bricolage

To a certain extent I'm only blogging about it to lock myself in to continued dedication but I have done around 15-20 (certainly no more than 20) pages of my second graphic novel, Bricolage. I am finding it a lot harder to work on than Persiflage notwithstanding I have written (and rewritten and rewritten) the entire script many times over. I am still not completely good with the very end - the denouement - but I figure after many, many evenings poring over the execution of the 180 or so pages leading up to that point, I will probably be in a position to hit the right note. 

It's almost certain that Persiflage was easier because it was my lockdown project, or at least most of it was, mostly. I more or less made Persiflage up as I went along, whereas Bricolage is, as I just said, written to within an inch of its life. The only thing that's stopping me continuing to rewrite it comprehensively is that I've numbered the 'script' up to this point and so it would be a big hassle to reorder it or add more bits although this might actually ultimately mean that I kind of explode at some point and do a real reworking. The more I draw the better then because I'm finding the drawing much more difficult than I did for Persiflage and so I'm unlikely to be inspired to redo it (though, well, I have redrawn quite a bit up to this point and also, I have redrawn some panels as per the above). (In that case, I had to redraw because I foolishly used a US car as a model so the drivers seat was on the wrong side). As you can see I am using rigid panel sizes as created for me by a computer, so I can easily strip in new panels if I make a mistake or change my mind about something. 

I don't hate what I've done so far, so that's good. There are a lot of bits of the story I'm looking forward to committing to the page. But I am also coming up to a really long party scene, which will take a lot of thinking, and thinking is hard. Butbut once I've completed that I think I will really be fully committed. 

 

my time to shine

...not really. But I have done eleven or so pages of my second graphic novel and I am not unhappy with it so far, and having written the entire thing (with expectation of some elements being altered as I go) I know the best is yet to come. 

This is how it starts, anyway, in 1959. I probably made an error by not drawing anything on the newspaper (and really, if I was to be accurate it would be a broadsheet not a tabloid... I can't do everything) (or perhaps I just can't do anything). This particular character doesn't need any more backstory than this image gives us, though I have plenty of ideas. The main thing that worries me but doesn't worry me that much is that the orange cat who's sleeping in the doorway possibly looks like it is either a tiny, tiny cat leaping from the back of the chair, or that it is not lying but kind of arched in a weird prone position in the doorway - I don't know. I mean to the first possibility I have no problems with that, I like weird juxtaposition, but the second, well, that might be my problem with perspective although I used a google image search for reference and that, more or less, is what a sleeping cat looks like, I think. 

Well, anyway, I am getting somewhere though not as fast as I should I suppose. I keep changing my mind about bits, I am not sure if that's a good sign but ultimately I am happy with what I've decided (I have one more page of this first 'prologue' section to do, and I think then I'll draw the 2-3 other pages where the same 1959 characters appear (we also see them very briefly in the early C21). 

I think it's quite a decent story, particularly since I have never shown any capacity to write fiction before, so I'm starting from a low base. The main problem - unfixable and I have no desire to fix it - is that the first part of the story is a long, rambling party scene which has much more in it than is required for a setup, but which I am just relishing drawing, so why should I deny myself something so nice? You're right, I shouldn't. 

continually surprising myself

Apparently 16 years ago I told you I was working on a graphic novel and I know I've referred to this one since, so sorry about that, I don't really know what's been going on. I thought that when Steve Connell asked me to do a graphic novel last year it was the first time I'd ever seriously embarked on such a thing (though John Porcellino had asked me to do one sometime about 2005, 2006 I think and I just didn't feel I had time to commit to it - shame in hindsight though I probably did other things instead I don't recall). I am tinkering with the next one, which will be a great one, just writing the words and I counted up the characters (because I decided I would do a 'cast of characters' at the beginning, in case it was confusing) and found that there were 42, I mean of those, there are really only eight who are actually important, but they all have a role. This one is probably going to be about 170 pages long, I know it's not about the pages (and whether I will actually have the stamina, capacity, ability to get it done is yet to be seen) but that's what it looks like atm. I can't wait to see it.  

 

snivellisation

Just over a year ago I mentioned how I was going to recalibrate a few old unfinished comic pages from the early 20th century as my second graphic novel. Well in one of the boxes previously mentioned I discovered a pretty decrepit copy of the comic book I had originally published this in. It was kind of the second-tier story to another (I have to say, pretty dark) story and I guess I was planning to progress them simultaneously under this banner:

I was really doing a lot of scene setting here and maybe sometime it would be worthwhile coming back to this as a story because there are some pretty rounded characters here, though none of them at all sympathetic it has to be said. I don't suppose you need sympathetic characters but on the other hand, if you don't have them then the reader wonders where you stand and why you hate everybody. I suppose it also reduces dramatic tension if everyone's a dick. 

This is the final spread of that comic book. The splattering is coffee or something I think and was not deliberate though it kind of 'works'. 

As I so often seem to be saying these days I have almost no recollection of what I was doing / thinking with this - like, surely the first step would have been to print five copies and take it to Sticky for instance - I'm absolutely sure I didn't do that. I am pretty certain actually I made almost no copies, and maybe gave a few away to a few friends, and that was it. 

persiflage: minor tweaks

Steve had good ideas for how to simultaneously draw out the tension of the final pages of Persiflage and set the reader up for its deflation, so I've just been patching up his suggested final edits. It's a whole different ballgame reediting something you've drawn but it is perhaps even more satisfying to continue to make it work, or to make it work better, in revision. 

I still have the next one running in the background of my thoughts a lot of the time. A kind of a revenge story I think although I am not sure whether the revenge will be conscious or unconscious. Perhaps unconscious is better. Yes, I've just decided, it is. It will also be a coronavirus story, very 2020. I think I might make it ridiculously overreaching, an epic of preposterous proportions. I may also make it more adult than Persiflage, which sets you up to imagine bizarre sex by depicting a naked woman on the first couple of pages (never seen again) but otherwise only goes so far as to show a vanilla postcoital scene towards the end but is otherwise only shocking in for instance the violence depicted above (which is however clearly framed as faked, cinematic). You're going to love it, well, I am anyway.  

I think it's always best to have something in the works and percolating while you weather the extreme letdown of response to the earlier thing. Gets you through the disappointment/irritation. It's all vanity anyway and as long as you know that you're fine. 

Steve is confident that Persiflage will be out before Christmas. 

i am not your superstar

So as mentioned this is the graphic novel I am going to do next, starting with four or five pages I drew in 2003. I can't remember if I showed you these panels. I figure it will probably not be called I am not your superstar which is the title I originally gave it, although I'll decide later about that (I was planning to call my second one Camouflage or perhaps Bricolage (I looked up bricolage in wiktionary, actually looking to check the spelling because I wasn't 100% certain of that, but I saw that it said 'see trash fire', so that kind of led me more in that direction...). 

The top half is good, the bottom half is abandoned - I photocopied this page, cut it in half and continued it in a different direction. 

I'm really looking forward to working on this, I have a whole new cast of characters for the present-day stuff (the woman is the only important character in the above as far as I'm aware, although the guy with a bull on his shirt, Dominic, might play a pivotal role in the story as I'm formulating it, but let me tell you, 17 years later he hasn't aged well). 

In the 2003 pages she is referred to as Desiree but I have decided that is too much. But with people you have to think not 'what sums them up' so much as 'how did their parents sum them up with precisely nothing to go on', so at the moment I am calling her Posey but I think that might change. l guess she is a bit over 40 right now, which means she was born in about 1978, makes sense, she was 25 in the 2003 pages, now she is a very high-ranking public servant with a daughter aged about 15. That's as far as I've got so far. It feels very promising though, I hope you agree. I am going to do this one in colour. 

Re: her name I actually wanted to call her Monica which would have been perfect but that would be pretty unfair on Monika Fikerle who deserves better!