Novel writing was not my first avocation.  If anything, it never was going to be something I pursued with vigor.

I would actually prefer to write (and illustrate) a graphic novel.  I was seeking to publish a monthly and had I succeeded, it would likely be wrapping up about now (to give some perspective, I would start about 2-4 years after Spawn was published).  When it came to character development, the characters for my graphic novel were more exhaustively developed than the ones for my tome (at the time.  I would invest more in the book, but it was still secondary to the graphic novel at this point).  I would start with four principal characters, and as the series developed, a few others would be introduced, before the over-arching story would begin to become clear.

The story was set in a period shortly after a nuclear holocaust encompassing everyone and everything, referred to as ‘the event.’  After ‘the event,’ some children born exhibited unusual abilities and ‘powers,’ (the typical superhero kind), and these would be harnessed and cultivated to counter the growing threat from a dangerous element possessing such powers for a more nefarious end.

If you are noticing a few parallels to my novel, to the back-story of Earth, that’s not by accident.  The two were in development, and even at times on parallel tracks.  I would move from the graphic novel story and back to the novel, treating the graphic novel as the ancient historical markers for events that the textual volume may only glance over.  Roughly 100-150 years separate the two, so there was no reason to think the ‘history’ would be perfectly preserved.

It also helped define a timeline for when the novel could start, and when the graphic novel would end. I think the ‘history’ in the graphic novel would also point to opportunities for various non-Terran species to interact with humanity and introduce them to the universe I had developed.  One I developed (and will discuss a little later) would be featured rather pervasively in the graphic novel because of their seeming ‘presence’ in the universe.  But by the time of the novel, they would seem to be absent.

This being a graphic novel, one of the areas where I spent a lot of time was their appearance.  The first four were probably not very typical, even in the late twentieth century.  Let me elaborate on one of the characters.

This character would not be ‘born’ with powers, like many of the super children, but would be ‘given’ them, through some concoction created from the scientific understanding of how the event affected the children with super-human abilities.  While that would prove to create an unusual dynamic for her (her talents would prove unreliable so she would compensate in other ways to avoid using them), I think what I liked most about this character was her heritage.  Her mother was a Hispanic executive assistant in Mexico City who would pursue a relationship (that would ultimately fail) with the Japanese executive she assists.  So, without thinking too hard, what does that make her ancestry?

The focus of the development of each of my characters for the graphic novel was more on their appearance than who they were and what they did. I was drawing them, so it was essential to know what each would look like, and how they would be distinctive.

My creativity, however, overwhelmed the resources needed to produce this graphic novel, as I have mentioned before, I was broke. Working on the two projects together did give me more ideas on character interactions and even story development.

I’m sorry, this blog was supposed to be about me!

Um, I wanted to draw a comic book. But, I didn’t.

Yup, that’s enough of me. Next week, the theories of space travel, according to The Silent Invader.

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