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.

Sunrise

By Regie Rigby

Hello again – and I’m late again, but this time it’s deliberate.

What? You’ve deliberately kept us all waiting? Why have you done that Regie?” I hear you cry.

Well, I have something important to tell you, but I didn’t want to spill the beans until everything was finalized. Now it is, so I can finally go on the record. I’m very very excited.

You see, today was the first day of the two day Birmingham International Comics Show (rather delightfully known to its friends as B.I.C.S.) – an event I haven’t previously attended. This year though, I had a very good reason for making the trip to England’s second city.

Not that you particularly need a reason to take a trip to B.I.C.S. other than the fact that it’s a damn fine event – which I’ll tell you more about in the next column. But I was there with just one thing in mind.

Regular readers will remember Sunset, a superhero type character I created a while ago and that I talked a lot about early in the summer. One or two of you have been wondering why I stopped going on about it after I’d made such an initial fuss. Well, the truth is, things have been happening behind the scenes, and I just didn’t want to jinx them.

The original idea was quite simple. A friend at work introduced me to a friend of his – an artist who had been trying to break into comics for some time but couldn’t seem to get his work in front of the right people. Did I have any contacts who might take a look at his portfolio? Or could I give his art some exposure in the column?

One look at the art and the only answers I could give were “Yes!” and “Yes!”. The artist in question was Paul Green, and I only had to take a quick look at his website to see that I was dealing with somebody of considerable talent, and I really wanted to see him get his art in print.

I don’t claim to know a lot about art, or how artists should pitch their work, but I did think that there were a couple of things that might help him show off his considerable ability to best effect. Every comics pro I ever talked to about pitching always said to make sure you had a couple of pages of art that actually tell a story. Pretty pictures are all very well, but comics are about putting those pictures to work, and that’s a whole other skill.

So, we needed a script.

We also needed a character that didn’t belong to anyone else. I remember hearing a well known comics editor berating some poor hopeful at a portfolio session once with the words “We’ve got people queuing up around the block wanting to draw Batman. Draw something of your own – if we like what we see, we might let you draw him one day. This doesn’t impress me at all.”

Figured we didn’t need to risk running into that kind of attitude.

So, this is where Sunset came in, an idea that has been kicking around in my head for years. Paul put some concept art together, and we started work on an eight page story. The idea was that we would show that art around at Bristol, and run the eight page story here in the column.

You might have noticed that you haven’t seen it yet.

Well, there’s a reason for that. Actually, there are two.

You see, we showed the concept art around at Bristol to generally positive noises from people in the know. One guy in particular though was particularly impressed with Paul’s art. So impressed in fact that he offered him the chance to do some concept art for him pretty much on the spot.

Then he offered him some more.

Then there was this cover art needed doing.

And so that eight page story never did get finished, because since May, Paul has just been too damn busy. Which was cool, of course, because that had been sort of the point of the exercise. I couldn’t help feeling a little sad that my long pondered character wasn’t going to escape out of my head and onto the page though. It seemed a shame after all the effort that had gone into developing the basic idea. Not just on my part, but on Paul’s too.

And then the bloke who was putting all the work Paul’s way got in touch with me. The Sunset character had caught his interest. He wanted a pitch.

This was significant because the bloke in question was one Harry Markos, the head honcho at top British publisher AAM Markosia. So I pitched. And he liked it.

And that’s why I had to go to B.I.C.S. Harry had a contract for me and Paul to sign. As of about half past twelve this afternoon, I’m pleased to tell you that Sunset is officially “Coming soon from Markosia Comics”. I didn’t dare say anything until we had ink on paper, because I just didn’t want to jinx it, and I still can’t quite believe it’s happening. But it is, and if you’ll excuse me for a second…

WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!

Sorry.

As I said, I’m a bit excited.

I’ve dreamed of writing for comics for years now, but I never really believed I’d ever actually do anything about it. It’s been an extraordinary series of events that have got the project this far, and I’ve already learned a lot – as regular readers will already know. Now I feel able to spill all the beans, I want to take the opportunity to use the column to offer a case study in the life of a comic from inception to publication. There’s a long way to go and I have no real idea what I’m doing, but I’d like to invite you all along for the ride.



Just to be clear, Fool isn’t going to become the Sunset show – I won’t be talking exclusively about the project and ignoring everything else. Apart from anything else I have a whole bunch of reviews of comics picked up at B.I.C.S. to do.

So, I’ll be back on Wednesday (and I really will, I promise) with the story of my B.I.C.S. experience. I have to tell you, it was one hell of a show!