No Creeping Reclamation

I've gone and had another comic posted on that there internet! Now, if only I could get paid for this. Anyway, a little background:

Back when I was a spotty teen, the first short story I wrote of my own accord was "Green Fingers". An every-day tale of Death by Vegetation.

Years later, I had the idea of a sequel: "The Growth." This involved scientists trapped in a bunker, Dawn of the Dead style. They would bicker and argue and die while alien plants tried to get in. The idea went nowhere.

Many years later, one of the very first comic scripts I wrote was a one page variation of The Growth. Looking back, it was way too wordy. Each panel was a paragraph or more of description. I still find it hard to strike the balance between sufficient description for an artist and over-bearing amounts of extraneous, stifling, detail. But it did have a line I have always liked: "This was no creeping reclamation, this was an invasion."

Now, many, many years later, that script has been brought to life by Josh Mathus. You can go read it at Hadron Colliderscope, right  here. It looks a lot better than my rambles deserve.

"Kingpin gone to seed"

I'm a comics magpie - easily impressed by shiny, pretty pictures.

As a kind of follow up to my previous post, I should say that I am in awe of anyone who can draw a comic strip. The simple act of drawing the same character more than once, but getting it to look the same each time, is beyond me. So to follow a script and capture what a writer was thinking - well, that's doubly impressive.

Dan Cornwell (who I think is more talented that he realises) did just that when he drew Extras, another script I did for Clint. It's been hosted at Hadron Colliderscope, right here: Extras. Thanks again to Jim Campbell for lettering this.

In idle moments, I plan about putting together a portfolio of shorts and some longer stuff to put to editors along with a script. This would, I think, have been ideal for Wasted but for the fact it's already been around the internet (what with it being a Clint submission). Still, that's no reason for me not to plug it here!

I found it hard to cut a panel that didn't feature naked flesh, but here is one of a character I described as "Kingpin, gone to seed." I think Dan nailed it.

 You don't want to see what's happening in the

background. Especially if you're at work.

Be warned, this one is really not safe for work. REALLY, REALLY, REALLY not. I can do stories without naked ladies. It's just that the two I've mentioned here (Extras and Malignancy) were done for Clint and so I upped the naked body count. (Did I mention that my latest accepted script features hot succubus action...?)
 

If I had talent, I'd be famous.

I wish I could draw. My artistic career peaked at age 9, when I came second in an art competition. I got a medal from Glen Michael and have plateaued since. Thing is (call me a radical thinker, and maybe it's plain crazy talk), but I reckon that having the artistic ability of a nine-year old holds you back if you want to make comics. Sometimes I think I should just give up and focus on prose.

It's a problem for blogs, too. I peer jealously at the postings of artistic folks, sneaking a glance at their pictures like a digital urchin - nothing more thatn a grubby chimney sweep on his tip-toes staring through a window at all the pretty things he is denied. I'm green with envy at your effortlessly cool postings, filled with esoteric babbling about layers, and filters, and pens, and boards. It's a lost world to me.

But, then again, this is my blog. So, in true comic-creator style, here's a Judge Dredd I doodled. Brian Bolland will be trembling.

 There ought to be a law against this!

Hopefully this will change. I am working on stuff. By typing this, I am procrastinating over a couple of short comic strips (a risqué five pager, S.T.Z. and a time travelling tale of the credit crunch, Futures), a proposed graphic novel (Mr Tuesday, with Dave Thomson, if we actually get the collective finger out) and a prose story (working title: Dave Marsh Gets A Life). Of course, I still then need to find someone willing to draw them, which isn't always easy.

That said, I also have stuff that is being, or will be, drawn: three scripts with the folks at Zarjaz, a strip in Chris Cronin's up-coming small press anthology (my story is The Second Ringer), and three for Hadron Colliderscope (The Price, which is an entry to the 2000ad board's monthly regular story competition, and two old one pagers, Paradox Man and The Growth).

Part of the purpose of this blog is to give me a boot up the backside and make sure I keep writing. The lack of art is, I fear, down to the fact that I have been lazy and not produced enough stuff. The plan is that I should eventually have a steady trickle of images taken from comics I have written and that I can use to illustrate my ramblings. Pictures better than this:

Most feared being in the Galaxy? I think not.

So, I think radio silence is in order until I have something easier to look at to put on a post.

Oh, and if anyone who is working on my scripts happens to read this - then please note that the art in this post is entirely your fault. I look forward to you turning my words into pretty pictures. And if you're not quick then I might just do it myself...

The Second Ringer

I've had a script accepted for a new small press comic mag being put out at the end of the year. Yay!

It's an anthology of pulp stories. So, brooding detectives, femme fatales, lost tribes, double crosses and smouldering looks were order of the day.

Did you know this doesn't 

actually feature any postmen?

I'd no idea what to write, so I spent a couple of days reading plot summaries for every 1940s thriller I could find. Then I came up with something that's part Gilda, part The Postman Always Rings Twice. Only with a tiny little dash of, um, The Hidden.


I'm looking forward to seeing it in print.

Dead parents and abandoned by God. It's for kids, yeah?

Welcome to my nightmare.

Welcome to Time Bandits.

The chaps at Hadron Colliderscope asked me to review a film. As they have foolishly agreed to take on three of my comic strips, I couldn't say no. So I did a little piece on this 80s classic, the scariest film I've ever seen. Here it is here (it's the second review, so scroll down):

I think it has something to do with free will

Stick or Twist?

Ideas are cheap. Writing is hard.

Writing short stories is even harder, if you ask me. Because not only do you have to worry about all the things  that go into a story (y'know, characters and motives and plots and stuff) but you also need a twist. Twists are wriggly buggers. When you think you've got a good one, it slips away.

Writing a story with a good twist is mind-bogglingly difficult. Not only do you need a decent story, but then you have to get all creative again and come up with a twist. The twist has to be logical, fit with the story, be foreshadowed but not be obvious.

 

I know all this but I really struggle with it. I fear I can't do it, or at least do it well enough. Ideas are cheap because 99% of them are unoriginal. As an example: this morning I came up with an idea for a story where robbers use a time machine to steal gold in the future (dull, unoriginal) but the twist is they are stealing from their future selves (never saw that coming!), so they end up poor. That kind of thing would be laughed out of hand by most magazines as derivative pap.

                           Used with permission from the very funny Savage Chickens

But I wonder if such a set up can be saved. What about a double twist? You take the lame "seen it before" set up and play out the twist. But, in fact, that's just the set up for a second twist. You play with the reader's familiarity or anticipation of the first twist, creating a false expectation so that the second one is surprise.

I don't know if that would work. You still need to produce a logical and coherent second twist, and you will have the bulk of your story being dull or unoriginal - which is never good. But maybe the variation at the end could save it? My plan is to come up with a few stories that follow this structure and see what happens.

Of course, grand declarations of intent mean nothing. Knuckling down and doing this will not be easy. I know what I am supposed to be writing. I have an idea of what I want to do. Then again - ideas are cheap, and writing is hard.

Friggin' Tharg

Tharg, eh?

I sent the green so-and-so a script submission ages and ages ago - last May, in fact. Haven't heard a thing. Guess he's got better things to do, what with being an editor and all.

The scunner of it is, 2000ad is quite clear that you should only send one script at a time. Which is fine. I've got a pile of them, all ready to be rejected. But what do you do if you don't actually get a rejection? I've heard of one poor soul who waited 14 months before trying a new submission, and then got his wrist slapped for sending multiple submissions.

So I've waited... and waited... and waited. But then the fear kicks in. What if it never arrived? Did I properly address it? Did I put on enough postage? Is it lost?

What to do?

My cunning plan? Re-write the outstanding script and send it with a grovelling letter asking for an update. So it went off today. I'll post to say what happened as soon as I know - assuming I'm still doing this in 2012.