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.

Writing... Tougher Than It Looks

By Regie Rigby

So. Writing comics.

It’s harder than it looks.

I confess, that like many people who like to write a bit but have never actually written for publication before, I’ve always had a bit of an arrogant attitude to writing. It’s something that I’ve always just sort of figured I could do, and some of the reviews that have appeared in this column from time to time might well be reflective of that attitude.

Since I actually put my metaphorical money where my metaphorical mouth is, and signed a contract to write my own comic I have developed a much greater respect for the people who actually make a profession of writing anything, but particularly those who make a living writing comics.

As I write this, there’s another window open on my laptop. It’s the draft version of Sunset: Book One, Issue One. I’ve been working on it diligently for five weeks.

I’m on page twelve.

You should understand, that in spite of the recent trend for this column to be posted late (this week being yet another case in point. Sorry), I’m actually a pretty quick writer once I get going. When I’m writing prose I can easily get a thousand words or more on a page in an hour. In my ignorance and hubris, I had always sort of assumed that writing comics would take a similar amount of time.

It doesn’t.

Writing this column is something that I enjoy, partly because it is exactly like talking. I find my subject for the week, and rant on about it in exactly the same way as I would if I was in the bar with a bunch of mates. It has the added advantage of the fact that although I can get feedback and responses via e-mail or on the message board, nobody can interrupt me. (When you love the sound of your own voice as much as I do, that’s pretty much the perfect situation!)

Writing a comic is utterly unlike this.

For a start, I’m not writing in my own voice. When the characters speak, it’s not me speaking, but them, and they really are quite picky about what they say. As a result, although it is the case that I only have twelve finished pages that I am remotely happy with, I’ve written and discarded literally hundreds of pages where the dialogue just didn’t work.

Honestly, most of these characters have been living in my head for years, and I thought I knew them pretty well. Indeed, I thought that because they were my creations, I could do with them as I liked. Not so it seems, because once created, it appears that the characters take on a life of their own.

For example, I created a priest who I wanted to be a pacifist. It’s rather important to the story that this priest is utterly committed to non-violence. And yet, no matter how I write a scene where his church and his parishioners are threatened by a small time crook, I simply can’t stop him balling up his fist to strike his tormentor. OK, so he doesn’t hit the guy, but he wants to, and although that does add an element of realism to proceedings, giving my priest an added layer of depth and complexity, it’s not what I had intended.

How the hell did this character develop free will? Because that’s what it feels like he’s got.

And then there’s the question of how much to tell the artist.

This is a genuinely hard question, and one I hadn’t actually considered until I actually sat down to write a proper script.

You see, I have a very clear vision in my head of how I want the finished page to look, and I’m possessive enough about the vision I have of my story to be worried by the idea that somebody else might mess with it.

At the same time, I’m also painfully aware that every single time the astonishingly talented Paul Green has deviated from my ideas, the result has been infinitely better than anything that I could have come up with. This means that I catch myself mid way through writing detailed descriptions of panel layouts and thinking “why am I writing this – shouldn’t I leave this sort of artistic composition to somebody who is, y’know, quite good at it?”

And always the nagging doubt of “is this any good?”

It’s at times like this that I need to look to others for reassurance. So it’s a comfort to be able to look to Tony Lee and Dan Boultwood’s The Gloom is available at The Chemistry Set - rip roaring, lip smacking, pulp pastiching proof that words and art can go together to make brilliant stories happen. If you missed this little gem when it came out on paper, go and read it now for free! How good a deal is that?

Actually, it’s been a good week for people showing me really cool, inspirational stuff. Sworn to secrecy at the moment, so I can’t say too much, but I’ve been privileged to see soft copies of the next Tozzer opus and the first issue of Tony Lee and Sam Hart’s Robin Hood: Outlaw’s Pride. Rest assured that they’re both outstanding, although in very different ways, because they’re such different books.

Tozzer is setting out on something of a new direction, which I’m looking forward to telling you all about as soon as the creators will let me, and Tony’s version of Robin Hood is, I think one of the best I’ve read in a long long time – and is certainly infinitely superior to the sub-Xena travesty of a show currently polluting my Saturday nights on BBC1.

And then there’s the return of SBC’s own Barb Lien-Cooper’s Gun Street Girl to it’s original home at Graphic Smash. Lien-Cooper and Howe’s occult gunslinger was the first online comic I ever really got into, and it too has been one of my inspirations.

And so, people I know continue to demonstrate to me that what I’m trying to do with Sunset can be done. So as I sit at my desk and grapple with page thirteen, I have something to refer to. Actually finishing a comic is possible – however unlikely it’s looking at the moment!








If you want to keep on top of the latest happenings in the development of the Sunset Comics Project, do feel free to drop in on the Gazing at the Sunset group on Facebook. The very latest stuff, as it happens. More or less.