The New Script (whatever it's called)

I'm working on a crime series with Will Beard right now. We somehow always kept doing cowboy ideas, so we worked to break the cycle for now. I asked what I always ask the artist--"What do you want to draw?"

Will's answer: crime. We're both great admirers of Eduardo Risso's work, so we knew it would look noir. But was it going to be noir? Well, it's going to be a pretty modern tale of theft and shifting alliances, but the players will be a bit unusual. I have a default setting to making white male characters, and it wasn't a choice so much as me just projecting in all directions. I've made a conscious effort to vary characters these days.

Here's the opener to the first issue:

LYMAN V/O: Working in the sewers of Freedom City, Texas doesn’t lend itself to romance. It’s a combined storm and effluent system, meaning it’s twice as gross and deadly as you can imagine. On a good rain day, it’s like whitewater rafting with turds fighting for a chance to plop into your screaming mouth. When it’s been dry, gas pockets form that are just big enough that you couldn’t run out of it for a breath on the best day of your life. The gas in question is not oxygen. The turds strike again. We drive around in a truck for a lot of the day and spend the odd few hours down here unclogging the system. You’re happy when you manage to plunge your efforts clear of the bowl. Imagine our joy blowing loose a six foot tunnel of it.

But the theme? Movies. We're gonna nerd it up. You will see.

The most interesting development is that we are aiming to do 24-28 page large size issues (like Syphilitic Cowboys), but in getting used to Will's pacing, I undershot with the first issue. He called me a while back to say "It's nine pages." The way I write, I do screenplay format. I leave the panels and pacing to the guys with the mice and brushes. So now I'm stuck. "Do you want me to expand some stuff?" I ask. "No, it's good as it is." So, we move forward. There will be two chapters of the story in each issue from here. That's pretty cool for dinking around with points of view and such.

I'm plain excited about the project, so excited I can't even come up with a name for it yet. I've even been writing in on a huge sheet of packing paper folded into columns. That's the way to roll.