Hello and welcome friends.
So this is in essence, my way of staying honest. This will make sense to some, but hopefully to all by the end of this entry. So I have been trying my hand at making a comic book for sometime now, and well I have no real clue or idea how to actually do any of it if I am being completely honest. I mean yes, you can just do it for sure, but Scott McCloud didn’t write two books for nothing and the countless classes on Skillshare as well are there for a reason. Not to mention, I am kind of a big massive comic book fan, the kind of fan who stares into the soul of each page and panel, looking for meaning in every single line of artwork. Of course I am going to try to apply what I love to my own work, that is only natural. That kind of mixture bakes for a slow moving cake, one that is not even guaranteed to taste any good. Which is kind of terrifying. You want people to at least try a piece.
So this idea was brewing, pun very much intended, about five years ago. It was during my time at George Brown College, I was taking Cartooning and still at the time working as a barista at Starbucks. So I put the two together and created Santos, a skinny calavera looking barista who would be doomed to spend his afterlife serving coffee. That was the first pitch and holy butts, this thing has grown beyond my wildest expectations. Even Santos’ design has had tons and tons of changes, the first idea drawn of him, he was short and a bit more bulky. Looking back on that, it made no sense, this is a skeleton boy we are trying to draw here. When it came time to create a supporting character and an antagonist, I came up with two characters. The teacher/best friend character who also happens to be the love interest for Santos is the grim reaper of Loneliness. She was based on my girlfriend at the time and I had no idea how the character would grow and evolve. Even after we stopped dating, she loved the concept and story of the character so much and really wanted me to keep her in, the Lonely Warrior of Purgatory. The bad guy was going to be Misery, and originally he was just going to be a mean salty prick. Just as everything else, the evolution this character took was huge. I feel like the villain is such a key aspect to telling a good story and they have to be 3 dimensional characters, the heroes of their own legend. Misery now is going to be a very awesome character to draw and write, I can’t wait for readers to meet him.
So as the years passed by, my own story was becoming more and more complex with each passing year. I was working long hours at any job I could get, just to get by and the irony being I was longing for time to work on my comic, and well something would happen and my wish would come true in spectacular monkey paw fashion. Last year living with the pandemic was a lot to take in for all of us, I spent a lot of months in deep fear and anxiety as I assume many of us did. Hell I am still feeling that nowadays, I think we all are on some level, I am just hoping to see the end of this and be able to go out and about, mostly to see my friends in person again and get back to traveling the world. I did manage to begin working on my comic midway through the year though, I had finished the script and had done the layouts for all the pages. I had felt really worn out by the end of it, and little did I know how far away I really was from finishing this project all together.
And while there certainly is much more to this story, it is going to be a continuation for now…stay tuned.
