cwisnia

December 2006

So after five pages of drawing buildings that were never in the script, I got back to drawing the story that began the script as “page one”. Back to Dick Hammer in a road rage, careening down the freeway. The sequence was a few pages, and I tried to make the line work wilder and angrier and more out of control. Guiltily, I figured, Well, I can always go back and reference the Chester Gould style when Dick gets to his employer’s, and is sitting with him in the bedroom (Since the Chester Gould style was my original vision for the series).

And as I drew what was originally scripted as the second page, I realized that there was more text than I wanted to have on this page. This is something I’ve felt guilty about for some time. How much goddamn text I put on every page. How comic books shouldn’t have so much writing. How no one will have any interest in trying to read through all that, including myself.

I also realized, basically on the spot, that I wanted to spend some more time showing how angry Dick gets while he’s driving. To show people flipping Dick off, and him driving like a real prick, swerving between traffic, honking, and being a dick.

And I knew I wanted to have one entry as a big panel of Dick getting out of his car and walking toward the camera, looking cool. I began to sketch out the layout, and I’d accidentally drawn the car too big, so it wouldn’t all fit. So I went with it, and drew Dick a little too big as well, so that his head and legs weren’t in the shot. And I realized it was a perfect opportunity to draw him scratching his crotch, because that’s just what he does. But I still wanted to try to capture the shot I’d had in my head, so I drew a second one, with the car fitting into the panel this time, and Dick in the panel. So the story was getting longer and longer, but now a story was being told at the pace it needed to be. This is how these kinds of accidents were happening, and I was just including the entire process in the story.

And next thing I knew, what my script described in two pages, I’d slowed the pace, and enjoyed the journey, and taken thirteen pages. Five pages I made into city scapes, and five just of Dick getting out of his car. And it didn’t matter if the page count was too high, because this wasn’t a comic that had to fit in twenty-two pages. If it took thirteen instead of two, then that’s what it would be now. And I was really pleased with everything, even though nothing was turning out the way I was visualizing. I guess sometimes things just work out okay.

So then I got to the sequence where Dick would see his employer, and where I assumed I could pull out the Dick Tracy style. And the next thing I knew, I STILL wasn’t going to that style.

I thought, I can use his compositions, or his use of cross-hatching. But I haven’t even done that now. I haven’t looked back. I haven’t even flipped through any Dick Tracy strips. I think all that stuck with me is Gould’s use of Tracy in all black. I’ll keep that for Dick, but if anything else comes out referentially, it might be a miracle.

What I did instead is just draw a few headshots of each character. And for the first time, I’m going to do cut-and-pastes, rather than redraw each face, each time you see them. And for some reason, I think it will work okay this story. I wouldn’t do it just any story.

We’ll see what everyone else thinks.

While drawing the faces, I began drawing outside the borders, because I figured, by recycling the same images, that will give me more cropping options, and I can change up the panel compositions that way. And looking at them, I thought, Fuck it. It looks good being out of the borders. I’m going to use them that way too.

I’m getting really excited about this project, and I’m only a dozen pages in. I think I have enough of a head start to begin posting it now. I’m anxious to hear how other people feel about it, once it starts going up.

[IMPORTANT! Weekly readers…Please be sure and read note 7 (seven, below!) ABOUT OUR DICK HAMMER: THE DAILIES ENTRIES]

* * *

Whoops, fans!

In our general neglect of our “Diary of a Struggling Comics Artist” entries, we accidentally posted part two and three of our Dick Hammer: The Dailies entries (numbers 145 and 146), discussing the creation of the artwork, without first posting part one (number 144), on the creation of the story! And on top of that, we were two days late to post part three! Please accept our apologies, by allowing us to post part one and three in the same week! BUT…be sure to flip BACK to part one, (as we went BACK and inserted it chronologically, for posterity), or you weekly Diary-readers will have missed it!!

-Rob Oder, Editor-in-Chief!

 

 

I decided to do a web comic, because I knew whatever “next” project I would do, it would be a big one, and therefore I would be out of the published eye for at least a year. Even if working on a web comic, in addition to my regular projects, would slow down my major projects, I felt it was worth it to keep myself publicly visible during this interim. I also liked the idea of exploring this new medium, in which each short entry would need to be self-contained, while contributing to the larger story.

I hoped to produce one four-panel entry a week. This seemed like a light and realistic enough expectation, which would give me time to continue working on whatever project I felt like working on. So for example, when I first began Dick Hammer, I was still finishing pages for the second Doris Danger humongous treasury. For the most part, I was able to do one Dick Hammer strip and one Doris Danger page a week. When I finished drawing Doris Danger, I tried to continue doing one Dick Hammer entry a week, while editing, page-cleaning, lining up letters and title pages for Doris Danger, etc.

However, with trips to comic conventions every other week taking away so many weekends this season, as well as the fact that we have bought a house, need to pack, move, unpack… and have a kid…I quickly fell behind on my hoped-for schedule. Rats. But I hadn t begun publishing anything to the web yet, because I wanted a head start before I did, so I was only letting down my own expectations.

On November 30th, I drew a logo/cover image. The format I chose was horizontal, like a comic strip, rather than vertical, like a comic book. My original vision was that I would publish the strips like a typical comic strip collection, with two or three or four strips on each page, in a column. Over the months of creating new panels, as I began breaking the borders, changing the widths, and expanding spaces out from panel to panel, I realized stacking multiple strips on a page was no longer aesthetically possible. I decided I would use the comic book-sized page proportions on each page, but horizontally instead of vertically, with one strip on each page. That strip would only fill about half that vertical space (usually), centered with a lot of dead white border around it.  So it became a lot of unused space, but necessarily and eye-pleasingly so.

On the logo/cover image, I used bold thick lines, and retro shading. I was trying to reference the iconic profile of Dick Tracy. I was pleased with how it turned out. But then for some reason, from the very first panel of the very first page, which I began on December 4th, I threw my original idea of a Dick Tracy parody/Chester Gould artistic style out the window. A frenzied sort of spastic line style just developed that I felt encapsulated Dick Hammer s personality. Sort of a pent-up rage and hostility of line. I visualized Bill Siekiewicz s line work, or Simon Bisley s or Sam Kieth s, although I feel ashamed to even say it, since it s so unachievable with these hands of mine.

The first page I drew was not the first page of the comic, although I had intended for it to be. It was of Dick on the freeway. In the script, this was the first page. I fell into my style of line work due to the frenzied, road-raging feel I was trying to achieve during this sequence. When I d finished, I thought, it might be nice to build up to this page, rather than just jump right in. I should draw a couple cityscapes, to establish the “Crude Bay” setting. Give the readers a feel for the location the story takes place in. I found a few photos of Los Angeles (because let s face it, Crude Bay is just Los Angeles), and scribbled out a three-panel page of cityscapes.

But I still had some cityscape images that I had found and kind of wanted to draw, so I thought, what the heck. I ll draw some more of them. And I realized that even though I didn t use a ruler for any of them, they still looked more architecturally sound than I had envisioned, so by the fifth drawing, I was trying to muck up perspectives, and make things more shaky, ominous, and nightmarish. More like these decaying, corrupt buildings could collapse on top of its inhabitants at any moment. Could crush and destroy them. And I figured, this will work fine story-wise. It will be a descent into madness.

And I was enjoying drawing these cityscapes so much, I then decided, I should have a terrifying two-page spread of them, crashing out of the borders. I would throw perspective out the window. I wanted just a hellish Cubism-looking mess of nasty architectural chaos. I planned to draw two pages worth, side-by-side, but as I began drawing, the buildings stacked higher and higher on top of each other. So I decided, Why not? It s still a two-page spread, but the two pages are stacked rather than side-by-side.

And of course it s in the back of my head to draw another city scape at some point later in the story. But that one, I might make a two-page spread horizontally, since I d wanted to do it and haven t yet. And maybe I ll draw it in more of a Dick Tracy style, since I was getting farther and farther off that track.

Now I had pages and panels (which ended up being the first four or five pages, depending on how you count them) of city scapes, and I was pleased with them, even though nothing I d drawn so far wound up as I d imagined. And now I had all these new pages I hadn t originally even intended to include at all. But sometimes you just have to see where the project takes you. I liked the idea of letting the project tell me how many pages it needed, rather than telling the story it has to fit into this much space. I m my publisher, so I ll give myself permission to make it as many pages as I want. It doesn t have to be exactly six issues with exactly 22 pages per issue here. I d let the project dictate what needed to be shown and said.

December 2006

 

Because I have yet to find a format for anything I do that is catching on, I continue to try new things.

 

I’ve tried a 32-page comics series, which was cancelled after three issues (but which the distributor allowed me to publish through the story’s completion, a giant-sized issue five).  I tried a humongous treasury-sized format.  I tried a trade paperback.  I tried sixteen-page formats.  I tried writing a blog.  I tried signing up at myspace.

 

So a natural next thing to try was a web comic.

 

I had envisioned a “Dick Hammer: The Dailies” comic book some time ago, although I hadn’t ever conceived an actual story for it.  All I knew was that I wanted to draw it in a Chester Gould style.  I owned one hardcover volume of Tracy reprints, spanning from the first strip and into the 1950’s.  While in Portland for Stumptown, I found a second hardcover volume of just the 1930’s at Powell’s Books.  I planned for these to be research material, and to reference them similarly to how I reference Kirby’s work for the Doris Dangers.

 

I also thought it might blend to reference DC’s Golden Age Flash Comics, which was an era before there were supervillains every issue, because the writers hadn’t come up with them yet, so the superheroes just fought gangsters with tommyguns.  In a few more years, all these same superheroes would begin fighting Nazis or the Japanese, or Hitler himself or Stalin or Mussolini or whatever Red Enemy was hot in the news.

 

I had one idea for a story element, which came to me years ago, after watching “Out of the Past” with Robert Mitchum and Kirk Douglas.  In the film, Kirk Douglas described how he had been shot by his girlfriend and nearly killed, and now that he’d recovered, he wanted private detective Robert Mitchum to find his girl, who he claimed he still loved.  I found this idea hilarious, and decided I wanted to reproduce it, but with each time the girl was brought back, continuing to make attempts on his life and disappearing again, and the masochistic, love-torn guy continuing to love her and repeatedly re-hire the detective to find her and bring her back, again and again.

 

But that’s not enough to make a full-bodied story off of, so I let the project sit for a while.

 

The actual story idea came to me after watching the film “Somewhere in the Night”.  And when I say “came to me,” what I mean is, I found the story I wanted to steal from to make my own story. 

 

The more I brainstormed, the more elements I wanted to throw in, and the more complicated it all became.  It had to be an amnesia story.  Then I realized it needed two separate cases of amnesia.  I should have Rob Oder and Tabloia Weekly Magazine.  I wanted my characters, The Dirty Stinking No-Good Back-Stabbing Rats, who I created some time ago and who I planned to feature in a different Dick Hammer story that hadn’t come about yet.  I wanted a politician who’s gone missing.  Could I fit The Lump’s private detective, Lance DeLaney into the plot? 

 

I always planned to use a daily comic-strip format.  That was the fun of the whole story.  But now I was realizing that this would be the perfect format for a web comic as well.  I could post it as a comic strip online, and then collect it when it was finished.  And that way, I will still be available to the public, even though I’d be between projects, with lag time while I worked on things.

 

At the San Diego Comic-Con 2006, on a whim, I sat down on my hotel bed with my laptop one morning and scripted the first five strips of the story. 

 

Coming back from the trip, I grabbed out some paper and tried to sketch out a chart of all the different plotlines.  I’ve got a few of these attempts on paper dated 7/3/06 and 7/24/06.  But they would quickly fill up with scribbled notes and I’d run out of space to continue writing. 

 

On October 4^th, 2006, I opened a new file on my computer, and began typing all the various story elements I wanted to include.  If I felt inspired enough by a particular scene, I might jot down some of the scripted text.  The story was always on my mind, I was always trying to find ways to make it all work somehow.  On evenings walking the dog with my wife, I would try to explain the story to her, and she would shake her head at how confusing it all was.

 

But it was so complicated, some things still weren’t lining up right.  I had the elements I wanted, but now I had to boil them backwards to figure out a way that they could all work in one story.  I began simplifying, and that seemed to work out most of the problems.

 

Finally, I just decided I knew enough general stuff about what was going to happen and what needed to happen, that I went to the very beginning and began scripting.  Once I’d scripted about twenty-five entries, I began to draw it. 

 

November 26, 2006

I had just put out three comics on a monthly schedule. It was too much work for me to get the work produced AND try and promote every issue, so I promoted the first, Dr. DeBunko, and then waited until both Doris Danger 16-pagers were out, and then I sent both issues to all my usual reviewers. Now that it’s been over two years of doing this technique, I’ve been collecting a larger and larger list of people who are willing to say something about my works online. I honestly don’t know if I’ve cracked the printed review world, but I doubt it, because I haven’t seen anything written about my comics anywhere. But I do continue to send out copies to these magazines as well.

About a week after sending review copies, I begin doing periodic ego-searches of the books’ titles on search engines, or ego-searches of my own name, to see if anyone is saying anything about the books. Dr. DeBunko did pretty well with reviews. People online were wanting to do interviews, sneak peeks, and reviews. New reviewers who hadn’t given me reviews before spoke out about Dr. DeBunko. That was nice, and I assumed it meant I would get all these same reviewers looking at the Doris Danger books. But for some reason, the Doris reviews didn’t seem to pop up so heartily as Dr. DeBunko’s. And they were slower to appear, as well.

One common theme people mentioned in Dr. DeBunko AND Doris Danger reviews was how the stories are just “one-gag” jokes, building to a punchline. That had been one of my insecurities with the Dr. DeBunko stories, enough so that I even joked about it in the introduction to the issue. But now, are people saying it in reviews because they feel the same way I do, or are they just unclever, and read that I had said it, and believe everything they read? Or they believe anything the writer says about what he writes? The reviewers tended to agree with me, though, that it’s still a good joke, and you just have to read it in small doses.

But then I got a first review suggesting that the reviewer felt that the Doris Danger stories were “one-gaggers” as well. And that’s beginning to get me a little defensive, even if that IS all they are. Because Jesus Christ, aren’t we talking about comic books here? And aren’t ALL comics just a crappy goddamn one-gag joke? And I’m not just talking about flaccid vapid newspaper funnies (which are HORRIBLE DAILY one-gag jokes, year after year). I’m talking about mainstream comics. Superhero comics. Don’t they all just have the same goddamn character fighting a couple thugs on the street as an intro, then finding out a plot from some asinine villain that’s the same as all the others, then fighting them, then beating them, and then moving on by repeating the whole simplistic formula again? Isn’t the entire MEDIUM just one goddamn “one-gag” joke??! Doesn’t it HAVE to be, if you want to keep using the same goddamn character over and over, EVERY MONTH, for forty or sixty years for Christ’s sake?? So why should my characters be singled out?

Except that, of course, I’m being pessimistic because I love superhero comics, all the more if they’re no good. And also, of course, MY stories are pretty formulaic.

Last week, my blog hosting site announced that they had a newer update for the hosting, with all these upgrades and new features.  I loaded it up, and then learned that not only could I not edit any of my previous posts (which I do constantly, whenever I find formatting errors or remember something I forgot to mention).  I also learned I could no longer post a new blog at all!

So I fucked with and fretted over this for a week, and tried to figure out how to get it going again.  Finally this morning, I deleted my entire 65-entry blog, and began a “new blog,” in which I reposted my previous one in its entirety.

What a project, but I’m hoping by tonight, that means I’ll be caught up and able to continue sharing my saga of self-publishing.

I found a mention of my blog at Warren Ellis’s “The Engine” site.  A discussion was going on about how self-publishers should stay away from superhero subject matter, and carve their own niche, because that way these creators will have a voice, and eventually, if they’re good enough, superhero companies will recognize their talent and see their individuality, and hire them to do superhero comics anyways, in the same way they eventually collect up all the talent.

Larry Young from AIT/Planet LAR was supporting this theory, in his arguments against some cocky young upstart, eager to try self-publishing superhero comics.  Larry mentioned my blog, and said, “What makes you think this won’t happen to you?” and he added a link to my “falures of Tabloia” blog, in which I stated all the pathetic numbers my book sold, and how nothing I tried got me any sales or recognition.

The debate became so heated, that Newsarama picked up the story, and said that checking out the argument is worthwhile, if for nothing else, then to read the “depressing true story of Chris” self-publishing, or something like that.

This is all really the first press I’ve noticed about my blog.  It was nice to see some people were beginning to talk about my blog.  But on the other hand, I didn’t realilze everyone considered my blog so depressing.  I didn’t know I was the perfect sample of a pitiable, pathetic, loser in the self-publishing industry.

I wrote a quick email to Larry, and he was so sweet writing back.  He said that he was just trying to point out that he thinks I’m a perfect example of someone who’s done everything right, and how it’s still just so difficult to get any attention or success in this industry.  Larry pointed out that he might not personally have written about all the comics companies I had tried to apply to, to get work from, who had turned me down (himself included), because it might look like my work isn’t good enough for any of them.  It’s a hell of a valid point.  So I mulled it over and decided, you know, this is what has happened to me, and maybe it is pathetic.  Maybe it doesn’t look good that I keep trying to get work, and no one has hired me.  Maybe that DOES mean my work isn’t good enough, or maybe it means I’m perceived that way.  Who am I to say?  But this is my story, and that’s part of my story.  I’m telling my own version of how I perceive things to have happened, and that’s the whole point of this blog anyways.  To mythologically share stories, about the fun, pathetic embarassments, and hell I’ve gone through over all these years. 

I feel like I must sound like a drunk lush, upsetting a chair, all of a sudden raising my voice and shouting out, uncomfortably loudly in a public place, my bitter disappointed frustrations at my world turned sour.  “Fuck it, FUCK IT, bunch-a no good…Sho no one will hire me, sho what?  I’ve got my pride!  I’VE GOT MY PRIDE!”  Slurring my sentences, wiping the saliva off my mouth and toppling, unbalanced, into a pile of trash in the gutter and spilling my bottle before the embarrassed, pitying eyes of all.

And who knows, maybe I’ll keep at this self-publishing for years and years, and maybe I’ll be able to make a name for myself eventually, and then all this pathetic depressing shit that happened to me won’t look so pathetic any more.  Maybe then it will all look ironic, that I worked my ass off, so hard, for so many YEARS and YEARS, but it all worked out eventually.  I’ll be an inspiration, like Jack London who had hundreds of rejection letters before he was published or whatever.

I’m being sarcastic, of course, but JESUS, this industry!  How can someone make it here??!  As long as I’ve been self-publishing, my mind is consumed by this problem.  I find myself not getting any sleep nights, because my mind is racing, trying to come up with ways to just make it in this godamn industry.  It is so bitter and cold in the world of comics creating.

My wife used to joke, if anyone ever asks how I started making comics, that I should just tell them, “Oh, I just decided it’s something I wanted to do, and I just did it.”  And just promote the myth that I was this instant sensation whose work just shined on that first, initial excursion.