Here’s a little teaser of the Page 4 redo.

Enjoy.

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A warm-up sketch. Some hungry wolves.

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Today (Sunday) was the day of Boston’s 99th Comic Book and Toy Spectacular.

These shows are great and I love doing them. However, I awoke this morning to find that my lower back (after 31 years of loyal service) was demanding a day off.

On the one hand, I let Micah and Jason down and missed opportunities to further market Rapid City. On the other hand, I missed the chance to hang out all day in a cool place and meet cool people who like cool comics.

Simply, I want to apologize to anyone who was counting on seeing me and MONOLITH at today’s show. I’ll be at #100 in November with lots of cool stuff to show off. Promise.

My back is already feeling much better.

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Well I haven’t done any sketches of Mira lately, so I figured I’d try to “flesh her out” a little more. I really think everyone is going to like her. Josh has written a great scene with her that’s early on, and it’s really gives you a glimpse into who Mira Vega is.

Enjoy.

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As I have mentioned elsewhere, Rapid City is comic that is largely based on my life. The characters are based on people I know, and the events are often versions of things that actually happened. Of course, it is seen through a thick lens of metaphor.

Add to that the fact that I have been working on it, in one form or another, for about 4 years.

I know these characters pretty well. In fact, I can just put them in a scene and stand back and let them talk. It comes so naturally at this point that I have to actually slow them down a little to catch it all.

My task as writer, when it comes to dialog, is not so much like construction anymore. It is more like sculpting. I take the huge messy glob of language and I trim it back and tease it until it fits the shape I need it to fit. And I am really getting into it.

It makes me feel like a writer to just open up the creative flood gates and write down everything that comes out. But it makes me feel like a good writer, a professional writer, to surgically triage which lines get to live and which lines must die.

To guide me in this I am turning back to some of the harsh, mechanical, writing principles I have picked up in books and classes over the years. To apply these ideas as more than just theoretical guidelines, i have given myself some rules.

At the top of each notebook page, I have written S.C.A.L.A.P. Start Scene As Late As Possible.

If you can start a scene without some detail, then get rid of the detail. You don’t need it. I imagine the scene, and then I pick a starting point for it. I keep moving that scene forward until it doesn’t make any sense. Then I move the start back about 1/2 a second.

Done.

Or rather, begun.

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Josh wasn’t happy with Page 4 (and frankly, neither was I), so he asked me to redo it. So here is my thumbnail break down for Page 4 ‘Reloaded’. For the most part this is ready to be penciled. Might make a slight change here or there, nothing major.

Enjoy.

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So, I have been butting my head against a wall for the past few days trying to get this scene just right.

I knew that the scene would be in the book a long time ago. It is a great scene between two characters that I really like. They are almost complete opposites, so it really gives each one a chance to show off who the are.

Then, a little while back I needed the drama to go a certain way at a certain moment, and this scene popped back up. It moved the plot along perfectly, and gave just enough information about the characters.

So, I started re-writing it to fit its new place and found that it just didn’t work.

It sounded wrong.

As I set out to the coffee shop this morning, I put my MP3 player on random and just let my mind wander.

Two songs into my walk, the answer was given to me.

Henry Rollins.

The dude talks like Henry Rollins.

Not 100% Rollins, but it gave me a place to start with him that was really a departure from what I had been doing before. And it works.

People usually picture “the muse” as a delicately beautuful sprite, sprinkling inspiration into the minds of artists. In this case, my muse is a shirtlessly eloquent, tattooed, thug with a menacing glare.

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