All Aboard!

Excerpt from "Quickies" published in On the Romance Road

Mass transit is featured often in my comics, from airports and train stations in Cavalcade to a complex subway system and maps for Arche-City in Arche-Lady.

I was so excited about the artist loft I moved into back in 2010 for many reasons: great space, great community, and my loft overlooks several rail lines. Sure, the noise can be distracting, but it's also fun to watch the trains roll past.

Most of all, the MBTA's Greenline extension (GLX) was to break ground in 2011, with service expected in 2014. Then expected in 2017. Then 2021. 

But it's happening! Starting TOMORROW, the short leg of the GLX opens to Union Square!

Of course, I'll probably never use the trolley to Union, as the closest station will still be Lechmere. But the GLX construction closed Science Center and Lechmere stations to make the former accessible and the moved the latter across the McGrath, so now it's even closer to me.

Someday, maybe late in 2022, the other GLX branch will open to Tufts. That;s when it gets really exciting. Both the D and E trains will stop through Lechmere, with one going on Union, the other Tufts. But it will double the trains stopping in Lechmere, making service to my 'hood more reliable. 

Technically, the East Somerville station will be closer to my building, but I'll probably only use it when I am headed to the airport with luggage. 

Check back tomorrow for a thumbs up or down update!

UPDATE: the train started running today, 3/21/2022 5:05 AM.

Not much to show for Winter term?

Winter term for me was to be all about thesis project prep work (organizing thoughts, arguments, outlining, etc.). But the term was very disjointed, as I am also trying to maximize the last of my grad school months. Disjointed and stressful, and though I did things out of order, by the end, I ended up right on track.

Wedding gown ideas for Jenn's stepson's pregnant fiancee.

Here's what I worked on, though there's not much to show for it:

Thesis

1. Thesis prep--right on track and ready to start writing.

Clamantis entries

2. Colored, finalized, submitted second installment of my 9th & Pine vignettes.

3. Drafted and edited script for the third and final installment of 9th & Pine, prepped pages to pencil.

Summer term prep

4. Assembled summer workshop application, submitted.

5. Drafted, edited Podcast pilot script, discussed w/Thom (one of two projects for summer workshop needed).

6. Brainstormed idea and drafted summary (second project needed).

Awards

7. Drafted script to submit for upcoming student award; edited--not going well

8. Kept "current" in background for award I'm in the running for, in case I was called for an interview.

9. Was called for said interview, so took a solid week to prep for it.

And, not grad school related:

10. Drafted, edited social tile design to help promote Liebestrasse; generated tiles for release date and quotable quotes X 3 (horizontal for Twitter/FB/LinkedIn; square for Instagram; vertical for Instagram Stories)

11. Assembled, filed 2021 taxes (thank you Mayumi for preparing them!)

12. Doctor appointment, dentist appointment, two vet appointments, four dog haircut appointments, one human haircut appointment

13. Tackled to do list of things I hate doing (arranging for A/C repair and replacement, etc.)

Plus my full-time job made for a swirly three months!

I just mapped out Spring term, with only one project: write first draft of thesis!

 

Cereal

A deranged-looking Captain Horatio Crunch aboard the SS Guppy

It takes a long time to break a bad habit. I've read it's seven weeks, but sometimes the struggle is much
longer, or feels it.

One of my successes is breaking my love of breakfast cereal. More precisely, sugary cereals.

When I was very young, my parents taught me how to pour a bowl of cereal and milk so I wouldn't have to wake them in the morning. And, every day until I was 36, I ate a bowl (sometimes two) of cereal. Froot Loops, Apple Jacks, Fruity Pebbles, Cap'n Crunch, Lucky Charms, and the cult classic monster cereals and Quisp. The observant among you noticed I didn't call out any chocolate cereals... though I'd buy and eat them, to me they were only a step ahead of Special K or Raisin Bran.

I bought up vintage cereal boxes on eBay (sometimes with the vintage cereal still unopened) and learned as much as I could about the characters, prizes, marketing, and history of the chemical recipes. I became incensed when a company changed its formula or production method (that's for you, General Mills, for your yo-yo strategy behind Trix!)

Breaking this habit, obsession, and way of life was not easy. But I was able to create a ritual of making breakfast. Slow cook oats, yogurt, an egg or two, and when I lived in my little house, I'd pick fresh strawberries, blackberries, blueberries, and apples from my yard when they were in season. And for someone who's a notoriously simple cook, I can manage a near full-English by myself for a few guests.

These days, I only buy cereal under three circumstances: if I am extraordinarily busy (think end of term when everything is due at once and you can really use that 20 minutes of prep time on some other task), as a very special treat, or when traveling and experiencing foreign sugary cereals.

Go Ahead and Say "Gay"

We've entered an era where women's rights are eroding with chipping away at Roe v Wade, white supremacists are dampening voices of color with voter suppression laws, and Florida's pending "Don't Say 'Gay'" law will keep more kids in the closet.

In many ways, the law enforces the environment I grew up in as a teenager in the 1980s. Gay kids stayed in the closet, often not coming out until after university, or later. Few would have dared to confide in a teacher. 

Such a lifestyle rarely curbs homosexual behavior... it might delay it, it might create lifelong feelings of self-loathing... it might create a culture of drug and alcohol use, self-harm, and suicide... it might bury feelings do deep that they don't surface until someone is married with children, keeping their activity to illicit cruising grounds... but it rarely stops it.   

I suppose, the law will enable parents who don't want their children to be gay the opportunity to mess up their kids' lives... and keep their straight children in a make-believe world that homosexuality doesn't exist. I can't even begin to discuss the impact on trans kids and adults.

Excerpt from "Quickies" published in La Revue de LGBT BD and On the Romance Road. Colors by Matt Beaugrand.

 

Most of my work includes gay characters. My work recent work less so, as I have been encouraged to "diversify" and on one hand, I've grown as a writer as a result... but on the other, I'm sad I took my foot off that gas pedal.

So, as a reminder to you, but mostly to myself, a list of my work with gay characters: 

• Liebestrasse (OGN)—Phillip, Sam
• Sandwich Shop at 9th and Pine (comic shorts)—Tim
• Baby Makes Three (OGN, radio play pilot)—Trevor Kitten
• On the Romance Road (collection of comic shorts)—most characters 
• Stuporstition (screen play)—Clark, Joseph
• Saved by the Bell (TPB series)—unnamed couple in the background of every story I drew
• "Not Allowed to Play" (comic short in Vertigo's Strange Sports Stories)—Mike
• "LDR" (comic short in Marvel's Nation X)—Northstar, Kyle
• "Music/Boxes" (comic short in Oni's Hopeless Savages Greatest Hits)—Twitch, Henry 
  
• Cavalcade of Boys (TPB series) and its spin off OGNs Love is the Reason and Trust/Truth—pretty much the whole dang cast.
• Strugglers (OGN)—Tighe, Mike Hawkswell
• "Things Don't Always Suck" (comic short, short story)—Nate
• The Cupcakes (mini-comic)—the whole cast
• Mod Monsters of Marvy Manor (mini-comic)—Matt
• The Faggy Phantom (mini-comic)—Bruce
  
• Arche-Lady (comic series)—Astro-Boy, the Ant

I'm pretty embarrassed I didn't work an obviously gay character into Radio KNOW, but perhaps I will in the next draft. 

If you are struggling, I can say it does get better. There are people who can and will help. If you can, try the Trevor Project. Hang in there.

Work I Hope You See

 

I had been hoping my screenwriting class would be one of the highlights of my graduate school experience, and it has been. Years ago, when Cavalcade was under consideration as a TV pilot, without any screenwriting experience whatsoever, I hadn't been considered as a writer. This was to help change that.

I threw myself in to the class, and did all the recommended reading in advance, and did the first week's homework before the class started (the latter was due to me misreading the syllabus, but it worked to my advantage in the long run!).

Though I was encouraged by a few to write Arche-Lady: The Movie, I resisted, turning instead to an idea that had been long locked away.

I really only had the basic plot, the main characters, and one scene in my head, but I always had thought of it as a film.

After some futzing around in Final Draft, the story poured out of me! My professor paid me an amazing compliment about my main character along the way, "They don't write parts this good often."

The story is a comedy about a medium and her sister in a race against a pair of grifters to defraud an old man. I loved writing Maevis. We were told not to "cast" in our writing, but in my head she was a cross between Kristen Wiig and Mrs. Roper.

I had so many blocks in writing the screenplay, but it was a great lesson in pushing forward. Toward the end of the term, I was on a roll and finished my draft. For the final two weeks of class, I just revised, revised, revised. Another great lesson in persevering without inspiration. Go go go. 

I went through the trouble to copyright my draft and submitted it here and there. Nothing came of that, though nothing ventured nothing gained.

With Radio KNOW, I lived with the characters and really missed them when the term was over. Not the same with Stuporstition though... I was exhausted by term's end. But I emerged with a workable draft... and the story does lend itself to be rewritten as a graphic novel and I can see myself drawing it someday. 

Someday!

Inspiration is for amateurs...

I've had a love/hate relationship with Chuck Close's quote. If you're unfamiliar,

"Inspiration is for amateurs. The rest of us just show up and get to work. If you wait around for the clouds to part and a bolt of lightening to strike you in the brain, you are not going to make an awful lot of work. All the best ideas come out of the process; they come out of the work itself.” 

It's how I've lived and breathed my work in comics. Just keep working. Page after page. Almost nothing scrapped or revisited. Learn by doing. Though there have been some embarrassing results when I look back at early work, for the most part, I think my diligence and perseverance paid off. Each project better than the last.

In comics, I've focused more on my draftsmanship, and I can easily operate by showing up and getting to work. Inking, no problem to shut my mind off, listen to music or British comedy panel shows while I get the page done. Penciling for me requires silence, but still, I usually have no difficulty sitting down and visualizing a panel, page, or spread layout, compose in my mind, and draw. Though it never looks as good on paper as it does in my imagination, my best is my best.

Looking back at the quote, I might want to differentiate between inspiration and being inspired to work on a project. The latter is always more fun!--not being able to fall asleep because you're thinking of a project. springing out of bed in the morning to work on it, eager for the day job day to end to get back to the project. 

Writing had been where I probably had been letting inspiration strike. And, given how long it takes to draw a story, I could afford to wait. Entering graduate school, inspiration wasn't an option, and good or bad, I've kept writing.

Lately, I've been worried that I've still needed inspiration, with a few challenging writing projects at my door I've been delaying, postponing, and also procrastinating. But, huzzah, a breakthrough! Though I'd been ignoring the two projects, it was always due to a higher priority, often with deadlines in the latter half of 2021: thesis proposal, grant application, my final graduate course work, a short story for Image.

Turns out I didn't need inspiration, or to be inspired, I simply needed time! Without other work and projects with deadlines looming, I was able to produce respectable drafts of two projects that had taken the position of dead weight. Though my lack of progress had been nagging at me, creating an unsavory appeal for them, once it was their turn, I could simply get to work. 

The first was writing the pilot episode of Baby Makes Three as a radio/podcast play (you can read the OGN via comiXology). I'd had a few false starts... it was difficult to divorce myself from visual writing. The plan so far has been that my singer/songwriter friend Thom will write the music and songs. 

The second was the third vignette of my Sandwich Shop at 9th and Pine series. The first vignette was published in the peer review journal Clamantis (I'll blog about it soon), the second vignette has been penciled, inked, lettered, awaiting colors, and the third vignette was spinning wheels in the mud. But here, too, I was able to produce a good first draft.

Progress on these two projects has been a huge weight off my shoulders--knowing that now for writng too, I don't need inspiration, or to be inspired. Still lots of room for improvement, of course... so please excuse me while I get back to work.

 

 

Work you will and won't see

 

In the Spring 2020 term, when the College was scrambling to convert to classes via Zoom 10 days after the world (or at least our corner of it) went into lockdown, I took Playwriting Workshop.

I was a little nervous for the class, as I am not much of a theatre-goer and I was uneasy using the medium to its fullest potential. But I ended up loving the professor, the class, the plays we read, and writing a few plays of my own. 

Our first assignment was to write a short play (a page or so) utilizing an element difficult to use on stage. I chose a stream and running water. Nothing special there, except it was a good warm up.

The next assignment was to write a 10-minute play. Here I turned to a stalled comics project. I had drawn a page of a short story, of a Roman soldier and a shepherd, with the general premise, but as I mentioned, I was stalled. Shifting gears, I developed "The Roman Road" as a 10-minute play, and I was very glad for it. The story (I think) worked well relying on dialogue. Set in Britannia 400 AD, it's a story of the oppressor and the oppressed, and finding a common ground as a starting place.

The centerpiece of the class was to write a one-act play. I dug up an idea I had in my head for a very long time, which felt somewhat relevant to the moment. I wrote "Radio K.N.O.W." as a metaphor for people's reaction to change associated with the pandemic. I read about common reactions to change, both of people, as well as organizations (not quite the same thing). I had hoped to keep the character set more contained than it ended up being, but, I didn't really want to leave a common response out. I wanted people to see themselves and others they knew in the play. The central question, "what are you going to do?" calls the characters and I hope an audience to manage their reaction, response, and actions against adversity as a choice to make (of course, we're imperfect beings, and even our good decisions and choices can be difficult to adhere to, as the main character Sharon experiences along the way). I re-read my draft at least twice a day, editing and tweaking it. I was living and breathing it. I'm not sure I've ever been as invested in a group of characters as I was this set. It's a relatively straight-forward play, but I loved writing it, and reading it. An added treat: a group of former colleagues of mine, including two with a little acting experience, did a table read of an early draft. I wish I recorded it! It'll never be a comic... but I hope you can experience it somehow, someday.

After the course ended, I wrote "On the Roman Road" as a comic short, drew it, and colored it for submission to the graduate school peer-revue journal Clamantis. You can read the whole story on the journal's site. It was a very strange experience re-creating the story as a comic. It's definitely a bit different, since a comic can't lean on dialogue lest it become a "talking heads" comic but there was an easier avenue to introduce a bit more action than the stage might easily allow.