Believe it or not, I've been fairly busy for the past few months. Busy, of course, in relative terms. I mean, yeah, I still have time to play through Half Life 2 and read all of
Akira, but I haven't done a whole lot of writing. And the reason for that is:
This is the "vanity press" I created for myself. It's nothing fancy, strictly online publishing, for now, as an easy outlet for self publishing comics online, which is a fancy way of saying, "I'm making a
webcomic." I don't have the money nor the inclination to venture into print publishing at this point in time. This project has been in production in one form or another for over a year now. It's been a long, slow road, but it's nice to see some payoff from all that work. But it's been a busy couple of months. Aside from doing some massive editing to the scripts I wrote over a year ago, it's been kind of a headache coordinating the creation of the website. But I really don't have much complaining to do, because it's no more of a headache than I let it be. I'm just glad to be able to say that the website it
up and running. It's an ugly skeleton of a site right now(I can't stop cringing over the various typos), but over the weekend it should be tuned up to satisfaction and, starting Monday, we start updating full time. Two books, each updated twice a week. It's going to be a challenge. We've been working pretty far in advance, so I hope we can avoid any delays. Being punctual is
important, ya know.
As I am typing this up, I realize that I haven't talked much about the contents of the actual comics themselves(not just here, but to anyone really). Not because I'm secretive over my ideas(which are nothing special) but more because I'm just loathe to talk about myself. But I guess I'll try to give a good description here of what we're trying to do.
Many, many months ago, I teamed up with my friend Tim, and we began working on two books. We want to write these books in a style similar to Stan Lee's Marvel of the early 60's. I think this approach lends itself easily to the
webcomic format. Each book has it's own story and themes, while both tell a larger story of the universe wherein they're contained. On the surface, this sounds exactly like what Marvel and DC are doing, and I'll save you an intense lecture on everything they are doing wrong, but I think our approach different enough. The biggest, and most important thing we are doing is writing these books in volumes(or seasons, album, tomes, whatever). I'm not interested in spinning wheels and maintaining brands like the big companies do(not because they're evil, they have to do it), so we are writing toward endings. I wouldn't mind doing more volumes, of course. So that leaves us with my book, Zero's Heroes, and Tim's book, The Celestial. We are both working with various superhero archetypes throughout our books. Zero's Heroes is a team book about a bunch of
dysfunctional losers who are overshadowed by every other
superhero in town. On the other end of the spectrum, The Celestial is about the worlds most powerful and popular superhero and the challenge and weight of responsibility she faces.
It's both exciting and
stressful, but I'm fairly sure I'm just using the stress as an excuse for why I haven't been more productive. Though, I can't predict whether or not people are going to be interested in my book(and I think it's a waste of time worrying about it), I'm fairly confident with what I'm trying to do, and I think I'm a pretty good learner. Just keeping busy, and actually DOING it, has improved my writing tenfold.
So, it's going to be a great relief once we get the site completely done(as much as that can be) and I will be able to start working on other projects, like returning to Real Life/Real Death.
I usually don't go for signatures on my stuff anymore(there was a time when I did) because I don't like talking to artists unless I actually have something substantial to say, and I don't feel the need to improve my self esteem by proving that I once stood next to someone famous.
