Sad but true. Be happy you got 4 last week I guess.
Why no comics this week? One reason, I’m waiting for Alex to write a special comic (featuring a guest celebrity!) that I want to do before we move on to the next story arch I have written out. Alex, if you read this…HURRY UP!
Secondly, I’m drawing and preparing some special things for next week, the beginning of our month long celebration of the anniversary of I’M FAMOUS! So I assure you that I am indeed drawing, just not the strip, and you can’t see it yet.
A new comic on Saturday and Sunday, bringing the total to 4 new comics this week?! You lucky bastards. I do slave away for you, my stupid fans. Just kidding, sort of. Anyway…on to this comic we’re looking at. I decided to end the meeting! It’s not many comic strips that would attempt to do 14 pages of people sitting in a meeting. Probably for good reason. They couldn’t pull it off like us. Or they aren’t sadistic like us, torturing their audiences.
No, actually I think our willingness to carry out stagnant scenes has become a trademark of all 3 of our comic titles. Alex is a man of talking, not action, which is reflected in his writing. I’ve got something else in mind for this next story arch, the great sightseeing tour. So look forward that, and all the new things it will bring. It is somewhat ambitious, calling for many new settings and more movement of characters, but not too out of line from our past as far as the amount of dialogue and the way the characters act. I think it includes some of our funniest lines and situations yet.
That’s partially why I ended the meeting. Another reason? I said what I wanted to say for now. I’m sure there will be plenty of meetings in the future. They are a big part of the movie making process. While I’m on the subject, I don’t if I’ve ever really addressed this or not, but Alex and I love movies. We watch a ton of them. We read about them, sometimes write about them. On occasion we make them. I majored in film in college. It is something we both have a passion for. We also love comics and super heroes. You can see why we decided to do this strip.
So I imagine we will drag out the story of the movie making process as long as possible, and it explore it as thoroughly as possible. So prepare for my brand new story arch, maybe some shifts in character dynamics, some exploration of the LA area, and don’t forget February marks the one year anniversary of I’M FAMOUS!
This is a fairly personal, autobiographical comic. It is based on the many times I’ve had bosses or leaders of some sort who are just completely out of touch with reality giving me motivational speeches that no one listening actually believed in. Incredibly misguided attempts at boosting moral, or simply just being so ill informed they legitimately have no grasp of the true situation and atmosphere around them. It’s incredibly irritating and disheartening, usually have the undesired effect of upsetting people and lowering moral. It upsets me just to think about it.
Hopefully seeing this happen to others is funny. I thought it was when I wrote it. Reading it now, well it may just be my current depressed mood, but it isn’t making me laugh. Hopefully it translated that all the characters are concerned or upset by the fact that Rosenstein is so totally out of sync with where this movie really is at this point. To be totally honest, I’m not too thrilled about the way it came out and fear I didn’t make the “joke” clear enough. It was a fairly difficult comic to do, and very much outside of our normal spectrum. I can only think of one that was similar, and only thought of it halfway through drawing this. If I had thought of it sooner I could have used it for a reference, as I like that one.
This is the one I was referring to.
I'M FAMOUS! 15, the speech from Independence Day
Usually I wait a day to write these after I post the new comic. Maybe I should have here. Maybe I’ll feel different about it tomorrow. Hopefully I will, and it’s just the depression clouding my view now.
Don’t have a whole lot to say about this particular comic. I wanted to call attention to the ridiculous pet names that the Lone Wolf likes to call people. I really like the fact that our characters all have distinct voices, and many of them have pet names or different ways to address each other. It’s that kind of attention to detail that builds up to make something special. I also wanted to see Rosenstein weirded out by the Lone Wolf, as Alex and I recently busted up looking at there initial meeting when the Lone Wolf was weirded out by Rosenstein. Crazy people disliking other crazy people is always funny in my book. The truly crazy think they are sane, but often seem to recognize insanity in others. I really like those bottom two panels.
As I mentioned, Alex and I recently reread all the I’M FAMOUS! and I must say, they are hilarious. I’ve been a lot of really fun writing lately, and have the next 20 Famouses planned out. A record. Still planning many fun things for the anniversary next month. It’s going to be fun, dammit!
Until then, I’ll leave you with this ballad of movie star fame from the Kinks.
This comic pokes fun at the fact that we do not really explain anyone’s origin’s or usually spend much time defining there powers, which is also true of Black Snow. Why not? Because that is not what our comics are about. Our goal was never to make a traditional super hero story, it was to tell the story of people who happen to be a part of the super hero culture. That’s it. The big secret is out. At its core I’M FAMOUS! is about a diva-like celebrity who is famous because of his brand he’s created as a super hero, and Black Snow is about a man with similar dreams of fame and success, but not the ability to achieve them.
We did flirt with the idea of creating an origin tale for Black Snow and several other characters when we toyed with the concept of Issue 0. It was less an origin story of powers and identities, and more there “origin” of the relationships of the different characters. Basically early moments showing how people met or how certain storyline were initially set in motion. We did we abandon this? It was very difficult for us to write, and we were worried it was hurting our forward momentum that we’d gained with the completion of Issue 6. I’d like to return to this concept someday, maybe after the completion of Last Call.
Dedicated fans who remember my last turn at extendedly writing this comic, during the airplane ride, will recall that I touch on similar subjects of Lone Wolf’s lack of a truly defined super hero identity when he met Nicole. I honestly didn’t connect that with this until I just thought of it and wrote it, but I guess you can see my kind of humor is clearly defined in writing this. Kind of like my constant return to people getting drunk.
The mention of the Inquisition is a call back to Black Snow Issue 2, when the Lone Wolf met with Mary Summerhall and referenced the Spanish Inquisition. Upon rereading the scene recently Alex and I were struck by just how different the Lone Wolf was there. Still incredibly arrogant, but much less crazy and more sophisticated. I believe when we first came up with the Lone Wolf the idea was to basically have him serve a very similar role to Captain Amazing in the Mystery Men movie. So I have him mention the Inquisition here in both an attempt to reconcile the varying depictions of the Lone Wolf and directly point out the contrast. Basically it’s an in joke for fans and Alex and myself, as yet another way to poke fun at ourselves and our “mistakes.”
I like to add multiple layers of depth to the writing whenever I can. I’m still amazed at how quickly I’m able to draw with my tablet. A comic used to take 4-5 hours to draw when I was using pencil and pen, but with my tablet that time has dropped to 2-3 hours. Incredible! I feel like I’m really gaining a lot of control of the stylus, and the drawing on the tablet is almost becoming second nature already.
BTW, I’M FAMOUS! will be turning one next month! A year ago at this time Alex and I were just talking about the concept of this crazy spin off. The very first I’M FAMOUS! came out on Groundhog Day last year, or 2-2-10 for you non Bill Murray fans. Expect a fun celebration and retrospective next month, and some surprises as well!
