[This post was scheduled for March 31st, but website issues meant I couldn’t post it! Better late than never…]
Hey everybody,
It’s amazing how much can change in a month. Since last month’s update, the lockdown has grown to encompass every part of the country, and my free time (and creativity) has been swallowed up now that I’ve been sent all the equipment to work from home. I’ll be honest, it’s mentally draining being stuck inside the whole time – I’m finding it very hard to concentrate on most things.
Record for this month: *Not a single, solitary page written
I’m trying to remind myself not to feel bad about that – I’ve been doing a lot of hustling and extra work around the Kickstarter campaign (more on that shortly) so it’s not as though I’ve been completely stagnant, but it really is a struggle to work up the motivation to write. The home-working setup has cannibalised the monitor/keyboard/mouse of my studio PC, and unplugging everything post-5pm (then plugging it all back in the following morning) seems like too much effort, so I’ve ended up saving project work for the weekends when I feel like I can muster the energy. It’s a weird and challenging time for all of us, so I’m trying not to be too negative (or dwell on the social media updates of friends and peers who seem to be thriving!)
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As mentioned above, The Black Rubric Kickstarter has been running this month, and it’s honestly been a runaway success – the campaign just finished and we raised a stunning 270% of the goal for a total of £1802. I’m blown away by the number of people who are into the idea, and now we get to the fun part of the campaign (sending out comics and other rewards!) Since we made it through all of our stretch goals, we’re also doing band t-shirts and patches, and I’ll be sending out download codes for a 4-track demo of songs by the band – I’m looking forward to seeing what people think!
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This month’s playlist starts off with an appropriately-titled track by one of my favourite bands, Ayreon (the brainchild of Dutch multi-instrumentalist and prog songwriter extraordinaire) – this was the first song of theirs I heard and it’s an all-time fave! From there, we’ve a couple of instrumental tracks by Astral Bodies and Sidewalks and Skeletons, then some heavy (heavy) metal courtesy of Ignea and Knight of the Round (I’ve been playing the Final Fantasy VII Remake a lot this month!) A couple of more avant-garde black metal tracks from Secrets of the Moon and Liturgy are a nod to the Black Rubric campaign, then the playlist closes out with some Canadian rock from The Tragically Hip, an obscure acoustic Agalloch track and the tranquil Vinter from Myrkur’s beautiful album Folkesange.
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Hope you enjoy the tunes! See you next month – we’ll get through this together (as long as we stay indoors and continue to flatten the curve…)
Well, things have certainly changed a lot in a month..! Since my last post (as you’re almost certainly aware) the world has been gripped by COVID-19 (or ‘coronavirus’) and the UK has now gone into full lockdown to try and slow/stop the spread of the disease. From a purely selfish perspective, it’s been pretty good for my creativity – I’ve had a lot more time to work on projects while quarantined/locked up at home!
Here’s the record for March 2020: *22 pages fully scripted (16 for PROF ELEMENTAL: NEMESIS; 6 for Gail Simone’s COMICS SCHOOL) *Two sets of interview questions answered (THE BLACK RUBRIC press coverage) *Lettering pass completed on BRIGANTIA #2
Not a huge number of pages scripted, but two separate projects started and finished! For NEMESIS, I wrote the entire 16-page first draft in a day – it’s been a while since I’ve been hit with the inspiration bug that strongly! This story is intended to delve into the backstory of the villain for the next Prof Elemental album, Nemesis – it’s the Secret Origin of the character and will explain quite why he despises the Professor so much. It needs to both be a compelling story and also provide a springboard for the Prof and his collaborator Mos Prob to bear in mind when they’re writing the lyrics for the album – hopefully I’ve managed to achieve that.
COMICS SCHOOL is a very fun thing that writer Gail Simone did on Twitter this month – she ran a 5-day course over Twitter with the goal of teaching anybody who was interested how to write a comic script. Part of the course involved coming up with a springboard/outline for a short comic in either one or two of a list of genres and then writing the script over the 5 days. I rolled crime and fantasy, and my 6-page script (entitled ‘THE HELLFIRE DIVISION’) is available to read below if you’re interested. I might try and find an artist for it at some point..!
THE BLACK RUBRIC Kickstarter is launching today (March 31st), so we’re full steam ahead with trying to promote that and hopefully reach our goal. Given the current state of the world, I was very unsure about whether to go ahead with the campaign – there are obviously other things that people will be concerned about – but since our goal isn’t massively high I decided to launch it as planned and hope that people back it because they’d like something to look forward to. All the pages are now completely done and they’ve gone to Hass for him to work his lettering magic – please check out the campaign (https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/chrismole/the-black-rubric-the-comic) and pledge if you’d like a copy!
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I probably need to retire the phrase ‘this month’s playlist is a mixed bag’, because at this point all my playlists are going to be a little eclectic… nevertheless, here’s the selection for this month! There are a couple of heavy tunes, notably Forgotten Paths by Saor (an excellent folkish black metal band), Tere Muur by Fluisteraars (a Dutch atmospheric black metal band recently recommended to me) and the aptly named Virus Bomb by Anaal Nathrakh (one of my favourite bands – nihilistic, brutal, uncompromising extreme metal that sounds like the world ending). On the slightly lighter side of the spectrum, some post-metal from Red Sparowes (this album, Every Red Heart Shines Toward the Red Sun, is an absolute masterpiece) and The Ocean (again, fantastic album, fantastic tune). Lighter still is Go! from the incredible Public Service Broadcasting; we watched the Apollo 11 documentary on Netflix this month which was riveting viewing, made entirely with archival footage captured during the mission, and this song makes fantastic use of sampled audio from mission control. Plus it has a straight-up groove! Finally, there’s some jazz (the Overture from Whiplash, an incredible movie that has stuck with me), an instrumental from the tranquil underwater videogame Abzu, some equally relaxed folk from the incredible Myrkur (whose Folkesange album is already my album of 2020) and a fresh country bop from an acquaintance of mine, Country Legend Roky Moon!
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Enjoy the tunes, and thank you for reading! See you next month (when the world will certainly have changed even more…)
Month 2 of the recap posts, and this one will probably be a little shorter than last month’s since I didn’t have a Christmas break in which to write this month!
Here’s the (writing) record for February 2020: *3 pages fully scripted (SPACE COWBOYS #1) *Lettering pass on THE BLACK RUBRIC *HOCKEYTOWN re-drafting (issues #3 and #4) *Edits and redrafts on a comics-related article
It’s not as long a list this month because a lot of my creative energy has been spent on other things – most notably gearing up for the final stages of getting THE BLACK RUBRIC ready for the Kickstarter campaign and printing. Katie’s been churning out pages with incredible efficiency, the campaign page has been approved and we’re close to launch. Our goal was to have all the pages (inks, tones and any revisions or corrections we want to do) finished by the end of February, so we could get some pages to Hassan for a preview/potential press coverage and then he can aim to finish the rest of the lettering while the campaign is running. Katie’s now done all of her linework and is powering through the tonals/revisions part – hopefully we’ll have everything done today on February 29th, the unholiest of days! 💀
Harriet’s also been powering through pages for BRIGANTIA #2 – all her linework is finished and she’s moved onto backgrounds, flatting and colouring. There’s some big action sequences in the issue and she’s absolutely nailing the character action in those, so I’m excited for people to see the pages – it’s been a long road to get this second issue out but we’re getting there.
The most enjoyable thing I did this month was to shoot and edit a Kickstarter video for THE BLACK RUBRIC campaign (as mentioned above). I had a really strong concept in mind – a loving parody of Immortal’s seminal, self-aware and extremely low-budget music video “Call of the Wintermoon”, in which the band (in full corpse-paint) frolic around in a forest trying to look kvlt. I recruited three good friends to get dressed up and we headed for my favourite spot in the Peak District. Thanks to how committed to the joke the actors were, it only took a few hours to get some excellent (and hilarious) footage on my phone of them running around wearing capes and gesturing at things. The following day, I spent all morning holed up in the studio editing the footage together into a short video, and a chunk of the afternoon recording some frostbitten black metal music and vocals as a soundtrack – considering how quickly it came together, I’m extremely happy with it, and I think it perfectly captures the ridiculous but loving tone I was going for. I’m also hoping it’ll be distinctive enough to draw people’s attention to the campaign..!
Right at the beginning of February, I took a rare weekday excursion down to London for the purpose of attending Kieron Gillen’s Comics Writing Masterclass session. It was an excellent evening – the room was packed and I made a lot of notes, which is generally a good sign of an engaging talk. Afterwards, some of us headed to a nearby pub with Kieron to have a few drinks and natter about comics, which was a lot of fun. I also got a sneaky pub peek at the first issue of Kieron’s forthcoming new series (with Jim Rossignol, Jeff Stokely, Tamra Bonvillain and Clayton Cowles), Ludocrats, and it’s an absolutely beautiful, bonkers piece of work – definitely worth your time when it drops on April 1st!
This month’s playlist is a real mixed bag – Borknagar (and specifically this song, Colossus) were a huge favourite of mine years ago, and I was reminded of them on the way back from the video shoot. PIST were a recommendation from a very dear and long-term friend – Manchester locals whose new album mixes in black metal elements with their sludge sound. Audioslave are a band that I’ve always enjoyed, and the refrain of this track stuck with me during some of my more maudlin moments this month. Le Menhir is a one-man doom project by a good friend of mine – I’ll actually be joining him on stage with some other musicians for the first ever “full-band” gig he does with the project on March 7th, so I’ve been listening to this song a lot to memorise it. Anthrax are probably the greatest thrash band of all time, so this one needs no introduction! Ihsahn is black metal royalty, having written one of the most important albums in the genre (Emperor’s ‘In The Nightside Eclipse’) back in the ’90s – I wasn’t expecting to hear an Iron Maiden cover on his newest solo album, but it’s a solid one! There’s another new Myrkur track on here because everything she drops from the forthcoming album is utterly perfect (and it will be my album of 2020, I already know this), and the playlist finishes up with the indisputable best Elvis song – I watched Blade Runner 2049 (which features this song) for the first time a few weekends ago and again, feeling maudlin at the moment, it stuck with me.
Thanks for reading – next month will almost certainly be a busier one!
This is the first of my attempt to write 12 blog posts/newsletters this year – one a month, to recap what I’ve done in that month and help me keep track of my writing. It’s an attempt to be a little more focused and keep my eye on the ball rather than doing things in fits and starts. We’ll see how it goes!
On top of these, I spent some time revamping my website for 2020 with a great new header image shot by Manadh Photography. I’ve rejigged the layout, added some project pages and taken some down and added a store within the site so that my comics are available online. WordPress continues to be frustrating but we’re getting there!
HOCKEYTOWN is now fully scripted; my excellent editor Hugo Boylan has sent back his notes for issue #4 and the story has been tweaked accordingly. The next step is scouting for the rest of the creative team (art/colours) and then we can start getting some pitch pages and character designs together! That part could take a while – we’re both convinced that it’s a strong story, so I want to be sure that we find exactly the right artist for it.
My two other projects (THE BLACK RUBRIC and BRIGANTIA #2) are still at the art stage, but we’re getting ever closer. I’m planning to aim low with the Kickstarter campaigns for those – covering printing costs, postage and a few Kickstarter reward costs but little else. My last foray into Kickstarter (for BRIGANTIA #2) was for a high target and unfortunately failed- second issues are always a tougher sell than a #1 and there were plenty of things we could have done better. The goal is to stagger them somewhat as well so I’m not shouting all over social media about two projects very close to each other!
Just the one Powerhouse gig this month, on January 4th – we put on a benefit show to raise money for a friend of the band whose daughter is going through a horrific ordeal (the story has been in the news; CW for sexual assault). On the one hand, we raised a substantial sum of money for the cause thanks to a huge crowd (probably the biggest we’ve ever played to); on the other it was by necessity a slightly solemn occasion. Still, we played pretty well and got people dancing, so that’s good – I also managed to record some of our set thanks to a new phone mount tripod, so if you’re curious as to what a heavy metal/geek/folk ceilidh band sounds like… here’s our Star Wars medley!
On the personal side of things, January is always a difficult month – staring at the prospect of another year in a depressing office job and the anxiety and depression that accompanies it. This year, I have roughly 3 months to find an escape route (another role in the company or a promotion of some sort) after the project I’m currently on winds up or I’ll be thrown back into tedious work which I absolutely abhor, so that’s a “fun” challenge. On top of that, last January I spent a week on a blissful holiday in Barbados, which obviously wasn’t the case this year (thanks for punching me in the feelings, Facebook Memories!)
It would also be remiss of me to avoid mentioning the utter state of the world and how that’s weighing on me – today is a day that some people will probably be celebrating as Britain symbolically goes from being a tolerant, multicultural, open-minded society to an insular, closed-off one wracked with xenophobia and prejudice. It’s an upsetting and embarrassing thing to think about, and I’m trying not to dwell on it too much – but I have the privilege of being able to do so, and I know friends who are not so lucky. One thing’s for sure: I will never stop considering myself as European, and I will never stop hoping for the day that we rejoin the EU. The people who will suffer the most from Brexit are the ones who voted for it, and as Trump has shown, they’ll keep supporting it until the bitter end – so there’s a long drive until we see light at the end of that tunnel.
Before I get too maudlin, I’m going to finish this up with something fun (for me, anyway!); every month, a group of friends and I put together playlists (10 songs in length) which seek to capture our listening for that month. Here’s my January 2020 playlist:
It’s a fairly mixed bag, as usual. I spent a large chunk of this month with Rush after hearing of the death of their drummer, Neil Peart – not only one of the greatest drummers of all time, but an extremely gifted lyricist. There will never be another like him. Jonathan Coulton is well-written, nerdy acoustic rock – this particular song is on the list because I’ve been firing some emails off for a new project called NEMESIS and this was the only thing playing in my head throughout! Sega Sound Team is from the soundtrack of the videogame Bayonetta, a favourite of mine – this tune plays while you’re exploring one of the heavenly realms you stumble across in-game and it’s extremely soothing. Myrkur dropped a new track, and it’s absolutely breathtaking – I listened to it three times through on first listen because it’s such a haunting, beautiful piece. Wang Wen was a Spotify discovery that struck a particular chord – atmospheric, experimental and emotive. The playlist winds up with a solid 4 tracks of black metal – Fen weave in elements of Enslaved to create a cosmic soundscape for their riffs. The Infernal Sea are plague-ridden black metal, also from the UKBM scene; they have a great sound and a hypnotic stage presence. I was lucky enough to see them and The Great Old Ones at a gig this month, Warhorns Winterfest at Corporation Sheffield. I don’t go to enough gigs considering the strength of the local scene, so that was a highlight. Lastly, Skeletonwitch – their newest album sounds very little like their previous output, which was a lot thrashier and not really what I’d class as black metal. It’s also fantastic!
Enough rambling from me – that’ll do for this month. Thanks for reading!
It’s been a long time since my last post! 2019 was a… difficult year, to say the least. On a personal level, I went from dizzying heights of happiness to some of the most tumultuous upheaval I’ve had, and I’m still recovering from emotional shocks that the latter half of the year delivered. On a political level… well. I’m not going to spend any more time on that, but suffice it to say that we’re in for an absolutely hellish 2020 on that front.
I’m going to blather on for a little bit about the professional level; 2019 was the year when I decided to just go for it, and set a few projects in motion. At the very end of 2018, after a trip with friends to go and see the excellent Zeal & Ardor (Spotify embed below, absolutely fantastic band) in Leeds, I decided to do something with a project that had been sitting on my hard drive for ages in a half-finished state. That project was THE BLACK RUBRIC, a light-hearted, comedic story about a black metal band who accidentally write a song that’s too Satanic and rip open the gates of hell by mistake.
Art for the cover of THE BLACK RUBRIC, by Benjamin A.E. Filby.
I decided to stop procrastinating and just finish the story and get it made; that created a tiny snowball effect with some other projects, and it’s resulted in probably my most productive year of writing yet. I counted the pages on Twitter a little while ago, and I wrote 120 pages in 2019 – including THE BLACK RUBRIC, my next project HOCKEYTOWN (which was conceived, developed and all-but completed on the writing side within a year- honestly pretty impressive given my tendency to be crap at finishing scripts) and a sci-fi story I’ve been working on with the in-progress title SPACE COWBOYS.
So yes – 2019 was a productive year. It did also see some upheaval, most notably with my fantastic creative collaborator Melissa Trender being unable to continue with BRIGANTIA and us needing to find a new artist to pick up the torch from her. It’s obviously a shame not to get to continue the story that Mel and I created with her on art duties, but I completely respect her decision to step back from the project and she’s currently kicking arse in her new career as an apprenticed tattoo artist. She actually tattooed me in October with a design intended to represent the Fire of Awen, a pagan concept that will come into play in future issues of BRIGANTIA – it was very appropriate to have Mel design and tattoo that piece on me! Her successor Harriet Moulton is a fantastic artist, and we’re both overjoyed with how seamlessly she’s stepped into the role – Harriet’s working on issue #2 at the moment, so that’ll be out this year.
Anyway, onwards and upwards for 2020. The goals this year are to Kickstart and release both THE BLACK RUBRIC and issue #2 of BRIGANTIA, as well as to develop and pitch HOCKEYTOWN to a few places. I’m very proud of the story, and it’s my first time working with an actual editor (Hugo Boylan, most recently the editor on the acclaimed LAD by Umar Ditta); we’re both invested in the project and I think it’s unique enough to hopefully find a home at a publisher.
The world is a cacophonous, horrible place at the moment, so I for one take great solace from retreating into my creative cocoon and only popping my head out when I’m able. Take care of yourselves, everybody – we’re only 11 days in, and already the US has flirted with a large-scale middle-Eastern war and Australia has suffered absolutely catastrophic fire damage and loss of animal life. Donate to Wildlife Victoria if you can and let’s all do our best!
January 22nd, 2016. For most Penguins fans, just another home game against the Philadelphia Flyers- obviously important for bragging rights and playoff positioning, but nothing out of the ordinary. For me, it was the first time I’d stepped into Consol Energy Center, the house that Mario and Sid built; the first time I’d seen in person the ice that had long been almost mythical, on the other side of the computer screen. After almost 6 years of dreaming and supporting them from afar, I was in Pittsburgh, watching a Penguins game. I’m not ashamed to say that as I turned a corner and saw the ice from up on the concourse, I teared up.
The ice at Consol Energy Center.
I started watching hockey back in 2010, thanks to the efforts of my very good friend Ellie who convinced me to come and see our adopted hometown’s professional team, the Sheffield Steelers. I’d been to games as a child, back in Manchester (in the UK, not New Hampshire!) when the Manchester Storm were drawing big crowds to the Nynex Arena, but hadn’t really taken in the game- I was a small kid, I just liked the atmosphere and the music. When I first saw Sheffield at the age of 22, something clicked- it was the perfect combination of elegance and brutality, skill and determination. This was the sport for me.
I watched a few NHL games, mostly picking random teams to try and find one that I liked. I still remember the first Penguins game I watched, against Tampa Bay- I vaguely knew the Lightning’s name, but I hadn’t heard of the Penguins. I was entranced. It was 2010, the year after the cup win but still firmly in the Bylsma era- this was an up-tempo, high-offense team with a core of incredibly dynamic players. They played the game beautifully, and I remember them completely out-skating Tampa Bay. I flirted with a few other teams for a while (including Vancouver- thankfully I didn’t go any further down that road, given how badly mismanaged that franchise has been) but by the time Jaroslav Halak and the Canadiens had stonewalled the Crosby and Malkin-less Penguins in the 2010 playoffs, I was a committed fan.
During that offseason I spent a lot of time researching the team. I had been attracted to the Penguins because of the way they played- after spending some time on Wikipedia, I became entranced with the city and the team’s history. The towering legacy of Le Magnifique; Mario’s incredible return from cancer; how he saved the club and kept it in Pittsburgh; the back-to-back Cup wins; and of course, Sid the Kid and his impact on the city. The story of the Penguins was, to my eyes, one of determination, triumph in the face of adversity and a passionate love affair between the team and the city.
As the next season rolled on, including Crosby’s incredible 25-game point streak and of course, the Winter Classic, I continued to read about Pittsburgh. The opening shots of every home broadcast showed me how beautiful the city was, and HBO’s 24/7 documentary leading up to that fateful evening at Heinz Field convinced me that this was my team. The similarities between my own adopted hometown of Sheffield and Pittsburgh began to mount up- both are ex-steel towns, both have coped with the decline of the steel industry by moving into higher education (Sheffield has two universities, Pittsburgh has four) and technological innovation; our hockey team (established in 1991) is called the Steelers. Even my university’s team colours are black and gold (the only thing spoiling this is that my Steelers’ team colours are, annoyingly, orange and black!) I dreamed of visiting the city, of watching a Penguins game, eating at Primanti Bros’, seeing the view from Mount Washington.
As the Penguins sputtered through that horrific 2012 series against the Flyers I was up until 3am watching every game; the same the next year when Fleury ceded the net to Thomas Vokoun and the Pens advanced all the way to the Conference Finals before being stoned by Boston. I watched Crosby’s struggles with concussion and his effervescent return against the Islanders on November 21st 2011 (that backhand goal, and Sid’s passionate celebration!) I couldn’t hope to count the hours I’ve spent (usually in the small hours of the morning, huddled in front of my computer with headphones on) watching games online, following along on Twitter and going to bed either joyful and animated or sullen and angry (depending on the result), before waking up for work the next morning.
Late last year, I decided to take the plunge- to make my pilgrimage to Pittsburgh and finally watch a Penguins game in person. I went via Austin, spending a few days with a friend there, before taking an afternoon flight to Pittsburgh through Dallas. I was staying with some AirBnB hosts up in Grandview, who’d arranged to pick me up at the airport; as we drove back, late at night, they graciously agreed to take a detour through the Fort Pitt tunnel. The city unfolded in front of me, covered in a light dusting of snow, and I had to pinch myself- I was really there.
Perfect Pittsburgh (a.k.a Gotham City)
I left the house quite early the next day, eager to tick some things off my bucket list. I marvelled at the sight of the city from Grandview; I rode the Monongahela Incline down to Station Square; I convinced myself that I was sitting just behind Dejan Kovacevic as I took the T across the river into downtown. I wandered up to Consol and bought a Pittsburgh Gold jersey at PensGear, ate lunch at Primanti Bros’, had a brief skate on the temporary rink in PPG Plaza.
By the time the Flyers game rolled round, I had fallen deeply in love with Pittsburgh, and the incredible atmosphere and result that night only cemented it for me. My neighbours on either side at the game were friendly, polite and passionate- I felt immediately at ease. As I walked back up Grandview that night, the city twinkling with a million and one golden lights on the other side of the river and my face slowly going numb from the freezing cold, I couldn’t have described the feeling of travelling thousands of miles, across half the world, only to feel like you’d never left home.
Pittsburgh at night.
Pittsburgh is a very special city. I know I’m probably reading a lot into the relationship between the city and my own home of Sheffield, but the connection between the two (for me, at least) grows stronger by the day. Sheffield is built on and around seven hills; Pittsburgh might not have seven, but it certainly has a lot of ups and downs. Sheffield is the fourth-largest city in the UK, but feels like a small town where you know everyone; Pittsburgh has exactly the same feeling, and several Uber drivers told me they always see someone they know in Downtown while they’re there. Sheffield has a blue-collar, working-class ethos (it’s often jokingly dubbed ‘The People’s Republic of South Yorkshire’) which is mirrored in Pittsburgh. We have slightly more rivers (five in total) but they’re smaller, and we have fewer bridges. And of course, there are the people- everybody I spoke to was friendly and welcoming, more than happy to share their love for their city with me. My AirBnB hosts made me feel instantly at home, and I couldn’t have asked for better people to stay with. I know from personal experience how friendly Sheffield people are- it’s often called the biggest village in the UK, since it’s developed such a reputation for friendliness, and it was wonderful to see that Yinzers have the same approach.
And above all, both Pittsburgh and Sheffield have hockey. We have one professional team, a few semi-professional teams, a slew of recreational teams and a veritable army of passionate fans at all levels. Lord Stanley’s Cup was even forged by a Sheffield silversmith and sold from a London shop, so in a sense, the NHL and the most iconic trophy in sports was born in my city. The Steelers have gone through their own hard times and their own struggles, not helped by the collapse of the British IHL in the late 90s, but since the birth of the current Elite Ice Hockey League in 2003 they have won five championships and a slew of other trophies, including back-to-back championships this season and last. As Pittsburgh and Sheffield reflect each other in so many other ways, my hope is that this year’s Penguins will reflect Sheffield’s success- and bring the Stanley Cup back to the Steel City where it belongs. I’ll be watching from the other side of the Atlantic and rooting for the team, as I have done for the past 6 years. Pittsburgh is as much my home as Sheffield, in the emotional sense if not the physical, and I’ll be there in spirit as the Cup is paraded down the Boulevard this year.
Writing small press comics involves a lot of waiting and a lot of patience- it takes you a few minutes to write down some words describing an epic battle scene, but it’s often several months before you see how that scene looks on a page, after the artist has reached the right bit of their to-do list and spent hours/days/weeks drawing it. It makes it important to keep busy- rather than finishing a script, sending it off and then sitting by your inbox twiddling your thumbs until you see some pages, it’s good practice to start working on something else, keeping yourself busy.
Sometimes, though, everything comes back at once and you have several things to shout about- which I found out was the case this morning, when I realised that not only was the final part of Hadopelagic (my story in Aces Weekly with Neil McClements and Nigel Dobbyn) now available, but that a short story I wrote for Futurequake #27 (drawn by artist Joe Palmer) is also out and available now from the Futurequake webshop.
And as well as seeing finished work come to life, this morning also saw the next step in the journey for Brigantia, my project with the wonderful Melissa Trender- we’ve been hard at work putting a pitch document together, complete with 5 (gorgeous) sequential art pages, and have this morning sent that off to Image Comics to see whether it’s something they’re interested in. Now to cross absolutely every digit that I possess and hope that they like it! #TeamBrigantia
So, that’s the life of a small press comics writer (at least in my experience)- long periods of calm and relative quiet, interspersed with manic bursts of activity. The trick is to try and shorten the quiet periods by getting as many stories out as you possibly can!
Part two! In this post (following on from my previous entry about writing comics dialogue), I’m going to have a quick look at pacing, or how a story flows from panel to panel. This is another important part of building a story- if you’re writing a chase scene, with your heroine escaping from a mob of angry villains, you want to ensure that the pace of the scene is quick and exciting in order to reflect the subject matter. It seems like a simple thing, but it’s often overlooked in a lot of comics, meaning that the pace of the scene jars with the content.
Pacing is largely a subjective thing, since everybody will read a comic at their own speed and the beauty of the medium is that the reader can linger on a panel for as much or as little time as they want to, but knowing how to arrange your panels to achieve the desired effect can go a long way towards drawing the reader into the story. The best comics (in my opinion) are like a dynamic symphony- they slow down and speed up when it’s appropriate, pulling the reader along with them. Pacing is also very important in the kind of short 4-6 page stories that I’ve written a lot of for the Psychedelic Journal of Time Travel and Professor Elemental- when you only have a small number of pages, pretty much every panel has to move the story forwards and finding space to pause for breath is integral. Getting the pacing right can make or break the flow of the story, so it’s important to practice.
Let’s begin with an example of a slow-paced scene. The atmosphere for this meeting between two rivals is tense and electric- if this were a film, we’d expect lots of slow, long camera shots looking around the room and giving the two characters time to converse. However, we also want to pick up the pace towards the bottom of the page, to keep the story moving.
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Page
Panel 1
Wide-angle; the NEMESIS is standing with his back to the reader, looking out of a large plate glass window. The room is lushly adorned in a sleek, contemporary style. There is a wisp of smoke drifting upwards from the cigarette the NEMESIS is holding in one hand.
NEMESIS: I knew you’d come.
Panel 2
Another wide-angle panel, side-on; we see the HERO walking across the room towards the NEMESIS, looking bruised and battle-scarred. The NEMESIS is turning to face her.
HERO: Where is he?
NEMESIS: Not so fast, hero- relax, have a drink. We have much to talk about.
Panel 3
Wide-angle again; our view is now behind the NEMESIS. We can see the HERO in the background of the panel; the NEMESIS is slowly drawing a pistol out of a holster underneath his suit jacket.
HERO: Don’t try and distract me, Nemesis- I know what you’re up to!
NEMESIS: On the contrary, Hero… you have no idea.
Panel 4
Small, inset panel- close in on the NEMESIS as he takes a drag from his cigarette.
Panel 5
Another small panel- the NEMESIS raising his pistol to fire at the HERO.
—
As we’ve used three large, wide-angle panels on this page, we’ve been able to really slow down the pace of the story- it’s a break, a brief section of quiet and calm that gives the reader time to really digest both the surroundings and background of the panels and to sense the build up of tension between the two characters. If we hadn’t used these wide-angle panels (and panel 4, the close-up with the cigarette) the scene would have felt a lot more rushed and a lot more frenetic- which could also work, but not for the atmosphere that we wanted to achieve. We also used an inset panel for panel 4- these are very useful when trying to get the pacing right, since an inset panel (a small panel which is overlaid on top of a larger panel, often used to draw attention to something within the larger scene) can either reveal details about the scene or it can act as a sort of ‘quick cut’ between actions. In this case the larger scene (panel 3) was the Nemesis slowly drawing his pistol; we then built up the tension with an inset panel of him smoking his cigarette, to prolong the reader’s eye on panel 3. Finally, the small panel 5 acts as a clean break and shows a change in the status of the scene- the Nemesis raising his gun to shoot at the Hero.
I like to think of it as being the editor on a film- as the writer, you have the choice of whether to make quick cuts (smaller panels focussing on action), quickly switching from shot to shot to keep the tempo of a scene high, or slow cuts (larger panels focussing on atmosphere), to allow the build-up of tension. Study the work of some directors that you admire to see how they’ve approached the editing- Akira Kurosawa, for example (one of my favourite directors), is a master of using movement (and the lack thereof) to build tension and his films balance slow scenes with quick action masterfully. Here’s a great Youtube video about some of Kurosawa’s techniques, especially his use of movement (which isn’t something that can be directly shown in comics, but can be alluded to):
Pacing is definitely something worth studying if you want to improve the dynamism of your scripts- a lot of it will eventually begin to come naturally, and you’ll have a feel for how large or small or numerous the panels on a page need to be for the scene that you’re telling. Even if you’re constricted by a page count, think about the pacing and try your hardest to include breaks and panels that pause for breath, rather than action after action after action. Think about how great directors structure a movie scene and construct your scripts similarly.
So, in case you somehow haven’t seen the news- Sir Terry Pratchett, the author of the Discworld series and a host of other books, passed away peacefully in his home following a long battle with Alzheimers disease, one which he made public around 8 years ago. During that time he spent much of his life trying to raise awareness of the disease, championing the right to die and trying to generate more funding for research into how to cure and treat the condition.
This alone would make Sir Terry worthy of praise- being dealt an absolutely terrible hand and still fighting to try and make the world a better place for others in the same position as himself. I can’t say enough for his attitude towards death and how he undoubtedly made it much less scary for a lot of people.
However, I mostly wanted to talk about his writing, because Sir Terry has been and always will be my favourite author. Not just my favourite- those words aren’t strong enough. He has been my biggest inspiration, and is responsible for giving me the passion to try and write myself.
I first pulled a Discworld book (Guards, Guards) off my dad’s bookshelf at the age of about 10 or 11 and was immediately captivated by the richness of the world and the incredible humour and warmth which suffused it. Some of the jokes undoubtedly flew over my head, but I loved it, and continued to quietly plow through the rest of the books in the series until my dad noticed and got annoyed about me bending the spines, insisting that I use my pocket money to buy my own copies so as not to ruin his. (I always picture the Librarian’s opinion on books when thinking about this- books aren’t meant to be read, you might wear the words out!)
What captured my imagination most about the Discworld was the strength and power of Pratchett’s “author voice”. Reading them makes you feel as though you’re being told a story by a kindly, bearded uncle with a twinkle in his eye- sometimes. At other times, Pratchett’s anger and fury at the injustice of the world and the many problems that our species has pours through and scorches its way off the page. His mastery was in being able to weave together the different strands of his voice- from telling fantastic tales of magic and dragons laced with dry humour and wit, to stark, thinly-veiled commentary on the problems of our own society as mirrored by the Discworld. And then there was the inspirational side of his writing, where his characters stepped off the page and into my head. Moist von Lipwig’s life motto in particular has stuck with me since I first read it in ‘Going Postal’;
“Run before you walk! Fly before you crawl! Keep moving forward! You think we should try to get a decent mail service in the city. I think we should try to send letters anywhere in the world! Because if we fail, I’d rather fail really hugely. All or nothing, Mr. Groat!”
I could wax lyrical for thousands of words about every one of Sir Terry’s characters. Of Death, who somehow became human and heartwarming and heartbreaking all at the same time, while still being a 7-foot tall skeleton and the reaper of souls. Of Granny Weatherwax’s incredible, innate stubbornness and sheer, bloody-minded refusal to quit. Of Cut-Me-Own-Throat Dibbler, the most optimistic businessman in history, constantly coming up with schemes and ideas to make a fast buck. And of course, of every member of the City Watch- and Commander Vimes in particular, the very first Sir Terry creation that I encountered and my all-time favourite, a man who distrusts every kind of authority despite being an authority figure himself, who despises the Gods themselves for getting the world wrong, who balances himself on a knife-edge and willingly battles with the knowledge that he could be very bad but chooses instead to be very good.
I could keep going, but I’d be labouring the point. Anybody who’s reading this and has read the Discworld will know exactly what I’m talking about- anybody who hasn’t picked up a book, please do, I can promise you won’t regret it.
Thank you, a thousand times thank you for letting us into the world inside your head, Sir Terry. We promise to keep the lights on for you.
Non timetus messor.
Sir Terry Pratchett 28 April 1948 – 12 March 2015
This is intended to be the first of a couple of posts in which I espouse my thoughts on writing comics, distilled from having been doing it for the last few years (and from writing a swathe of fiction before that). I’m not going to claim that I know everything (because I absolutely don’t), but hopefully I can provide some insights and start some discussion about the whole process!
Anyway, in the first of these posts, I’m going to be talking about dialogue.
Dialogue is, in my opinion, the most important part of any comic, especially from a writer’s perspective- dialogue is the part of the comic where you, as a writer, get to speak directly to the readers. You can write all of the incredible prose descriptions that you want for your panels- you can evoke scenes of sweeping, Elysian majesty when describing a landscape, or set the tone of a moody cityscape with thunder and lightning and poetry. You can do all of those things. However, it’s probably not really worth it- because your readers will never read those descriptions, they’ll only see what the artist has interpreted from them (which may or may not match the image in your head).
Dialogue is the part of the comic where the artist cedes the floor to you, as a writer, so it’s incredibly important that it sounds natural, conversational and not forced. There are a couple of things that can help with this, and I’ll go over two of them below.
1. Read your dialogue out loud.
Dialogue is speech. Humans are a conversational species- we like to talk, we like to listen. Comics dialogue is characters speaking to each other or to themselves, and therefore it must mimic the nuance of human conversation. The easiest way to achieve this is to read every line of dialogue that you’ve written out loud (or maybe in your head, if you’re in a crowded place and don’t want to look like some kind of sociopath) and see whether it sounds natural. It should be immediately obvious if it doesn’t, because the words won’t flow naturally out of your mouth!
One of the undisputed masters of dialogue (in my opinion) is Garth Ennis, writer of Preacher and The Boys, and the reason his dialogue is so good is because every line sounds like it could be spoken by a real human being. He makes heavy use of slang and contractions so that you can hear the regional accents that his characters have in your head (Cassidy from Preacher, Wee Hughie from The Boys) and this makes every line seem natural-sounding. Furthermore, this makes the characters much more likable because despite the unrealistic nature of their surroundings (Jesse from Preacher and the angel/devil hybrid that lives inside his head) they come across as real people with real voices.
That leads into an additional point-Â take some time before you start writing scenes to think about how your characters sound, and to try and hear their voices in your head so that when you write their dialogue, it fits who they are. If your character’s an American redneck from good ol’ Tennessee, his dialogue had better sound like he’s from Tennessee instead of the clipped ‘received pronunciation’Â of a British aristocrat! You can achieve this by throwing in speech characteristics (like “y’all”, or other similar things) but also just by trying to emulate that voice in your head and speaking it out loud so that you know whether it works.
2. Punctuation, punctuation, punctuation
Punctuation is another incredibly important part of writing dialogue. When humans speak to each other, we naturally add in punctuation- we pause for breath, use linguistic techniques to indicate a break in what we’re saying and indicate full stops, semi-colons and others through the tone and pitch of our voices. Therefore, since dialogue is speech, dialogue must contain that punctuation in order for it to sound natural. Here’s a fairly obvious example:
Ex. #1: “Oh I didn’t see you there is everything okay?”
Ex. #2: “Oh! I didn’t see you there, is everything okay?”
The first example has no punctuation beyond a question mark. Try reading it out loud- there isn’t a natural break in the sentence, it’s just a stream of words, and means that the “Oh” at the start of the sentence doesn’t indicate any surprise, despite the words that follow it. In the second example, the exclamation mark makes that “Oh” into an expression of surprise, as well as breaking up the sentence so that it’s clear that the character is shocked by somebody’s arrival. The comma in the second example also helps provide a natural flow to the sentence, creating a break between the statement (“I didn’t see you there”) and the question (“Is everything okay?”)
Punctuation is incredibly important in emulating human speech patterns when writing dialogue, because it can turn a string of words with no grace or elegance to them into human-sounding speech that our brains will recognise and respond to. Learning what punctuation to use and when is vitally important, and will elevate the dialogue in a comic from a kind of breathless recitation of facts and statements into something with nuance, something that bypasses your brain and goes straight into your ears.
It’s my firmly-held opinion that a great comic should read almost like a movie or a TV show- the panels should flow from one to the next naturally, as though in full motion, and the dialogue should sound like it belongs there. Some of the truly great examples of the medium achieve this perfectly- Akira by Katsuhiro Otomo and the aforementioned Preacher are just two that spring to mind. Put time and effort into crafting your dialogue, since it’s the part of the comic where you as a writer are most fully on show.
