On July 29, 2005, I began drawing “Limbo Cafe,” the first serious comics project I wrote (serious meaning it wasn’t from high school or before), and which had been sitting on the shelf for eight years.
I always knew I wanted to go back to it. Those firsts are always the special ones. The ones you remember and long for romantically, even if they weren’t really that good.
Now seemed like a good time to pull it out again, because I’d finished my story-arc for “The Lump,” and concluded “Tabloia Weekly Magazine.” I could put out a trade or two of stories from Tabloia, of “The Lump” or Doris Danger, and that would help keep my name and comics on the store shelves while I undertook this next major project.
Politically and socially, I was getting annoyed and vexed by the country’s conservatism, fundamentalism, blind patriotism, and politics. Now this is just my opinion (and everybody has a right to their opinion), but whenever I turned on the news or read a paper, I saw our politicians insisting on the righteousness, infallibility, and correctness of anything they did. They distorted or misquoted facts to support their propagandistic agenda. They told us what we should think and chastised anyone who felt differently, unapologetically denying anything they handled poorly. And they refused to look at other perspectives and ideas. So under this conservative climate, I thought it would be an ideal time for me to release my story of an atheist who dies, finds himself in an intolerant, Christian Fundamentalist afterlife, and critiques all the potential problems and dangers he sees with literally interpreting scripture.
In addition, I’ve been feeling like this might be a good project to try and get some support from the Skeptic Society, since they were supportive of my Dr. DeBunko character. Perhaps they’d be willing to hook me up with one of their religious scholars, and I could get a proof-read, or some suggestions.
So I decided this would be the next project I do. I pulled out all my eight-year-old scripts, and did a quick read through. The story was originally visualized as seven 24-page issues. The main reason for this is that I didn’t really know of any other format. I thought that’s just how you did comics.
Now, re-reading it, I made some changes, and wondered if I should make more, but began drawing July 29th, and figured I could edit along the way.
The story had scenes on Earth, at the Gate of Heaven, and in Hell. It was in the script for sequences on earth to have five panels per page, Heaven seven per page, and hell six. I knew I wanted a grittier style of art for Earth, and a clean, simple style for Heaven, and a scratchity-nasty-dirty style for Hell.
I had been looking at illustrations from Illuminated Manuscripts, and decided each page in Heaven should have ornate panel borders that reference this art form. Believe it or not, the pin-up Tony Millionaire drew of a giant Kraken for my Doris Danger comic had a border, and that’s what got me thinking, as much as anything, about doing panel borders on these pages. I picked a panel border and laid it out on that first “Heaven” page.
I liked how it looked, but found I would have to make the art inside the panel as simplistic as possible, to keep the page from feeling too busy and cluttered. So the borders are intense and intricate, and the drawings inside are almost stupidly simple. But for better or worse, that’s just what felt right, composing the page.
I told my wife how much work it was, drawing out this border. She said, “Why don’t you just make copies of it, and use the same border for each page?” I thought about it, but realized that wasn’t at all what I wanted. As I got going, drawing more and more of these borders, friends began asking, “Did you hand draw all these borders?” They said they’d look at them, and then think, “He couldn’t have hand-drawn these. Look at all the detail. This would have taken forever.” But then they’d look closer, and they’d see the blemishes and accidents, the lines that weren’t quite perfect angles, or little mistaken lines that carried too far, or didn’t repeat right throughout the pattern. And then they knew these panels were handmade.
And that’s exactly how I imagined this project. Because they’re supposed to reference Illuminated Manuscripts, and Illuminated Manuscripts were all hand-made, and you can see little imperfections and blemishes in them, and so I wanted mine to be the same way.
It reminded me of a talk I had with a wood-worker. He told me he had the skill that he could carve a perfect circle by hand, if he wanted to. But when he did, potential buyers would look at it, and they wouldn’t show much interest. So he started purposely putting imperfections and wobbled lines and edges. And then potential buyers would say, “Wow, isn’t this nice? It’s hand made, see?” And THAT’S how I wanted my art to look with these panel borders.
Even though it would take me forever to draw all these elaborate borders, the good news is that once they were drawn, and I put all the lettering in, I could draw the panels in no time at all. So I could catch back up on my schedule in that way. The borders would be so exhausting to hack out, it was a nice break to just whip the simple drawings out afterwards.
In the original script, I had a number of sequences that took place on earth, that could lead to a potential sequel to this story-arc. When I got to the point in the script where it was time to draw these, I did a layout for one page, then never bothered even so much as lettering it. I’m wondering if I will just leave all these sequences out. Or alternatively, if I should just save them for use as an introduction to the sequel, if I ever decide to do a sequel at all. Another thought I had was that I could do three or seven regular issues of the story, and then collect them in a trade that also contains bonus footage of these Earth sequences. So many choices. But it really just boils down to whether the sequences would serve the story or not. I still haven’t decided how I want to handle this.
While putting together the Doris Danger humongous treasury, and then the Lump trade paperback, I managed to finish thirty-one pages of “Limbo Café,” and also to draw borders for six more pages. The last day I spent on this before getting fully distracted into other projects, was November 26th, 2005.
I kept going, and continue to go, back and forth, as to whether I want to release a few 48-page prestige issues, or just release the entire project as an original graphic novel. I think about the pages I’ve done now and then, and I always feel like something isn’t quite right about the story. Is that art not quite right? Whenever I look it over or read through it, though, it seems to be okay. I’m looking forward to spending time on it again, and finishing it up. Only a hundred fifty or so pages to go…