A New Begining!

So I haven’t done anything with this blog in over a year, so I’ve decided to use it to chronicle my adventures in comic book publishing, assuming said adventures ever actually begin.

The comic I’ve been working on oh-so-slowly for the last few years is entitled Grimalkin, and it’s mostly set in the fictional Midwestern ‘Rust Belt’ town of Lake City. It’s a superhero comic in general form, but all kinds of crazy stuff happens to the main characters, their loved ones, and the whole human race. The protagonist is Lynn Epstein (aka Grimalkin or just plain 'Grim'), a young woman who tries to navigate the hazy line between hero and criminal, going first one way, then the next, never quite knowing where she ‘fits’. Though it might be cliched to say so (and it is), I think we can all identify with that.

The comic explores a wide variety of themes, some light-hearted, some dead serious, including but not limited to the following: people with disabilities, nerd conventions, telepathy, time travel, prison life, Judaism, hockey, extraterrestrials, the War on Terror, celebrity cults, stage magic, criminal masterminds, children’s television, robot doubles and quality home furnishings. If I was to boil it down to its basic elements, I would say Grimalkin is based on two concepts: that the only thing that really separates a ‘good guy’ from a ‘bad guy’ is the choices he or she makes, and that being a good person is an active choice we all must make every day of our lives.

I will tell the sort of stories I would like to read, as I think really that’s the best a writer can do; I‘ve been working with talented SF-based artist Thom Chiaramonte on several character designs (sadly, he will not be available to work as the regular artist), and the results have always made me smile with nerdy delight. I hope to continue our collaboration, on this project and others, for years to come.

I don’t have an artistic partner yet, mostly because I’ve yet to generate a single completed script! I hope to rectify this over the course of the next few months, so that I will have written copies of the first three issues (Grim’s origin arc) completed by April 2010, so I can present them to publishers at the first Chicago Comic & Entertainment Expo.

So what have I been doing for the last three years? Two words (or one word in two parts): world-building! Creating an epic comic book universe out of whole cloth is not done overnight, my friends! No indeed! One has to make all sorts of choices, like how many super people are there? How did they get their powers? What does the rest of the world think about them? Are there aliens? Magic? Other dimensions? Almost every variation on these ideas has been explored, parodied and turned on its head by far more talented writers than myself going all the way back to 1939, when Superman made his heroic debut and the era of the superhero was born. You will literally go nuts if you try to make your world completely 100% original, for it cannot be done!

So what do you do? You make it personal, exploring the themes, characters and concepts that touch you in some way, that make you laugh, cry, or crave a sandwich. And then you take all of that and jam it into twenty-two monthly pages, and hope to God people like it. But if they don’t…well, we can’t all be rich, right?

Tune in next post for another exciting epsiode of Bob the Procrastinator!