IT'S WHAT MEN IN STAINED RAINCOATS PAY FOR

Andi Watson turned in all of the drawings for I Was Someone Dead. The whiny limey was all, "Wahhhh, I don't know if I can make my April deadline," and then he turns around and whips out a slew of amazing drawings in February. I don't know how he can live with himself.

But they are brilliant. On Cut My Hair, I told people what to draw; on this one, I let Andi have absolute free reign, and he picked some interesting stuff and approached it in a really amazing way. I'll give you one of them, one of the more straightforward ones, but this is just a tease, you have to wait:

I would be remiss if I didn't mention that the first issue of Andi's amazing new series, Little Star, is in stores this week. It's marvelous, his most complicated and mature narrative to date, all about the joys and horrors of fatherhood and a man's struggles to come to grips with the changes in his life.

We're also told the story Andi and I did for Four Letter Worlds is due out on March 2nd. Order it here now.

In other news, I have been working on various and sundry. Chynna Clugston roped me in to assist on a short story for the Blue Monday: Painted Moon collection, which has been kind of a bitch to write. I've also been working on a new comic book idea of my own that I've written about 27 pages for that I don't want to really reveal too much about yet. I am playing with a specific form and genre, and as part of the process I am trying to bend to its will rather than bend it to mine. It's been interesting, as I've already learned a lesson or two from going into it that way.

For instance, as we know, I have very specific ideas about how to approach point of view in comics. Every sequence in 12 Reasons Why I Love Her, for instance, I had a rationale for how the point-of-view character was privvy to the information if he wasn't in the scene. In this new book, though, I work with a more conventional cinematic approach, a third person omniscient narration. In one two-page sequence, I managed to leave my main character, and in so doing, establish a setting and a supporting character and heighten a paritcular mystery in a very economical fashion, and it was like a big "duh" smacking me in the face. Of course this is why these sorts of sequences are done. How obvious!

It won't change me from normally sticking with a limited narrative voice, but I think it will be good for me to step out of that for a bit.

Current Sountrack: The Smiths, Stop Me Japanese EP; Pulp, This Is Hardcore Japanese edition, disc 1

golightly@confessions123.com * The Website

[to leave comments, click on the time-stamp below, then scroll down on the new page] – All text (c) 2004 Jamie S. Rich