Regular readers of the daily update will recall the comics-making experiment we're doing over at Comic World News called "Proof of Concept." Every three weeks, editor-in-chief Caleb Gerard will post up a twelve-page script by me, and artists can draw it. The one Mimi and I like best will be published in December as part of a graphic novel. I do commentary and make suggestions on the previous week's work and offer another script for artists to draw. Lather, rinse. Repeat.

This week's script, Hemogoblin, is one I'm real proud of, because it's everything I like about writing. I'd had the marketing hook in mind for a while: Anne-Rice-meets-The-Fugitive, but nothing in it really gelled for me. Seemed a little on the banal side. Then, when talking about it to the missus, she asked me if I was stuck because I thought the story was about the last vampire in the Blade Runner-esque future. "Seems to me the story's not about the vampire, but what a vampire suddenly appearing does to society. Pick a couple of folks and see how it relates to them."

ding-ding-ding

But even that's not why I like this one so much.

You'll have to hit that link for the column and scroll down to the bottom and download the pdf or the rtf and give it a read, but the short version of why I like this one so much is because these guys in the story just whispered in my ear, like what happened with Astronauts in Trouble: Live From The Moon. That the act of writing the story was more like transcribing a history of what happens than of crafting a story to entertain. It's a weird metaphysical distinction, I know.

Anyway, when writing Hemogoblin, even I thought I was writing the story of a retiring security guard and his replacement on the night their world changes forever.

I got to page twelve, and it turned out I was writing something else.

No one was more surprised than me when those two showed up at the door.

Laura "Tegan" Gjovaag wins the unofficial blogger's contest I had going, in that I had sent a bunch of comics all around to the comics bloggers people told me were the industry-opinion leaders, and I wanted to see who'd mention us first. Go, Tegan!

http://realtegan.blogspot.com/

To do:

dist. POTC & DEMO 6

paper for Charlie; smooth/rough tooth

Call Jon P.

Tucker's link

CODEFLESH/100 STORIES/POTC covers for site

UPCs & ISBNs for next five

SCURV #2 dist allottment

S&G contracts for K & A

David Jones & Bill Sherman packs

Real nice write-up by man-amongst-men Todd Casey of Bri and Rob G's Couriers 02: Dirtbike Manifesto in Wizard 151, out today on the newsstand and at your local purveyor of fine comics. "...makes Reservoir Dogs look like a trip to Six Flags" was a personal fave. Brian also lets slip the title of next year's Brian Wood Month offering: Couriers 03: The Ballad of Johnny Funwrecker.

Didn't update Proof of Concept over at Comic World News last week in order to give people three weeks total to take a stab at each script. Seems like the original timeframe was just a little too challenging and was scaring some folks off. So we'll air it out a little, and hopefully artists will have a little more fun rather than be too stressed out about it. I'll give you a link to the new one on Friday.

"Then he got up and shambled out of the room, weighed down, Randy thought, not so much by the stress of his job as by the knowledge that no one was ever going to give him the Nobel Prize for what he had just done."

-- Neal Stephenson, Cryptonomicon

Been reading all the usual suspects, and a thought occurs: if you have an established website or review column or comics blog, just ask me for review copies if you want to review something of ours. We're good like that. No problem.

Also, here's me, Mini-Me, James Sime, Kirsten Baldock, Anita and Jared Guenther, Ryan "Frying Pan" Yount, and Bri Wood, keepin' it real.