What do I want from comics?

I've already talked about some of my comic-based influences and how they've affected my own comics. I'll close off this series by talking about the last comic I drew before this one and the type of comic I'd like to make someday.

Comics can be used to tell any type of story, in any genre, with any art style, but ideally I think that they should at least try to make some use of their form as it connects with the story. I'm talking about things that can only be accomplished with comics. "Huh?" you say. I'll try to explain. One comic I tragically haven't read but have been DYING to read for years is Nick Abadzis' Hugo Tate. (Abadzis also drew the award-winning Laika, the true story of the first dog in space). The story of Hugo Tate follows a character who starts out drawn as a stick figure, and gradually becomes more realistically drawn as the story progresses and his character arc develops.

Another comic I haven't read that supposedly makes use of other formalist techniques is David Mazzucchelli's Asterios Polyp. I've got a copy waiting for me in my file at the comic store when I get home...four months from now...sigh.

The very best example of this I HAVE seen is Dylan Horrocks' Hicksville. This tells the story of a fictional town in New Zealand where everyone reads comics, which also houses an underground library of comics that were never drawn - by real-life creators who "never got the chance to tell that magnum opus." The story contains several comics-within-a-comic, mimicking a wide range of styles - Golden Age superheroes (vs. modern-day superheroes), surreal underground comics, mini-comic gag pages, and so on. The superhero spoofs are particularly important as the main storyline concerns a character called Dick Burger, a former resident of Hicksville who moves to America and makes a fortune from a superhero franchise, which he has stolen from another creator's work. Maybe Hicksville wouldn't appeal to someone who isn't a huge comics nerd like me, I don't know. (There are plenty of comics-centric in-jokes - the town's local cafe is called The Rarebit Fiend, for example. And be sure to watch for Stan Lee's cameo!) I still highly recommend it because, like Bryan Talbot's One Bad Rat, it doesn't get the attention it deserves.

Other ideas I've seen include sculpting word balloons so that they become a part of the artwork and environment - weaving around objects, invading a character's personal space, and so on. I've decided to do similar things later on in my comic, such as having several unreadable thought balloons piled on top of each other to demonstrate the rapid thought processes of a manic person.

The page layouts also effect the story - I remember writing about this in my essay, how comic pages usually follow a straight grid and innovative frames are only used for dramatic situations or to create a disorientating effect. I tried this back on pages 3 & 4 especially, and a little bit on pages 22 & 23 below.

Phew...I hope all of that made sense. Let's take a break now to watch Printheads.


...Yeah. Basically it was a story about these two British neo-pagan hoboes (one's a wizard, one's a librarian) that drive around England in an old 1970s Ford Cortina (yes, because you REALLY see a lot of those on the road) fighting demons. And...no, that's all. Not very original. (The guy in the back seat there is basically Shaggy from Scooby Doo if he was obsessed with aliens.) I did make the mistake of giving the basic concept to someone else to write a script from, and we disagreed on how it should play out. I don't think it would have been much better if I'd written it myself, but never mind. Like all the others, it was good practice drawing comics, and I've moved on.


...Then again, I drew this 24 Hour Comic version of the same story which featured an evil Russian librarian turning into a giant potato monster (who is defeated by a bottle of malt vinegar) so...maybe I SHOULD have written it myself and made it as ridiculous as possible, thereby having as much fun as possible. (Why all the librarians? There was some sort of underlying book theme, about certain books being portals to hell - ALSO not very original - and a villain called "Spill Fector" who was a 1000+ year old demon trying to rewrite the entire world to fit his own unique vision. SOME of this stuff has potential but I just never figured out how to make it work)

Most of what I learned while drawing Printheads was dry technical stuff - perspective, proportions, composition, that kind of thing. I'm more careful with how I compose my frames now because I noticed there was often too much "dead" space in the Printheads panels. It's also much easier for me to find the correct horizon line when I start to draw a perspective grid - it sometimes used to take me three tries to get it right and now I can nail it the first time every time. Finally, I now use a brush to ink the characters and most other foreground elements, as it's much faster than using fineliners for everything.

So where does this leave me today? After finishing Look Straight Ahead (and believe me, I'm GOING to finish it - it is my DUTY), what kind of comic would I like to create in the future?

As evidenced by Printheads, I'd just really really like to tell some sort of swashbuckling adventure story. This story should be original, entertaining, and fun - there should also be a good amount of humour. Hmmm. Shall we look to cinema for inspiration again?

Oh! A Chinese Ghost Story, of course! This has everything you could ever want from a film: adventure, romance, a good dose of humour, scary bits, great visuals and plenty of action. Although I guess I'm thinking of targeting a slightly younger audience with my hypothetical adventure story. My mother has also been after me to draw a children's book for years, but I just haven't come up with a good idea for one yet.

What other comics would I like to draw? I definitely also want to draw something surreal, dark and creepy, with a very angular art style. (In fact, about a year ago I DID start drawing a comic called "Hornet's Heart" about an evil man who murders his wife and tries to make it look like an accident - the reason being that she wants a divorce and he doesn't want her to get half of his possessions. Of course he gets his comeuppance - his wife comes back as a giant hornet and kills him. The only reason I didn't finish drawing this comic is because I can't draw insects to save my life.)

It's tough for me to write these learning logs simply because I've been drawing comics for 8+ years and have learned as I've gone along, through trial and error - and back then, a lot was based on instinct. I'd draw a close-up of a character or a long shot or something, but I wouldn't know WHY - now I know that a character's face should be shown if it's important to show their emotions, and a long establishing shot is for showing the surrounding environment and grounding the reader in a setting. This all sounds very obvious now, and I'm trying to work out things that aren't quite so obvious. Such as...how can I REALLY make page designs work to my advantage, and perhaps make certain pages works of conceptual art in themselves? How much can I get out of just black & white? How can I make GOOD use of negative space? For example, could I have just ONE small panel in the center of a page, as Craig Thompson sometimes does? How many panels per page is too many? (Hey - deliberately overloading a page with panels could serve the same purpose as piling thought balloons on top of each other - to show a character is deeply confused and frightened. HEY!)

I think that's about all I have to say. My project deadline is tomorrow (the 16th) so unless I think of something between now and then...later!

Pages 14 & 15

(Next - pages 16, 17 & 18)

(Previous - pages 11, 12 & 13)

These are old, some of the first pages I drew. See, when I get an idea for a random scene I kinda have to draw it right away while it's fresh in my mind. In that case there are many MANY other scenes I should be working on, but, uh...I'm gonna wait till after the project deadline.

I PROMISE to do some actual work tomorrow :p

Also a word about printing. I've never scanned anything higher than 300dpi, but all the material I've read about printing comics suggests that you must scan your pages at 600dpi grayscale, Threshold them to black & white, then convert to 1200dpi grayscale and Threshold again. I'm REEEEALLY curious to find out if this works, because I'm sceptical. I hope it's not necessary - I really don't think my computer can handle 1200dpi files...to say nothing of an InDesign document full of a couple dozen 1200dpi files... D:

Sketches and scribbles

Some hilarious thumbnail sketches - now you see why I don't post more of these. XD Even _I_ don't know what half the stuff in the top image means. Oh, and there's also a pair of legs for some reason. I'm really not very good at drawing legs and so lately when I sit down to do practice studies, they're usually of legs.

This is usually what my roughs look like right before I trace them onto decent paper and make them all slick and pretty. But what's this?

I was having a lot of trouble with that set of panels at the bottom left, so I redrew them on a clean sheet of paper. Seriously, you don't even know how frustrating it was - I was stuck on this page for about three weeks. D: When I get stuck I typically go and flip through some other comics for inspiration, but unfortunately most of my comics are back at home. I should watch films instead, I guess - I seem to recall a scene in Matinee getting me out of a jam and inspiring the Fun Tak Man page.

Shading & Lettering

A couple of days ago I tried shading one of the finished pages. Not sure if I like it or not - I think it would work well for certain pages but not for others.

I'm tempted to do it in blue or some other colour, rather than grey, but...I've seen my share of comics shaded that way and I think it's way overdone. Not only that, but I'm going to be doing a couple of scenes later on in full colour, which I don't think would have as large an impact if the shading on every other page was blue, green, or what-have-you.

OR I could just NOT shade anything...wow what a concept! XD

Anyway, here's something else I tried.
I created my own comic lettering font quite some time ago - it's called Printheads, after the comic I was drawing at the time. However, my lettering's improved significantly since then (largely because I managed to track down one of these) and I don't know if it's really necessary to use a font this time. I mean, damn...that font looks pretty cold next to the hand lettering, doesn't it? :p It just doesn't fit.

Let me know what you think, though....someone...anyone? :p

(Nag me to get back to work, too, since I'm only doing this as a way of avoiding real work! XD)

Page 6 and 7

Hey all right!

(Next - pages 8, 9, & 10)

(Previous - pages 4 & 5)

Page 7 is partially based on an earlier test page that I won't be using. The "melting" page goes directly after this, but I'll have to re-draw and re-caption it. That shouldn't take too long - after all, for me the two hardest parts of all this are storyboarding/staging and page design. And since that's already done for page 8...all I gotta do is trace it onto a new page, move stuff around and ink it again. And you already know how much I LOOOOOVE inking. :D

I generally try to avoid putting four rows of panels on a page, since it tends to look cluttered...but I seem to be doing it a lot in this comic. Maybe I'm getting the hang of doing it right. I've noticed that European comics use four rows way more often than American comics, although I cannot find good examples online to back this up...I also recall Peter David saying that you should never use more than six panels per page, although he didn't mention rows & columns when he said that...so who knows.

Who was I?

I'm going to try to make some sense of this now, whether or not any of this makes it into the first chapter all depends on how much time I have until the project deadline and whether I can figure out how the hell I'm going to tell it in comic form...

(A disclaimer before I begin...some of this might disturb you. It still disturbs me. I probably shouldn't be this open about it, but it's all kinda part and parcel of this project...)

The memory of my nervous breakdown is fading, now - which makes sense since it was over 7 years ago - making it that little bit harder to tell this story. One thing that keeps resurfacing is the memory of lost identity. I remember believing that I had all sorts of incurable diseases (and that said diseases defined me, I guess) and I also remember believing I was other people...celebrities, mostly. Projecting myself onto others to make myself seem more important, I don't know.

When you're growing up all you want is to belong, to find your place in the world, figure out who you are and how you can use that knowledge to make a difference. While I was having my little episodes, boy, did I ever think I was going to make a difference! I thought I had incredible godlike power, that it was my duty to use that power to save the world, and that I was the smartest, most important person in the world who was being quarantined (on the psych ward) by the government so I couldn't foil their plans for world domination.

...No, REALLY. I honestly thought that. How messed up is that?

And that's not all. Before these scary grandiose delusions started to manifest, I just felt really good. Too good, though. I remember feeling so in touch with everything, every molecule, every living thing. I felt invincible. (If that sounds like an LSD trip to you, you're not alone - but NONE of this was drug-induced) My drawings had also gotten a lot better. I understood everything (or thought I did, anyway) as my mind was going a mile a minute. I thought I was unlocking my full potential (now you see where the godlike power delusion comes from). The world - no, the entire universe - made sense, and I had finally figured out who I was supposed to be.

...Unfortunately, no, I hadn't. Everything went downhill from there - I'll spare you the rest of the details. Instead I'll try to illustrate the two sides of this coin for you, visually. Here's a drawing I did while I was...manic.


Spontaneous, colourful, energetic...now here's one I did during my descent into full-blown madness.


Jagged. Very tense. No more colour. Those patterns are kind of interesti--DEAR LORD WHAT THE HELL IS THAT THING. D:

Ok, not the best example... Here's another one...

Two people with FOREIGN OBJECTS STICKING IN THEIR HEADS - A PARASITE AND TWO GIANT RAZOR BLADES. Obviously at this point I had finally figured out something was wrong, but I was powerless to stop it. (Powerless?! What happened to the godlike power you said you had?!) I had to keep on going wherever the madness was going to take me.

What makes this so difficult for storytelling purposes is that none of this was gradual. It was quite sudden and came on without warning - all I know is that it was caused by a lack of sleep. And believe me, I wanted to sleep - to this day I still have no idea what caused me to stop sleeping for an entire week for no reason. Since it wasn't gradual, I can't figure out how to make it fit into the "rising action" portion of the standard storytelling model.

Silence

A drawing by Nate Powell, another comic artist I admire whose style is starting to rub off on me. Maybe.

My main problem with drawing is that I lack confidence. I don't draw nearly as much as I should, as I suffer from constant anxiety about whether my work is any good or not, and constantly compare myself to other artists. (I also worry about unintentionally ripping someone off, although that's never really happened) And that's why, when I first saw Nate Powell's graphic novel Swallow Me Whole, I threw up my hands and said "That's it. I quit." I saw no point in creating my own comic about a teenager suffering mental illness if such a breathtaking work as Powell's had already been drawn (and in a fraction of the time that mine is going to take to finish, to boot).

HOWEVER....

It's fortunate that when I first saw this comic I happened to be at a release party for a Saskatoon comics anthology and I had brought some of my work along to show the editors in the hopes that they would publish me. They were very impressed and the owner of the comic store even gave me a free t-shirt, and told me he wanted to hold an exhibition of my work in the store. This was my reaction:

"ARE YOU SERIOUS?!"

I went home as confident and energized as anything, anxious to draw my comic after all, realizing that it wasn't about being the first to create a graphic novel about mental illness, but about telling my own story. And adding to those already out there - since, let's face it, Powell's is still one of only three or four. It's still largely unexplored territory.

But I couldn't have come to this realization if it weren't for the kind accolades from the people at that release party.

Now why is that? Why do I need constant validation of my skills? I shouldn't. In fact I've been taught (by snarky internet forums) that it's a BAD thing. That mindless praise is wrong because it doesn't teach you anything. I don't know. I still haven't figured that one out.

Uhh...so let's move on. Lately I also find myself inspired by the Flight comics anthologies. They tend to be very heavy on the whimsy, with lots of stories about cute fuzzy little animal-type characters and that probably doesn't appeal to most of you. But never mind, that isn't why I like them. (Okay, MAYBE it is, I am a girl, after all) I like that a lot of them lack dialogue, giving them loads of atmosphere and leaving them open to interpretation. I've incorporated that into my work, first with At The Hundredth Meridian and now with this comic, although I freely admit that I do it partly because I can't write dialogue. I always struggle to find the right words to communicate and I've always been able to say so much more with a drawing. It's tragic, because I want to do both. I want to be a master of pictures AND words. Someday.

Old comics & influences, part 2

Instead of doing ACTUAL comic work, I'll write another one of these.

I promised to tell you about my favourite graphic novel ever. That would be Bryan Talbot's The Tale Of One Bad Rat. His magnum opus is The Adventures Of Luther Arkwright, but I feel Bad Rat really doesn't get the credit it deserves. I never see it mentioned in discussions of graphic novels, and I never see it on anyone's "top ten" lists. Ever. Despite a recent deluxe hardcover reprint edition. Come ON. You've got no excuse, people. Go out and read this comic NOW.

Bad Rat concerns a young girl named Helen, who runs away from home to the English Lake District fleeing sexual abuse at the hands of her father. In the end she meets a couple who take her under their wing and give her a job in their pub, and she finds the strength to stand up to her father. This story accomplishes everything that a good story should: It explores a serious issue with grace and authority, it is populated by well-developed characters (the one that drew me in initially was Ben, the Geordie street musician), and it is sad, powerful and moving. Bryan Talbot also knows when to let the drawings communicate the story without text...and oh HOW they communicate...

Reading this comic was a huge revelation for me, on the level of "Comics can do THIS? Why didn't anyone tell me comics could do THIS?!" I really do suggest you read it for yourself because I can't even put into words all the reasons I love it. When you're finished reading Bad Rat, also check out Grandville, Talbot's anthro steampunk detective story - it's a lot of fun...

--

Speaking of fun, my second comic was not GRIMDARK serious like New Edge and was only drawn for fun. It was called These Days, and it concerned Ian Curtis returning from the dead and running around present-day Manchester, accompanied by Mark E. Smith. Yes, REALLY. You can read the whole comic in its entirety online here (as much as we completed - myself and my co-writer), if you feel so inclined. Uhh...but be warned, it's very stupid. A lot of people seemed to enjoy it though, so...stupid in a good way. Sure.

Next: my largest current influences. Also, the story of an obnoxious wizard and his even more obnoxious "friends," battling an ancient god named after a record producer.

Old comics & influences

Let's pause now to take a stroll down memory lane...

This is a page from Archie's Sonic the Hedgehog #0 (well, it's originally from the "#1/4" ashcan, but never mind), the comic that began my love affair with comics. (As I mentioned earlier, I was 7 years old at the time. :p) It's drawn by the multitalented Scott Shaw! - writer, animator, storyboard artist, comic book artist, collector of "Oddball Comics" and all-around cool guy. I purchased this comic at a bookstore in my hometown - a store that no longer exists. I then sat and read it in the mall while waiting for my mom to finish grocery shopping. I loved that comic so much that I never wanted it to end, and when I was finished reading I knew exactly what I wanted to do for the rest of my life.

I spent years copying the Sonic comics - I sort of wish I had copied something else, but what 7-year -old has the foresight to copy, say, Andrew Loomis figure drawing books (or WANTS to gawk at pictures of nekkid folks, for that matter?! ANYWAY!!!)


Fast-forward TEN YEARS...Here's a page from New Edge, the first comic I drew, in 2002 (which, incidentally, was also the same year I suffered my nervous breakdown, upon which my current project is based). I was 17. And when I say "the first comic I drew" I mean it was the first comic I drew that wasn't copied from another source, and the first one that was a more-or-less complete chapter lasting 18 pages. I sold New Edge #1 as a photocopied fanzine complete with poorly written indie record reviews in the back pages. There was never a #2 - I hadn't planned the story out that far. :/ Nor had I bothered to write any more record reviews.

The storyline of New Edge concerned a punk rock band called The Dead Layaways, who are trapped in a dangerous post-apocalyptic city. I basically ruined this concept and ground the story to a screeching halt by trying to EXPLAIN everything on the second-to-last page, in a huge nonsensical exposition dump...would've been better if I'd left it vague.

The art style of New Edge was heavily influenced by J.Axer - here's an example of one of his older works, from that time period. I would link to one of his comic pages, but he doesn't seem to have any of those online...

Looking back at these pages, and this one in particular, I'm quite amused by my constant desire to create...er...UNUSUAL page layouts, even when the situation doesn't call for it. I still do this, although not as frequently...


I was also inspired by Johnny The Homicidal Maniac, by Jhonen Vasquez (most well-known for creating the cartoon series Invader Zim). It was the first real underground comic I ever read, unless you count a few issues of Usagi Yojimbo that I came across at a hardware store (?!) in my hometown. JtHM was weird, scary, and messed up, incorporating VERY dark humour, yet still managed to have a surprising amount of depth for being a story about a homicidal maniac. It also used lots and lots of black ink and often had very cinematic visuals. It was like no other comic I had read up to that point, and I soon became eager to create my own epic in comic book form.

Er...still haven't done that, yet... :p

Next time: Mark E. Smith and Ian Curtis' ghost have stupid adventures... Wait a minute, WHAT??? ...Also, I discuss my favourite graphic novel ever. Surprise: It's one that you've probably never heard of (although you may be familiar with the artist). And that's a damn shame, it deserves way more attention.

Starting in the middle

Page 1, all finished!

(Next - pages 2 & 3)

I'm sure there's a term for this oft-used practice of starting a story at the climax, but I don't know what it is. At any rate, it's a useful device in that it immediately grabs the reader's attention, throwing them right into the action. By not telling them anything specific right away, you make them want to keep watching the film/reading the book to see how the story got to that point...uh, well, maybe not in MY story's case, but we'll see.

Consider AMC's Breaking Bad, my current favourite TV show. How did its first episode begin? With a pair of trousers drifting through the air in slow motion. As the trousers come to rest on a desert road, they are run over by an RV, driven by...a man wearing nothing but a gas mask and underpants, with an unconscious younger man (also with a gas mask) in the passenger seat and two presumably dead bodies in the back. Watch it here (hope that link stays active...) Isn't that excellent? I mean, just what the hell is going on there?! (And believe me, the show only gets better from there!)