I’ve been spending the long weekend working on finishing up Blueboy Brown Comics #4. I had this entire book done, but then I realized a different story that I’d been pondering since the beginning of the series.
I went with it.
I’m the writer, artist,, editor, and publisher. I don’t have to pass my ideas through a committee. No suits have a say in the content of these books. Indie creators know what I mean.
Anyway, I just thought I’d post this. If you’ve been following this comic, you know it spans 150 years of history, from the Civil War to the present, in the life of one family, the Browns. It’ll portray several generations. The present story arc already has three generations in it.
I can’t really express how much fun it is to make comics that allow me as a writer to explore a set of characters in-depth, and their adversaries too. There are a lot of them.
I have the plot of the series worked out. As I go along, I let the story talk back to me. Some plot devices just come to me, like one did today when I was making my breakfast. I started laughing because this element I have seen in the real world and it makes sense. It also brings in a thread that enriches the tale and lends credence to the developments in the second trilogy, which will occur a quarter century after the events of the first trilogy.
This is maybe what makes the writing and drawing of my comics the culmination of everything I have done as an artist for the past fifty-plus years. Every medium (painting, drawing, printmaking being the main ones) I’ve explored is being employed in creating it. Next semester, I begin teaching a college class in cinema appreciation. I suspect that will have an effect on the series.
We’ll see.