I was listening to Robert Kirkman on Wordballoon this morning on my way to work.
It was an interview from about a year ago in which Kirkman talks about his writing process, his comics, and comics in general.

One young fan asks for advice on making comics and “breaking in”. In his response, Kirkman essentially describes my Rapid City project and says “don’t do that”.
His point is that by writing and writing and writing, you essentially bury yourself under and unpublishable mound of material.
And he is right. No publisher is going to agree to take a risk on a project which is hundreds of pages long. Not from an unknown, unproven, talent.

Instead, Kirkman advises that you find an artist and make comics. This is the best way to show that you can make comics.

He makes a good point, but I do not completely agree.
With this approach, you will learn how to make a comic book, but not how to make comics.
It is like trying to learn how to be a good husband by going on lots of dates.
You can be Mr. Right all night. Super attentive, romantic, sensitive, and funny, but what are you like the next day? And the next day? And all the next days after that?

You can find an artist and develop a one-shot project that you are both really excited about… but what about the next one? And the next one? You learn to work with giddy enthusiasm, but not with drudgery.*

My goal with this project is not to develop a pitchable project. My goal is to develop the much sought-after ability to reliably produce comics month after month. If some of this eventually sees publication, that is fine with me, but that is not the intended purpose.

This is not a pitch.

This is not a way to sell the idea of Rapid City. Rather, Rapid City is a tool with which I can demonstrate my skill and dedication.

Hopefully, there is an editor out there who needs someone who can reliably produce a comic book script on time. And, hopefullier, he is now googling the phrase “someone who can reliably produce a comic book script” and comes across this and sees that I can do what he needs done.

And beyond all that, in all honesty, the fun of doing this and the pride at knowing that I can do it is more than enough to call it a success.

*Beyond that point, the dating/marriage metaphor really breaks down, unless you take it to mean that I am symbolically “married” to this project.

Switchboard is a character who was in my Rapid City: B-Sides comic book.
She also made a brief appearance in Rapid City #10.
Now she is coming back as a major part of issue #12, and the arc that is spreading out over the next few issues.

So, I figured that I would make a new character sheet for her.

Here it is.

And here’s her talking about herself.

“You want me to go first? Ok. My name is Switchboard. I grew up around all of this superhero stuff my whole life. All of that “cape and glory” shit, I never saw that. I saw my dad’s friends with their masks off making racist jokes and talking about what villains they would do. So I never had that “ideal”, you know? I remember I was shocked when I figured out that other people actually looked up to these guys. They meant it when they called them “heroes”. I was so disappointed.
You know, it was the first time I realized that most people are pretty stupid. That’s a hard thing for a twelve year old to deal with. I was a pretty moody teenager.”

The script for the eleventh issue of the superhero comic book, Rapid City, has now been posted.

Panel 4 Similar shot, but now Wild Thing is getting to his feet and Kinetic has his arms spread in confusion.

WILD THING

Just… just do yourself a favor and walk away, you can’t win this.

KINETIC

Are you crazy? I just beat you.

Panel 5 Shot of Wild Thing talking. Kinetic’s words come from off panel.

WILD THING

I mean the whole thing. You can’t win the whole thing. That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you. You’re wasting your time on this small-change stuff.

KINETIC

No. Wrong.

Panel 6 Similar shot, but now it is Kinetic talking and it is Wild Thing’s balloons that come in from off panel.

KINETIC

You’re wrong. “Small change” is how change happens. I didn’t save the world, but now this park is a better place.

Read and discuss this issue of Rapid City, plus all of the ones leading up to it, for free here.

I just wrote a scene where some drug dealers talk to eachother about how to handle a problem they are having.

Most people do not have experience with this sort of thing. Consequently, when writing it they have to rely on pre-existing cliches or extrapolate their best guess from what they DO have experience with.

Fortunately, I work with drug dealers every day, Monday through Friday. I know what they sound like when they are talking amongst themselves. The down side, though, is that their natural language sounds REALLY cliche.

I am joking a little bit, but it is an issue. The actual problem is that they way they actually talk would be, for the most part, unintelligible and unbelievable. What I end up doing is writing the dialogue “straight” and then peppering in a few slang constructions to give it a “realistic” feel.

In this case, clarity trumps accuracy. Plus, the characters in my comics live in a fictional city…..so who can say what “accuracy” even means there.

When things come up repeatedly, you should try to take notice of them.
In the past few days, I have been coming into contact with the idea of the psychological toll of living a violent life.
Hurting people makes you start to see people as things that can be hurt.
The act of physically enforcing your will on another person (even for the best of reasons) dehumanizes all people.

So, how does this affect the superhero?
What is the mental cost of rearranging your life for the purpose of practicing benevolent violence?

Maybe I am leading Kinetic toward a breakdown. Or worse, maybe he is moving toward some kind of larger acceptance of the violence in his life.

It is exciting to see where this will end up.

I came upon this today. It is Jeopardy champ Ken Jennings talking about Grant Morrison’s run on Animal Man. Pretty neat stuff.

In 1988, when Animal Man had barely been seen in decades, he was reinvented by Glaswegian comic book writer Grant Morrison in his own series. Animal Man was now an easy-going suburban dad, trying to make a living as a full-time superhero. An encounter with B’wana Beast (another embarrassingly named 1960s relic) radicalized his politics, and Animal Man became the first vegetarian, PETA-member superhero. A reasonably clever take on the character, I thought. Then things got weird.

I consider Rapid City to be metafiction, but every once in a while I am hit with just how meta some fiction can get. Rapid City is, in many ways, a story about its own production, but I don’t ever expect the characters to actually address the audience.
Maybe I should re-label it psuedo-meta. Meta-meta?

The script for the tenth issue of the superhero comic book, Rapid City, has now been posted.

Panel 2. Sidekick on the ground. He has knocked over one of those black waste barrels and several pump hoses have come out of their cradles. He is gesturing to one of the hoses, or holding one up, as an example,

SIDEKICK

Careful? Doesn’t look like you’re too…

Panel 3. Kinetic has grabbed Sidekick by his jacket and is swinging him in a high arc.

SIDEKICK

careful!

Panel 4. Kinetic completes the high arc by slamming Sidekick hard into the ground. Monkey is leaping clear of the impact and bits of gravel are spraying up.

Panel 5. Kinetic gripping his bandaged abdomen in pain and grimacing. Sidekick is climbing to his feet again

KINETIC

Damn.

SIDEKICK

What was the point of…. Oh!

SIDEKICK

Are you ok?

Panel 5. Shot of Monkey looking over at the slightly larger crowd.

MONKEY

Sidekick, this isn’t working.

Read and discuss this issue of Rapid City, plus all of the ones leading up to it, for free here.

Issue 10 is coming along well.
But, I just looked at my page count and I realize that I might need some padding. I think that means I need a bad guy.
Until now, all of the major characters and events have reflected my over-arching theme of following my creative process.

The growth and progress of the characters will mirror my own growth and progress in this writing project.

So now I find myself in a spot where in order to meet my deadline, I may need to cavalierly inject some action or some unexpected interference. Can i do this and maintain the project integrity?

Maybe the key is to devise a character who is facing external pressures (my deadline) and feels that he must take action regardless of the consequences… with no regard to what ever carefully laid plans he might be upsetting. That could work.

I was talking with my friend Micah about villains today.
He sent me a list of his favorites and I texted back “combine them and give him a motivation, then get back to me with the result”.

A few hours later, this landed in my inbox.

Why I love my favorite villains:

Iago: doesn’t actually DO anything at all, but uses the weaknesses and blind spots of those who trust him so that they do his evil bidding. Also, he destroys those around him for no good reason, though he offers a number of reasons. We get the feeling that these are really just excuses for his manipulations rather than the real source of his venom. Instead, it seems that there is something deep inside him who gets off on tricking others into destroying each other.

Sabertooth: has no grand aspirations; only likes hurting others. His motivations are two-tiered. First, try to hurt others; if possible, come out ahead. But he’s willing to get caught, hurt, lose the loot, whatever if it means that the other person is hurt. He’s a special kind of sociopath.

Richard III: Willing to do anything, no matter how immoral, to get what he wants…power. However, he’s special because he’s fucked to begin with. It’s not really immoral to do what he does since he actually cannot have happiness without doing what he does. He can’t be loved, he can’t be healthy, and he can’t feel comfort. The only outlet for him is attaining power. Thus, we feel sympathy for him when he is brought low, instead of joy.

Ben Linus: throughout the LOST series, at least until near the end, we aren’t sure whether he’s a good guy or a bad guy…and neither are the protagonists. He’s deceptive and manipulative; he’s also creepy. Nerdy villains are often the best to put against athletic heroes. When they rise up after a beating, it’s extra-scary because their vengeance feels justified. He does what he does out of a sense of loyalty to a mystical being, then is betrayed by that mystical being so he becomes “good” or something.

Lucifer: I almost always like portrayals of this character, but here I am thinking especially of the Miltonian version. Part of my attraction to him is his grandness. He rises from the pit after the first fall and is gigantic – the other gods and demons seem to swarm to him like gnats. He’s also very reasonable. He says that a second assault on heaven would be pointless, they’d just lose again. However, he can destroy what God loves most: creation. It won’t give him what he wants (reign of heaven), but at least it will hurt the one who hurt him. Revenge. Pointless and pure. I love him also because he wins in the end: Eve eats the apple.

Zenith is a hero of necessity. He has a great deal of power: he can control electromagnetic fields. In turn, he can do high-energy blasts, create nuclear bomb effects, and so on. However, he has not enough power to anything globally influential. For example, he can’t hold the planet ransom, insisting that he will remove the Earth’s atmosphere or anything. Anything he does is local. He finds this incredibly frustrating. He’s thought through every aspiration of global dominance that he’s conjured up, and each time has come to the conclusion that the strategy would be futile. Any attack would be met with a counter-strike (either military or superhuman) that would end in his death. Also, he knows that – though he’s very smart – that there are people on the planet who are smarter. Of course, there are super-humans with super-intelligence that outstrips his very high intelligence by dozens of IQ points. He knows this. So, he does what he can: he does superheroing and strives to surround himself with as many key players as possible. He’s an excellent study of character and gets what joy he can from playing these heroes against each other, destroying each one systematically when he can. Because he cannot fulfill what SHOULD be his destiny (global emperor), he poisons others’ destinies.

Not bad. I think I will put some, or all, of that to use.
But, i still need a more immediate threat.

The script for the ninth issue of the superhero comic book, Rapid City, has now been posted.

Read and discuss it here.

Panel 1 Large panel of Coil stepping in to the apartment. The wires from his hand that unlocked the door are retracting back to his glove. He is being as intentionally non-threatening as he can be in this situation.

COIL

It’s ok. I’m a friend. I’m… I was a friend of Hourglass.

COIL

We need to talk.

Panel 2 Kinetic and Coil in the panel as Coil closes the door behind him.

COIL

You go by Kinetic, right?

KINETIC

Yeah.

COIL

It’s nice to meet you. I’m called Coil. I wish this had been under better circumstances, but it is what it is.

Panel 3 Close on Coil’s foot as he steps among some small pieces on the broken phone.

COIL

This kind of thing happens from time to time. And when it does, we need to sort it out. Figure out what happened.