So, work work busy busy blah blah blah.
I’ve recently decided to scrap the comic I’ve been writing in favor for two, count’em- TWO, new ideas.
I know. Losing Momentum is the worst thing a comic and creator suffer more times than God can count, but in this case I felt simple was better. The first story had a lot involved and I wanted to do it right. So, I guess scrapped is kinda harsh. How about Shelved? I like shelved.
With the two supposed new concepts, I’m rehashing ideas from old notes that go back to High School.
I’ll give a short synopsis on the original stories, but I’m keeping the titles
The first is called SPILLED MILK. I, literally, created the concept on the car ride back home from seeing ROBOCOP (1987) in the theater for the first time. I was 14 years old and I couldn’t wait to get home to start drawing my cyborg adventures. The title, SPILLED MILK, comes from passing a grocery store that had milk on special and had it displayed as such in their front marquee. I thought that milk was a neat name to call blood and there’d be lots of blood in my epic cyborg future world- and the catchphrase of the anti-hero just jumped out of my mouth, “Don’t cry over spilled milk.”
I was a genius. Or so I thought. I basically just drew beat up cyborgs for a few years along with all the other stuff I was drawing ad nauseam at the time, (see- super heroes, super heroes, and super heroes) and then came one of the comic events that would change my life forever…or until the next big comic event- HARD BOILED. I felt like Frank Miller jumped inside my brilliant brain and pulled out my great idea and made it even better. Getting Geof Darrow for the art? GENIUS!!
I was so awestruck by this in the next ten or so years it took to come out (it was released quite irregularly-over the next two years, actually. It just seemed like 10) that I just figured that my story didn’t have to be told. Mr. Miller and Mr. Darrow had summed up everything I could have possibly said about a cyborg malfunctioning and creating a streak of terror thru people, robots, and cyborgs alike, that my mega epic masterpiece didn’t need to be revealed.( for the record, mine ended with the character finally being killed by a super tank, because- DUH- how else do you kill a super psycho cyborg…or psyborg!! Thank you, I know!!)
The second rehashed idea is simply called Worms. I’ve been a horror films fan since forever. It was being babysat when I was 4 that I was allowed to stay up with the babysitter as long as I stayed in the living room while he watched AMITYVILLE HORROR. I couldn’t tear my eyes away and I had nightmares for weeks and am just now able to look at flies without thinking they’re agents of Satan, but it was one of the first truly awesome character defining moments of my very young life. My parents gave the dude total shit and I never saw him again after, but the short effect for his awesome taste in movies combined with my parents having HBO was just the beginning of things to come.
Naturally, my taste in horror movies went on from Satan and possessed houses. Two of my favorite genres of horror are monsters and aliens. (Yes, they’re two different things. Although aliens can be monsters while monsters don’t necessarily have to be aliens.) So, it was actually a very good friend of mine (who I will keep nameless as he’s not much the public type) that created the concept for Worms and invited me in on helping with the creative and drawing it. I’d go over to his house and we’d listen to punk rock and read the John Byrne Fantastic Four run over and over while creating the horror genre defining comic piece that would forever be put up on the pedestal of awesome-itude. WORMS.
To be honest, I don’t remember what we called it back then, but we ended up stopping the idea after he moved away to college and I had another year of High School and the world would have to do without our opus maximus.
The basic premise was the classic pod people concept meets zombies, at first, then just went all out gross and beyond ridiculous. What all comics should be. And that’s why I still want to make it.
There ya go. Sometimes nostalgia comes back to kick you in the nuts and tell you that you need to remember the times where being creative was fun and nothing but cartoons and peanut butter and honey sandwiches could get in the way of that.
And sometimes that’s all you need.
Stay Tuned
Brad
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