Building the Page - Guest Starring Edward Whatley!

TALKING WITH MY WIFE

I have been sadly, uncontrollably, addicted to the Avengers Alliance game available through Facebook. I seriously cannot stop playing it. I take back all of the rude and disparaging things I have said about my Facebook friends and their Farmville nonsense. (Although after all these years bugging me about your stupid pumpkin patches, you guys do sort of owe me. C’mon! Join my SHIELD flight crew. We’re saving the world here!) 

The other day Jenny was tidying up the kitchen while I was sitting at the kitchen table, helping Iron Man and She-Hulk save New York from the forces of Hydra. I was having a grand old time, but then realized that Jenny was standing there staring at me.  

Jenny: “You haven’t heard a word I have been saying, have you?”

Me: “Uhm… No. I’m sorry. I was busy Assembling!”

Jenny (shaking her head and sighing): “Nobody ever listens to Jarvis.”

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BUILDING THE PAGE

 Gray Haven Comics’ “Silver Age” volume of The Gathering will be coming out next month. As a special treat, and a tease for my story “Timesheet”, I got permission from the editors at Gray Haven to hijack their “Building the Page” column. Ladies and gentlemen, may I present the fabulously talented artist for “Timesheet”, Mr. Edward Whatley!

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Hello, denizens of Comic Book Land! Edward Whatley here. Grayhaven Art Director John Coker recently offered me the chance to illustrate a story for the Silver Age issue of Grayhaven's The Gathering anthology. He was also kind enough to offer me the chance to contribute to their Building the Page column. I of course jumped at both offers, and here we are.

The script I received was written by Travis M. Holyfield. It is intended as a tribute to/parody of the Adam West Batman show. It revolves around a poor hapless guy named Roy Murphy who applies at a temp agency and finds himself hired out as a henchman to various villains. I watched the Batman show devotedly as a kid, so the script had a built in appeal for me.  

My first step was to of course read the script, several times actually, to make sure I understood everything that was going on and to find out what image references I would need to gather.

 The script was VERY well written. Travis spelled out everything he wanted in each panel and didn't ask for more than a single panel could accommodate. But he did present some challenges in that even though the story is only four pages long, it takes place across many different settings and features not only our protagonist Roy, but also two heroes, five villains, and assorted other henchmen. So I had to gather lots of reference material and do lots of character designs before I got started on actual pages. The villains I decided to design as I went, but I figured I should at least know what Roy and the heroes (Dober-Man and Beagle) will look like since they appear throughout the story. So I came up with the designs below to which I referred while drawing the pages.

  

I then scribbled out small thumbnail sketches for all four pages. This is actually where most of my decisions get made in terms of storytelling and composition. I also work out the placement of dialogue and narration. After reading the script, it was obvious that the humor was coming from the repetition of the same events over the span of a week. Roy got hired out to a different villain every day, but every day came to the same violent conclusion for him. Since the plot was based on repetition, I figured the layouts should support that concept because the art's primary purpose is to support and convey the story. Each page had 4 panels, so I was therefore able to lay out each page in the same manner, with four long horizontal panels.

 Another example of decisions that get made at this early stage is in panel 3. The script simply called for the heroes to be pummeling the villains, but I got the idea to have Beagle throwing a bone at our villain in lieu of a batarang. This wasn't specifically called for in the script, but I figured it supported Travis' intent to satirize Batman and Robin.

  

From there I drew rough pencils on 11x17 printer paper. These will be the basis for the final artwork, but as you can see I don't concern myself with neatness.

  

Then the roughs go onto a lightbox. I take a clean sheet of Bristol board and place it over the roughs. I then trace off the rough pencils onto the Bristol board, cleaning it up and refining the drawing as I go. I also dug out a book of Hieroglyphs and added them to the doorway to reinforce the setting.  I drew the tight pencils onto the board using non-photo blue pencils which don't show up in normal scanning. I was able to capture the blue lines for this page in the image below by playing around with the brightness and contrast while scanning, but normally they don't scan (which is the point of using non-photo pencils). Since the blue lines don't scan, they don't have to be erased for scanning after the pages have been inked.

After the pencils are done, it's time for (ugh) inking! Ideally, I would have used a brush and nib for a classic brushy Silver Age look, but I'm excruciatingly slow with those tools. So I decided to use microns and artist pens and just try to replicate the look of classic brush and pen lines.

 John had suggested I include some zipatone in order to create a classic Silver Age look. That sounded like a good idea to me, so after scanning the inked pages I added some gray to the background in panel 2. I then used a Photoshop filter to convert the gray to black dots, thus duplicating the look of old fashioned zipatone.

 

Inching closer to the finish line, we come to the coloring. I use the layer approach when coloring in Photoshop. I create a separate layer for the linework and add color to layers beneath the inks. I also typed the flower names on the shirts in panel 4 and used Photoshop's warping tools to make them look as if they were actually printed on the henchmen's shirts.

  

Finally (whew! It's almost a completed page!) I import the page into Adobe Illustrator and do the lettering. I used an original font I made using Illustrator and a fairly inexpensive program called FontCreator. Dialogue balloons and captions are done with the shape tools. This is also the point at which I threw in file photos of the villains for each scene. I figured that would help establish a rhythm to the story: a new photo indicating a new scene.

And voila! It's an actual comic book page! There's nothing left to do now except close down Photoshop and Illustrator and then (literally) go back to the drawing board and start the roughs for the next page so the process of funny book creation can begin anew.

Thanks for reading.

Edward

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 My sincere thanks to Edward, who took my silly script about super-villain temps and made it look like a real comic book. And thanks to John and Andrew at Grayhaven for letting me share this column with you! 

Edward is hard at work drawing a full-length Dober-Man and Beagle one-shot. Watch this space for more details as they develop.  

And remember to pick up The Gathering volume 11, “TheSilver Age” this April!

  

Hugs and kisses,

(The)Travis

Spring Q&A. BRING IT!

TALKING WITH MY WIFE

“The casino should have a new ad campaign demonstrating all of the worst possible things that can happen to you there. Just the worst, most humiliating, most horrible, painful, awful things that a visit to the casino could bring. Just unflinching. And then the tagline is, “Or… Maybe Not? Come Gamble With Us.”

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Q&A time!

Joey Cruz‏ (@NeverWanderer) asks: The Host, Good monster movie or BEST monster movie? (Real Q: How much detail is too much when writing a comic script?)

I didn’t like the Host when I first saw it. Everybody I know professes to really dig it, though, so maybe I need to give it another shot. There’s this whole field of South Korean cinema that everyone who isn’t me seems to be in love with, and I just can’t quite penetrate the culture barrier.

Real A: It depends, I think. A lot of it hinges on your relationship with your artist. I try to write based on what I know about the artist’s strengths, and about their ability to tell the story effectively. And I have been blessed to work with artists who can absolutely deliver. I don’t know that there IS a thing as too much detail, as long as you, the writer, understand a few things. Foremost is that you can’t always get everything you want. And comics is a collaborative medium. You’re less the director than you are the screenwriter, in movie parlance. The artist is the director and the cinematographer and the costume designer and the lighting director and everything else that makes the visual aspect of your story happen. You have to trust that they know what they’re doing. I have read the scripts for Watchmen, and have been blown away by the level of detail on each panel and each page. But I also have read that Alan Moore also tagged almost every script with “If that doesn’t work for you, do what works best.”

"If you screw with my script, I'll turn you into a newt!"

Also, remember that the page has limits. The panel has limits. You need to be aware of what can be done in a single panel, and then make sure that you’re not trying so hard to write like Alan Moore that you overwhelm the artist with a lot of stuff that can’t happen in one panel on one page. An artist friend (not naming names) called me one night to see if I had any ideas on a script he was trying to draw. In one splash page, the writer had asked for no fewer than 5 angles of focus. And my friend was pulling his hair out trying to figure out how to draw what he was being asked for. (“How do I show the POV of something on the floor AND something on the ceiling at the same time?”)

Look at a comic you love and reverse engineer it, and ask yourself, what details are absolutely necessary to make this panel happen? 

And for the record, I am by no means holding myself up as an expert here. This is stuff I try to do, and I am still learning something new every time I write a new script, every time I read a script, and every time I look at a comic.

Adam Witt‏ (@adamwitt) asks: What part of your writing process takes you the longest?

It varies based on what I am working on. I spend a lot of time thinking about what I’m going to write before I even sit down at the keyboard. In the shower, in the car, on the train, when I’m trying to get to sleep, I’m thinking about the story, and working things out in my head. So by the time I sit down to do the mechanical typing, I usually have a pretty good sense of the beats I want, and how I’m getting from point A to point B. And then, as I write, I just try to fill in the blanks and see what new and interesting directions things take.

My main hold-up to writing is research, typically. I am completely paranoid about not knowing enough about a given topic, and so I have a bad habit of over-researching to the point where I’m not actually writing. Fortunately, I have Jenny to yell at me and tell me, “Write first! Fact check later!” But still, I spent a couple hours last night researching the differences between western and English horseback riding styles. If you look at the faux Secret Avengers pitch I did in my last blog, understand that I spent several nights researching the characters involved to make sure that everything I would propose was in continuity and to ensure that I could draft the characters in question without encroaching on any other book Marvel was publishing at the time. So… I may have a problem.

Sean Francis‏ (@indeciSEAN) asks: Thoughts on The @Avengers’ trailer?

Is “nerd-boner” a thought? It looks wonderful. I am unspeakably, pants-wettingly, excited for this movie, and from what I can determine from the trailer, Joss Whedon and all involved really knocked it out of the park. The quick segment where Hulk catches Iron Man in mid-air and then slides down the building are probably the Marvel-est things I’ve ever seen in a Marvel movie.

Kt‏ (@KtIsGerman) asks: What [super]villain would out-villain them all and how? How does the existence of smart phones impact plot/story telling?

As far as comic book villains go, Bullseye is the guy who always makes me nervous. When he shows up, you know SOMETHING horrible is going to happen.

Norman Osborn is getting there for me, as well. Between Warren Ellis’ use of him in Thunderbolts, all the work Brian Bendis has done with him in the pages of Avengers, and Kelly Sue DeConnick’s brilliant Osborn miniseries, Norman’s gone beyond the Green Goblin to being a genuinely terrifying supervillain who is always one step ahead of the good guys.

As far as non super super-villians, the scariest for me will always be from Garth Ennis’ Preacher. Jesse Custer’s grandmother and her henchmen Jody and T.C. are absolutely bone-chilling. “All in the Family” (collected in Preacher volume 2, “Until the End of the World”) is arguably the best arc in a series filled with amazing arcs. And that’s largely due to how EVIL Grandma is.

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I went online and asked for questions, and the amazing Terry L. Tyson (‏@terrytyson) came through!

Is there a comics collectable you've ever coveted?

Original art, mostly. If money were no object, my walls would be covered with commissions and original pages. As it stands, I own only three pieces of original art, and if my house were on fire, they’re probably the things I’d grab on my way out the door. One is an original Michael Gaydos page from Alias. The second is a Michael Oeming Powers page. And the third is the original sketch from the cover of Ethan Van Sciver’s “Manifesto” sketchbook.

Which comic from your childhood do you miss? What made it special for you? Was it the book or was it you, in that time, etc?

I have the good fortune to still have pretty much every comic I have ever purchased. But I wouldn’t mind having a better copy of New Teen Titans #1. My copy was read so much by my young self that it’s pretty much disintegrated at this point.

God, I love that comic. I walked down the street to the 7-11 one summer day when I was a very young lad, and picked it off of the rack, with no idea who anybody except Robin and Kid Flash were, and had my little brain thoroughly blown. That was probably the best half a buck I have ever spent.

What's the worst comic book based movie ever made?

Although I’ve never actually seen it, I have it on good authority that Halle Berry’s “Catwoman” takes that title. But I’m not brave enough to verify that for myself.

What comic do you wish YOU had written/drawn? (Mine will forever be Steranko's "Nick Fury" books.)

Drawn? Anything. I’d just like to be able to draw. (The nerdiest thing I have ever said to follow.) If I could “re-do my character sheet”, I would put more attribute points into “artistic talent” and “play guitar”.

Written? Probably Alan Moore’s Swamp Thing run or James Robinson’s Starman series.

Should Marvel ever consider a 52-esque reboot of their books? Which ones really need it, if any?

ABSOLUTELY NOT. There’s nothing to be gained from such a move. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

Name three people from the comics world you'd invite to dinner, living or otherwise.

This is the hardest question I received! (It’s probably easier to list who I WOULDN’T want to have dinner with.) I’ll limit myself to the deceased. Mark Gruenwald, Archie Goodwin, and Jack Kirby. That would be a really awesome dinner party.

I know picking three dead legends is sort of a cop-out, but I seriously puzzled over this for hours and couldn’t settle.

I DO still want to take C.B. Cebulski to Caseus in New Haven, though. That offer is on the table.

What would be the ultimate (even if the tech doesn't yet exist) e-comic experience?

Something that could replicate the experience of spreads and double-page panels. Something that grows and shrinks to accommodate the artwork.  That’s my biggest issue with digital comics right now  - scrolling about to see the panels and the artwork.  But I would also point out that I’m not the world’s biggest advocate for digital comics. I know lots of fans who love them, and I know there is a big push in that direction, but actual physical comics just suit my reading preferences better. And I say this as someone who would pull out his own teeth before surrendering his Kindle.

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And now, via Facebook: THE LIGHTNING ROUND!

Benel Germosen asks: Super Ninento or Sega Genesis?

Super Nintendo. I never had a Genesis, although I did play Sonic a few times at a friend’s house and thought it was basically Mario on crank.

Bryan Lipsitz asks: Superman or Batman?

This is Sophie’s Choice, man. I’m going Superman. 

Adina “Sailor” Gruzleski asks: Logan’s Run or Brazil?
Logan’s Run is super fun, and cheesy, but Brazil is inarguably a better film, and holds up WAY better.  

Jared Moore asks: New Mutants, Gen X, or Academy X/New X-Men?

New Mutants. Absolutely.

Walter Hall asks: Did Han shoot first?

Of course he did! Anyone who says differently is a fool and a liar. And YES, I mean George Lucas when I say that.  

James Michael asks: Will your male Shepard be gay?

Nope. Although I appreciate that Mass Effect fans will now be able to have their male Commander Shepards bump rude parts with a large black man, my personal Shepard is in a committed, monogamous relationship with a blue alien lady.

Aleina Paige asks: Comics or graphic novels?

Six of one, half dozen of the other. There’s no real difference, to my way of thinking. Some stories tell better in a single book, while some benefit from the great traditions of cliffhangers and serial storytelling.  

Kelley Gilman asks: Spring water vs. tap water?

Tap water. Although I use a Brita filter, so maybe I’m cheating. 

Christopher Bell asks: Most embarrassing thing ever caught in your beard?

I keep my face-fuzz fairly close-cropped, so I have never really had any problems in that regard. Although when I eat anything with butter or garlic, I spend the rest of the night making “duck face” while I smell my moustache. 

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BUY MY COMICS!

The Gathering Volume 8, “The Fifth Dimension” is now available through GrayHaven Comics. It features the story, “I AM (ANALOG) LEGEND”, written by me, with art by Chris Page.

I have it on good authority that Volume 9 (Fairy Tales), featuring my story “The Heartbreak Tree” (art by Leonardo Gonzalez), should be out in time for MoCCA Fest. So anyone in the NYC area should come and pick up an issue from me, personally!

Hugs and kisses,

(The)Travis

Comic Book Industry Ambitions

Talking with my wife…

Jenny has been burning the candle at both ends lately, and has been going to sleep early to try to make up for it. The other night, I tucked her into bed, with the intention to then go play Skyrim for a few hours.

Jenny: “This is nice. It feels like you’re tucking me into bed in your house in Whiterun, and then you’re going to go out and slay dragons and have adventures.”

Me: “You would HATE that, because it would mean my housecarl was sitting in the corner, watching you sleep. That’s creepy.“

Jenny: “It’s cool. I’d be like, ‘BITCH! Get me a sweet roll!’”

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Been busy this month, and not just because I have been swapping out all of the time I normally reserve for sleep and food intake for hours logged in Skyrim. (I have been considering marrying my housecarl in Solitude, not because I love her, but because she has been sleeping on a pile of hay in my basement, and it makes me feel really guilty.) I’m doing research for a couple projects, and realizing that my research skills have totally atrophied since I was in college. I keep mentioning that I need to go to the library, and people look at me like I am out of my mind. “Uh, haven’t you ever heard of the INTERNET?” The truth is that I don’t quite TRUST the internet. You can always tell when someone has done all their research on Wikipedia. They end up writing a WWII epic where Captain America fights Chip Hitler.

(And now I kind of want to write a comic about Hitler’s slacker younger brother, Chip. He’s just as horrible as Adolf, but because he’s so lazy and unmotivated, nobody really cares.)

Anyway, if you’re a librarian, and there’s a fat guy wandering around you screaming “WHERE’S THE FUCKING MICROFICHE?”, that’s me. Sorry for the noise.

The next three months or so will see a bunch of new stuff from me. GrayHaven Comics will be releasing the Sci-Fi, Fairy Tale, and Silver Age themed issues of The Gathering, and I have stories in each of those volumes. Please check them out. I’m insanely proud of all three of those stories, and super-impressed with the artwork turned out by Chris Page, Leonardo Gonzalez, and Edward Whatley, respectively.

Also, I got the word that I will be anchoring GrayHaven’s table at this year’s MoCCA Fest with Gathering editors Doug Hahner and Erica Heflin. So come visit!

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Comic Book Industry Ambitions

Not the obvious ones. Not “I want to write Spider-Man someday.”, or “Hey, DC, I have a killer idea for a Creeper mini.” (Although both of those are true.) I mean the less obvious stuff. The little things that let me know I’ve “made it”.

When I first formed a punk band, just after college, I set a handful of goals for myself. None of them were “Get a record deal and become a rich and famous rock star”. That was on my mind, of course, but that was the forest, and I wanted to focus on the trees. I wanted to make sure I didn’t get so obsessed with the big picture goal of “making it” that I didn’t enjoy what I had while I had it. On the list were things like;

·        Play a show at Toad’s Place.

·        Open for my favorite local band, Big Mistake.

·        Open for my OTHER favorite local band, Spring Heeled Jack, USA.

·        Play a show out of state.

·        Go on tour.

·        Get a hug from the lead singer of NYC ska band Metro Stylee.

·        Rock out in front of that girl I had a crush on in high school. (The one who would go on to date Chris Carabba.)

And you know what? I did all of those things. I never became a rich and famous rock star, but I did get to do all of those cool things that, to me, were part of the process of someday BECOMING a rich and famous rock star. And they were all AWESOME.

So with that in mind, I have, recently been composing a list of my Comic Book Industry Ambitions. The little stuff. The fun stuff. I don’t know if I’ll ever get to write Spider-Man. But maybe I can get some of these other things done.

COMIC BOOK INDUSTRY AMBITION #17: Ride a roller-coaster with Dan Slott.

I love Dan Slott. He just seems like the sweetest, most fun guy. And he’s kicking so much ass on Amazing Spider-Man that it’s on my pull list again after a five plus year absence. He also does the best impression of The Thing I have ever heard. Every time we see Dan Slott at a convention, my wife is overcome by the urge to give him a hug. That’s the kind of guy he is.

(On a side note, Dan Slott was the ONE guy from Marvel I saw in the audienceat last year’s stellar “Women Of Marvel” panel at NYCC. He’s a really good dude.)

I think it would be fun to ride a roller coaster with Dan Slott. Especially if, as we crest that first rise, he looks at me and says, “Uh-oh, Stretch-o! I think it’s Clobbering Time!”

COMIC BOOK INDUSTRY AMBITION #38: Touch Jason Aaron’s beard.

Everybody talks about Alan Moore’s beard. And yeah, it’s pretty great. The standard by which all comic book beards are judged. But Jason Aaron’s beard is special. I think it’s full of secrets and wonders. Also, I should mention that Wolverine and the X-Men is my favorite X-title in forever, and I say that as a huge X-geek, so that should tell you something.

 I should note that I would never TRY to touch Mr. Aaron's beard without prior, clearly expressed, non-equivocal permission. Because he looks like one of the dudes from Sons of Anarchy, and I have no doubt he could beat me up pretty badly.

Plus, there could be a leprechaun with a machinegun in there. Or a bear trap. Just too much potential for mayhem.  

COMIC BOOK INDUSTRY AMBITION #54: Do something good enough that Laura Hudson calls me “A Good Egg”

Laura Hudson is the very sharp, very cool Editor-in-Chief for Comics Alliance. She writes articles that make me think, and she takes an inordinate amount of shit from the fanboy community at large. I wrote a blog a while back about one of her more controversial articles, and how the end result for me was a reminder to be more careful when I was writing, and to try to do justice to the women in my life with the characters I create and portray. (Also, when I’m writing women, I try to imagine that if I do something creepy or fanboyish, Kelly Sue DeConnick will swat me on the nose with a rolled-up newspaper.)

I really want, someday, to write a comic that makes Laura Hudson give me a thumbs-up. That’ll definitely tell me I’m doing something right.  

COMIC BOOK INDUSTRY AMBITION #73: Write, Direct, and Co-Produce "Indie Comics Roadtrip"I had the Comedians of Comedy documentary on as background noise while I worked the other day. And I started thinking how much fun it would be to get a posse of my favorite indie comics friends together and spend a year hitting every major con. Just get in a van with Pat Loika, Jef UK, Len Wallace, Amanda Rachels, Chris Page, and any other indie comic folks I could get to join in and make a documentary on the fucking thing.

It would mostly be hours of footage of us being stuck in traffic while I scream obscenities at other drivers, me trying to get Pat Loika to do his Lars Ulrich impression, and Chris Page and me doing our impressions of Amanda Rachels when she's not around to hear us and take revenge on our flabby, weak bodies with her hammer-like fists.

I'd watch that.

COMIC BOOK INDUSTRY AMBITION #85: Continue to grow the "Indie Comics Poop Text" mailing list

Over the past year or two, a bunch of my friends have invented, and participated, on-and-off, in the "poop text" game. Fairly simple rules. When you're making twosies, you text everyone on the list and let them know. My list has a bunch of my bestest buddies in the field of woefully obscure comics talent on it. Not mentioning any names, of course.

I'd like to see this list grow, and really get some bigger name creators on this. Jamie Rich WANTS to let me know when he's pooping. He's just afraid to admit it.


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Follow me on Twitter @travisholyfield and look for the tag #comicindustryambitions for more of these, as they occur to me.

 

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My poor mother saw that AMC was going to have a show called “Comic Book Men”. She also saw that it had something to do with Kevin Smith. And because she loves me more than I probably deserve, she called me up, all excited to tell me about it.

(Let me say this in no uncertain terms – My mom is AWESOME for things like this, and has been my entire life. She doesn’t share my interests, but she has always made a point of knowing enough about them to tune me into things she sees that relate. The poor woman went through the 80s knowing the secret identity of every single member of the X-Men. If there’s an Eisner award for awesome mothers to geeky children, I’d like to nominate her.)

I watched the first episode and… Yikes. Really guys? You couldn’t make it through the first episode without talking about which superheroine you’d most like to bang? Way to not perpetuate any stereotypes. I was left just feeling thoroughly “meh”. Not for me, sadly. But thanks for trying, mom.

(Also, the show is called “Comic Book Men”, but really should be called “Let’s Be Horrible to the Asian Kid”.)

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I WROTE SOME THINGS THAT PEOPLE LIKED!

There have been a handful of reviews for Volume 6 (Further Into the Abyss) of GrayHaven Comics’ Gathering anthology. And people have been really positive in their evaluations of the book in general, and my story, “Jack, Unblinking” in specific.

“…it is end story Jack, Unblinking by Travis M. Holyfield and Chris Page that leaves a lasting impression. A creepy and sad tale that is quite the twist on a well loved children's toy.”

You can check out some reviews here:

http://therottingzombie.blogspot.com/2012/01/gathering-comic-anthology-issue-4-and-6.html

http://girlsreadcomics.com/2012/01/20/review-further-into-the-abyss-the-gathering-vol-6/

http://artbyarion.blogspot.com/2012/01/arcadio-bolanos-gathering-vol-6-further.html

Hugs and kisses,

(The)Travis

I Can't Kill That Guy With My Chainsaw If I'm Hiding Behind This Rock...

TALKING WTH MY WIFE

Jenny, on the topic of menstruation: “Why does everyone say “On her period”? Like it’s a horse? ….. Well, maybe it’s a BIG RED HORSE that gallops all around and you have NO CONTROL over where it goes! It’s just galloping all over kicking people in the face and wrecking joints!”

YAY! VIDEO GAME TALK!

By the time you read this, Gears of War 3 will be out. I probably haven’t purchased a copy yet. But the active ingredient in that sentence is the “YET”, so rest assured that the sound you hear amongst the grinding of chainsaw teeth against putrescent alien flesh is me weeping in frustration.

I really love Gears, but it’s a very schizophrenic experience for me. I’ve been fascinated by the game since I first saw the TV ad for the initial installment.

Fucking WOW, right? There’s a promise of a game there that’s not only action packed, but tense, involving, and angsty. (It’s the promise of a game experience that Bioshock actually lives up to, oddly enough.) But it’s never quite realized by Gears. The aesthetic is there, and some of the existential despair, but it’s also codified within the body of a shooter game, which means it’s also going to be a lurking hive of the inherently stupid.

Unlike most games of this type, which seem to basically be a delivery mode for online play and the savage derision of the prepubescent, Gears actually has a single player mode that engages me. I’m committed to the story, in a way that I could never muster with a Call of Duty game. Maybe it’s because I’m trying to gun down aliens, instead of Nazis. My internal brain circuitry is better configured to dealing with a problem of invading subterranean grotesques than it is with actual genocidal monsters of flesh and blood.  It’s also because the heroes of the story - despite being gigantic, monosyllabic, lurking bundles of testosterone and bullets - are oddly sort of likeable. There is no poetry in hacking a Locust to chunks with your Lancer, but there is a sort of gleefully maniacal joy that our heroes take from the act. As my grandmother used to say, “It’s hard to argue with anyone who looks that happy.”

My issue with Gears is basically internal. Regardless of the game I am playing, and its ostensible category, I treat all gaming experiences as RPG experiences. I don’t have heart palpitations while playing Dead Space because of their masterful use of darkness and claustrophobic spaces, I do so because I do not want to have my flesh flayed from my body by oozing space zombies. I don’t know how YOU play Pac-Man, but I know things about his backstory and motivations that would shock you.

I blame some of this on my cousin Kevin. During our formative video game years, as young Atari enthusiasts, he would sit next to me as we played Missile Command and identify which of our family members were in each bunker, adding a fantastic layer of real-life stress and survivor guilt to what should have been a simple fucking game about shooting your glowing dot at the other glowing dot.  

So now take my fragile psychic projections, and strap them onto Marcus Fenix. Gears of War mixes a robust cover system with a protagonist who is constantly yelling exhortations to grind his enemies into paste.  Try to parse that for a minute. You are given the tools to move gingerly from cover to cover, avoiding conflict until the last possible moment, and you are armed with a machinegun taped to a chainsaw. I can’t keep up. I’m hiding behind rocks and chunks of beautifully rendered wall, thinking, logically, that it is a smarter place to stand than in front of bullets. And while I am doing this, Mr. Fenix is telling the Locust hordes about how he’s going to murder their mothers and rape their fathers. I feel like he’s judging me. He’s never yelled “MOVE ME INTO MELEE RANGE, QUEERBAIT!” But I feel like it’s implied.

Penny Arcade, as always, sums it up better than I ever could.

MISCELLANEOUS GOODNESS

My lovely wife, the insanely talented Jenny Langin, has her first published comic book story coming out very soon, in GrayHaven Comics’ Gathering Volume 5: Love Letters. Please check it out, and then tune back into the Gathering for Volume 6, where I have a scary story with art by Mr. Chris Page.

Hopefully some big comic book related news from me coming soon. Watch this space.

As always, Q’s for me to A are welcome. Hit me up in the comments here, on Twitter, or email me.

Hugs and kisses,

(The)Travis

Five Movies that Scarred Me as a Child

Talking With My Wife, Part One

Jenny has come home from work. I am playing Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood.

Travis: I have minions!

Jenny: In what context?

Travis: In Assassin's Creed.

Jenny: How do you have minions?

Travis: I’m recruiting people for my guild.

Jenny: They’re not minions. It’s an association of young professionals.

Travis: No, they do my bidding! I send them out to kill people I don’t like.

Jenny: You are drunk with power.

*****

Five Movies That Scarred Me as a Child

Jenny and I have a pretty expansive cable package, which we maintain by threatening to drop cable altogether every 6 to 8 months, resulting in panicked deals and attempts at placation from our cable provider. It’s sort of an abusive relationship, but we’re firmly on the side of the abusER, so I don’t care.

Anyway, when you have access to several thousand channels, and you also suffer from frequent insomnia, you might find yourself, like me, staring at the TV at 4 am and trying to decide between one of several mid-to-low-card 80s films. This has been causing me to have some HORRIFIC flashbacks to my childhood, as I re-experience several movies that traumatized me as a kid.

The 80s were a great time for movies that would fuck up a small child. Disney was just on the tail end of a streak of “what the fuck” film decisions that resulted in some truly amazing movies like Tron and The Black Hole, but also gave us a lot of stuff where Bette Davis is creepy and evil.

Everyone my age has some sort of trauma relating to E.T. Mine wasn’t that it looked like E.T. was going to die. My mother, being forewarned at the affect the movie might have on her sensitive son, had made a big point of assuring me that E.T. wasn’t going to die. So I was fine with that part. But then, at the end, E.T. goes home and leaves Eliot behind with his asshole brother, his borderline retarded sister, and his absentee mom. Oh, and no friends whatsoever. E.T. to me is the story of a lonely little boy who has his magical best friend taken away by the government. That’s why I’m a liberal.

Anyway, here are five films that messed me up when I was a lad.

1. BABY, SECRET OF THE LOST LEGEND

This is one in a long line of films where the story introduces you to an adorable family of magical creatures and then proceeds to slaughter one or more of them. This movie has all the best parts of Bambi AND Dumbo (one doe-eyed dinosaur parent gets murdered, the other gets imprisoned by the evil human scientist people). The film has a very clear message about how dinosaurs are better than people, and also about how most scientists love torturing things. Unlike a “Jurassic Park”, I don’t even think you have the moment of cathartic release when the maliciously evil villains are killed and mutilated by velociraptors.  Admittedly, my memory on this is spotty. I only saw the movie once as a child, and it upset me enough that just seeing the movie poster causes PTSD. Fuck this movie. And fuck the Greatest American Hero for not doing more to help these dinosaurs.

2. PROJECT X

Not only is science evil, so is the military. And when they get together, whoa-nelly. The evil is practically off the scale. I mean, most people consider Doctor Doom pretty evil, but I’m not sure even he would think of strapping chimps into a flight simulator and then bombarding them with radiation. (Cosmis rays, maybe.)

Again, this is one of those movies where the endless cruelty against our protagonists is resolved with a desperate flight to freedom, the death of a loveable character, and a faked demise for most of the rest of the protagonists. You can also see this in D.A.R.Y.L., except that time is was robots, not apes. This is why the Rise of the Planet of the Apes remake was so awesome. Because by the time the third act comes around and all the apes are jumping through windows and electrocuting Draco Malfoy, you’re pretty much on their side. Project X needed more monkey-on-human violence.

3. TIME BANDITS

I actually did rewatch this not too long ago. This movie is so WEIRD. Let’s see… a neglected and lonely child (a theme in movies I watched as a kid, apparently) gets involved with six dwarves who are running away from God because they stole his map of the universe. Actually when I write it down, it doesn’t sound THAT weird. Except for the six dwarves, it sort of sounds like a Grant Morrison comic. But trust me, this movie is insane. And it has the most downer ending possible, where after being abandoned by the dwarves and God, the kid watches as his parents are disintegrated by a chunk of absolute evil.

In doing some research for this, I found out that George Harrison helped produce this. That makes sense because this movie is the visual equivalent of a guy playing a sitar. I don’t know how it is, it just is.

4. THE WATCHER IN THE WOODS

It’s Disney’s version of The Exorcist. Yeah.

5.    CLOAK AND DAGGER

Okay, so it’s another lonely little kid movie. This time it’s a kid whose dad is never around and clearly blames him for the death of the mother. The boy wraps himself up in role-playing games, make-believe adventures, and an imaginary friend who looks JUST LIKE HIS DAD.

I actually think this is a really good movie. But I also think that, for me, ten years old may be too young to confront your own issues with your father. Also I hate movies where they basically imply that imagination is dangerous and that to grow up you have to stop playing make-believe. That’s just completely untrue. Most of my favorite people have predicated their lives and careers on playing make-believe. I’m glad your dad came and saved you from terrorists, Henry Thomas. But you’d still be well-advised not to write off good old Jack Flak yet. Your dad’s still going to work tomorrow and leaving you sitting home alone with nothing to do.

Wow. This blog is saving me a week’s worth of therapy bills. AWESOME!

*****

Talking With My Wife, Part Two

Jenny is looking at the latest Rolling Stone, featuring a cover story on The Sheepdogs.

Jenny: This cover… what’s the name of the band in Almost Famous?

Travis: Stillwater.

Jenny: Yeah. That’s what these guys look like.

Travis: Yeah, they kind of do. And you know, I read the article… and it IS a think-piece.

Jenny: You’re such a fucking dork.

Hugs and kisses,

(The)Travis

You Q'd, and I A'd.

TALKING TO MY WIFE (Part One)

We were arguing about something completely random.

Jenny: You are so wrong!
Me: I am NOT! I am totally right.
Jenny: Wrongzors!
Me: You can’t just say “wrongzors” and win an argument.
Jenny: WRONGZORS!
Me: In fact, just by adding “zors”, you lose. It’s like when someone brings up Hitler.
Jenny: HITLERZORS!

INQUIRYS AND REPLYS

I put the call out for questions I might be able to answer, lest I be tasked to actually come up with a blog topic out of my very own brain. My good friends at the Brian Michael Bendis board on Jinxworld.com were goodly enough to provide the following:.

Evan the Shaggy asks: What's your favorite band story from your past days of rockin'?

Monday night I went to see my friends Jerry and Andrew Morgan doing standup at Cafe Nine’s FISTFUL OF JOKES night. I got to hand out with a couple old friends, including Burke, one of the guitar players from my old band SaveFace. It reminded me how much I love hanging out with my punk rock friends, and swapping stories - Especially when those stories always involve lines like, “Oh yeah! Her dipshit boyfriend is the one I sprayed with that fire extinguisher.”

Anyway, I don’t know if it’s my FAVORITE story, but I do like this one.

SaveFace was an east coast punk band. At the same time we were playing out, there was another Saveface (no capital “f”) from Bakersfield, CA. They were a Christian rock band. Every once in a while, there would be a massive miscommunication with someone booking shows, and one of us would end up at a gig intended for the other. Which is how my band of functioning alcoholics and potheads ended up playing at a Christian teen center.  

I knew immediately what had happened when I saw all the paintings of bible scenes hung on the walls. And then I heard a cute girl quoting Leviticus and I knew we were officially screwed. But we decided to just try to power through it. We figured if we kept our heads down, played real loud, and tried to refrain from swearing, we should be in good shape. I didn’t think it would be a problem, as out songs, unlike most punk bands, didn’t have any swearing in the lyrics. (I actually sat in our van with our lyrics sheets asking questions of our drummer like, “Can I say “bastard”? I’m using it in a sentence.”)

Three songs in we ran into trouble when our lead guitar player broke two strings at the same time. One broken string we could handle. Two meant the song ground to a screeching halt, and we had to kill a minute or so while he tuned his back-up guitar.

I thought I’d try to warm up the crowd a little with my comedy stylings. “So,” I said, “any of you guys want to hear an off-color joke?”

A young man in the front row looked up at me with wide-eyed sincerity and politely said, “No thank you.”

At this moment our bass player asked me for the microphone. This took me by surprise, as it was completely unprecedented. Jeff was laconic to the point of being practically mute. He NEVER asked me for the microphone. Stunned, I handed it over. Which, as it turned out, was my fatal mistake.

“What the fuck is up with this fucking town?” he began. “I went to get something to fucking eat and there’s nothing on this whole fucking block. I ended up getting a fucking sandwich from a fucking gas station and eating it on the fucking curb. And now I’ll probably get the fucking shits. It’s fucking ridiculous.”

Then he handed the microphone back to me. I looked at him and then looked at the crowd who were staring at us with jaws agape, perhaps starting to realize that we were not the nice Christian boys from California they had expected. All I could think to say was, “Dude. You can’t say “sandwich” here.”

Slewo asks: What do you think is the biggest problem facing comics today?

Lack of readership, probably. But that’s kind of the nature of the beast. I know that it’s semi-heretical for me to say this about my beloved comics, but I’m not sure that we will ever see what we want, which is for the medium to be as popular (or at least as ubiquitous) as other forms of entertainment.

Reading in general seems to be on the downslide. A few years ago, I was sitting outside of a public library, waiting for a friend to meet me for lunch. I saw a trio of high-school aged girls walking by. They were having one of those conversations that are at a volume where you cannot help but hear it. You’re not eavesdropping, you’re just not deaf.

Girl #1: “Omigod. I was at the mall with April yesterday. And she bought a BOOK.”
Girl #2: “Ungh. Who READS?”

What do you do with that? Short of following them to their cars and clubbing them to death like baby seals.

Now add to that the difficulties in starting to read comics if you don’t already. Jenny brought up a really good point to me recently that for us, it’s completely reflexive and unconscious, but for strangers to the form, it can be difficult to follow the art, the word bubbles, and the flow of the panels. It’s like jazz, sometimes. You have to LEARN to appreciate certain aspects of the art form. And who has time for that when there’s shit like “Jersey Shore” to watch.

But I’ll still keep trying, man. I support the “April”s of the world.

Thatguyfromsyracuse  asks: How much are you looking forward to NYCC? I mean, you ARE going, right? PLEASE!

I am pants-wettingly excited to go to New York ComicCon this year. I missed last year because my eyeball issues had JUST started, and I couldn’t see a thing. But this year I will be there come hell or high water. Grayhaven Comics is fixing to have a booth at the show, and I have already volunteered to pull a couple of shifts, so I will be there hawking issues of the Gathering to all comers.

Even though I missed last year, I still had one of the nicest experiences of my life as a result of that show. Pat Loika drafted up a get-well poster featuring me as eyepatched superspy Nick Fury, and all of my buddies from the Bendisboard signed it. Including Bendis himself.



He signed it, "Ha Ha! Loser!" I love this guy.



And of course, I also got this gem in my email. A show of solidarity from my brethren.

I have some of the greatest friends in the world. I don’t say it enough.

Ryudo says:  I would also like to hear you talk more about small press, your graphic novel, and your involvement with the Gathering.

The graphic novel is coming along. The artist has most of the script now, and I am finishing up editing on the last quarter of the book. It should be around 100 pages or so. We’re working to put a pitch together, and I will probably have it in hand before NYCC. Once the pitch is done, I’ll feel comfortable talking about details. Watch this space for art previews down the road.

The Gathering is one of those things that makes me love comics. Nobody involved is trying to get rich or sell a movie script. It’s just good people making great comics. People who want more exposure to the industry and to hone their chops among their peers. Andrew has really grown this thing by leaps and bounds, and I am delighted to be a part of it. It’s certainly given me the courage to go after my creative goals in a more aggressive manner. I wouldn’t be writing a 100-page graphic novel had Andrew not given me that first shot at getting something published.

I was very fortunate to have Andrew invite me to be part of the second volume of the Gathering. And double lucky to get to work with Pat Loika on the art. I like doing short form stuff a lot. It’s a unique challenge, to make those 2 or 4 or 6 pages contain the body of your story. I tried to make something in that issue that would be fun for Pat to draw (crazy Kirby-esque space giants) and also to create something that could completely stand alone. I think some writers use short form stuff to try to pitch a larger idea, and that just kind of leaves me cold. I’ve never read a short prose story that was trying to audition to be a novel. If you have two pages, the whole story should be in those two pages.

In Fear Itself: Home Front, Howard Chaykin is doing these little one page snippets, and they’re brilliant. Just these tiny little emotional gutpunches of human cost in the middle of a larger story. Good stuff.

Now how succesful I was at making a good two-page story depends on who you talk to. a lot of people seemed to like it. Andrew said he liked it. My mother said, "Is that it?" The one professional review I saw basically called it "stupid but harmless". The nice part about being in a painfully obscure punk band in the era of the internet, though, is how it thickens your skin to bad reviews. Just by virtue of nobody calling me a "fat faggot", it was still one of the nicest batch of reviews I have ever recieved. :)

And honestly, I watched some guy go apeshit on Twitter last night and threaten to "slap the shit" out of poor Stephen Wacker over the decision to cancel Uncanny X-Men. I can handle "stupid but harmless".

I have one more bit of business coming out from the Gathering this year, in the “Big Book of Horror” issue. Then in 2012, I have stories running (hopefully) in the Sci-Fi and Western themed issues, plus possibly one more. Watch this space for that announcement  

Ryudo also asks:  What are your favorite Disney World attractions?

Tower of Terror and the Aerosmith coaster are a lot of fun. I love the dinosaur ride in Animal Kingdom. Haunted Mansion for sure. Magic Kingdom is for certain my favorite of the parks. I kind of want to be buried there.

Artimoff asks - H0w's y0ur eye d0ing?

Coming along nicely, thank you for asking. I should be getting new glasses in the next few weeks that should hopefully put my left eye vision at 20/60, which is a huge improvement over the 20/400 I was at. The right eye is “quiescent”, which I thought was a fabulous word to hear.

Thanks, guys!

I also got a couple questions on Marvel versus DC, particularly the DC relaunch (which I think I covered pretty well last week), and Marvel’s “Fear Itself” event. I’ll get to talking about Fear Itself soon (spoiler alert: I fucking love it).

TALKING TO MY WIFE (Part Two)

Jenny is sitting next to me while I play “Mass Effect 2”, a major portion of which involves scanning planets for mineral resources and then plundering them.

Jenny: “Commander Shepard is a dick.”
Me: “No he’s not! He’s the hero of the galaxy.”
Jenny: “He’s raping all of the natural resources from all of these planets.”
Me: “I never leave them “depleted”. I always stop when the resources are just “poor”. It’s okay.”
Jenny: “You leave the planets with “poor” resources? You’re a monster.”
Me: “Look, all of these planets are uninhabited anyway!”
Jenny: “Why, what happens when they are inhabited.”
Me”… Well… usually I end up going down there with two friends and killing everything that moves. “
Jenny: “Commander Shepard is a dick.”

A little while later…

Jenny: “You should scream “I drink your milkshake” while you’re doing this.”

HELP US MAKE MORE COMICS

GrayHaven comics is running another Kickstarter campaign to continue to help fund publication of the Gathering, and other small press titles. The original goal was $1,000, which we managed to blow past like it was standing still. Now there's a whole new set of challenges. For every extra thousand we raise, Andrew will put another issue on the schedule for next year. Contributers will have first dibs on pitching to those issues. If you're an indie comics enthusiast, and would like a shot at writing a short story of your own, this is a great opportunity. even if you have no industry ambitions, get in there and throw a couple bucks at the project so we can continue to make amazing anthology comics and continue to give new artists and writers a chance to show their stuff.

That's all for now. Tune in next time when I talk about my newfound appreciation for the UK's national superhero.

Hugs and kisses, (The)Travis