Category: Color choices

When Jeff suggested that we try to get back into comics (him drawing and me writing), he immediately suggested the Dystopia material that I’ve been regaling you with in these first few posts. When he did that, he asked me to send him everything: the “bible”, the scripts, future story notes, and so on, as he hadn’t read any of it in years. What I also sent were a few short stories that I’d been writing in more recent years on the suggestion of my friend, Margot, that Jeff had never seen. Years ago, Margot had read the bible and a bit of the other material and reasoned that, if I couldn’t find an artist to do it in comic format, I should just write (or rewrite) the stories that I had and do everything in prose. That way, I wouldn’t have to rely on anyone to enable their seeing the light of day other than me. I’d become so fixated on the material in a visual sense that I’d never considered trying to change format and approach them from another angle. Some of that fixation remains, since we used to do everything in black-and-white at Fifth Panel because color printing was yet another expense that we (meaning: Jeff) couldn’t really afford. Consequently, I imagined almost every concept and character for Dystopia in black-and-white and that perspective remains to this day. Jeff has talked about adding color to the finished panels for the first story, which is based on one of those short stories that Margot suggested- written over a decade after the studio had ceased operation -and I find myself still imagining everything in black-and-white, such that adding color to anything feels foreign. I think Into Darkness could probably remain black-and-white, although I understand that adding color to it will attract more eyes and allow us to reveal some more details about things like the Netwights and so forth. The next story, though, will definitely benefit from a little chromatic accessorizing…

Into Darkness was intended as the opening segment of a serial novel. Even doing prose, I couldn’t escape the comic roots of the concept. What I wanted to do was a series of connected short stories- nine of them, in fact -that could stand on their own but still be a part of a continuing presentation; kind of a serial novel, with each segment taking place on one of the city’s nine levels. I realized in thinking about the whole concept that the later stories would more clearly be really long chapters in an actual novel, since the characters would be reflecting on previous events and interacting in a manner that involved that continuing story. But the first three or four or five could easily just be “days in the life of Dystopia” that spoke to one corner of the differing nature of each level. The central plot of the novel was an eruption by the Netwights/Jackwraiths in both the Real and the Now, respectively. You’ll see me regularly using that little catchphrase that is commonly wielded by the inhabitants of the city to talk about the outer world (the “real”) and the inner world (the ShadowNet or the “now.”) It was something I thought about when developing the concept of the city as I noticed how quickly news traveled on the then-nascent Internet, compared to the everyday world which still depended on newspapers, TV networks, and word-of-mouth. That phenomenon expanded beyond anything I was considering 30 years ago, such that, on today’s date that I’m writing this, the current president of the United States announced that he was not running for reelection not via press conference or delivering a letter to the New York Times, but on the social media platform formerly known as Twitter. That was inconceivable 30 years ago. There was the real and today there is the now. The entities that are the wights and the wraiths exist in those domains, respectively, but they’re just one of the most outward examples of how intertwined those domains are, which is why the catchphrase exists.

All of that said, Into Darkness is about just one aspect of The Rim, which is Force Command. The previous post talked about a few others, so there are still many directions that we could go if we decided to venture back to the top level. It is, of course, also only the first half of that story and we will finish it, but we’re going to sail down to the second level for the second one: Midwife, aborted which is, again, one of those short stories of the serial novel but involves a concept that’s been with me from the very first imaginings of the setting, which is The Tribunal, the dominant presence on the second level, and the Midwife program, which is a key element of the Tribunal’s genetic purity efforts. I’ll do a post about level Two as I mentioned at the end of my post about The Rim, so I won’t go into too much detail here. But there’s no hiding the fact that one of my favorite concepts within the setting is that of the fanatical, fascist, ultra-religious, Kafkaesque Tribunal and its various manifestations, including its own network, known as TrinityNet. So we decided to switch off from completing the full story of Bradson and Frazier up on Point and figured we’d engage at least the first part of how that surge of wights and wraiths is impacting at least one of the other levels of the city. I’m not sure if we’ll follow through the entire plot of the novel just yet; mostly because I never finished it. I completed the first three stories (although there’s room for them to be expanded) and got about halfway through the fourth (Stake and the Knightshift on Four, key characters in that story, are among my favorites of the gangs that are everywhere in the city) before losing the flame for it. Now that Jeff and I are back at it, this may turn out to be the compelling factor in its completion; not least because it’s a solid look at every level of the city all the way down to the Well. (Just as an editorial aside, I’m still debating about constantly capitalizing the articles before proper names that are major elements, rather than personal names. In other words, I’m questioning whether I should keep writing things as “The Tribunal” or “the Tribunal.” It may just be a question of me saving one keystroke (e.g. not pressing Shift more than once when writing those names.))

I kind of detest doing survey work, which is what I feel like “introducing” people to the concept is. I don’t want to be writing a guidebook. I want to be writing stories. But the serial novel was intended to be both an introduction to the overall concept AND a solid story, so beginning where we do is a convenient opening, but I’m not really concerned about holding people’s hands on the way down, either. One of my all-time favorite comic writers is Howard Chaykin, who basically never stops to give people any kind of introduction to plot or setting or characters. He just dives right into whatever story he’s writing and assumes that you’ll catch up as he moves along. There are pros and cons to that approach (Howard has never really been a “hit” comic writer) but it’s always felt more “honest” to me and I want (need, really) this project to be compelling, rather than seem like a chore, since it will end up producing better material from my end if I’m enthusiastic about what I’m doing, rather than feeling like I’m writing yet another guidebook to all of the amusement parks in my head. I’m not trying to imply that Into Darkness isn’t compelling. On the contrary, I hope people find it to be a great springboard into everything else that we’re doing. But I just don’t want to feel, again, like I’m letting people in easy. There’s nothing easy here, in the real or the now. So, next time, level Two. Maybe.