Weirdlings

Master Po:
Close your eyes. What do you hear?

Young Caine:
I hear the water, I hear the birds.

Po:
Do you hear your own heartbeat?

Caine:
No.

Po:
Do you hear the grasshopper which is at your feet?

Caine:
Old man, how is it that you hear these things?

Po:
Young man, how is it that you do not?

I started working on a version of this story 3 years ago. My original idea for this story was about a boy who discovers he is a monster, and wanders the world searching clues about his origin. Monster movie meets Kung Fu, the TV series. (Yes the old TV series about a Shaolin monk who travels the American Old West searching for his half-brother.) Anyway, there was this artist that I wanted to work with and I thought this might be a good fit for them because they were into monsters as well. A quick pitch to the artist and they love it and want to work on it. Sweet. I start fleshing out the story, important plot points, characters, etc. all the fun things that writers like to do.

I start sending everything to the artist so that they can begin doing character sketches and getting a feel for where the story is going. This is my favorite part of any collaboration, seeing the intersection between what I’ve written and how it’s interpreted artistically. Let’s just say that I could tell it wasn’t going to work.

So it ended.

I took my idea and wrote the full script during my comic book writing course with Nunzio DeFilippis and feedback from the great classmates.

Then the script sat there. Waiting. Until Scott said that we should do a super-hero book. Then I realized that I could write monster as meta-human and began reworking the script.

More on that next week.

Footnote:
The artist did decide to work on a variation of my idea and it sounds pretty cool. It’s got a neat blend of old EC horror and 90′s comic book feel to it.

“Boom goes the dynamite!” or in this case, boom goes Noel Carter.

After today’s page there are only 3 more left, I can’t believe it’s been almost a half a year of having a weekly web comic. Big thanks to Scott for turning in page after page of sweet, full color artwork.

Only a few more pages left now. Wow. I can’t believe that it’s almost over.