Pj's Playground of Terror, er, Worklog
I know I've been terrible about keeping up worklogs in the past, but this I'm doing for myself to keep track of things and to maybe get some feedback when I get stuck. I tend to work in a vacuum, especially on this particular series, so I'm going to try and change that somewhat. Be gentle. 
Here's the basic deal: I finished the Utopian webcomic after 18 months and 109 pages last fall. While I was pretty "over it" by the end of the run, I also left a wide open window to continue the story if I so desired, minus one hurdle: (if you didn't read it, SPOILER ALERT!!) The main character, the TITLE character, died at the end. Apparently.
After the trade paperback release, a lot of people asked if I was doing a sequel. And I guess if it made sense to them that there would be more, it made sense to me. Plus, I went through all the trouble of asking Image to change the title of it's "Utopian" series, so I didn't want that to fall by the wayside either. It didn't take much thought to realize I'd created a world with all these supporting characters, but they never really got a chance to be fully developed, because James/The Utopian told almost the entire story from his POV.
The approach for the "sequel" is to tell a series of interconnected story lines building around the central conceit: that, following James' death, a nonprofit social justice organization is founded in his honor, called (shockingly) The Utopian Foundation. The new story picks up about nine months after the end of the TPB, and we see the impact of James' life/death on his supporting cast: gang member T-Rex has left behind crime and become a volunteer at the Foundation. Football star Nate has gone off to college to play ball, but his little brother is now restrained to a wheelchair due to unspecified damage done as a result of his drug overdose. Michelle and Sean are finding their own ways at Valley University, while bonding over their shared experience with different aspects of James' personality. And then new characters are introduced to make their lives interesting/difficult, including Danielle, a high school senior who blames James for the death of her little brother, Danny. This all builds to a conflict centered around the opening gala for the Foundation's center on campus.
I'm concurrently writing the script (something, honestly, I rarely did in advance during the original run of the Utopian, instead scripting on the fly) and doing large thumbnails, and though I'm not setting any deadlines, I'm trying to stay on relative course to finish it this year. This will be the only comic I am both writing and drawing (as I've mentioned before in P&P, I'm only going to do one or the other for new projects), and I want to spend the time to make it a leap above the first series, while still maintaining the same feel.
Now, here's where the first bit of trusted feedback comes in: I'm not sure whether I want to serialize this for free online like I did with the first volume, or just wait and release it as a graphic novel entire. But if I DO go the webcomic route (I'm about 60/40 on this right now), I sort-of feel like I want to take down the archive of the first series and start fresh posting the new one. A few reasons why:
1. The first few chapters of the Utopian (vol. 1) are ROUGH. I was just getting back into comics and art when it started two years ago, and while in collected form, the progress shows, I fear that when people go to "the beginning" to read it, they might be turned off by the change in style/pacing/quality.
2. Perhaps more importantly, I could use the telling of the NEW volume FREE as a webcomic as incentive for new readers to BUY the collected print edition of the first volume. The way I'm writing the sequel, you don't need to have read the first volume -- not at all, actually -- but if you're into it, and you want to, I figure that's a good way to generate sales. And adds some mystery.
Any thoughts, SWers?
Here's the basic deal: I finished the Utopian webcomic after 18 months and 109 pages last fall. While I was pretty "over it" by the end of the run, I also left a wide open window to continue the story if I so desired, minus one hurdle: (if you didn't read it, SPOILER ALERT!!) The main character, the TITLE character, died at the end. Apparently.
After the trade paperback release, a lot of people asked if I was doing a sequel. And I guess if it made sense to them that there would be more, it made sense to me. Plus, I went through all the trouble of asking Image to change the title of it's "Utopian" series, so I didn't want that to fall by the wayside either. It didn't take much thought to realize I'd created a world with all these supporting characters, but they never really got a chance to be fully developed, because James/The Utopian told almost the entire story from his POV.
The approach for the "sequel" is to tell a series of interconnected story lines building around the central conceit: that, following James' death, a nonprofit social justice organization is founded in his honor, called (shockingly) The Utopian Foundation. The new story picks up about nine months after the end of the TPB, and we see the impact of James' life/death on his supporting cast: gang member T-Rex has left behind crime and become a volunteer at the Foundation. Football star Nate has gone off to college to play ball, but his little brother is now restrained to a wheelchair due to unspecified damage done as a result of his drug overdose. Michelle and Sean are finding their own ways at Valley University, while bonding over their shared experience with different aspects of James' personality. And then new characters are introduced to make their lives interesting/difficult, including Danielle, a high school senior who blames James for the death of her little brother, Danny. This all builds to a conflict centered around the opening gala for the Foundation's center on campus.
I'm concurrently writing the script (something, honestly, I rarely did in advance during the original run of the Utopian, instead scripting on the fly) and doing large thumbnails, and though I'm not setting any deadlines, I'm trying to stay on relative course to finish it this year. This will be the only comic I am both writing and drawing (as I've mentioned before in P&P, I'm only going to do one or the other for new projects), and I want to spend the time to make it a leap above the first series, while still maintaining the same feel.
Now, here's where the first bit of trusted feedback comes in: I'm not sure whether I want to serialize this for free online like I did with the first volume, or just wait and release it as a graphic novel entire. But if I DO go the webcomic route (I'm about 60/40 on this right now), I sort-of feel like I want to take down the archive of the first series and start fresh posting the new one. A few reasons why:
1. The first few chapters of the Utopian (vol. 1) are ROUGH. I was just getting back into comics and art when it started two years ago, and while in collected form, the progress shows, I fear that when people go to "the beginning" to read it, they might be turned off by the change in style/pacing/quality.
2. Perhaps more importantly, I could use the telling of the NEW volume FREE as a webcomic as incentive for new readers to BUY the collected print edition of the first volume. The way I'm writing the sequel, you don't need to have read the first volume -- not at all, actually -- but if you're into it, and you want to, I figure that's a good way to generate sales. And adds some mystery.
Any thoughts, SWers?
Comments
BTW: got back on the horse with Bluetick and Redbone. I'm getting pressured to work over time so its slow going... but as long as its steady we get there.
I don't know where I got the idea to introduce a character bound to a wheelchair, but it just kind-of happened. That's how the rest of this unfolded. I did two pages setting up Luis (in the wheelchair) and Terrence (who we see on the next page), then two pages setting up Michelle at university with her now-estranged best friend, then a few pages each introducing the other major players and conflicts. That was the easy part.
But as I've taken these characters a bit further and moved from loosely tossing out separate storylines to trying to weave them into a cohesive, interconnected plot, it strikes me that I need to decide what is my goal here: Am I looking to create another finite, 100-odd-page story that has a relative beginning, middle and end to package it into a graphic novel? Or do I want to leave it open-ended, and continue writing this like a soap opera, with all these individual stories playing out, overlapping when necessary, but not forced into a contrived connectivity?
I can easily see this going either direction. One would be a true sequel to "The Utopian." The other, however, feels like it would be a new entity unto its own, a spin-off more than a sequel. And that would require an entirely different approach, I think.
So I stepped back, let it cool, and then re-approached it after about a month, tossing 95 percent of the work I'd done out the window and tackling the project, now at least about 20 pages written, purely as an illustration gig. For me, that means researching photo reference I need for each scene - college campuses, dorm rooms, portable classrooms, handicap ramps, etc. - and getting high-tech, building 3-D models of recurring sets. Building those models take extra time on the front end (though not more than scouring the web for photo reference, really), but once they're done, they make rendering different, interesting angles for the same sets much easier. It's almost more like "directing" a comic, except I also have to write it, wardrobe it, act it, set-build it, etc.
But having put in the prep work before actually touching the final art pages, I was able to begin penciling (digitally) the first four pages this weekend with confidence and excitement. They're already looking and feeling much better than before. Now I just have to decide: Digital or traditional inks? Hmm ...
I've spent the last few months reworking and expanding on the premise, which at this point, is essentially the TV series "Angel" meets "Harry Potter." (Yes - a supernatural crime series with heroic undertones). It takes place in London's East End, so I've been doing loads of research on the area, its demographics, its politics, dialect, crime rates, architecture, etc., but one of the things that's been bugging me is I may have been focusing too much on trying to ground this story into the "real world."
I finally realized it's a ridiculous proposition to make the story of a man who controls electrical currents waging war against a crime lord who controls chemical bonds "realistic," so I finally decided to just focus on making it BELIEVABLE instead within its own INTERNAL LOGIC. To that end, I'm setting most of the action in the fictional East End district of "Blackcross," a not-so-subtle take on Whitechapel, which, along with Hackney, will serve as the loose model for the area.
Well, the other thing that's been bugging me is the name -- or lack thereof -- of the proposed series, "Electric." While, shockingly, it's never been used as a comic title before (that I could find), it is a bit generic and doesn't speak to the overall tone/scope of the proposed series. I wanted to rename it East Enders, which I thought would be terrific, but then I realized that's the name of a BBC soap opera.
So when the Blackcross development came up, I realized, damn, that's actually a pretty decent name. Doesn't say much while saying a lot, you know? It's about the PLACE, and the PLACE will be as much a character as the detectives, hookers, drug dealers and central protagonist.
(Also, "Black Cross" is the closest usage in comics ever, a forgotten Dark Horse character from the 1980s last seen in 1997, and no trademarks exist for ANYTHING close to "Blackcross." Crazy how it only took me 10 minutes of web research to find that out AHEM.)
Further, an artist I originally approach two years ago to work on another pitch is on board to draw this thing, and will begin working on the eight-page sample story (which actually draws from a few issues in) this month. So I'm pretty excited and ready to re-focus on the writing while that's being handled.
I'm terribly nervous discussing so much about a pre-pitch, in-development project as I am, but that's what this community (and these worklogs) is for, right?
Right? *crickets*
So not entirely forgotten, but yes... the title is available.
Hmm. Or not.
- "Eastsiders"
- "Chapel's Crossing" / "Chapel Crossing"
- "Blackshire"
- "South Temple"
- "Blacktemple"
Inspired by HIS work, I promptly scratched out plots for five issues of the series, three of which literally came out of nowhere. Love when that happens. Of course, now the series is coming together a little less like "Angel" meets "Harry Potter" and a little more like "The Wire" meets "Hellblazer," but eff it, that's where my head's at.