This is my first blog about writing comics, so I’ll give a recap on what I’ve done so far. I wrote my first script for a short comic six months ago called The Arborist, which came out of an idea I had after doing a self guided tour of the National Mall in Washington D.C. (fun fact, I was in D.C. the same weekend the entire country shut down for the coronavirus pandemic). I fell down an Internet rabbit hole researching the famous cherry trees and this story came out of it. I had the artwork done by David Monge Bautista and D.C. Alonso, two amazing artists from Spain. I’ll be talking a lot more about these gentlemen in future blogs as I’ve worked with them on several projects now.
Since then, Arborist was fortunate enough to get placed in Tales from The Dispatch Volume 1, a very cool indie comics anthology. Dispatch will be a Kickstarter and published as an actual printed volume in the not-to-distant-future, which I’m pumped about. In the meantime, you can read the The Arborist on my site. It’s worth noting that Arborist didn’t make it into Planet Comics and Heavy Metal.
In the middle of producing Arborist, I saw a posting for Crime Pays, another sweet indie anthology. I had an idea for a cool crime story, whipped together a script, and collaborated with David Monge Bautista to produce a 6 page comic in less than 3 weeks. This was a tremendous learning experience from a production standpoint, but I don’t recommend doing an insane rush job like this. The final story has a less than polished feel (my fault) and I know it’s rough on artists. Still, I’m proud of the comic that ended up being The Bank Robbery and I hope to return to the world of Phan and Munez and the SRG-15 some day. David did an amazing job with art and I can’t say enough about his talent and professionalism.
Bank Robbery is also the first comic I’ve written that lives in an actual trade paperback. Amazing!
Bank Robbery is also available to read on this site.
My Secret Next Comic
Which brings me to my latest project. Right now I’m finishing up a 12 page full color comic that is an adaption of a chapter from a popular sci-fi novel. This will end up being a digital only portfolio piece for the entire art team as we have no rights to the novel. Why do an adaption you ask?
I had a couple of goals with this project:
- Pick something that would show off the skill and range of the art team
- Be a treat for fans of the original novel
- Adapt a challenging story for sequential art
The last bullet point is important because the story is unusual for comics and there was a ton of detail I had to nail to do right by the original story. It was a huge challenge for me as an adapter, to say the least.
Also, I love the novel and I was super fired up to see the characters and settings rendered by a crack art team. I’m not revealing the story just yet…I want to tease it out over a couple of blog posts about the process of adapting the story. At the end I’ll publish the entire comic in this space.
I can tell you it turned out better than I imagined and looks spectacular. I really hope fans dig it.
For now, here are a couple of black & white panels and one color panel (all without lettering).
The art team for my super secret comic:
- Interior Art – David Monge Bautista
- Colors – DC Alonso
- Letters – Rob Jones
Cool Comics Corner
Here are a handful of dope comics I’ve read recently:
- Killadelphia, Volume 1
- The Massive, Volumes 4 and 5
- BRZRKR, Issue 1 (one of the best debut issues I’ve read in a long time–Keanu Reeves is killing it)
- The Plot, Volume 1
- Sandcastle (Incredible. This one stayed with me for days)