2. Second priority.
I’ve been working my ass off and really enjoying scripting the new Dick Hammer web comic I’m planning. I’ve got the entire back-story lined up, which is a doozy to sort out, because it’s so complicated. I had to get the back-story figured out, and then the actual comic story timeline begins AFTER the back-story has run its course. So then I started trying to figure out the plotting, and when and how you, the reader, will learn which facts, so that it remains a mystery, makes sense, paces all right, and is hopefully an enjoyable read. After spending maybe a week on this, and it going difficultly, I decided, screw it, and just started plotting. I will figure it out as it goes. I will let it reveal itself to me at its own pace, and I’ll go in and re-work the plot threads as needed, as they flesh themselves out.
This web-comic is going to be in the Dick Tracy newspaper comic strip style, and I will only do four panels per entry, and I’m thinking realistically, I probably won’t do more than one entry per week. I’ve finished the scripts for almost a year of installments, at that pace, and I’m barely into the story at all. My concern is that many of my stories pace slowly, and there’s a lot of dialogue. So I’m making a conscious effort to minimize the text-per-panel.
Overall, it’s going to be a big, slow project, but I’m really looking forward to it. It’s gonna go along slowly, and then after that year mark, you the reader are going to realize something is going on, and even more slowly you’ll begin to piece together all the craziness. It’s going to build to a huge film-noir-style climax, with lots of crazy plot twists. I’m excited about the story. I’m excited to begin something new. I’m hoping to begin drawing this week.
3. 3rd Priority
Once the Doris Danger book is completed, I’d like to jump back into my religious story, “Limbo Cafe,” which is long overdue. This was the first comic script I wrote, years before I began publishing my other comics, and I drew about thirty pages of it a year ago, then got side-tracked.
Originally I envisioned this project as a seven-issue mini-series, but now I have an idea to also produce five or so similarly-religiously-themed mini-comics, and then later include them in the overall big picture. Once again, this is thinking marketing-wise about releasing products while tied up producing bigger, slower projects. This is why I decided to do Dick Hammer as a web comic- so that even though it’s a huge project, it will be something people can enjoy along the way, instead of waiting for three years or whatever it takes to finish it.
So the re-visualization of Limbo Café is that these between-chapter installments, which I will release as home-printed mini-comics beforehand, will be “behind-the-scenes, absolutely true stories of the New Testament Bible,” which will be my own atheist’s version of the Jack Chick-style pamphlets.
And then Limbo Café, I’ve decided to fuck single issues and just put this goddamn thing out as a graphic novel. As a package, it will be fine, but from a marketing standpoint, I just don’t think I can justify trying to do single issues again. I haven’t had the luck for it. Every time, sales have been so horrible. So I hate myself for it, deciding to make the move to graphic novels. Because I despise graphic novels, and I love comics, and I wanted to resist as hard and for as long as I could, but I see it so clearly now…it’s futile, futile…
So these three priorities (the second Doris Danger giant book, the hundreds-of-pages Dick Hammer Web Comic, and the 150-or so page Limbo Café), in all likelihood, could keep me busy for two or more years. Which is a shame, because I’ve got SO many more stories I want to tell. All I can do is pump everything out as fast as I can, and look forward to the next one.