STRIPS 4

They say to write about what you know.  That writers take little pieces of themselves and inject them into the characters they create.  I think this is probably true, at least while starting out.  The easiest way to get a believable story is by having believable characters.  By pulling from ones own life it's easy to create a believable story.  I think that's why Public Education has been well received.  I live it every day.

The kids vernacular and questions are taken as directly from my students as I can remember or jot down.  I'll edit things down occasionally to try and best set up the gag for the strip, but I try to get the speech down right as often as I can.  

I also benefit from having a built in audience to test my ideas on.  Chances are if the ladies at work find my story amusing, the joke has potential as a strip.  If I can't boil down a funny situation into a line or two I know it won't work as a Public Education.  A few teachers around the school are fans of the strip as well, so I can get real time feedback on the strips, which is a luxury I don't think many web comic creators are afforded.

In short I think Public Education works because I love my job.  Public Education is the quirky little whatever that makes my day special at work.  If I can share with the reader why my job is cool, then I think I can keep them hooked.

The picture above is a portrait one of my students did of me last week during their indoor recess time.  I love it.  It's awesome how many of my students love to draw.  I hope every last one of them keeps it up.

-Jon O

I was recently involved in a terrific discussion about writing believable characters with some fellow comic writers and fans.  The conversation steered quickly toward the necessity for characters to have their own specific voice.  I think that this is a valid point.  I've heard many modern comic readers complain about older comics because of stilted dialogue or cookie cutter personalities for heroes.  It's something I do give a lot of thought and I figured I'd highlight just a few of my characters and my thoughts on their individual voices.

When writing for Moonfish I always try to first think about how I would approach a topic at my most skeptical.  Moonfish grew up in Forest without any other interaction with men, so she isn't very chatty or personable.  I also want her to be act as a voice for the reader.  Her inquisitive nature helps me answer questions about how the 3rd World operates.  Her inexperience with the world mirrors our own.

Nimbl grew up in Canyon so he is a much more loquacious sort.  I try to form his dialogue based on my most enthusiastic responses.  Nimbl loves to talk, and loves to hear himself talk.  I try to have him ramble often and distract himself.  It has been a fun challenge to have a character that rambles, but doesn't artificially inflate balloons to obscure the panels.  I'm not sure if I've been completely effective, I second guess my decisions with every edit.  I think the challenge is worth it, as I can really separate his tone of speech from that of Moonfish.

Some characters I have given the same speech patterns as people I know.  Mera's few bits of dialogue were taken from what I imagine a friend of mine would say.  The children of Public Education are oftentimes verbatim recounts of what I hear at work.

For the Heroes Journey I've been reading up on lots of silver and bronze age comics to try and help myself recreate that same feel.  I'm using lots of alliteration and puns in my banter.  I'm using more narration than ever before.  I've even started toying with caption boxes to the reader.  Everything I can do to make the legends of my Heroes read and feel like the old heroes I read about in comic books.  Here's a sneak peek of what these Heroes are going to look like.

Thanks for reading and as always I hope I gave you something to think about.

-Jon O

As Timothy wrapped up work on the third issue of 3rd World I was beginning to notice a problem.  Things seemed to be dragging.  There wasn't enough action and excitement.  It's no fault of Tim's, it's the script I wrote.   I still feel that 3rd World benefits from a slow paced introduction to Moonfish and Nimbl, but I need some more excitement to break up the character moments.

My solution was to take an idea for a spinoff of 3rd World and insert a sort of back up story to the narrative.  I've been wanting to do a good old fashioned super hero romp since reading through Drake and Premiani's original run on the Doom Patrol.  The stories are fantastic and you never know what to expect in the course of each fast paced issue.

My plan initially was to have my own separate Heroes Journey run later if I wanted to continue playing in the universe I'd created.  It's not my only 'side project' in the 3rd World, but it seemed the best suited to solving my current dilemna with the main story.

3rd World is a story of the everyman, but they still have their heroes.  These stories could be the legends the people of 3rd World tell to their children.  They would, in effect, be the superhero stories of the time.  That way I could be throwbacky and fun, and really embrace everything I love about my favorite golden and silver age comics.  Things like Fantomah, The Flash, and other superheroes that start with the letter F.

These fun little super hero shorts will be interspersed in between the chapters of 3rd World.  I planned for each Heroes Journey story to further explore or explain an aspect of the 3rd World that is hinted at or introduced in the main story.  In that way I hope that I can explore the universe from two different perspectives.  I want these stories to feel very different tonally.  Ideally this will add true value to each series' story and serve to make the abundance of quiet moments in these first few chapters more powerful.  I guess I won't really see how effective it is until I see everything finished and intertwined.

I'm trying to adjust and correct shortcomings as I come across them, but always in a purposeful manner.  I don't want to just keep massaging my story until it loses its shape.

-Jon O

What can I say about issue three of 3rd World hmmm ... trouble comes to mind.  This issue was full of trails and tribulations, how would I draw Lady Archane, how would I deal with the lighting inside her great tree, what should the first Vicer look like?  All of these questions were floating around in my head as I started the first page.  I had drawn page after page of concept art but it did little to focus my vision.  So as I always do in these situations I plunged head first into my work determined to figure it out as I went along. For the most part I'm happy with how everything came out and I met my deadline but there are a few pages that seem like missed opportunities.  For example the pages where our characters find themselves inside the great spiders tree didn't end up anything like I envisioned them.  My goal was to created a moody shadow covered room with little visibility, then have Lady Arcane slowly emerge from the shadows. What I ended up with was far from the shadowy room I intended for.  Luckily I still think the pages work as far as storytelling goes and I can promise the next time I attempt a shadowy room it will come out better.  

-Timothy O'Briant

When I first started thinking of creating comics I always fancied myself a writer.  I spent months on the scripts for 3rd World.  I researched and built the history of the world, thought about the motivations of each character, where they were from, why they behaved the way they did.  I wrote and rewrote, edited, read over, edited some more.  Hopefully it turned out o.k., I don't want to over massage anything and dilute the story.  I'm also aware it's my first script and there are some flaws in it.

I also routinely write and draw at least 3 comic strips for Public Education a week.  This gives me practice with sequential story telling and helps me think about how timing works in the medium.  On the penciling side of things it also helps me work on conveying emotions through my cartooning.  It doesn't help me with any long term narrative pieces though.  That's what I wanted to work on.

My new years resolution was to write a 22 page script a week.  Professionals do it.  I should be practicing that too.  I tried to script a little Batman story my first week and it was a disaster.  On top of my other comic responsibilities I fell woefully behind and gave up on my very first endeavor.

My second week I've toned it back to an 8 page script.  It also helps that a friend wants to try and pencil some comics and asked me to write him something short and sweet to try his hand at.  This gave me an audience to try and please and plenty of freedom.  I think trying to write an established character was paralyzing instead of an easy start.  I felt like my story had to be at a certain level to deal with the bat, where my story could be anything at all.  As long as it was fun for my friend to try and draw.

Setting a smaller more realistic goal really helped, maybe I can work my way up from here.  The important thing is that I practice writing every week.  And that's what I'll do.  Batman always teaches us lessons.  Yeah, he scares the !#$@ out of us, but he's a determined somebody.  That's what I what I'm striving for.

-Jon O