A Take On My Own Work : The first chapter

This week I published a comic that I wrote in 2014. It's 2023.

So I touched upon a key thought of mine in my self-interview at the end of the published issue of Flux (Click Here to Read for Free with Kindle Unlimited). A nameless drifter who has an mysterious connection to every living thing there ever was travels across country with a hapless truck driver. For whatever reason when I wrote this series, I never wanted to name the characters. I wanted the book to just be about feelings. Every issue in the story had it's emotional highs and lows. It was more about those emotions than a character journey. Flux is the first story I have ever written that I had ever attempted to put out for public consumption. Everything else I had written prior was fan fiction and was completely unoriginal. Not having it available even with all of its flaws felt like a disservice to myself and to the people that worked on it. I'm okay with recognizing the flaws I had in the past. Being self critical and having thought out criticisms of your own work or any part of yourself shows your ability to grow as a person. Publishing the story also serves as a way for me to move onto other projects mentally. I've continued to write since then but this was unfinished business. Recently I finished what I would call a confident first draft of a story called "Empty Spaces".

Empty Spaces is a story about a young girl who runs and hides in the center of a clothing rack where she literally has to fight off her own demons. I've tried to make every detail of that story have meaning. I've tried to write it in a way to offer an artist an opportunity to show off what they can do in comics. It's one issue, a one shot. It tries to tell a whole life in one comic. While I'm immensely proud of Empty Spaces, I know it has flaws, The writing is strong enough where I feel like I reached another level when I compare it to Flux.

Empty Spaces contains Hindu and Buddhist themes. When exploring an idea like cyclic existence you automatically provide a story telling structure that forces you to try to have some character development. When I was a child I had an out of body experience and last year was the first time I had ever met another person who had also had one. Their experience matched my own. The situation was different but the mechanics of what being out of one's own body was the same. I did not describe my experience with this person in the slightest before they provided theirs. I was already interested in philosophy after exploring psychology a bit, algorithms have a way of leading you down a rabbit hole. A bit of Ram Dass here, a bit of Alan Watts there, and sprinkle in a little meditation after months of stress and Empty Spaces is the result.

Flux's inspiration is based of morphic resonance. I heard about it on a podcast while taking a comics class online and it seemed like an interesting story prompt. I was reading H.P. Lovecraft a the time and the idea that living beings have a shared morphology because an intrinsic memory in nature seemed like a really nebulous and weird idea that could lend itself well to horror.

I still think the premise works. I started the first issue off in the desert because I wanted the reader to feel desolate and alone. I wanted the snake and the vulture to be there to tie it to the real world. I had them tracked in that world to show movement because I knew a lot of this issue was going to just be two characters talking. When we meet "The Drifter", he's in his late 20's. The 2014 thought process for taking this characters point in life and introducing him to reader from that age and this moment in his life was mainly for evoking the emotion of loneliness. I also happen to be a life long fan of The Man with No Name Trilogy and setting the first scene in the west was a way to pay homage to that. The first scene written in this book was the big reveal, the horror twist. It take's place during The Drifter's childhood. I wrote that scene to complete the comics class I was taking in 2014. It was a four page comic. I basically encapsulated that story by putting it in a different time period and having the main character tell the tale It also give me a chance to create another character in The Rig Driver. I really really didn't want to give characters names at the time. I tried to come up with all different names but I could never find one that felt right for both characters. I think that was reflective of being insecure of what the characters actually were.

If I were to write this story for the first time today I would probably force myself to name The Rig Driver. I probably couldn't get past not naming The Drifter but I'd be lying if I said that I didn't like the idea of a character connected to every other living being through the collective conscious and otherwise being unnamed to this day.

Some of the dialogue including the intro splash is rough. The following hurt to re-read before I submitted the story for publication. I'm sure it's unimaginable to some to publish something they find to be imperfect but again, I need to move on.

Sure part of me is concerned that it's a poor reflection of my ability, but I write for my own enjoyment. Learning how to do digital lettering or finding another letterer to edit this bit on top of doing a rewrite would only lead me to doing a complete rewrite and then I'd have to rewrite the other nine issues as well. I'd rather spend my writing hours on something new. If I were to rewrite the entire Flux series I think I'd try to embrace the idea of every issue having an emotional ride and emotional theme but I'd want to amplify that a bit more and also make sure there is progress in the character's journey.

Even with the flaws, I had the best time of my life prepping the story for Kindle Direct Publishing. It gave me another chance to feel connected to the work again. There is something magical in working on a comic book. I'll do it again some day and hopefully it will be able to pay for itself.