Childhood Ambitions

I've been reading the first America's Best Comics collection, which has some beautiful work in it, particularly the Promethea strip homage to Little Nemo.  At the back of the book is a collection of sketchbook pages from the many artists involved.  Quite a few graphic novel collections have these pages and they could perhaps be seen as a bit self indulgent, but I really like them - seeing the ideas develop from initial sketches through to finished art.  But reading it now, a week before we start drawing our first chapter, it makes me realise that these guys are drawing all the time.  I know, obvious really.  They do many character sketches before they draw the actual comic.  They do sketch layouts of scenes and whole pages before getting to work on the finished article.  

They do this for a living.  They draw all the time.  How are we going to get anything worthwhile done in three days?  We have lives.  We have families.  Maybe achieving childhood ambitions is a younger man's game?

This got me thinking about the comics I did draw as a kid.  I started when I was about six, inspired by a pile of black and white Spiderman comics (weekly UK reprints of the smaller, colour American monthlies) that I had somehow acquired.  

[A standout memory from those Spiderman comics was a villain called The Prowler.  He didn't have any superpowers, just a costume that consisted of utilitarian clothes and boots (maybe his work clothes?), and a mask (a cloth bag pulled tight over his head, I think) and cloak.  There was a scene in which he quite rationally weighed up the pros and cons of being a hero or villain and concluded that whilst the potential risks were about the same (fighting, falling off buildings), the rewards for being a villain (cash, stolen swag) much outweighed those of being a hero (gratitude), so he would become a villain.]

Another inspiration was a British weekly (The Dandy?) that had a strip in it called Billy The Cat and His Assistant Katy.  (Those British comedy/kids weeklies always seemed to have one adventure strip that was drawn more realistically in black and white, as pastiche-d by the Viz strip Black Bag - The Faithful Border Bin Liner).  I remember once playing a game inspired by this comic strip, and my Mom, in an early attempt to address the sexism common in the comics medium, suggesting I play Katy the Cat and her Assistant Billy.

Anyway.  I carried on drawing comics through until I was about 16 or 17.  I don't remember the earlier attempts too well, but the comics I drew in my teens I have probably got in a box somewhere.  What I know they all had in common though is that none of them were ever finished.  I wouldn't write a script or even a plot.  I'd just have an idea for a character or group of characters and a situation.  Then I'd start writing it by drawing the cover of the First Issue.  Some of them (one called The Blue Bullet comes to mind - though that was more and idea for a costume (er, blue) than for a character) didn't get much past this one page.

Others I'd get a few pages in before getting bored with drawing that particular character's costume, or giving up because I had no idea where it was actually going, narratively.  A few of these later attempts I remember well.  Triple Agents - a cartoony detective story in which the three incompetent Triple Agents (who were all hat and mac, no faces) were aided by an unacknowledged fourth Agent and his assistant - a small yellow creature of some sort.  Bruce The Spaceman, about a spaceman called Bruce (always wore a helmet so I didn't have to draw his face) and his talking cat, who also wore a space suit.  Puma, about a teenage superhero (wore a mask, of course) who's friends don't know he's a hero and doesn't get the girl (hmmmmn, Spiderman transfered to the Midlands).  Street People - an extremely violent gang warfare comic set in the Post Apocalyptic Future (this was the mid 1980s); that one got as far as the end of the first big fight- about 5 pages.

There were some attempts to do it properly.  My friend Aidan wrote a couple of scripts for me to draw.  One a modern day noir detective/assassination story, and one an adaptation of Kurt Vonnegut's short story Harrison Bergeron (everyone wears masks, great).  These were better produced, but again only ever got a few pages in, partly because Aidan lived in Harrogate and I lived in Walsall.

So, we should be able to do something better than those unfinished masterpieces, I would hope.  But the spectres of the comics that we read now, that we aspire to, sees to hover over the project.  Perhaps I should do some preparatory sketches.