Making Comics

The main point of this post is just to have an excuse to put up the gif down below, but first I'm gonna write a bunch of words to explain it.

My primary creative obsession the past few weeks has been creating a series of comics for my friends in Loaded Gun Theory to help them promote their new show. Basically, they just gave me a copy of the script and let me pick out any snippets of it that I thought would work as a stand-alone teaser in comic form. Wanna check 'em out? Here's some links:

A Chat Over Chess

A Taut Line

Tea With Martha

The Creator

The process for these things started off with me creating a loose storyboard to figure out what pictures I was going to need. I can't draw for shit, so all the pictures in my comics start with photos. Since I was working with a script and actors in this case, I basically just put the actors in a spot and had them run through their lines while I snapped pictures of them from different angles. In some cases, I ended up getting kind of snap happy and ended up with assloads of pictures from a given scene, which when put together look something like this:

All that just to get this tense little exchange:

Those two dudes are my friends Bill and Ian in the roles of Geoffrey and Tiernan. My favorite pic from that whole session, which you can see tucked into the gif up there if you look closely, is this one:

Almost as if he's breaking character, looking over at the director, and saying:

Simply glorious. 

Post-Apocalyptic Chess

My friendosauruses in Loaded Gun Theory wrote a new play, Our Apocalyptic Dream, which is going up in just a couple of weeks. They asked me to take a few scenes and comicify them as I am wont to do. This is the first one, featuring my friends Bill and Ian, having a friendly chat over chess.

The Stage Is Littered With Fragments of Shattered Expectations

There’s a whole set of expectations that accompany you, as an audience member, when you step into a theater. You’ll keep quiet during the performance. You won’t attempt to engage the actors in conversation unless they ask you to. You will not ask the people on stage if it’s over yet. And though plenty may come to mind, you most certainly won’t offer suggestions as to how the performance might be improved - at least not in the moment.

These are pretty reasonable expectations, so much so that you might not even think about them most of the time. Except, that is, when you get handed a permission slip to ignore them.

The Ash and I were brewing beer on New Year’s Day, along with the generous assistance from our friends Bill and Brandon. The boys were thoroughly uninterested in what we were doing, having taken the measure of it and determined that it stood to benefit them in no way at all. And then their friend, Neighbor Kid, came over, and the three of them went off and got lost in Little Boy Imagination Land, a place which, if I remember correct, is populated by dragons, tanks, and mermaids with snakes for hair and flamethrowers in their boobs. Among others.

So there we are, four adults standing outside around the brew pot, each of us with a brew in our hand. One of us was probably stirring. Neighbor Kid sticks his head out the back door and tells us that we need to come in and see their play. I misunderstand for a second, think I’m hearing him tell us we need to come in and watch them play, which, what? Why do we want to...? OH, play noun, not verb. Though, now that I mention it, there are plenty of philosophical discussions to be had regarding the relationship between play the noun and play the verb, what amount of the verb goes into the noun, what the noun actually is. I’ve watched them happen, read the treatises. Or was it a manifesto? Right now, as I type this, as you read this, someone somewhere is declaring, "it's a play, not a show!" It’s sort of like “Stairway to Heaven” - it’s never not happening somewhere.

We adults file into the house and into the living room where Neighbor Kid and our boys are waiting, their excitement to reveal their creation to us causing their skin to bristle with energy and their hair to stand on end. Neighbor Kid, because he is the oldest, gives the signal, and the play begins.

It starts with my oldest rolling a bowling ball and knocking over a row of pins. Then a remote control truck races onstage and knocks him over, then zips around the playing area. My youngest bounces in on a horse and attacks the truck. People are falling over. Dialogue is minimal. It’s all very performance art. And through it all, we in the audience are speaking, not only to one another in unhushed tones, but also to the three players. We’re asking aloud what it is that we are seeing. We're cracking wise. We’re offering our learned assessments. We’re pleading with them to stop bashing the truck into the piano. At one point, someone asks, “Okay, is that it?” Can you imagine? But the kids seem not to mind our jibber-jabber one bit. Though they would have been perfectly entitled to do so, not a single one of them turns to us and snarls “Respect the fourth wall!” We applaud them from a standing position and they bow.

Children. Expectations. Explosions.

A Lot Can Happen In 24 Hours - part 8

Once again, this year, I signed on to be part of the something-like-annual 24-hour theater event known as Slapdash Flimflammery. By 24-hour, I mean that a series of short plays are written, rehearsed, and staged for an audience inside that amount of time. This is the 8th year that Loaded Gun Theory Productions has put this on, and if memory serves, I've participated in all but one, maybe two, of them in some capacity - usually writing, sometimes acting, and a couple of times, both.

Yeah, those days of "both" are long over.

This year, the theme of the event was Time. When I got to the theater Friday night, the following things happened:

1. I wrote down a line of dialogue on a note card. This was to be the last line of my play. The other six writers did the same and we threw them all in a hat. 
2. We passed the hat around and drew. Whatever line you drew was your first line. 
3. We threw twenty-one note cards into yet another hat (or was it the same hat?), one card for each actor with only their gender written on it. Each writer then drew three cards to know what they had to work with sex-wise, though since we're all adults, that's really the kind of thing we should know already. 
4. Since the theme was Time, there was yet another collection of notecards on which the members of Loaded Gun Theory had written various dates, some future, some past, one present. Each of us drew one. This date was to be used somehow in the play we wrote. 
5. We all sat down around the table and made with the playwrightering. Our deadline? 6:00 AM.

Coffee station

I don't think we quite killed the coffeepot, but we definitely made a dent.

I'm 35 years old, so staying up all night is not the cakewalk that it once was. I had taken the day off from work and attempted a nap, but I've never been able to sleep during the day. I yawned on my way to the theater, then yelled at myself. "There'll be none'o that, Holmes!"

By the time the directors arrived at 7:00 AM, we were all plenty zombiefied. After conversing  briefly with the director that drew my script, I went home to make a futile attempt at a nap while she went off to rehearse with her actors. They had just under half a day to get the thing on its feet.

As always, it was a great time, the plays all came off really well, and everybody - as far as I could tell - had a blast, made all the more blasteriffic by the keg that followed the show. Have you ever stayed up all night and then the whole next day and then downed a beer? Your shit gets loopy, my friends. No joke.

This year's crew of writers

Anyway, below is the script that I came up with over the course of Friday night - Saturday morning. The date I drew was October 31st, 2364. I could have kicked myself for the last line that I came up with, but it worked out, I guess. Your brain goes weird places in the middle of the night.

Hollow Steve

Melba is seated cross-legged on the ground picking her nose. Downstage from her, off to one side, is a gargoyle up on a pedestal of some kind. Gozz enters from behind her. She is carrying a large futuristic-looking gun. She stands behind Melba and points the gun at the back of her head.

GOZZ

What about the pterodactyl?

Melba looks up at the gargoyle.

MELBA

That’s a gargoyle, gorgeous.

GOZZ

No, stupid. I mean for Hollow Steve.

MELBA

Oh. A pterodactyl? Like a flying dinosaur?

GOZZ

Yeah!

Gozz shrieks and flaps her arms in flying dinosaur fashion. She’s very into it. No really, don’t puss out. Get Mesozoic on this shit.

MELBA

That’s impressive.

GOZZ

Fucking ptero-ma-dactyl, bitch! Great idea, huh?  

MELBA

I don’t know.

GOZZ

What’s not to know? Need me to do it again?

MELBA

No. I mean, you can if you want. I just mean, dinosaurs? What are we, five?

GOZZ

No. I’m eleven.

MELBA

Yeah, and I’m going to be twelve next month.

GOZZ

So?

MELBA

So, don’t you think maybe we’re getting to be too old for this Hollow Steve stuff?

GOZZ

What? No way.

MELBA

Look, Gozz, gorgeous, I’m not saying we can’t mutate this year. I’m just saying, let’s be cool about it.

GOZZ

Pterodactyls are cool.

MELBA

No. They’re not. They’re really not. They put dinosaurs on little kid tee-shirts and in little kid read-books and on little kid table-mats for gross little kids to spill their dinosaur-shaped mac-and-cheese product all over. Face it. Dinosaur equals little kid equals not cool.

GOZZ

A dinosaur would tear your head off.

MELBA

Maybe if they didn’t go extinct thousands of years ago.

GOZZ

Millions.

MELBA

What?  

GOZZ

Dinosaurs went extinct millions of years ago, not thousands.

MELBA

Congratulations.

GOZZ

A pterodactyl’s wingspan could reach up to twelve meters. Or as my great great great

Counts the “greats” on her fingers

great great grandpa would say, forty feet.

MELBA

Look, if you’re so hung up on going out for Hollow Steve mutated like a pre-schooler, be my guest.

GOZZ

But the three of us always mutate as the same thing.

MELBA

Well maybe things change this year.

GOZZ

Well, what do you think we should go as?  

Before Melba can answer, Comet streaks in with all the energy of a preteen who has downed five too many energy drinks.

COMET

AH MAH GAW! AH MAH GAW! AH MAH GAW! AH MAH GAW! AH MAH GAW!

And so on and so forth as you see fit.

MELBA

Comet!

GOZZ

Comet!

Melba and Gozz both yell at Comet, trying to catch her attention while she runs around screaming in full-on freakout mode, seemingly unable to control herself. When shouting at her fails, they resort to physical restraint.

MELBA

Comet, gorgeous. Use your words.

COMET

You’ll never guess what Ethyl and them are going as for Hollow Steve.

GOZZ

What?

COMET

Robots.

GOZZ

Robots?!

COMET

Fifteen meter robots.

GOZZ

What?! That’s like fifty feet!

MELBA

Rolling eyes

Ahm gaw.

COMET

With flames.

GOZZ

Flames?!

COMET

And lasers.

GOZZ

Lasers?!?!!

COMET

I know, right!?

MELBA

What the ever.

GOZZ

Examining gun

I don’t even think my mutator does robots. Oh yeah it does. But they’re only six meters. No flames or lasers either.

COMET

Takes gun from Gozz and examines it

I think you have to pop in a Moleculo upgrade clip.

GOZZ

Ahm gaw. Those are like three-million dollars.

COMET

I already spent my allowance.

GOZZ

Okay, you know what? That’s fine, because I know what we’re going to mutate as this year and it’s going to fly circles around Ethyl and her stupid robots. Li-tuh-ruh-lee.

COMET

What what what? Tell me tell me tell me.

MELBA

Dinosaurs.

COMETS

Dinosaurs?

GOZZ

Hey, I wanted to say it!

MELBA

Flying dinosaurs.

COMET

Flying dinosaurs?! YOU MEAN PTERODACTYLS?!?!!

GOZZ

I KNOW, RIGHT!!!

Gozz and Comet both do the shrieking arm-flapping routine that Gozz did earlier. Seriously, go nuts, y’all. They take to snapping at each other, as one could imagine real pterodactyls might do with those long sharp beaks of theirs. Comet makes the mistake of snapping at Melba.

MELBA

Would you two stop it?

COMET

You don’t want to be a pterodactyl, Melby?

GOZZ

Melba thinks flying dinosaurs with wingspans of up to twelve meters and talons that could slice through steel are lame.

COMET

They could slice through steel?

GOZZ

Probably, sure, yeah, totally.

MELBA

They are lame. This whole Hollow Steve thing is lame. Who was this Hollow Steve guy anyway? And why do we mutate into things because of him?

COMET

I think Steve was the name of the guy that invented the mutator gun. I don’t know why they call him hollow, though.

GOZZ

My great great great great

counts on her fingers

great great grandma said it used to be called something else. Like Hollow Eve or something.

MELBA

So who was Eve?

GOZZ

I don’t know. But supposedly, the way it used to work was, kids would go around to people’s houses and knock on their doors and ask for stuff.

COMET

Like money?

GOZZ

Yeah! Or food.

MELBA

Wow, that actually sounds kind of fun.

COMET

I want to go to people’s houses and ask for food and money.

GOZZ

But how would you do that if you were a pterodactyl? Or a fifteen meter robot?

COMET

Or even last year when we all went as horses. I guess you could put the money in your saddlebags.

GOZZ

But pterodactyls don’t wear saddlebags.

COMET

But they could. We could make special pterodactyl bags. OH! Or we could carry baskets in our steel-shredding talons!

GOZZ

Totally!

They do the pterodactyl routine again, this time holding bags and baskets.

COMET

I’m a pterodactyl! Give me your fucking money!

GOZZ

Or I’ll tear the roof off of your car!

COMET

And give me some ice cream while you’re at it!

GOZZ

Or I’ll stab you with my beak!

Beak-stabbing motions!

COMET

Chocolate ice cream!

GOZZ

Chocolate, bitches!

More pterodactylling.

MELBA

STOP IIIIIIIIIT!

Silence. Comet and Gozz freeze mid-flap and look at Melba in shock. Comet lets out an inquisitive pterodactyl caw.

MELBA (cont’d)

I don’t want to be a pterodactyl.

GOZZ

I think you’re outvoted.

MELBA

But I, I...

She breaks down sobbing.

GOZZ

You’re still outvoted.

COMET

Hey, Melby, don’t cry. It’s okay.

Comet puts her finger in Melba’s nose in a gesture that is meant to be comforting.

Are you crying because you don’t want to mutate as a pterodactyl for Hollow Steve?  

Melba nods.

GOZZ

Picking her own nose

This from the person who was going on about maturity.

COMET

Melba, is there something else you want to be for Hollow Steve?

Melba nods again.

COMET (cont’d)

Yeah? What is it?

GOZZ

If it’s anything less than a pterodactyl, you can forget it.

COMET

What is it, Melby?

MELBA

Through the sniffles

A unicorn.

COMET

A unicorn?

GOZZ

No. We went as horses last year.

MELBA

They’re not horses, they’re unicorns.

GOZZ

Whatever. I’m not going as one.

COMET

But we always go together. As the same thing.

GOZZ

And she always picks it! Every year! Who decided we should be horses last year? Melba. Who decided we should be giant balls of yarn the year before that? Melba. And when we were in kindergarten, who decided that we should be giant hamsters in giant hamster wheels.  

MELBA

Hey, we won the school mutation contest, didn’t we?

GOZZ

I’m not going as a stupid unicorn.

MELBA

Unicorns and beautiful and magical.

COMET

Puts her finger in both of their noses

Okay, you guys, wait, hold on. Maybe we don’t have to go as the same thing this year. Maybe we could just do like, you know, a theme.

MELBA

What do you mean?

COMET

Well like, we could all go as things that fly. Gozz, you could be a pterodactyl. Melba, you could -- wait, unicorns have wings, right?

MELBA

No.

COMET

Oh. Well, could yours have wings?

MELBA

Uh --

COMET

And I could be, uh, uh, a comet! Since that’s my name!

MELBA

Unicorns don’t have wings.

COMET

Could you just work with me here, Melba? I’m just trying to--

Gozz grabs the mutator gun and points it at them both. During this exchange, Melba backs away while Comet inches, er, centimeters closer to Gozz.

GOZZ

No. No unicorns. No comets. No real comets I mean. People named Comet are okay.

COMET

Gozz, what are you doing?

GOZZ

Get away from me. Put your finger in your own nose.

COMET

Gozz--

GOZZ

I’m setting the mutator gun to pterodactyl--

COMET

Gozz, put it down.

GOZZ

And I’m turning all three of us into motherfucking pterodactyls.

Aims at Melba

COMET

Gozz!

Comet jumps, but she is too late. The mutator fires and Melba is hit. The force of the blast knocks her back. Offstage, in fact. From backstage, there is a furious roar. The walls shake with terrifying violence. Melba emerges back on stage in the process of mutating into a pterodactyl. She flaps her mighty wings and advances on Gozz and Comet, who are both now screaming their fool heads off.

COMET

You turned her into an angry pterodactyl!

GOZZ

This thing doesn’t specify emotional state!

COMET

Hurry! Change her back before she takes flight!

Gozz fiddles with the dial and fires again. Melba stops shrieking, drops her wings, halts her advance, and speaks in an even, if not somewhat condescending tone.

MELBA

So you admit that you have sexual feelings for your mother?

COMET

Gah wha?!

GOZZ

Dammit! I set it to psychoanalyst.

COMET

What?

GOZZ

It’s the next thing down from pterodactyl in alphabetical order!

MELBA

How does that make you feel?

COMET

Yanking the mutator away

Give me that! You have to set it to undo.

Comet fiddles with the mutator and fires at Melba again. Melba reverts back into dinosaur rage, picks up her wings, etc.

GOZZ

Undo it again! Undo it again!

Comet fires again. This time, Melba’s transformation back into herself is slower, as if she is resisting it. Comet keeps hitting her though. At the end of it, Melba is down on the floor, motionless. Gozz and Comet look at Melba’s prone form in shock for a moment, then snap out of it and run to her side.

GOZZ

Melba!

Gozz and Comet kneel next to their friend and roll her onto her back. They help her sit up, but her head dangles. Gozz is crying.  

GOZZ (cont’d)

This is all my fault! I’m so sorry! We can be unicorns for Hollow Steve, Melba, I don’t care!

Melba looks up at Gozz.  

MELBA

No. We will be pterodactyls.

GOZZ

We will?

MELBA

Yes. We will all be pterodactyls.

COMET

Oh good! I’m glad that’s settled.

MELBA

I can’t even describe to you...I’ve never felt anything like it. The cells of my body weren’t simply jostled into the form of some other creature. I was taken somewhere, somewhen. I became something else. I saw the world through whole new eyes. I felt so much power...the power to fly, to rip, tear, destroy, kill. I didn’t want to come back.

COMET

So you don’t want to be a unicorn anymore?

GOZZ

Because we can if you want. I’m so sorry.

MELBA

No. I don’t want to be some stupid unicorn. I want to find a unicorn, swoop down on it from on high, grab it in my talons, and tear its magical hide to shreds.  

GOZZ

But there’s no such thing as unicorns.

MELBA

A horse will work. The point is, we’ll all do it together.

COMET

Together! Yay!

MELBA

And then, we’ll set our sights on Ethyl and her stupid giant robots.

COMET

Robots are made of steel.

GOZZ

So you’re not mad at me?

MELBA

Mad?

Laughs, puts her finger in Gozz’s nose.

Go ahead, gorgeous. Stick your finger up my nose. See what happens.