Valiant Comics has been doing these great anniversary spectaculars for the 25th issues of their books, and I’m happy to say that, as announced at NYCC’s Special Edition over the weekend, I’ll be featured in Archer & Armstrong #25 on sale in October.
As you can see, there are a great many names involved, and I’m super excited to be a part of it. Here’s the full press release and solicitation info:
With 47 hours to go on the Kickstarter and counting, we’ve come to the final installment of the Footprints: Bad Luck Charm page process blogs! If you haven’t checked out the other installments, here you go: Page 1, Page 2, Page 3, Page 4, Page 5.
Once again, this page was drawn more or less as written in terms of panel descriptions, but Jonathan did add an extra panel between the scripted 6.2 and 6.3; there’s a close-up of ‘Resa’s reaction and thus Adam moved her “Oh, really?!” line to that added panel. This works better because it gives more care to her emotional change and segues better into her dive bomb, rather than having that turn be on a dime. It sets up her physical reaction to Devil’s stupidity nicely.
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Only two days left on the Footprints: Bad Luck Charm Kickstarter, and we’ve already explored the behind-the-scenes of Pages 1, 2, 3, and 4… onto Page 5!
This page is pretty straightforward. The only real deviation from the script is panel 5.3, which originally called for a medium shot or so of ‘Resa placing her bet. Smartly, Jonathan conserved space and changed it to a close-up with an off-panel balloon. It just wasn’t necessary to show that many details, not when the location has already been firmly established and we can infer what she’s doing from the context of the scene and her dialogue. Great example of an artist being economical with space.
We’re only a few days from the end of the Footprints: Bad Luck Charm Kickstarter, so I’ll be posting the remainder of these behind-the-scenes pieces this week! We’ve looked at Page 1, 2, and 3, so onto Page 4!
Jonathan more or less rendered this page as I wrote it aside from two notable changes: he added a panel that helps build the suspense of the gambling and he chose a different angle for that last panel, which definitely works better (and is less complicated) than what I wrote. But the thing I love about this page is something that you can’t see from comparing the script to the final art — you’d have to be privy to our emails back and forth to have any idea about it.
‘Resa’s line in the last panel, “Cash in your winnings and never come back” is a nod to one of the greatest movies of all-time, Casablanca. But it wasn ‘t written in the original script that way; it was originally just “Oh, Devil…” as she tried to grab his attention. Continue reading
Only 9 days left, have YOU backed Footprints: Bad Luck Charm yet?
Since we’ve looked at pages 1 and 2 so far, I figured we might as well go the rest of the way and check out the remaining four pages of the Footprints: Bad Luck Charm story. Whereas Page 2 takes a lot of liberties from the script in terms of what Jonathan did with the art, Page 3 is a great example of how Adam’s lettering really helped the flow of the story in a significant way.
You’ll notice that Adam shifts the balloons around a bit, most notably Devil and ‘Resa’s lines as scripted in 3.2 to 3.1 and Devil’s line as scripted in 3.6 to 3.5. While the moves might have been related to space issues within the panels, they both help punctuate particular moments that would’ve been lost under dialogue otherwise.
Generally speaking, I’m not a huge Godzilla fan. I like and appreciate the character, his fandom, and his history, but my love of it all really begins and ends with the profound and penetrating Gojira; everything else is little more than a late-night cinematic curiosity for me. That being said, I was really excited for Gareth Edwards’ new American-ized version, meant to pick up the slack left by Roland Emmerich in 1998’s Godzilla (which had a kick ass soundtrack, to be fair).
Unfortunately, as I sat in the movie theater last night, about 30 minutes in, I got that uncomfortable lump in my stomach. You know the one. The one that makes your insides turn over as you realize you’re really not enjoying yourself. I don’t usually write stuff about movies I don’t like, but the fact that I have no real stakes in the franchise itself and I was still really excited for the movie and yet loathed it has really struck me for some reason. Godzilla is not only a terrible Godzilla movie, it’s a poorly scripted and visually derivative action blockbuster by any standard. I didn’t like Pacific Rim either, but at least that movie had some unique visual flair.
From this point on, there are full spoilers to be had. You’ve been warned!
Last time around we looked at Page 1 of Footprints: Bad Luck Charm, in which Jonathan followed my script exactly. Page 2 has significant changes, and I think goes to show how much a good artist and storyteller can help improve whatever you’re trying to do with the story.
So often, as a writer, you’re lost in the script and the dialogue and trying to think so visually that you’re neglecting the core of the scene and what it’s about. That was the case in my script for page 2, I think, where I was doing more to establish the setting than I was the characters (see below).
As the Kickstarter for the new Footprints wears on, I thought it’d be fun to take a look at what goes into a page of the book. Here you see the full script for Page 1, which Jonathan followed pretty much exactly (next time we’ll look at Page 2, where he deviates from the script and makes it better).
Over the weekend, the kind folks at Bleeding Cool asked me to write something about Footprints. This is the piece I wrote, but you can read it over at Bleeding Cool as well along with the pages of Footprints: Bad Luck Charm.
We all remember our first true love. It’s the one that made your heart blossom. The one that cut deepest when it was betrayed. The one that still lingers somewhere inside of you, every single day, no matter how far you’ve come since the time you felt that first unmistakable flutter. You’ll love other things in your lifetime, of course you will, but the first will always be your first and nothing can change that.
When it comes to my career making comics, Footprints is my first true love. It certainly wasn’t the first comic I made, but it’s the first one that felt right, that felt special, and that I was truly proud of. It was a creator-owned mini-series by me and friend/co-creator/artist Jonathan Moore that we began working on in 2010 and released in 2011. It’s an amalgam of everything I love; a noir whodunit starring Bigfoot as a private eye trying to track down his brother’s killer with the help of his old pals Jersey Devil, Nessy, Choop, and Megalodon. It’s weird, it’s funny, it’s scary, and it’s us.
Joey Esposito 