Artists, lazy, lazy artists.
Well, Mr Burns was supposed to have some art up on the blog by now but apparently drawing is hard or something like that. 'I'll get to it man but I'm busy', he opined on the phone today. 'I was doing a phone interview about EK2.'
Let me tell you something, aspiring comic writers, you don't win Ledger Awards with that kind of attitude! The only thing to do in a situation like that is harangue! Whine! Whinge! Threaten! Tell them that they are demeaning your genius with their refusal to drop everything and assuage your ego by drawing! That's what I did and...
...I'm refining the technique.
So just a quick one tonight.
There's two dreams involved with the creation of The Eldritch Kid and they seem to have come to me to entirely strip me of all notions of research and pondering.
A mate of mine told me about a dream he had. He was sitting down to play a game of Dungeons and Dragons with the members of the band, 'The Highwaymen'. The only thing he really remembered was Kris Kristofferson saying 'Hell, I fucked a Cherokee. I should get to play the elf.'
It was, suffice to say, a memorable image to someone as enamoured of both being a giant nerd and country music as I am. (Bearing in mind that what I think of country and your average station programmer thinks may not significantly overlap...)
It clicked something in me. From ridiculous seeds, things grow. I'll get to what it sparked off in my mind another time but the seeds for that melding of fantasy and gritty reality were perhaps planted with that foolish dream.
Then I had a dream. It was the first six pages of Eldritch Kid. Fully formed, a prodigy, an Athena, ready and complete in all ways. The characters, the lines, the scenes. I awoke knowing the name of the character, his visual, how I wanted to introduce him but also the Kid had a friend. That's Ten Shoes Dancing, the Oxford educated highbrow Lakota shaman. He's not in EK 2 so I won't go into him too much here.
But that was it. All my plan and inventing, thinking and cooking up and bang, the damn subconscious mind steals your thunder.
I felt almost cheated until I realised something... I really, really loved the story that played out in my dreams. I suppose it is immodest or vulgar or something but, well, I really fell in love with the whole idea of the Eldritch Kid that early afternoon. I wanted to know more about him, to get to know him. Possibly buy him breakfast and get an apartment with him from the sounds of that last paragraph.
But that was it. The Eldritch Kid was ready to go. I had a proposal and now all I needed was an artist. There was only one man to turn too. A young punk I had made the acquaintance of at a comic convention who had a brilliant portfolio but, more importantly, great music.
Next issue: Enter! Burns!
Let me tell you something, aspiring comic writers, you don't win Ledger Awards with that kind of attitude! The only thing to do in a situation like that is harangue! Whine! Whinge! Threaten! Tell them that they are demeaning your genius with their refusal to drop everything and assuage your ego by drawing! That's what I did and...
...I'm refining the technique.
So just a quick one tonight.
There's two dreams involved with the creation of The Eldritch Kid and they seem to have come to me to entirely strip me of all notions of research and pondering.
A mate of mine told me about a dream he had. He was sitting down to play a game of Dungeons and Dragons with the members of the band, 'The Highwaymen'. The only thing he really remembered was Kris Kristofferson saying 'Hell, I fucked a Cherokee. I should get to play the elf.'
It was, suffice to say, a memorable image to someone as enamoured of both being a giant nerd and country music as I am. (Bearing in mind that what I think of country and your average station programmer thinks may not significantly overlap...)
It clicked something in me. From ridiculous seeds, things grow. I'll get to what it sparked off in my mind another time but the seeds for that melding of fantasy and gritty reality were perhaps planted with that foolish dream.
Then I had a dream. It was the first six pages of Eldritch Kid. Fully formed, a prodigy, an Athena, ready and complete in all ways. The characters, the lines, the scenes. I awoke knowing the name of the character, his visual, how I wanted to introduce him but also the Kid had a friend. That's Ten Shoes Dancing, the Oxford educated highbrow Lakota shaman. He's not in EK 2 so I won't go into him too much here.
But that was it. All my plan and inventing, thinking and cooking up and bang, the damn subconscious mind steals your thunder.
I felt almost cheated until I realised something... I really, really loved the story that played out in my dreams. I suppose it is immodest or vulgar or something but, well, I really fell in love with the whole idea of the Eldritch Kid that early afternoon. I wanted to know more about him, to get to know him. Possibly buy him breakfast and get an apartment with him from the sounds of that last paragraph.
But that was it. The Eldritch Kid was ready to go. I had a proposal and now all I needed was an artist. There was only one man to turn too. A young punk I had made the acquaintance of at a comic convention who had a brilliant portfolio but, more importantly, great music.
Next issue: Enter! Burns!
2 Comments:
The Kris Kristofferson thing needs to be enshrined somewhere visibly and permanently.
I envy you for being able to dream a story like that.
Just goddamned got my dander up. Spend all your time in books and researching and all along, lurking in the hindmost Dragon Brain with gods and fish and shadows are all the stories anyway. And they don't give a tinker's cuss about anything.
As Nick Cave once said, misquoting Blake 'I myself did nothing. I just pointed an accussing finger and let the Holy Spirit do the rest'.
Which is the one and only quote I ever heeded on writing.
Dreams? One day I'll tell you about the Yebbie. Or the Butcher's Shop.
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