Most mornings i listen to informative podcasts. Last night,however, i bought The Langley Schools Music Project album specificly for its odd, haunting, quality.
I put in both headphones and hit play on my way downstairs. The song that was just starting was Space Oddity.
When i stepped outside, i stopped dead in my tracks.
Listening to a spooky version of a spooky space song, and i am suddenly looking down my street into fog so thick that it appeared the whole area was underwater. The thickest i have ever seen.
At the corner, half way up the hill, i could see the fog in front of the lights that were there to stop traffic crossing my path. There was actually a visible beam of red mist stretching out in front of the light.
Breahttakingly strange

Posted via LiveJournal app for Android.

Originally published at Rapid City Script Blog. You can comment here or there.

The script for the twenty-third issue of my superhero comic book, Rapid City, has now been posted.

In this issue, Coil’s plan to steal an ancient artifact unfolds with terrifying consequences.

Panel 1. Everyone looking toward the Captain with surprise.

GUARD 1

Sir!

SCIENTIST 2

What have you done?

KINETIC

What’s wrong with you?

Panel 2. The Captain yelling back at Kinetic.

GUARD CAPTAIN

Not me. Them. Look what this scum does with the power they have now. They hurt, steal, and kill.

GUARD CAPTAIN

More power will mean more people hurt and more people killed. That’s not happening on my watch.

GUARD CAPTAIN

The vault stays closed.

Read and discuss this issue of Rapid City, plus all of the previous issues, for free here.

Originally published at Rapid City Script Blog. You can comment here or there.

I recently interviewed comic book writer George O’Connor.

A short preview of his book Healed has just hit the web.

The book is about a world in which death by-natural-causes has simply stopped happening. It’s a cool idea and I’m really impressed with how well executed is. Take a look, even if you don’t normally read comics. You’ll enjoy it.

Originally published at Rapid City Script Blog. You can comment here or there.

The 23rd issue is done enough to call it done.

I still have some touch-up work to do, but all of the panels and pages and stuff are all written.

I am pretty proud of this one.

Originally published at Rapid City Script Blog. You can comment here or there.

I post new comic scripts in the 15th of every month and a new interview every Monday.

Oh, also the deadline to get the completed Issue 11 to the printer is rushing closer and closer.
There is a lot of pressure on right now.

I have a few interviews cooking. I need to get on top of those, but they aren’t my main priority. When they get done, they will get done. No one but me will notice that missed deadline, and the people who will appreciate those interviews will enjoy them whenever they come out.

The book for the printer is largely out of my hands right now. All I can do is to keep on that and make sure it is moving along. Guys, if you are reading this, get back to work.

The script for issue 23 is almost completely done. It will only take an hour or so to get the actual creative part of the writing done. If I had an assistant or something, I could hand off this script and call it done. Let the editing and minor details fall to someone else. I could send it as is to an artist to begin drawing, and clean up the small details later.

However, those are not the kinds of details I like to cut. I want to get it DONE done by tonight.

Originally published at Rapid City Script Blog. You can comment here or there.

I met fellow Bostonian comic writer George O’Connor at his booth at the Boston Comic Con where he was selling his book Healed. We quickly determined that we had already “met” online at the comicsexperience web site. I was impressed with the quality of his work and asked him to talk a bit more about himself and his work.

Who are you?

Such a deep question so soon? My name’s George O’Connor and I’m a writer, producer, musician and copywriter from Boston.

What do you write?

Currently I write the comic book “Healed” which is illustrated by my friend and creative partner Griffin, and distributed by our indy press, Homeless Comics. I’ve had the opportunity to be a part of two anthologies put out by Elevator Pitch Press: Tales from the Comics Experience and Great Zombies in History.

In the past, I’ve spent 10 years writing, directing and producing short films and created the webseries “664-The Neighbor of the Beast”.

By day, I’m a mild-mannered copywriter for a Boston advertising agency.

Why do you write?

The simple answer; because it’s fun! The long answer; because I love the creative process and seeing ideas come to life. Getting into a room and working on a song with musicians, or on a set with actors, or working with an artist and seeing the germs of an idea grow and seeing it grow really gets me excited.

The other reason is that in this day and age, it’s so easy to get your ideas out there for people to find. From your basement, you can put your music or podcast up on iTunes, webseries on YouTube or your comic on Graphic.ly or Indy Planet and you can reach fans. I truly believe there is no better time for creators to get their ideas and art out into the world.

How do you write?

I’m a stew-er. I roll ideas around in my head all day, writing and working out scenes, lines and beats. Eventually, a little light goes on that says “It’s time to write.” Then I’ll head down to the basement, throw on some metal (Metallica’s “… And Justice For All” or Testament’s “The Ritual” are two go-to albums. I try to write the first draft as fast as possible, not dwelling on it too much, embracing the idea that the goal for the first draft is to be completed and that’s it. Once it’s written, I like to walk away from it, for a few hours or a day. In that downtime, I usually think of new lines or beats to work into the second round. After the 2nd version, I usually flip it to my wife to make sure the ideas I wanted to get on the page actually got there and make sense outside of my head. She’s also fantastic on grammar and punctuation. At that point, I feel comfortable with throwing it out to the world.

Healed is a great comic. It seems like a counterpoint to our culture’s current fascination with zombies. It could be sub-titled “Night of the Living Living”. Do zombie stories and Healed deal with similar social, cultutral, and psychological issues? Are they opposites or compliments?

Yeah, in a way it’s kind of like the anti-zombie book where instead of everyone dying, everyone lives but there’s still chaos all over the place. They’re both similar in that there’s a big event and everyone has to figure out how to survive in this new situation. One major difference is there’s no obvious enemy in HEALED’s world, so when it turns bad, it’s human against human. But they still both boil down to the same thing: survival.

Is this a personal story for you? Has your life been affected by terminal illnesses?

I count myself pretty lucky in that I haven’t been affected that much. But I’ve been surprised at how these stories have connected with people who have had to deal with these illnesses. If anything, it might be a testament that good stories don’t need to be complicated, they need to be honest.

If so, is this story in some way wish-fulfillment?

Without digging real deep into my head, I don’t think so. It was an idea that seemed really interesting and as Griffin and I talked about, it seemed like it had tons of possibilities. That being said, if I could live forever with reasonably good health, yeah I think I’d sign up for that.

You feature several stories showing many aspects of this new disease-free world. Surely these few issues

worth of stories do not represent every single story that occurred to you for this setting. How did you choose which stories to include? What do the ones that made the cut have in common?
As the series has gone on, we put more thought into the combination of stories. That helped put some structure to the books and the stories that we picked. Griffin and I sat down one evening to plot out the issues and that turned into a great “what if” conversation and that also helped us decide which stories we were really eager to tell and see come to life.

In your writing, what mistakes do you find yourself making again and again?

Great question. Technically, I’m terrible at spelling and grammar which is why I’m so thankful to have my wife editing the book because she has a great eye for that. I also worry that I’m way too verbose. It’s actually one of the reasons I enjoy lettering the book. It gives me one more chance to edit and sometimes it forces me to say knock a two bubble panel down to one without losing the purpose of the dialogue. Ya know, when I decided to get into comics, I took Comic Experience’s writing class online and it was absolutely worth it and would highly recommend those courses for anyone thinking about getting into comics.

What are you particularly good at?

One of the compliments I’ve received that I’m proud of is that my dialogue sounds like actual dialogue. Other than that, I think I’m good at driving projects across the finish line.

Making music and writing comics seem to be polar opposites. Writing a script is a solitary, heavily structured, activity which usually only goes through a collaborative stage when it passes through the vision of the artist. Music, on the other hand, is instant and very public. Regardless of much effort and attention to detail goes into the creation of the song, it still goes from the creator to the audience at the speed of sound. How are the creative processes similar and how do the influence each other?

At least the way my projects have worked, they feel similar. There are some songs and stories that come out fully baked and there are others that need someone else’s talent and input to reach its full potential. And I count myself very lucky that over the years to have talented friends willing to get involved in these goofy lil adventures of mine. And as I’ve grown older (read: more mature) I’ve embraced a way of working that leaves plenty of room for my collaborators to leave their mark. I don’t care who comes up with the good idea, so long as there’s a good idea. I also think, thanks to the technology, comics and music can get out to the world pretty quick.

What are you working on next, and where will you be appearing?

Griffin and I will be taking HEALED and our other work to Baltimore Comic Con, ComicCONN in Stamford, CT in August and then the Small Press Expo and Massachusetts Independent Comics Expo in September. Over the winter, we’ll get HEALED #5 ready for a spring debut. I’m also hoping we can find a publisher who’d be interested in putting out a HEALED trade. After that, I’d like to get a couple pitches together and throw ‘em against the wall and see if anything sticks.

Thanks a lot, George. I’ll see you at M.I.C.E.

Originally published at Rapid City Script Blog. You can comment here or there.

Below is the second installment of my interview series. Each week I will interview another with a comics creator on the art and craft of writing comic books.
This week I spoke with the creator of the very insightful and informative blog Superhero Nation, Brian McKenzie.
If you are writing superhero comics, I highly recommend you check this out, even if you already know everything there is to know about the genre.

Who are you?

I’m a blogger with a bit of editorial experience. In August, I’m set to start teaching high school English in Korea. Some random facts about myself:

My writing advice blog, Superhero Nation, has had ~300,000 readers, which means I’m still getting killed by autotuned cats, Newsweek and Rebecca Black.
My interests range from the nerdy (I’m a fairly high-level player in a few video games) to the profoundly nerdy (I’ve spent thousands of hours running a website about how to write superhero novels and comic books).
In high school, I was voted Most Likely to be an Abercrombie & Fitch Centerfold, which was probably the senior class prank that year. My friends still haven’t told me how they pulled it off. (I’m the guy on the right here: http://www.superheronation.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/headerjanuary63.jpg ).
My main writing experience is in nonfiction (mainly government communications and copywriting/advertising).

What do you write?

Mainly nonfiction, articles about how to write better novels and comic books.
In terms of fiction, I’m working on a comic book series titled The Taxman Must Die. It’s a wacky mix of an office comedy and a national security thriller. Two unlikely secret agents– an accountant and a mutant alligator–have to save the world. From themselves, mostly. (If you’re interested, you can see five illustrated sample pages here).

Why do you write?

I like interacting with readers. Compliments are nice, questions are better and witty insults are the best. I once did a writing contest to gently discourage would-be screenwriters from asking me for writing advice. (I do comic books and novels, not TV/movie scripts). So I asked my readers to fill in the blank: “Asking B. Mac for screenplay writing advice is like _________________.” My favorite response was “Asking B. Mac for screenplay writing advice is like having Michael Bay direct Titanic, the butler did it and was darn sexy while doing it, but it isn’t right for you because the butler was a robot…in disguise! Boom! Explodey!”

I would be immensely pleased if my fiction had enough readers that I could write it full-time. Right now, it’s just a hobby. However, I am not under any delusion that it will happen quickly. It usually takes years of practice to get professionally published and years more to build up an audience large enough to write full-time.

How do you write?

In nonfiction:

I usually start with a request from a reader on my website, a Google search to my website or an idea or concern based on a story I’m reviewing. For example, one Google search that showed up on my Analytics account last week how to introduce a new character. I thought that was an interesting idea, so I decided to write an article about How to Introduce Major Characters.
To fill out my articles, I brainstorm a list of ideas of problems that I’ve seen authors run into. For example, when it comes to introducing characters, I’ve read many stories where authors introduce characters with no connection to what has been going on in the story, drown readers in meaningless visual details rather than develop interesting information about the character, introduce too many characters at once, etc.
I finish the article by offering possible solutions to each problem and examples of published stories that I think handled the issue really well.

In fiction:
I’ll sit down for a certain period of time (usually 30-60 minutes) and keep writing until I have a page or two ready.
If I’m truly stuck, I’ll post what I have so far and ask my beta-reviewers for possible suggestions about where I could go from here. As soon as I have a first draft ready…
…I start rewriting savagely. I try to write the first draft longer than I will eventually need so that I have room to cut scenes that I later decide are not quite at the same level as the rest of the work. My philosophy is that you’re not actually writing a comedy unless you’ve removed scenes because they’re not funny enough.
I ask my reviewers what they think of the rewritten draft–is it easy to read? Fun? Coherent? Then I’ll rewrite until I’m confident that it’s ready to go.
Submit to publishers.
If I get published, celebrate. Otherwise, return to step 3.

How much does your Taxman comic draw from your life?

Subconsciously, perhaps. For example, it’s about a white-collar nerd (an accountant/IRS agent) thrown onto a super-SWAT team where everybody else is far more badass than he is, even the receptionist. I can sort of relate to that, having been probably the least competent cadet in the history of Air Force ROTC. Also, I was a communications intern for the EPA, which rivals the IRS as the least badass police agency in the world. (To be fair, though, both have armed field-agents and have lost agents in the line of duty).

I think I’m also subconsciously drawing on my dissatisfaction with Superman.

The Superman universe bends over backwards to make his life as easy as possible. For example, he’s an alien that not only looks like a human but an exceedingly attractive human.
He doesn’t have a personality (besides being perfect).
His superpowers tend to be ridiculous (like going back in time by flying around the world really fast or induce amnesia with a kiss). Also, he’s vastly more powerful than most of his nemeses, particularly the cinematic versions of Lex Luthor.
He talks about morals and ethics but acts like an ass. For example, he was a star football player, which is sort of a dick thing if you have a competitive advantage far beyond illegal steroids.

I notice that my other main character, Agent Orange, is very much an anti-Superman.

He’s not an alien, but he is a mutant alligator that looks, ahem, like a mutant alligator. (American alligator!)
I feel his personality and voice are lively. He is an extremely scholarly jingo dedicated to the pursuit of badassery. (For example, he whips out The Compendium of the American Alligator: A Treatise on Awesomeness to explain the key differences between American alligators and their various nemeses).
Besides incredible athleticism, his only superpower is the ability to turn off the lights for three seconds, courtesy of a billion-dollar defense research project that fell, ahem, seriously short of expectations.

When I first found your blog, I read it disingenuously. I was waiting for you to screw up. How could a guy who has made no super hero comics tell me how to write super hero comics? I was all set to feed my ego by correcting your misguided mistakes. But I couldn’t, because your blog is damn good. How did you get the cajones to do offer advice on a topic that you have no ‘PROOF that you know anything about?

Those questions sound harsh, the point I am trying to make is that I am impressed with the awesome pressure you have chosen to take on. Have you felt that pressure? Has it affected the way you write?

“Those questions sound harsh…” No, I think your question is entirely on the mark (and perfectly polite). I appreciate your honesty. I think my sparse credentials are definitely a valid concern–I myself would be wary of someone offering advice in a field in which he/she was not very experienced. Like you said, I’m not a published author, and I have only a few months of low-level comic editing experience.

I think it helps in my case that I tend to focus more on suggestions and things to think about than ironclad Orders from On High or Rules That Cannot Be Broken*.

For example, compare these ideas.

Suggestion A: “Characters with distinct personalities tend to be more interesting.”
Rule B: “If you want to get published, you must write characters with distinct personalities.”

They’re similar, but Rule B is demonstrably wrong. I think most readers could come up with a few examples of characters that have been published despite having bland personalities. In contrast, very few people would disagree with Suggestion A.

From there, I think it’s really easy to share with readers some of the characterization problems I’ve made and/or encountered. For example, one problem that sometimes makes it harder to build distinct personalities is that too many characters are introduced too quickly and/or the scenes have too many characters in them, so some characters get lost in the shuffle. If you think that’s a problem for your work, you might find it helpful to consider an approach like introducing characters more gradually, reducing the number of characters in scenes (so that each characters is fighting fewer people for the audience’s attention), and/or perhaps even merging characters or deleting them altogether. Even if you don’t think that’s a problem for your work, that part of the article will still hopefully help you identify the problem if it crops up later.

*Well, I do have some ironclad rules, but they’re matters of professionalism rather than writing style. For example:

Always be upfront/honest with your teammates. Don’t be the writer that tried to renege on a contract with his freelance illustrator by claiming that he had died. (No, really).
Always double-check the submissions guidelines and proofread your materials before submitting.

Your very public blog is, at least partially, a massive compilation of comic dos and don’ts.
1. Does that make you nervous about making your own comics?
2. Do you worry that you will neglect some piece of your own advice?

1. Not very. I will continue making mistakes for the remainder of my professional career. It’s part of the learning process. (My website’s tagline is “We’ve made every writing mistake so you don’t have to”– clearly it’s hyperbolic, but I feel like I’ve benefited a lot from my mistakes. Judging by the site’s repeat traffic, my mistakes are also helping others.

2. Definitely not. I’ve got a Superhero Nation drinking game based on drinking whenever I disregard my own tips. When I do so, I try to avoid the potential problem in some other way. For example, I’d generally recommend keeping the superheroes on a team roughly as powerful as each other unless you want the most powerful one to sideline the others. But the main character in The Taxman Must Die is an accountant without superpowers, whereas everybody else is a super-SWAT officer. Admittedly, the taxman probably won’t be much help in combat, but he’s good at cracking cases, which ends up mattering more than his combat skills. (After all, real supercriminals are too smart to just shoot up a bank in broad daylight–it takes skill to find them).

When you work on your own comics, what are you good at?

I feel that my main characters are interesting and my comedy is strong.

What mistakes do you find yourself making again and again?

First, my most glaring defect is that I’m not a very productive fiction writer. I get distracted extremely easily and I end up putting things off for months. When I do write, it tends to be less coherent than I’d like.

Second, I feel like my side-characters are a bit too two-dimensional. The Wild Cards and Harry Potter series and TV shows like The Wire and Dexter develop their side-characters in such interesting ways. For example, I think most readers could name 10+ side-characters after reading the first HP book because the characters have at least one trait or memorable moment to etch them into the readers’ minds.

If you could wave a wand and wipe a stupid beginner’s mistake from the face of comics, what would it be?

Superpowers do not by themselves make a character interesting. I think the most important thing about a character is personality, preferably something that distinguishes him from other comic book protagonists.
Superpowers are not a substitute for a personality.
An origin story is not a substitute for a personality.

What’s the most demoralizing part about writing for you? Harsh reviews?

Hmm. Some authors have a tough time dealing with tough reviews, but I find it relatively easy.

It’s impossible to write something that will please everybody, so you will have tough reviews. Some of them will help you identify potential improvements in your work.
Some of the people not pleased by your work are, for reasons beyond your control, unfriendly and insulting. I wouldn’t worry too much about them because they’re so rarely instructive or helpful.
Especially if you’re a young or relatively inexperienced author, I wouldn’t get discouraged by negative feedback because getting good at anything takes practice. Keep writing and it will get better.

Counterintuitively, I find it a lot harder to deal with really positive feedback. I feel like “I loved this–when’s it coming out?” puts a lot more pressure on me than “This is awful–go die in a fire.” I have no idea when it’s coming out and it’s harder to let down a fan than a troll. (Also, I feel like the compliments remind me more of how far away I am from being published).

Thanks a lot for a really great interview, Brian.
And to anyone reading this now, if you are serious about writing comics, do yourself a favor and check out his blog.

Originally published at Rapid City Script Blog. You can comment here or there.

The script for the twenty-second issue of my superhero comic book, Rapid City, has now been posted.

This issue is the second part of story in the style of Crime Noir. Villains brought together to steal a powerful artifact face the lives they have chosen as they await the final heist preparations. Coil pulls Kinetic’s strings to push him into action, but for what purpose?

Panel 1. Kinetic over Coil and shouting down at him.

KINETIC
You don’t ask about her. After what you did, you don’t even get to say her name.

COIL
I did….

Panel 2. Close on Coil looking up at Kinetic. He is slightly sneering.

COIL
I did what I had to do.

Panel 3. Coil starting to stand, Kinetic still over him.

KINETIC
You set her up. Attacked her. You tortured her. That’s what you had to do?

COIL
They would have killed her.

Read and discuss this issue of Rapid City, plus all of the previous issues, for free here.

Originally published at Rapid City Script Blog. You can comment here or there.

I just spent about an hour agonizing over a single line of text.

But, it is the line of text that wraps up the 22nd issue of Rapid City.
I still have plenty of editing to do tomorrow (and actually 1 more page to write) but essentially the issue is done.

It isn’t polished and perfect yet, but if an editor needed these pages tomorrow, I could confidently tell him or her “Yes, you can have the 22nd issue of Rapid City, complete and on time!”

Look for that to be posted very soon, followed by another interview on Monday.

Josh