic Four movie Rise of the Silver Surfer is a clear example of what I'm talking about. The Fantastic Four aren't ironic or gritty or dark, and any attempts to make them 'cool' in that way will result in failure. Stan and Jack just went for it, and told huge stories, with characters that explained what they were doing while they did it, and when you are bold like that, when you write a story about a giant purple guy from space who's come to eat the Earth, you have to just jump in with both feet. Any timidity will cause the whole thing to fail.

My webcomics pick this month has bigness.

Johnny Saturn by Scott Story and Benita Story
(http://johnnysaturn.com/)

Superheroes have been seeing a renaissance since Hugh Jackman first popped his claws back in 2000. The potential of the genre has been increased as these stories have broken out of the confines of nerdy obscurity, and they have become familiar to a wider audience. There's been an explosion of interest in masks and capes as people are cluing in to the huge potential of this storytelling form, a modern-day mythology that allows us to reflect on the big issues while delivering heroic thrills.

Many of these characters have been used and abused over the years. There are many superhero stories that don't bother trying to reach for mythological greatness, but instead wallow in cheap commercialism. And there are very few that reach for the great height achieved by Alan Moore in Watchmen. Enter Johnny Saturn. It's bloody, it's rough around the edges, and it's epic. Scott and Benita Story take the superhero story into a place that's both dark & gritty while still being earnest & heartfelt.

The story begins with the funeral of Johnny Saturn, where are grateful city pays its respects to their fallen hero. We are introduced to a world that has superheroes as a part of its culture, as a combination of celebrity and additional level of law enforcement/national defense. This motif is familiar to those that read conventional comics from Marvel or DC. But rather than set up a status-quo and then return to it, the universe of Johnny Saturn evolves and changes as it progresses through the chapters.

The quality of the comic also evolves. I've said this elsewhere; for me, this is one of the joys of webcomics, the diamonds-in-the-rough. The joy of witnessing talent in a raw form, people working on something just because they love it. Johnny Saturn is a labour of love. This is evident in every panel. Part of what kept me clicking 'next' was the sense of urgency that is imbued into this work. The author was driven to create this comic, as driven as the titular character is on his mission of vigilante justice.

So yes, it's a bit rough around the edges. Hell, it's rough in the center as well. Professional work is always guaranteed to be of a certain level, but it's also guaranteed to stay within certain boundaries. The plot of this comic goes out of bounds for the usual superhero story. Waaay out of bounds. I admit I was lost in the wilderness at some points. Not knowing what's going to happen next is a kind of thrill that can be hard to find in printed comics. I would assert that this is a good thing, and it's what makes this story transcend the bounds of popular fiction. It strives to become something more; if art is too strong a word, then literature at least.

Does it hit the mark? Not exactly, but it reaches for it. And that makes it well worth the price of admission.

Comic Fencing

I was invited to contribute to a webcomics review site called Comics Fencing. The idea is that a number of reviewers all check out the same comic and then post their reviews. Here's the explanation from the site:

"The mission of Comic Fencing is to provide a place where webcomics are critiqued and celebrated. We also want to introduce you to comics you may not have seen yet. And we wanted to give you a way to know if you'll like a given comic or not.

The best way to do that is for our reviewers to offer mutliple reviews of the same webcomic, dueling it out in order to bring you the truth. So every week, our dedicated reviewing staff will give you their points of view on the chosen comic. Then, fully informed, you can decide if you want to read the webcomic.

We also welcome your thoughts to better inform the rest of the audience. Below each Comic Fencing review is a place to offer your comments. Is the reviewer correct? Did they miss something important? Don't let the other fans miss out!"

So my first review for them is up now. It's for a comic called "Cottonfluff Hollow". Check it out at http://comicfencing.com/

002 Bloody Brilliant

In my travels about the interwebs I encounter a certain question a lot; “Can Webcomics Be a Money-making Business?” It’s not a very interesting question to me, as I think everything doesn’t have to be about money, but I have some thoughts about it nonetheless.

The entertainment and publishing industries are hungry for more stories and fresh ideas, as they always are; their jobs depend on it! But over the last few years I think the situation is getting more urgent for them. In the good ol’ days, people didn’t have as much choice in their media, so they would just watch the same buddy cop story, or the same romantic comedy, with different dressing. If the people didn’t like it, they were welcome to turn off the TV and have a picnic instead.

But as the ‘new media’ take root in our culture, the entertainment industry is having to work harder to keep people’s attention. In their search for a competitive edge, they are swimming upstream, back to the pools where these industries were spawned, returning to the source; writers.

Webcomics are a rich wilderness to search through for new writers. People with stories to tell can show their stuff in a direct and accessible way. It’s not exactly a marriage made in heaven, but they’re still only at the early dating phase. We’ll see how things work out if webcomics lets the entertainment industry get past first base.

One of the things that industry people don’t get about webcomics is the money thing. (If it’s not something you’re getting paid for, then it’s a hobby right?) It seems to get dumped into the same ‘useless’ pile as fine art and poetry. It seems like the attitude is “No one ever got rich doing that stuff, not while they were alive anyways. Just a waste of time – amusing if you enjoy that sort of thing I guess”.

That’s not a respectful attitude, is it? No wonder webcomics isn’t letting you past first base, entertainment industry. You’re not taking the time to get to understand webcomics’ feelings and hopes and dreams.

Webcomics is like graffiti. People do it without a paycheck, and they give it away for free, but the artists who do it work on their own terms, without having to compromise. Webcomics is still a very young artform compared to graffiti, but the potential is there for it to emerge as a real force in the culture of the 21st century.

So to carry on that metaphor, we can examine the question “Can Webcomics Be a Money-making Business?” through the lens of the graffiti experience. The answer is not simple. Graffiti is a specific thing – uninvited paint on a wall in a public place. You can split hairs there, and as you go, you get further away from what graffiti is. If a bank hires an artist to do a mural on the wall of their parking lot, is it still graffiti? If a well-known graffiti artist does a painting on a canvas, is it still graffiti? What if they design a t-shirt? Or a logo?

Graffiti artists can go on to have successful careers in the graphic arts industries as designers and illustrators, but graffiti is not their ‘job’. It’s possibly where they got their start, where they developed their methods, where they worked out their techniques, made their contacts... but no one makes any money off of graffiti itself.

Is the same true of webcomics? The answer is impossible to nail down. Experience has shown that everything to do with ‘the new media’ is a moving target. What’s true today could be totally changed tomorrow. As of right now, there’s no established ‘webcomics business’. People that pay their bills solely from webcomics are the exception, rather than the rule. There’s a webcomics industry, but it’s an industry in the old-fashioned sense of the word: diligence in an activity or pursuit; steady or habitual effort.

Does that have value? Absolutely, but not necessarily a dollar value. For webcomics to be an ‘industry’ in the business sense of the word, it’s got to employ other people. People with non-comic creating skills. That’s what takes something from an ‘artform’ to a ‘business’.

Don’t get me wrong. If someone wants to pay me for writing, I’ll write whatever they want. I’ll write dog-food labels if there’s a steady pay-check involved. I’m not trying to be some indy purist, I have nothing against people making money.

There’s people out there making money from their webcomics, and more power to ‘em. They’re livin’ the dream, and fueling the enterprise with their own blood sweat and tears. But being an exceptional success is not the same as having a successful business model. Right now, the only way to make a living as a webcomics creator is to just be bloody brilliant.

For now, webcomics will have to settle for just being excited about what they’ve got, which is that excitement that comes from creating something you really enjoy just for its own sake. Maybe the entertainment industry will take the time to get to know webcomics a bit better; it could be the start of a beautiful friendship.

Saturno the Demon Eater by Jilly Foo
(http://www.demoneater.com)

Because webcomics creators don’t have to pitch their idea to a publisher, there are fewer obstacles to prevent them from creating things that are very unique. Bizarre even. The author does not have to know where they are going with the story, they don’t need to have three acts worked out, and they don’t need to explain the idea. This approach can have mixed results. Sometimes there are webcomics that could benefit from a bit of development before they were released to the public. Saturno the Demon-Eater by Jilly Foo is not one of those. It’s really great just like it is. It's bloody brilliant.


This is a story that takes place in some sort of version of hell. It’s a dog-eat-dog world (literally) as demons must eat each other to grow in power. The rules of this world unfold as Saturno struggles to survive. It’s one of those stories that’s enigmatic and weird, but you can sense that the author has a logic underpinning the whole thing. It feels like something out of a scary, disturbing dream. Not a nightmare exactly – one of those dark dreams that you like for some reason.

It’s gorey and creepy. Tim Burton would just love it I’m sure. The main character Saturno has a gentle inner nature, which makes it all the more painful to try and survive in this violent world. As the demons eat each other they change shape and grow. They take all manner of forms – part of the fun is to see the interesting creatures that the author comes up with.


The artwork is beautiful. Jilly Foo’s paintings have a wonderful simplicity that allows the textures and colors to support the storytelling. The text is all done in caption style – a simple font (Garamond?) for narration and dialogue without boxes or balloons. There’s no standard page size. Some drawings are larger than others, as are some pages. The overall effect is to draw the reader into this dream-like world. I recommend reading it in a darkened room to enhance the effect.

x

Once this comic is all finished, I’m sure someone will pick it up for publication. It’s beautifully rendered, with characters you can’t help but be interested in finding out more about. It’s being hosted on a number of sites, but as far as I can tell, DrunkDuck is the main site. If you like monsters and aren’t too squeamish, then you should definitely take a look at Saturno the Demon Eater.

http://www.demoneater.com