Memory Lane the Sequel
Hi, everyone!
I have returned from my adventures in the midwest and am safely entrenched in the east coast. I’m glad you all enjoyed D-Rey’s reviewing of his path to Shadowgirls and in light of his willingness to bare his soul I’ve decided that I can do no less!!
Well…I can do a little less. You’re only getting this page out of me.
The image above was penciled and inked by yours truly sometime around 1997. Some friends of mine had started a literary magazine called “The Eclectic Screwdriver” and one of their editors, a certain Lewis Harris, asked if I would be interested in contributing something. This was back when I felt that I was going to be both writer and artist and so I offered to do a few pages of a continuing comic book story. They agreed and the very first published version of Starkweather was born. My work was printed and distributed throughout Rockford and the response was nice. It was my first taste of what this could be like. (And I bet if you work hard enough you might even be able to dig out some copies of that magazine somewhere.)
This initial version of Starkweather was very much influenced by the comic Preacher and I was trying very hard to be “edgy”. Like every superhero comic I currently hate, almost every character was some kind of deviant or douchebag and they were all trying to out douche each other.
It wasn’t my best work but it was where I started to develop the skills that you need to transfer thought to page. How to pace out the story…and maneuvering so that you always end the page with a reason to turn to the next. (A technique some of our Shadowgirls readers might be familiar with. 
) And most of all it left me with a consideration for what the artist goes through.
But it was also where I learned that drawing comics was not part of my future. The images on the paper never approached what I had in my head and it caused me no end of frustration. I abandoned the story after 18 pages and focused on writing and directing plays in college. (Which, in hindsight, was a good thing. ) I think sometime in there I sent a pitch of it to Vertigo along with a script sample but I never even got a response.
It wasn’t until almost five years later that Starkweather reared his stubborn ass head again. I would abandon many of the original plans, but a lot of the core ideas were strong enough to survive. (He always had “a belligerent talking iguana”. I think that scene is word for word the one I used in the 90’s script that never surfaced.)
The rest of this week will trace the steps I took in moving my fledgling series forward and how that led to my current adventures here with you. If you care to see ONE other page that I did, you’ll have to hit the vote links.
See you on Wednesday!
