Things I’ve learned so far… Part 3
Matt Badham, comic book journalist and writer, read some of my blogs a few months ago and we got chatting about the work I’ve done so far. I sent him some comics to read along with apologies like “I know they’re not perfect!” and he suggested I write a blog outlining the things I’ve learned from making two independent superhero miniseries. This is that blog. Or, at least, the third instalment of that series. See, I wrote approximately 10,000 words on the subject.
What follows are the conclusions I’ve reached or lessons I’ve learned from the last few years of making and selling Sugar Glider and Halcyon & Tenderfoot, and the few other comics I’ve been involved with. I might be wrong about these things, but they are my feelings, on collaboration, based on those experiences.
The first and second parts of the blog was a huge success - thank you to everyone who read it, shared it and gave me feedback. This one is a months later, mind. Sorry about that. I was writing comics.
Collaboration
Most writers either don’t want to or can’t write and draw their comics, but I find that most artists would love to both. This makes it difficult for writers to find an artist to collaborate with.
I struggled to find a collaborator when I was getting started. Most artists I approached were interested in deviating from their own work and the interested ones were put off by the scale of the projects I was suggesting. I decided to change tact. Instead of approaching artists with my ideas, I approached Gary Bainbridge with an idea for the superhero character he had drawn at a comic makers meeting. Getting an artist excited about a project they’re already invested in is a far better approach. We entered into a very equal collaboration that resulted in around 200 pages of Sugar Glider comics.
It’s a lot easier to find collaborators once you’ve made a comic that is seen as being successful.
I don’t see how offering potential collaborators a share of the profits from a project being very appealing - because you probably won’t make a profit. Going into a project as a genuine partnership with both parties investing their time, money and enthusiasm is the best way. But this is only likely to work with a collaborator at the same stage in their career as you and with the same level of enthusiasm for the project.
Your preferred collaborator will work on the project with you if they really want to. They will invest their time, money and enthusiasm if they’re excited by the project. I don’t think that paying a potential collaborator from your small amount of savings will make them more excited about the project. From my experience contracting artists for difficult projects, they’ll probably just see it as badly paid, uninspiring work.
Make sure when checking through thumbnails/artwork that you’re not just checking to see if you like the artwork. If you’ve written vague panel descriptions and only check the artwork to see if it’s nice, you might miss something important. There’s a panel in Sugar Glider issue 1 where I wrote, “Susie looks around” as the panel description and missed out ‘for clues’. When I checked the artwork, I really liked the panel Gary had drawn of Susie looking around at the reader over her shoulder. But for some reason the page didn’t flow the way it was meant to. I shrugged it off. It took me months to work out what had gone wrong.
There are some comic book pages that take a lot of revisions before the artists arrived at something that really worked. Asking for revisions isn’t something to feel bad about if the page doesn’t communicate the story to the reader. I revise the story, outline, scene breakdown and script based on feedback from the artist. If you’re going to have input into your collaborator’s work, you must welcome that input into your own work too.
When I started writing comics I tended to ask for revisions just so the artwork would match what I had imagined while writing the script. This is wrong. Decisions should be based on what’s best for the story and the reader, rather than ego and 'how I want it to be’.
Don’t assume, like I did, that a collaborator who has never really read superhero comics will understand the atmosphere and style you’re going for when you say words like Bronze Age and Silver Age. It took a long time to nail the designs in Halcyon & Tenderfoot because I wasn’t speaking the same language as Lee Robinson. With other projects, this wouldn’t be as problematic but with something where the fee, idea and theme was very specific, it really would’ve helped to create a Pinterest board of images that evoked the spirit I was looking for. I’ve done this for a project I’m working on at the moment, and it’s also a great tool to reminding me what I’m going for and for inspiring story ideas.
If like me, you care about representation and what you’re saying with your work, having no female creators working on a female-led comic anthology will make you feel uneasy.
Handing over my characters and loose storylines for other creators to work with on Sugar Glider Stories made them feel more real to me than the other issues. Probably because all the comics I read as a child were Lee/Kirby/Ditko characters interpreted by anyone but Lee/Kirby/Ditko.
Having other writers interpret my stories and fill in the gaps between stories I’d written was incredibly rewarding - they added things I never would have thought of.
I won’t be staying awake through the night 'in solidarity’ with artist I’m working with again. It’s a nice gesture, but I go from tired to exhausted very easily due to anxiety issues, which results in shakes, sweats, panic attacks and an upset stomach. I don’t think comics are important enough to lose sleep over. But they are important enough to schedule time for.
Lee draws comedy very well, so I tried to write some funny stuff for him to draw. Probably not as much funny stuff as he’d have liked, mind.
If you find the right colourist, they’ll make great artwork look even better.
We came up with a great system for doing Halcyon & Tenderfoot. Lee would thumbnail the issue, we’d talk about it, he’d draw roughs straight into Photoshop, I’d letter the roughs and stick panel borders on and then he’d do the final art. This meant that there was enough room for the balloons in every panel and it also meant that if Lee did work throughout the night at the end of the deadline, I wouldn’t have to rush the lettering in the morning and/or stay awake all night to letter as pages were finished.
The only change I’d make to that plan is for lettering placement to be incorporated into the thumbnails. We’re doing that a little now, but it still needs developing slightly. Lee is also developing the process to the point where his thumbnails are also his roughs.
It was really fun to draw two pages of Sugar Glider Stories written by Gary. Switching the creator roles gave us both an understanding of what each other had to do to make a good comic. I really enjoyed drawing those two pages, but it took me two weekends and I wouldn’t draw a comic again.
Working Marvel-method for a silent comic strip can work wonders, and it lets the artist really enjoy themselves.
Collaborators who don’t return emails and who make decisions about the work without any conversation are the ones you know not to work with again.
It’s important to write for the artist you’re working with. I learned this while making Sugar Glider Stories issue 1. One strip was written for a novice artist but then a veteran ended up drawing it, the script was far too long and cluttered for the veteran artist and ended up making them miserable.
On the same point, writing for Gary meant I could include lots of real life locations, knowing that he could pull off an expert likeness because architecture is his speciality. Lee’s artwork conveys a lot of emotion so you’ll notice that I write a lot of sad characters and events in comics we work on - because it really hits home with the reader. Writing for Martin Eden meant I was free to come up with a really zany story and I knew it would be believable on the page.
Having a scientist friend really helps when coming up with the conclusion of a story that hangs on a character being very intelligent.
Writing the strip for Martin Eden really changed the way I thought about writing comics - they have to be fun. That doesn’t mean they have to be silly or funny, they can still be sad and serious and deal with real world events, but they should be fun to write and fun for your artist to draw. Use comics as cleverly as you can by writing things that couldn’t be achieved as well in other mediums (you could do this by including a diamond prison or by changing the way you play with the passage of time or storytelling methods).
Google maps and the massive amount of photo material that can be found online means that an artist from another country can accurately represent areas of Newcastle they’ve never been to.
Sometimes you’ll search for reference material to give an artist and they won’t use it. You’ll just have to accept that that time was wasted and move on.
No matter how many times you say not to, some creators will always draw their female characters with large breasts.
I don’t think that two people can successfully edit one book like me and Gary did on Sugar Glider Stories issue 1 unless you have a plan on how that is going to work beforehand (splitting stories up between the two of you?). Otherwise, you’ll both end up giving different feedback on the same things. That isn’t helpful for other collaborators.
If you have people working on an anthology for you and they aren’t being paid, they should be getting something from it. At least one copy of the comic and some kind of offer on any more copies of the comic they want to buy. And you should go out of your way to really push their work to your friends and contacts.
I’ve written a lot of scenes that call for crowds. This always winds artists up. But when a comic is about the public opinion of superheroes, etc, you will need to see the public. I’m not going to write comics about this kind of thing as much in the future.
Artists don’t seem to like drawing cars or bikes. But some artists will grow to love drawing those things. However, it isn’t really the writer’s job to force them to learn to love drawing something they hate.
I never thought Gary would go for the idea I had for the Don Quixote character in Sugar Glider issue 2. Gary was often concerned with making the comic believable and I wanted to take his old swordsman character and make him a delusional librarian who shouts 'DEMON!’ at everyone. But the idea was a fun idea with lots of story potential so he went for it. I took the risk of it being shot-down and it paid off.
Not having an editor means some less important details can be lost or forgotten about. In Halcyon & Tenderfoot, The Glory Guild HQ would have benefitted from being filled with trophies from their battles - this would have communicated the group’s history and their ruthlessness to the readers, but I completely forgot to mention this to Lee in the rush to get this issue out. We do have an amazing version of this page in the pitch for a Halcyon & Tenderfoot collection.
There are quite a few things in Halcyon & Tenderfoot issue 3 that we needed to fix when we went through and made the collection pitch. We did the whole comic in just under a month with no editor so there were a good few things we missed. However, I think sometimes you just have to do the best job you can in the time you have. It’s never going to be perfect. I’m not saying you shouldn’t try to make it as good as possible, but I think there’s something to be said for accepting your work based on your ability and the timeframe available to get the work done.
There’s a page in Halcyon & Tenderfoot issue 2 that Lee thought I would hate. He threw out the idea of the grid and created something closer to a collage. But the page is still completely readable/understandable and communicates the ideas and feelings I had written. He took the risk and it paid off.
I didn’t realise it at the time, but Lee loves gross-out humour. I bet he loved drawing those smelly feet and that out-of-date milk carton at the end of issue 2.
Lee draws very good sad moments and perfectly translates what I write when it comes scenes that are meant to be touching. But I think he does get sick of drawing tears.
If you need to say something difficult to an artist, it helps to ask another artist about the best way to approach the situation. One of the strips submitted to Sugar Glider Stories really wasn’t up to scratch and I didn’t know what to say. But a short conversation with another artist really helped to solve the problem as best as we could.
Every collaborative partnership will be different. You have to do the groundwork to get it to be as good as it can be, and then accept it for what it is. I’ve spent a lot of time wishing collaborators approached things the same way that I do but that’s just wasted energy. The reason you collaborate is to bring different elements to a project. You have to accept the other commitments and responsibilities your collaborators have and the time and skills they bring to your project. I have to accept the people my collaborators are, and they have to accept who I am - a worrier, a planner, very honest. If you can’t accept the personality and working methods of your collaborator, you shouldn’t be working with them.
Collaborative relationships should be an equal partnership. I’ve often been afraid that a collaborator would bail on the relationship before the project is complete. But I think this has a lot to do with a lack of confidence in what I was bringing to the table, and putting too much stock into comic book projects. Now that I have more in my life than comics (a house with my girlfriend and a challenging day job) I’m not putting more importance on my comic book projects than my collaborators are. And I’m more confident in my abilities to the point that I know I’m contributing something worthwhile. If the partnership isn’t equal, it isn’t a partnership at all and it will cause you head, and heart, ache.
Additional thoughts
Establishing shots are very important. But not all establishing shots have to be exteriors.
I decided establishing shots were important when writing issue 3 of Halcyon & Tenderfoot. Before that, I’d had too many characters and too much story to bother with anything like setting the scene for readers.
If you create a really cool character design like Gary did with Sugar Glider, you won’t need to solicit for the reader’s drawings - people will just draw the character because they think it will be enjoyable. We got loads of fan art.
I never thought I’d write a scene including a giant robot and I bet Gary never thought he’d draw one. But I’m very glad that we did.
I must have known the story of Don Quixote deep down, because the back-story I had for our Don Quixote character had so many parallels to the book it was unbelievable to me. Originally, I just thought the name seemed like a good fit for the character designs Gary had shown me.
Halcyon & Tenderfoot issue 4 took absolutely ages to get finished (about 6 months) but it was worth it because the comic looks great. Sometimes you just have to accept how long things take - especially when you have lots of paid work going on at the same time.
I think too many first issues are just teasers for the series. First issues need to be packed with story to give the reader a chance to understand your central idea and character - but also so you give them something exciting to get them to come back.
But with the issues in the middle of your story, you have some space to show some smaller moments and give more of a glimpse into your character’s lives.
I always loved that thing about 90s Vertigo books from people like Grant Morrison where you’d get a story that seemed completely separate from the main issue as an introduction. I’d love to do something like that at some point.
I have no idea how Lee reached the decision to reverse the colours in a panel of Halcyon & Tenderfoot issue 2 (black is white and white is black) but it really worked to make this moment of the story seem like a hammer dropping to the floor.
Sometimes the easiest things are the best things. They’re instinctive and full of energy. But sometimes the hardest things are pretty brilliant too. The cathedral full-page panel in Halcyon & Tenderfoot issue 2 took ages to get right and it’s bloody great. So there’s no fixed rule on things that are hard being better/worse.
If your character designs aren’t 100% working, I wouldn’t be too worried about tweaking them between issues. We did it on Halcyon & Tenderfoot and no one noticed. At least, no one mentioned it.
7 Notes/ Hide
- pmhd-blog liked this
- pmhd-blog reblogged this from danieljamesclifford-blog
- danieljamesclifford-blog posted this