zack! empire

Upcoming works/Hopes for the Future

Now that I’ve finished Ugly People number 2 it’s time to start thinking about my next project. I have several things in mind. I’m sure a lot of you go through a similar thing were you have a ton of ideas, but don’t have the time, or sometimes the skill, to get them all done. I recall reading an interview with Seth where he commented on how sad it is that he can only complete so many comics in his lifetime. I feel similar with my own work. I don’t put nearly the work into a page that he does, but I still know that I won’t be able to draw all the stories I can think of. Even Jack Kirby couldn’t draw all the stories he could think of and I think he once drew 3000 pages in one year. No shit like 3000 pages in one year. He did about 3 books a month, around 20 pages a week. I guess that’s why he was the king?

            Anyway I thought I would take a bit of time to talk about a few of the projects I will be working on, and a few of the projects I have on the backburner. The thing with my comics is that, since it is mostly humor based, no story is too ridiculous to do. Sometimes I’ll just come up with a completely ridiculous idea like “how about a story where a monkey is some kind of Kung Fu super star, but his master is killed because of his skills. So the monkey decides to quit the Kung Fu game and become a dentist instead. Only his enemies’ will not leave him alone? It will be called Kung Fu Fightin’ Monkey Dentist!” To me that would be a funny comic to read, and a fun comic to draw. So you can see how easy it is to come up with ideas where every silly idea is entertained to be a gem of a story. I have to mention Jack Kirby again, because I’ve always looked up to him as an artist, and as a creator. He was a man who created series after series of fantastic work. I am always coming up with different characters and situations, like him, and I would like to emulate his ability to keep them all going at once. It sounds a bit silly but I would love to build the “Empireverse”.

            Here a few of things I think I will be working on in the future:

           

            TEN FOR TEN:

            A good way to make money when you are a cartoonist is too sell your original artwork. Right now I do not want to get rid of any recent artwork. I’m still too close to it. There is a page from Ugly People number one that I was looking at the other day and it has to be one of my favorite pages. The idea of selling it to someone is just absurd. I think I would miss holding it in my hands.

            I thought about selling some older artwork, but to be honest I don’t want to cause I think that stuff just isn’t very good. I’ve mentioned before how I feel I’ve found my style. The work I did before, older than two years I would say, just doesn’t seem good enough to sell. I also thought about selling some unused pages, or pages that I redrew because I wasn’t happen with the final look. The pages weren’t good though. That’s why I redrew them. Can I really mean to sell someone a page that isn’t the best I could have done? That would be to damaging to my ego. Plus, it would be unfair to the person buying the art.

            The idea I had was to try my hand at doing commissions. Since I haven’t done it before I’m not sure what people would expect from me. I thought that if I did some sample drawings first it would help to give people an idea of what they can expect if they decided to have me do one. Therefore I had the idea to do ten drawings for ten dollars each. I have some 9x12 pages of Bristol left and I will be using those to do the drawing on. I’m selling the work very cheap cause I’m not sure how many people will want to buy it. The lower the price the more they would consider buying it.

            I have not begun doing the drawings yet. When I had the idea I was struggling a bit as to what I should draw. I’ve seen a bunch of people doing commission sketches and drawings on YouTube, but they were always of superheroes. I’m not sure people would want to buy drawings I’d do of a bunch of heroes. It was kind of a no shit moment for me when I realized that I could just draw my own characters. Why wouldn’t people want to buy a drawing of that?

            The big problem though is that I don’t do much in the way of straight character drawing. Usually I only draw my characters on the actual comic page, or I will draw their face in my sketchbook. I’m just not good at coming up with pin-ups. I suppose I will just have to work at it until I master it.

THE ADVENTURES OF KUPO JOE

            A while back my mom was over for a visit. Lucy was also here. She went into my room and got a copy of one of my comics, then brought it to my mom to read to her. My mom did not want to read it to her, cause of the nature of the stories, and frankly I didn’t want her to either. Lucy seemed really disappointed by this. She sees me drawing all the time. She knows that I draw comics, but she can’t read them. This comic would be a comic that I could sit down and read with her.

            It would be an adventure style book. I’m not going to try and specifically write it for children. I think I’m going to write the story the same way I always do, but leave out all the curse words and naughty bits. Lucy is helping me with the story and the characters. I sat down with her and we talked about what she wants to read in a comic. We just made stuff up and I made a list. Then we talked about names, and story lines and such. It was fun.  The story is about a pizza named Kupo Joe and his buddy Professor Pup. They just walk around and get into trouble. When I asked Lucy who the villains should be she just said “snakes, but like a lion snake and a snake that is a giraffe.” I’m not sure what that means exactly but it should be fun to draw.

          One of the cartoonists I really like is Jason. I like how many of his comics are 48 page one shots. I am not sure if I will ever do a long format graphic novel. I would like to for sure, but at this point I don’t see myself doing one. However doing work similar to him, where the comics are short adventure types seems more fun and more in line with the kind of stuff I want to write. So this comic would also be testing out my ability to write a one shot comic that is only one story, not a group of stories the way I usually do.

UGLY PEOPLE NUMBER 3

            I already want to get started on the next ugly people comic. One of the stories from ugly people number 2 leads directly into a story that will take place in number 3. I don’t have all the details quite worked out yet but I’m excited. There are a number of characters that have yet to appear in a book I want to get down on the page. My hope with this one, aside from the story I mentioned before, is that it will have an all new cast.

            I’ve had the characters appears in each other stories cause I want to show that all of them live not just in the same universe, but basically the same town as well. I’d like to build on the relationships of the characters, and the back stories of the characters. For instance in Jerkface Comics number one we find out that Jerkface lives with his aunt, but we don’t see her, or know why they live together. I’d like to build more continuity into the world. It is fun to do the silly stories but, while I don’t want to do heavy emotion stories, I would like to do stories with more dialogue and more interaction. If you look at some of the Ditko/Lee Spiderman stuff, or the Lee/Romita stuff there is a TON of dialogue on each page. Another great example is the Jersey issues of Hate. That is the look, as far as talking goes; I would like to start having.

A FEW ODDS AND ENDS

            I enjoyed doing the Jerkface comic that was all about him. In the future I would like to have more character one shots. I already have a great idea for another Jerkface one, which will most likely be one long story. I’d also like to do one with Big Daddy Bacon. I’m not sure why but he is becoming one of my favorite characters. He is just such an asshole. It’s fun to write assholes! Perhaps at some point all of the “main” characters will be featured in their own one-shot? I’m not sure yet.

            I might actually do the Jeffrey Brown parody with Dracula in it. I wrote him a letter about it, and he thought it was a funny idea. Plus the responses I got from other people were all very positive. If I did do it I would try to have similar materials as him so it would be nice to be able to sit on the couch or at a café and draw. It’s hard to balance a 14x17 piece of Bristol on your lap!

            There is a host of characters I would love to do short comics about, similar to the comic I did with me and the Thing. In case you haven’t noticed I’m a big Spider-man fan. I think it would be fun to do a comic about him. I’m more interested in doing a comic about Peter Parker, then specifically about Spider-man. Something I’m surprised I never see are people doing fan fiction for Watchmen. We all know there won’t be another issue anytime soon (or ever) so why not give it our own treatment? One thing they don’t cover in the book, but I would love to see more of, is when Rorschach and Nite Owl teamed up to take on the gangs of the city. My style doesn’t lend itself to that kind of story but hey, who gives a fuck?

            Well I rambled on way more than I thought I would. I’m sure I lost you somewhere way back there. Hope you’re as pumped about future projects as I am!