Some I Let Go
I’ll be peppering in some in depth process stuff (and possibly by the end of the week, those buildings will be gone because…yikes) through the week, but this is hot of the presses and I love it. So here it is.
As you know, Kevin Analog’s power is drawn from the music he’s listening to. It’s the Blaqstarr Remix with Rye Rye and Afrikan Boy, in this particular instance, in case you’re wondering.
Shame Breeds Hope
So, yeah. There were some missteps in today’s The Rack. I took, let’s say, a less than ideal approach to inking with a brush. I imagined the lines of my heroes being rendered in broad swoops of the arm, landing in perfect swaths of the pitchest blacks.
Then, our man Kevin clued me in to this little pouch of YouTube gold, an inking demo by Chad Cole. I was legitimately surprised, heartened if you will, by seeing such a careful and meticulous approach. I realized the frenzied and breathless jabs of brushery I engaged in last night were deeply flawed.
And so, in a haze of mourning (seriously, this Tim Russert thing is hitting me damned hard), with a new approach in my heart, and the buzz of a mood-lightening and pitch perfect new episode of The Venture Brothers all rattling around, I inked this sketch of a random Kevin Analog thug. Obviously, there’s a lot of backstory and cleverness I’m not yet at liberty to divulge, but enjoy this sketch, inked by brush, as a kind of penance for poor decision making.
Commemorating The Invisible
Kevin Analog is, as I’ve pointed out here (I think?) an idea I’ve been messing around with for a long time now, and recently I’ve put it in the front of my mind in the hopes that I can come up with a solid three issue comic book story to pitch around.
The problem, for a while now, has been what do with with the 45 or so pages I’d need to fill after the rip-roaring opening scene I’ve had written in my head for a few months now.
There have been a lot of different paths I considered, most of them way too big and unwieldy for a three issue story, or way too aimless, which has always been a problem for me. It’s why instead of having tons of finished scripts for Limited Serieses in my drawer I have a bunch of mini-comics and never resolved webcomics.
Well, say what you will about temp work, but it tends to free up your mind to wander and imagine up all sorts of things. So, as I was going through file directories today, my brain totally came through in the clutch and birthed an amazing and charming and fun and straight up awesome story. The perfect thing to introduce Kevin and the new face of Manhattan, the borough many refer to as “The Genre City” because it’s so packed to the gills with inexplicable strangeness.
I won’t share every single detail that I scrawled feverishly into my Moleskine (I know, I might as well be wearing a scarf), but there was one thing that really crystallized the sheer fantasticness my brain is occasionally capable of:
“What Is The Terrible Secret Of…Conference Room 16B?”
So, gang, we are officially on our way. At some point I’m going to pick a page to focus on and I’m going to walk you through every moment of its creation. I’ll show you the chicken scratch from whence it came all the way down to its final splash of color.
This post is the smashing of the champagne bottle on the hull of the good ship Kevin Analog: Temporary.
The Venture Brothers & The Narrative Ideal
So, I just finished watching the latest episode up on the ol’ Adult Swim Friday Night Fix and it struck me how well this show sustains its inherent (and fantastic) wackiness while evolving into a really well made and melancholy character study.
This particular episode is all about Rusty and, yeah, it’s hilarious with plenty of great references to all kinds of great stuff, but I realized that over the course of two seasons they’ve really done a fantastic job fleshing out these characters.
This season so far (sure, it’s only been two episodes) has shown a lot of skill in focusing on a character instead of a conceit, as in most previous episodes. But of course there’s been a lot of groundwork laid over the past couple of seasons that can bring about an episode like this latest one, which in a lot of ways is a point which Rusty Venture’s life so far has been leading to for a very long time.
Anyway, it got me thinking about the primary project I’ve got in the back of my mind: Kevin Analog. One or two of you might remember a mini-comic of the character I put together a few years back, and also my webcomic Genre City, which ran on Modern Tales for quite some time.
This is basically going to combine the two and redefine the way “Genre City” works. One of the main reasons I wanted to rejigger this blog here is to start keeping a work blog of the process of getting the project out of my head and onto some Bristol Board.
Oddly enough, talking about The Venture Brothers is kind of a perfect place to start. It’s got exactly the kind of approach I want to take with Kevin Analog. There’s a lot of high concept craziness, which I will naturally be getting into with all of you in the weeks and months ahead, but I also really want there to be some weight to the characters.
Trust me, when you see this latest episode (I know not everyone feverishly hovers over AdultSwim.com on Fridays, hitting refresh until the latest episode of The Venture Brothers shows up), you’ll get exactly what I mean. I can’t think of any other show that strikes such a great balance between tone of character and just plain hilariousness.
Also, Jackson Publick’s general style of cartooning is a massive inspiration, and I’m sure I’ll get more into that in the future as well.
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Benjamin Birdie
Suddenly kind of aged, Benjamin lives in Queens with his cat. His Master's Degree in Creative Writing has helped him immensely with his primary responsibilities of drawing things.
He can be reached at benjaminbirdie (at) gmail (dot) com.
And do feel free to follow him on Twitter.
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His Comics
Every Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday, this charming comic strip by myself and Kevin Church receives a sparkling new installment. A Comic Strip About A Comic Shop.