Cartoonist Commentary , Serious Creatures Issue 1

 Cartoonist Commentary

 My book is not about Rob Bottin.

 But there would be no book without Rob Bottin.

 His career and legend served as inspiration for this story, but I have no interest in trying to tell his story.

I’m much more interested in telling the story of someone who lived a life similar to Rob but also similar to myself.

 And also, not at all similar to either one of us.

 Because it’s only behind masks that we’re finally able to face ourselves.

  …whoa.

Cover

The cover for issue one is an homage to Basil Gogos’ Werewolf of London cover for Famous Monsters of Filmland #115.

Basil Gogos was a big influence on the coloring of this entire comic.

Credits Page

I think the concept of a rating for each issue and it being the credits page came pretty early on once I decided that I was going to make the story a comic book and not a novel. Of course, then I had to think of a clever rating for each issue that reflected the story, didn’t give away too much of it and maybe had a couple stand-alone jokes in there.

I also decided that since the first issue revolved around the brother and sister dynamic of Bobby and Laney I would dedicate issue one to my own sister Allison. Allison’s middle name is Lane (Ali Lane, get it? She named one of her sons that too) so I figured I’d include her middle name in the dedication, so you’d see the origin of the character Laney’s name.

Oh, the first arc’s title “Never Been to California” is also the title of a song from my old band Bicycle Fight. The song’s title came from the fact that I had lived in Tucson Arizona since age 11 but at the time I wrote the song (age 21-22?) I had still never been to the neighboring golden state.

Oh, oh! And I always wanted to do the Kurt Vonnegut/ Stanley Kubrick thing of having an alternative title a la Dr. Strangelove Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb or Slaughterhouse Five Or, The Children’s Crusade.

Page 1

I had just read Mister Miracle by Tom King and Mitch Gerads and was taken by its extensive use of the 9-panel grid. Which of course reminded me of Watchmen’s masterful use of it, so I wanted to try my hand at it. But I also was not gonna use it on every fucking page! No thanks. But I did like the idea of opening the issues with it and using it as a pacesetter for getting people into an issue. The only problem was I was also a big fan of splash page intros followed by double page splashes for pages two and three! Erik Larsen of Savage Dragon does this a lot and learned it from 70s era Kirby. But back to Mister Miracle, that book reminded me that you can break up a big single image with a grid and still get that pacing while also the wow factor of one big image to set the reader on notice.

Best of both worlds, right?

This 9 panel first page thing also led to me making every single issue open with a nine-word sentence. Which sounds restrictive but actually helped me a lot. Sometimes perimeters pave the way for possibilities.  

On to the page itself, gotta go with the Jaws poster, right?

I was just beginning to write this as a novel, I got one chapter in and I kept thinking about the possibilities making it a comic would open up. The surreal imagery, the subconscious of Bobby Feckle and the symbolism a special FX artist might conjure up…I kept thinking of this iconic poster but with Bobby as the soon to be devoured swimmer….had to do it.

Also, drawing sharks is fun as hell. At least from this angle.

Page 2

The first pages were done as an experiment to see if I liked this story better as a comic than novel.  Before I drew them, I also did a three-pager detailing Rob Bottin’s infamous space cantina George Lucas run-in. (Later adapted again in issue 3) Both that three pager and these four pages I posted online and then, once deciding to keep going and make this a full comic, I recolored these four pages drastically from that earlier online version.

These four pages are me stumbling into how the coloring of the comic was going to work; how it would soften and offset the harshness of my linework, how it would give it a dreamier feel. By the time we get to page 5 I feel like it’s starting to look like the book I wanted to make.

Panel 2, the comedy/tragedy mask monster is of course based on one of the forms of the Rob Bottin’s alien in The Thing. I chose it because Bottin fans would know it, Thing fans would too, but also it resonates with the duality of this story. Plus, it was a good time to draw. This was drawn separately and added later after bipping up the original panel.

Panel 9, this and the presiding panel mark the first appearance of the forebodies! Their look reminds me of Jason Voorhees or the Shy Guys from Super Mario 2 with their big circular eyes. Panel 9 reminds me of an Edward Gorey pose.

Page 3

Panel 1, Ben Cooper Masks were a little before my time, but I had some older cousins who rocked them for Halloween. I think the packaging is iconic, so I used it and I liked it so much I used it again for the cover of issue 5.

Panel 2, our first shot of Bobby Feckle’s face. When I first drew Bobby, I think he looked about 15 or 16, knowing he was only going to be 14 here I had to figure out how to age down my design. With my style and my lack of experience as a cartoonist I eventually settled on a rounder face to denote his youth. I also decided to give him big ears -like really big honking ears -this was done not only to help show his youth but also because I just like them. I think they help make him identifiable and it goes towards that Mickey Mouse/ Astro Boy/ Bart Simpson silhouette character design theory sorta thing.

It didn’t occur to me until after this issue came out how similar this feels to panels from Understanding Comics where he breaks down why a simple happy face can be easier to connect with than a well rendered face.

Page 4

 I think every single line of text in these first 4 or 5 pages is straight from my novel version’s chapter one rough draft. With maybe a little punch up.

Page 5

Removing the holding line on the issue title was a good choice and I use it off and on throughout the issue, on the next panel and the bottom of the page I use it on the car. Which gives it a more painterly look, I think.

Once I decided I was going to go full Gaiman/Moore and do quotes I quickly thought of this line from one of my all-time favorite Dylan songs.

I was also excited to do title pages with the words incorporated into the art. I had recently reread Swamp Thing and really liked the way Bissette and Toltiben would do that.

The reason I used the song “Seasons in the Sun” was because it was a hit around 1974 and I could see people getting sick of it being played too many times.

Bobby’s sketch pad shows his pencil drawing of a shark, presumably based on the book cover for the novel Fin. This is the first time I made the choice to show Bobby’s drawings in pencil, so they stand out against the rest of my artwork.

Page 6

First appearance of Famous Monsters of Filmland Magazine. I went with the London After Midnight cover because it’s wonderful and could still be understood small scale. 

Fucking 8 track! Yes, I referenced a player, yes, I also referenced the Dark Side of the Moon 8 track itself. NO, it does not show even a little.

You’re welcome.

Pages 7, 8

Not gonna lie, I felt like I was a fucking genius when I discovered that the shark’s head from the Jaws poster was a triangle and that it could be formed from the pyramid of the Dark Side album cover.

Speaking of the Floyd I’ve had this idea for the “Dark Forebodies” for a while. It all stems from John Irving’s novel The World According to Garp. In Garp one of the protagonist’s kids mishears his parents’ warning of being dragged down by the undertow of the ocean as the “under toad” and the under toad becomes a running joke and a symbolic boogeyman throughout the rest of the story.

Page 9

Ladies and gentlemen, Steven Spielberg! ...I mean Shark Beard. This is one of the major parts of Bobby’s life and career that diverges from Rob Bottin’s story. Neither Bottin nor Rick Baker were ever on the set of Jaws. But knowing that I was going to be telling my story with analogues it opened it up to having Bobby have a front row seat for the dawn of the blockbuster era of filmmaking with the movie that started it all.

Also knowing how troubled of a set it was, especially in regard to the mechanical shark special FX...it had to go in the book. This was an early choice, in fact when the opening line, “In the end it was all the shark’s fault,” came to me; that’s when I knew I had a story. When this entire 12 issue saga is complete (someday) you’ll see the final impact of that line...no spoilers.

Page 10

Jack Barber is not Rick Baker like Bobby’s Feckle is not Rob Bottin. But his look is a lot closer to a young a Baker than Bobby is to a young Rob. Rick Baker was cute! Still is, but I am not a fan of ponytails...sorry Rick, just me talking, sir. But I really loved the look of Rick Baker in the 70s and 80s, cool hair, good beard, great sharp nose which is fun to draw. He looks a little bit like Shaggy from Scooby Doo in this first issue to me.

Jack Barber is named after my first best friend I ever had, back in 2nd and 3rd grade. His name was Jackson Barber. We used to play video games and draw stage plans for our own games together.

Bobby Feckle shares the last name of cop character I played in a later in life best friend’s indie movie entitled Two Young Cops (not a porno). This best friend’s name is Peter Leon and he is credited on the movie poster for Fin at the tail end (get it? …fuck you , you get it) of this issue.

Panel 2, these 6 little portraits of iconic special fx characters were done on separate pieces of paper and shrunk down here.

The previous page was the first mention of The Beards and this is the first mention of both Mitch Gillis and Grady Miller. I wanted to lay the groundwork for a larger world in this first issue as organically as possible while also not bogging down the story at hand. Writing in first person POV is good for that sort of thing because asides feel more natural in that storytelling mode.

Page 11

A few people have told me that they enjoy the “wish fulfillment” aspect of this story; and while part of that is true, when I tell them that Rob Bottin and Rick Baker both become apprentices in movie special fx by sending in fanart and fan mail or showing an established artist photos of their homemade make-up effects people are a little shocked. As I was too when I first read about it. So yeah, it’s wish fulfillment for me, but it also was just how it worked for a small window of time for some talented, tenacious and lucky guys back in the 70s.

Page 12

One of the challenges and fun of making this comic was making conversations visually interesting; usually the answering was staging and layouts. I like this one; I also enjoy this lowbrow gag with Laney because it really reveals how her and Bobby work off each other.

Page 13

I tried to give this page an underwater feel when they bring in the sunken mechanical shark.  Getting to show the Forebodie in the mouth of the shark was one of the moments where I realized the book was going to work. At least for me as an artist; it would be weird enough, and emotional enough that moments like this could have weight and deepen the story in a way that wouldn’t be the same if this was told as a novel.  These panels felt like I was on the right track.

Page 14

Panel 1, 'ole! I like how round and awful the teeth look here, I looked at a bunch of set photos of Bruce after his many sinking episodes while filming Jaws. I also think there was a bit of the Mouse of Minsk (from An American Tail)  in the look here. But hey, Shark Beard was involved with that too, right?

Page 16

Panel 1, in reality Bottin at age 14 sent Rick Baker a fan letter and included a sketch of Lon Chaney Sr. from the film Mockery, not Phantom of the Opera. But the Phantom works is more identifiable and works better storywise  (bit of a hint for a later issue not yet published)

I really enjoyed seeing the Basil Gogos rainbow oil slick colors surrounding the bare pencils on these pages.

Page 18

The Plymouth Fingerblaster from Hot Wheels should be available by the time you read this. Just cut out your coupon and send money for shipping to the address included in Serious Creatures issue #0.

Page 21

“What? Don’t I look surprised?” I wasn’t sure if the visual gag of having Bobby missing his eyebrows and saying this would land since my art style tends to make eyes and their brows a little abstract (see, Zorroesque “Z” slashes) but I think it works?

The gag is a bit of a rip-off of the Modest Mouse lyric from, “Lampshades on Fire” “Shaved off my eyebrows when I fall to the ground, so I can’t look surprised right now.”

Page 22

Here’s a good example of how I weaved in biographical elements of my life into this comic. I never collected Famous Monsters of Filmland Magazine, by the time I came on the scene the monster magazine of choice was Fangoria but I was and still am a huge comic book reader. My sister Allison moved from Arizona to Ohio to live with our Aunt Susie when she was 15 or 16 making me around age 11 or 12. In a gesture I’m still touched by (even though it is my own and that’s really narcissistic) before she left I gave her my prized possession; the comic book Spawn, issue # 1, bagged and boarded; near mint. I told her that I wanted her to hold on to it for me, that I wasn’t giving it to her, but that it was proof that we would see each other again. I was a very dramatic 12-year-old, ask anyone.

What I didn’t tell my sister or include in Serious Creatures was that a few weeks later I pulled together some more scratch and scored another copy of Spawn #1 just in case this whole sibling thing went tits up and my sister lost my first copy of McFarlane’s masterpiece.

Page 23

Every once in a while I like to pull back from the colors and go minimal or no color at all. I think it really works to great effect here. Also, it’s slightly easier than coloring everything.

Note, there’s a figure walking past Bobby and Laney just behind Bobby’s back, that was supposed to be a nun with a suitcase smoking. Which is something I find funny. But the way I drew her with the hunchback makes her look at best like a Bene Gesserit or maybe even Detta the Science Witch from my comic Lumen?

Page 24 and the Fin back cover

This is the beginning of me realizing the amount of possibilities the great white shark possessed as a symbol and visual motif. I think every kid at some point realizes that airplanes look a lot like sharks (hence those awesome nose art shark paint jobs on WW2 planes) but doing this page at the end of issue one is supposed to tip off the reader that shit is going to get even weirder. And that the shark and the forebodies are here to stay.

The Fin poster was a challenge in that Jaws has probably the most recognizable and iconic movie poster of all time - and I already ripped it off for page one! So, what do you do?  Realizing on the title page inside the book that the word “fin” could smuggle in a fin shape underneath the letter “n” gave me something to hinge the poster on. But I think the tagline (which is good, come on, it’s fucking good) is what really made me want to make the poster. I wasn’t planning originally to do every back cover as a movie poster but after making this and see how it enhanced the world inside the comic I knew I was going to waste a lot of time thinking of brilliant taglines for utter bullshit make believe. Story of my life.

Also, the small text is nothing to gloss over, I was inspired by all the legal boilerplate on the inside covers of Sam Keith’s Maxx where he’d always stuff in a bunch of jokes and weird ramblings.