Who's Who in the CBU 2008

Name: Regie Rigby

Regie is a strange, almost ethereal creature. Who can plumb the hidden mysteries of his dark and murky past - a past which contains a terrible secret. A secret that taught him that with great power comes great responsibility, that criminals are a cowardly superstitious lot and just who exactly knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men.

By day, he assumes the appearance of a mild mannered teacher, bringing the joy of literature and the English Language to classes of enthralled and enthusiastic students. But by night?

By night he goes home and writes lesson plans. Sorry. That's as interesting as he gets. Really.

The rumours about rooftop struggles with underworld uberfiends, the gossip about the hidden cave filled with hi-tec equipment and the suggestion that his car might be fitted with turbo lasers are all nonsense.

When he's not teaching he reads comics. Sometimes he combines the two activities. When he's not doing that he's either playing computer games or asleep.

The Importance of Artists

By Regie Rigby

Exciting times are coming, my foolish friends! Indeed for some of us, they’re already here. Readers of the Fool’s Errands message boards will already know that long standing friends of this column Stu.Art and Chris Lynch of Monkeys with Machineguns have a strip in the current issue of Judge Dredd: The Megazine. I feel strangely proud, somehow. Congratulations boys – it’s a well deserved accolade. Can I encourage everyone reading this to dash out and grab themselves a copy? Go on, the Meg’s quite good these days anyway, so treat yourselves and support your fellow fools!

I’m also rather pleased to note that my own LCS, the lovely Destination Venus will reach its second birthday on Saturday. The Venus boys will be at the Leeds Comics Mart for the day, so if you happen to be passing (and I know there are some Leeds locals reading this) do stop by and say “hello” to them.

In other news SBC’s own Tony Lee confirms that the long awaited Hope Falls is ready to go and is solicited in the latest Previews. For the record the order number is SEP073850, and you should trust me, and place you order now. Seriously, you don’t want to miss this – from what I’ve seen Hope Falls may well be the reason the universe brought Tony Lee and Dan Boultwood together. It really is looking that good.

Tony Lee is a modest bloke, and he’ll never tell you that Michael Moorcock has called him “one of the best Story-Tellers working in comics today”. That doesn’t make it any less true. (Both at Tony is one of the best writers working in comics, and that Michael Moorcock said it…) I’ve had my eye on Hope Falls for a while now, and I’m desperate to get my hands on the full story, which promises to be a supernatural thriller like no other.

But I have other reasons to be excited. One or two of you have been wondering what has happened to the Sunset project I was banging on about a while ago. Well, lots of stuff has been going on in the background. The art for an eight page “trailer” is just about done (slowed down by the vast amount of work the artist has had to do for a publisher we met at Bristol), while I’ve now just about completed profiles for all the major characters and scripted the first draft of what has turned into a five issue story arc.

As soon as the trailer is finished, we think we’re going to have a go at pitching the character to a publisher, just to see what happens. As soon as we’ve done that, whatever the outcome, I’ll be running the trailer here in the column and inviting your comments. I’m finding the process of creating a comic like this both challenging and exciting – and I’ve learned a lot about storytelling as I’ve gone on.

Whatever happens with Sunset, I’ve gained an increased respect for comics writers – It’s a lot harder than it looks, let me tell you. Pacing is particularly difficult – the need to ensure that every twenty-second page ends on a cliff-hanger without messing up the narrative flow is something I’ve talked about when I’ve been in “reviewer” mode, and I’ve been critical of writers who don’t do it well.

In future I’ll refrain from such arrogance I think – it is hard to get that right. Much harder than I thought it would be. Even working out how to link sections of story between pages takes a lot of thought – most of the re-writes I’ve done on the Sunset script have been to ensure the right images have appeared next to each other.

I’ve also gained a deeper understanding of and respect for the work of artists. My conception of the artist’s role in the creation of a comic has, in the past been rather simplistic. Regular readers will know that comics for me are about stories not pictures, and that I’ll happily buy a comic with a good story and bad art, but however impressive the visuals nothing will induce me to spend money on a bad story. Art, I had always thought, was simply not all that important.

Surely, I thought, it’s the writer that creates the story? Then, if the writer isn’t drawing the strip themselves, it’s the writer who tells the artist what to draw?

How wrong can you be?!

Working on Sunset with my mystery artist (still not telling you who it is – all good things to those who wait…) has taught me how writers really work with artists. Sure, I told my artist what I wanted on the page. But what he drew was his interpretation of what I asked for. Most of the time what actually ended up on the page was something I couldn’t have ever thought of myself, and invariably it was better.

My artist, it seems, sees the world in a different way than I do. His mind is more visual than mine. While I spend ages thinking about what goes where, he seems to do it instinctively, and can usually tell me why my way doesn’t work. He also understands what to do with light and colour. I just sort of imagined that daylight is daylight and night is night – just as I thought that black was just, well, black.

The art that has come back to me has taught me the error of that simplistic view too. The art for the Sunset Trailer has done things with light and shade that seem obvious now I’ve seen them, but that I could never have thought of if I’d stared at a page for a decade. I may have created the characters and the situations, but it’s the artist that has created the look, and given it all life. I had never really appreciated before that it is the artists vision that is the reader’s primary experience of the comic, but now I think of it it’s obvious that it would be.

We take in the comics page visually. How the page looks, whatever our views on the importance of the pictures, affects the way we read and experience that page. I can tell you that reading the finished and lettered pages of art for Sunset was like reading the story fro the first time – which when you consider that I wrote every word on that page, and I decided on the situations portrayed there tells you just how much difference the artist makes.

I dunno, maybe it was just me in my story obsessed blinkered arrogance that didn’t see this and everyone else has always understood this perfectly well. I’m pleased to have learned it now, because it has changed the way I look at comic art. And It’s got me to thinking. How do you read comics? Do you focus on the words, or the art? Do you allow your eyes to skim over the art, or do you spend time interrogating each panel? What matters to you, and what would improve your reading experience?

The boards are open. Let me know.