streaming through a shameful window

My second graphic novel is taking me years - years! - to complete, and that metaphor about pulling teeth, well, would be too much because it's not painful exactly, for me or anyone, but it is arduous. As you can perhaps see in the above the folding table has an overly white top, that's because I turned the picture upside down while I was doing the grass to get that good grass stroke, but because it was upside down I thought the tabletop was blank space but it wasn't (so I had to use liquid paper on it). Anyway, I don't want to give away any of the salient points of the story, I will just say that one strand, which is just incidental, is the song everyone's singing here, which is called 'Monument',* which is kind of the 'radio hit' of the early-2000s band the Waving Sticks, which the novel is essentially about, only the text of the song (like, I think, all the songs) is stolen from a small press poetry magazine published in the 1950s by the grandmother of the main songwriter of the band. So he kind of 'writes' these songs, very literary, but no-one realises (or cares?) that he has purloined his material. 

Now 15 years later the drummer of the band, who was unceremoniously ejected from it but for some reason holds no grudge on that front, periodically has parties where she plays the song on her ghetto blaster and makes her friends sing along to it. I suppose that sounds a bit dictatorial - I don't know anymore. I must have written the script for this years ago, though I'm still tweaking it as I go. The above picture was drawn this afternoon and I am not unpleased with it, though it could have been better (everything can always be so). 

It is not the case that I have only drawn 31 pages of the book, of which there are to be 200, as there are some other sections I've completed, ages ago, but also, though I have done most pages up to p. 31 there are still a few I haven't done yet for various reasons. One is that the script has called for two characters to kiss passionately and their head shapes just don't seem appropriate for kissing anything, though I am hoping that I can convey at least the impossibility/improbability/difficulty of the action. 

The Waving Sticks was a name I made up in the mid-80s when I was living in London and I was really irritated by the habit of London scenesters of claiming new bands, who had barely done anything, as the greatest thing ever. I published a fake fanzine making a big thing of the Waving Sticks. To my great pleasure towards the end of my time in London one of my friends came over to me at a Wire show at Hammersmith... Hammersmith something, and said 'theres's someone here with a Waving Sticks t-shirt' - actually, it wasn't. They were wearing a Big Stick t-shirt with a jacket so you could only see the 'G STICK' part of it. Great accidental illusion. 

* This is about all we get to read of the actual poem 'Monument', though it is apparently very daring if not obscene. One reader finds it extraordinariliy liberating. 

bricolage

To a certain extent I'm only blogging about it to lock myself in to continued dedication but I have done around 15-20 (certainly no more than 20) pages of my second graphic novel, Bricolage. I am finding it a lot harder to work on than Persiflage notwithstanding I have written (and rewritten and rewritten) the entire script many times over. I am still not completely good with the very end - the denouement - but I figure after many, many evenings poring over the execution of the 180 or so pages leading up to that point, I will probably be in a position to hit the right note. 

It's almost certain that Persiflage was easier because it was my lockdown project, or at least most of it was, mostly. I more or less made Persiflage up as I went along, whereas Bricolage is, as I just said, written to within an inch of its life. The only thing that's stopping me continuing to rewrite it comprehensively is that I've numbered the 'script' up to this point and so it would be a big hassle to reorder it or add more bits although this might actually ultimately mean that I kind of explode at some point and do a real reworking. The more I draw the better then because I'm finding the drawing much more difficult than I did for Persiflage and so I'm unlikely to be inspired to redo it (though, well, I have redrawn quite a bit up to this point and also, I have redrawn some panels as per the above). (In that case, I had to redraw because I foolishly used a US car as a model so the drivers seat was on the wrong side). As you can see I am using rigid panel sizes as created for me by a computer, so I can easily strip in new panels if I make a mistake or change my mind about something. 

I don't hate what I've done so far, so that's good. There are a lot of bits of the story I'm looking forward to committing to the page. But I am also coming up to a really long party scene, which will take a lot of thinking, and thinking is hard. Butbut once I've completed that I think I will really be fully committed. 

 

i am not your superstar

So as mentioned this is the graphic novel I am going to do next, starting with four or five pages I drew in 2003. I can't remember if I showed you these panels. I figure it will probably not be called I am not your superstar which is the title I originally gave it, although I'll decide later about that (I was planning to call my second one Camouflage or perhaps Bricolage (I looked up bricolage in wiktionary, actually looking to check the spelling because I wasn't 100% certain of that, but I saw that it said 'see trash fire', so that kind of led me more in that direction...). 

The top half is good, the bottom half is abandoned - I photocopied this page, cut it in half and continued it in a different direction. 

I'm really looking forward to working on this, I have a whole new cast of characters for the present-day stuff (the woman is the only important character in the above as far as I'm aware, although the guy with a bull on his shirt, Dominic, might play a pivotal role in the story as I'm formulating it, but let me tell you, 17 years later he hasn't aged well). 

In the 2003 pages she is referred to as Desiree but I have decided that is too much. But with people you have to think not 'what sums them up' so much as 'how did their parents sum them up with precisely nothing to go on', so at the moment I am calling her Posey but I think that might change. l guess she is a bit over 40 right now, which means she was born in about 1978, makes sense, she was 25 in the 2003 pages, now she is a very high-ranking public servant with a daughter aged about 15. That's as far as I've got so far. It feels very promising though, I hope you agree. I am going to do this one in colour. 

Re: her name I actually wanted to call her Monica which would have been perfect but that would be pretty unfair on Monika Fikerle who deserves better! 

unknown new old project

Having more or less finished my debut graphic novel I feel like I might be on a roll and I am kind of inspired to do another. I started one in, I think, 2006* which probably needs resolution. I only did the first chapter (hmm - vague memories of starting up a chapter 2). I published this as a little comic book (maybe ten copies?)** with another unfinished story, but whether my plan was to work them both up into full-length works I don't remember (I actually think not - the sub-story was probably only going to have three or four instalments). I have to say that looking at these pages (some of the originals have been shredded in storage, by the way, which is kind of bizarre, but I think I have photocopies of everything) I must say my drawing was considerably better 15 years ago compared to now. 

I really didn't know where I was going with this story, though I was definitely pushing the envelope in a few directions, many of them possibly even unresolvable. The two main characters were both immensely unlikeable: this semi-naked man, Julian, who is kind of a hippy but/and also a thoroughly unself-aware misognynist, who can't come to terms with anything about his own awful perspective both on the two women he lives with and his son. The woman above who loves him completely one-sidedly, is basically vacuous. I have to say that looking at this now - whether the work itself reveals this or it just brings it back for me - I was 'not in a good place' in 2006.

There was also a sub-plot about the son's friend who is seemingly abducted with the inference that he is murdered, and I remember thinking I didn't really know if that was going to be the case or not, and torn between what you can't do in a comic and what is a cliche. If I pick this up and start again, I will have to make sense of those issues. 

For Persiflage, I was really keen to rule all the frames and then draw around them for a fairly regulated but slightly organic feel. In this instance, clearly I didn't give a loose root about the frame shape and I was relying on feel. I don't know how I feel about that now but if I want to use these pages as is then I will have to stick to that format I guess. 

I do like the challenge of picking up something I started when I was 40 or so and seeing it to conclusion. I think I might have a better handle on how to guide a narrative now (I know that's arrogant, I'm really a beginner, but whatever, it's not my day job or anything, I can just dabble in this stuff for my own amusement, right? Right). 

*Probably 2007, as I discuss it briefly here

** Possibly more because I recall giving it two different titles, neither of which seemed adequate, and drawing two different front covers, although that said whether I printed copies of both I don't remember at all. 

I'm a regular Ub Iwerks

I have written my graphic novel script far in advance of what I've drawn, so tonight I conjured up the characters I've had in mind for some time now. Artur is the kind of apprentice tape op in the studio where we see Sherman making his 'serious' album in the 70s, the one where the Eagles are scheduled to come in and do harmonies the way they did for Randy Newman on Little Criminals. Steve is the producer. Amber and Aspic are Sherman and Grace's daughters, though tbh I'm not sure if we'll ever see them as adults. Piotr is the Polish narrator who describes all episodes of The Rest of Quiglet to Polish television viewers, who Elyse interviews for her PhD. I hope you got all that, but if you didn't, it's written down here so you can refer to it whenever.