THE BUZZ(ES) THAT ALMOST WAS(ES) – PART I

A long time ago, I promised myself once LOVE BUZZ was published, I would find the time to write down the story behind the story. For all I know, the journey in getting the book made might very well be more interesting than the book itself. It's officially been 10 years now, since I first conceived the project and set out to make it tangible, and now here I sit, ready to lay bare for all you budding comic makers out there, the hardships and triumphs of getting published in this fickle industry. From starry eyed beginnings to that triumphant yet punch drunk moment when you finally hold the first copy of your blood, sweat, and tears in your hands and everything in between, this is the story of LOVE BUZZ. The journey that myself, Michelle, Dave, Thomas, and a slew of other people who joined and encouraged us along the way as we forged on over the eight year period to it's completion. It's a long story, which I will break up into six parts along the coming weeks. A nice little companion piece we'll be sharing along the way, with the help of Tim Simmons and the Comic Book Script Archive is the original script I wrote for LOVE BUZZ dating back to 2004. This original draft, clocking in at very nearly 300 pages, includes numerous things that were cut from the book that finally saw print from Oni Press. Needless to say, we cut a significant bit of story out of the final product to get it down to the 184 page mark. I consider sharing the original scripts to be a gift to other young writers out there, to help them appreciate the importance of the editorial process. 

We'll start our story with the same words that have begun so many others before it...

IN THE BEGINNING…


I first conceived of LOVE BUZZ as a long haired young rascal who looked something like this...

My first job as a filing clerk for an insurance firm had eventually yielded me the thousand dollars I would need to buy myself a top of the line (for it's time) digital video camera, as a couple of high school buddies of mine and I sat up a few late nights on weekends, coming up with ideas for short films and features we mostly never got around to producing. These late night gatherings did however inspire me to go off and write a trio of never produced scripts that still sit in the bottom of a drawer somewhere in my house. My first finished work, MIND IS A ROLLING THUNDER, a title I will freely admit that even I don't know what it's supposed to mean, but used because it sounded cool at the time, LEADERS AND FOLLOWERS, a concept I some day look forward to revisiting, about two rival high school "know-it-alls" seeking to rig an election for Class President with their own Manchurian Candidates, and finally, a script called LOVE BUZZ, which share's only two things in common with the book that's in stores now. The title, and the name of it's main character, Norm Raymer.


The original LOVE BUZZ was a story written by a guy who'd known nothing about love, and had only been out on maybe two dates with a girl who ended up getting tired of him and moving onto another guy. Convinced that my first time getting dumped was the end of the world, I began to set pen to paper writing Love Buzz. This first version had Norm getting dumped by a very different version of Maggie Gunther, who went off to date some dude with a Motorcycle, while leaving Norm to ponder what comes next, until he met a girl named Christina who was something else all together more special. The first LOVE BUZZ was written by a man with no experience in the realm of love. Regardless, I showed it to a few friends, who all said they really enjoyed it, including the girl who would become the basis for Maggie in the final incarnations of LOVE BUZZ, and the reinforcement from them kept me going and wanting to write.


Despite my film making dreams dying early, what was done was done. I had officially spent the last two years of my high school career dicking around in class, writing stories and movies that never got made and making wreckage of my GPA. Despite the fact that those things I had written are things that I can now look back and cringe upon, the writing bug had bitten me hard and there was no going back for me. Not everyone figures out what they want to do with the rest of their lives at the age of 16, but I had. I didn't know where I would go from there, but I knew that by sheer determination and refusal to quit, I could get there. My on again, off again relationships with the girl I based Maggie upon stayed rocky for some time, which is all pretty well documented within the book itself, so I'll just skip the back story on that and tell you if you haven't already, to go buy LOVE BUZZ right now off Amazon. 


So, doing a movie was out, at least for the moment. As much as I love reading prose, the idea of writing something as elaborate as a book made my testicles retract up into my body, so that was out. Plus, I had already spent so many months writing the ever bulging screenplay for LOVE BUZZ, which had grown well over the 90 to 120 page limit of most rom-com scripts and by all measures was still growing. It was around this time that I had gotten back into reading comic books in a big way after an several year hiatus, in which I had discovered that girls thought guys who read comics were dorky and unkissable. (Thank God THAT’S not the case anymore, amIright?)

     My realms of comic reading had broadened considerably as I discovered there was more beyond the cape and tights set. Books like Craig Thompson's BLANKETS, Chynna Clugston's BLUE MONDAY and particularly Sean McKeever, Mike Norton, and the Brothers Fraim’s THE WAITING PLACE had begun to made a great cases for a bold format change and new direction for LOVE BUZZ. I had begun to doubt that I could find an artist crazy enough to commit to drawing an almost 300 page book for me, but that’s fine. I took some cartooning classes as a kid. How hard could it possibly be?

     Remember what I was saying about “a healthy dose of self-delusion”?

     Yeah…

     TO BE CONTINUED…

How To End Big

Today's been an interesting, low key day of work with Love Buzz. Hacking out bits of dialogue that were too wordy with Mauer and basically trying to get the first two chapters of the book ready for Oni to compile into a PDF preview that we will then start distributing through the web in the next week or so. I've gotten too many emails from people wanting to see a bit more of the functioning comic itself in all it's glory, and I'm hoping to have the preview together a couple weeks in advance of the pre-order cut off date, so we can finally show people a bit of what we've been doing. Stay tuned for more on that soon.

The other part of my day has been spent going through the old script, looking for ways to cut out or consolidate a few pages here or there, so Michelle can have a little lighter of in the weeks up to her impending deadline. In doing all of this, I've had to spend time getting familiar with all the old friends I locked away inside my head, since I finished writing the book so long ago. The bulk of the editing work will be coming out of the last four chapters, and I've managed to clean up a good bit, and actually just cut a lot out of one chapter and merge what was left into the chapter before it, so go me.

The thing I'm having trouble with now though and probably won't end up changing much, if at all, are the final two chapters. These chapters also represent a bit of a subtle transition between the Len that wrote Love Buzz originally seven years ago, and the man and writer I've grown into to this day and I owe it all to Oni's Managing Editor Randy Jarrell.

Here's how the story goes...

In the time shortly before the gang and I signed with Oni and they'd expressed interest in picking us up, Randy and I were going through some things over the phone. The strong points of the story, the weak points, and anything that might have needed to be changed. Randy expressed some disatisfaction with the ending I had. Upon hearing this, I was a little wounded to be honest. Love Buzz had a lot of shaky points, but in my opinion, the ending was pretty good. Without going too far into spoilers on how things turn out in the story, Randy told me that while things changed for both the characters in the end, he said the old ending was lacking in "growth" and that despite all the changes I saw, Norm and Maggie never actually got to a point where they actually "grew" as characters. He suggested a few ideas and told me I should rewrite the last two chapters from the bottom up.

Needless to say, after hanging up the phone, I felt a sudden rush of panic wash over me. At that point, I'd been about 5 and a half years with Love Buzz living in some form of stasis in the back of my head, and frankly, I was getting sick to death at the thought not being done with it. Even worse, the idea of going back and tinkering with something I'd considered myself to be "finished" with for over three years was something that even thinking about would make me want to get violently ill. I sat on it for a couple of days and groused to myself in normal, crabby fashion until I got exhausted with being mad about it and decided to get started. I mean, Oni fucking Press wants to publish my book. Even if they hated the ending, I must have done something right.

I went back over the script as a whole, got back inside the skins of these characters I'd frankly become sick of, and ruminated on what I could do to change things and make them actually say something if not better, then at least more poetically phrased than what I'd originally had. I backed up the old ending in my emails, and then deleted it off my hard drive and told myself I wouldn't use a damn bit of it in crafting the new ending. the process of rewriting those 30 pages took me a little over a week, but once I figured out what I wanted the new ending to "say" without deviating too far from the basics of where I wanted the characters to be with the original ending, it became a cake walk. I'd spent so long resenting Love Buzz for not being done, and not getting published repeatedly, due to all the different circumstances, that I'd forgotten all the things about the story that made me fall in love with it and the characters in the first place. Once I figured out the direction for the new ending, it reignited my passion for the story as a whole. It's a great ending. I like to pride myself on many of my current projects, that my strengths always lie in knowing how to end a story and end it in a spectacular and unexpected way. The new ending for Love Buzz is just that. Without even trying, I crafted an ending that made me fall back in love with Norm and Maggie and everything they represented about that time in my life, and even found a way to make it pertain to my life now, seven years later. Like I said, I owe it all to Randy.

Anyway, the prompting for this post I guess is just from be going back and re-reading the whole book for the first time the whole way through with the new ending attached. I may post the script for the original ending somewhere down the road, after the book is out, but part of me thinks I should also keep it a mystery, because the new one just blows it so far out of the water that I think showing the old, busted ending might cheapen the impact of the new one. Those last two chapters are really just something that not even I figured I was capable of.

Somedays, I Wear Editor Pants!

Felt today like posting a little something from an ongoing pet project of mine that I started a couple years back on my own and more recently evolved into trying to make work as an anthology book. As I've been getting a bunch of really good stories turned in, as well as a few small smatterings of art I'm going to use to pitch the project, I figured I'd show a few assorted panels from several of the stories that have had art turned in for the pitch I've been putting together for my romance comic anthology, Less Than Three!

Obtuse, Written by Brian Dervin, art by Joe Eisma

Brian Dervin and I have been long distance friends for so long, I'm not even sure how we first started talking. Dervin and I bullshit with each other via AIM for probably over five years or more by now. Anyway, Brian's been wanting to get into writing comics over the last couple of years and when I told him about my idea for this anthology, he jumped at the chance to try and crank something out for it. Not being overly familiar with how Brian would fair as a first-time writer, I kinda just figured we'd see what happened. I finally got the script in my email and read it that night. It was short but sweet and surprisingly low key. The whole thing takes place in the confines of a single room and the majority of the story is told between the dialogue of it's two characters. One would think this might make for some boring art notes, but no. Brian had some pretty specific art directions that make the whole thing interesting to look at. Suffice to say, the story was good. Really good for a guy with no real previous experience at writing comics. It was the kind of story who would need an artist really capable of capturing facial expressions and that sort of thing. Joe Eisma's still fairly new to the game, but his art gigs have been moving up a bit in profile as he moves along. From drawing the sequel to Jason Burns' A Dummy's Guide To Danger for Viper Comics this year, as well as his and Burns' second collaboration on Devil's Due's Serpo OGN, Joe has had a nack for capturing emotions (usually used for comedic effect) so I figured he'd be a perfect fit with Brian's story.

Fool Me Twice, written by JAn Napiorkowski, art by Laura Zajacz

In JAn's story, he wanted to have a bit of a punk rock feel to the story of a girl trying to investigate the possibility of her boyfriend cheating on her. When I read it, I immediately figured out the perfect artist for the occasion. Laura Zajacz has been involved with me on Less Than Three since the project was first concieved as a web comic. She was going to build and host the site for me, but as the plans I had changed into what they are now, I still wanted to give Laura something to do for her commitment in the past. She does her own webcomic called High-Top Chucks & Bubblegum with the same punk-centric feel to it that JAn's story gave me upon initially reading it. Laura was getting geared up to start working on one of the short stories I'd written for the book, but just before she could, I showed her this script and now here we are today.

The Valentine's Day Massacre, written by yours truly, art by Brenda Lopez

This one's one of my favorite short stories I've ever written. Just five pages of pure, silly, outlandish fun from wall to wall. I've flipped on artists for this one a good bit before the story landed at Brenda's feet. First, I wanted to get my Love Buzz accomplice Michelle Silva to draw it, but with working on Love Buzz and several other short stories for different anthologies, Michelle expressed the idea of wanting to write her own story to draw for the book, so I'm letting her work that out in between Love Buzz pages, and the story she's come up with, while I'm not going to talk much about it, sounds pretty cute. Then the story briefly went to Laura Zajaca before I decided to move her over to JAn's punk-centric story, since I figured it'd compliment her art better. This brought me to Brenda, whom I've been watching like a rabid dog through her MySpace and DeviantArt pages for a couple of years. She doesn't post as much art anymore due to her job as a teacher, but I've been persistantly bugging her about wanting to do something, and I figured that her love for children might help me to get her on board with this story. Every pages I see from her is just panel after panel of mad-cap joy and insanity.

Gillian's Heart: Diamonds Are A West African Warlord's Best Friend, written by Dave Baxter & Gillian Horvat, art by Cal Slayton

From the beginning of putting this anthology together, I told myself I would absolutely not include anything to do with superheroes unless it not only fit in with the criteria of what I wanted for the book as a whole, but also brought something different to the whole superhero thing as a whole, so when Dave Baxter and his girlfriend Gillian told me they had a superhero idea they wanted to pitch, I repressed my initial urge to groan and roll my eyes and gave them my warning of what I was looking for and within a few days, they'd turned in their script. Admittedly, it made me cringe at first. Not due to the writing or the style of it, so much as the fact that the format of the script they turned in for an eight page story came out of my printer as 24 pages of paper. That's like one billionth of a tree, right there. After getting over my initial horror with the thing, I read it. Not without its problems, but still, Dave and Gillian gave me everything I asked for in a superhero story. It's different, it's fun and flighty and has some pretty great dialogue to it. It reminds me of some of the best aspects of Dan Slott's She-Hulk run. With some coaching, Dave and Gillian's trimmed the script down considerably and put it in the capable artistic hands of Cal Slayton and so far, it's the first story with fully rendered art, color, and lettering to be completed. Bravo!

Billboard Baby, written by Josh Wagner, art by Josh Boulet

Wagner and Boulet are a pairing that have worked out exceptionally well. I'm really happy about what's come out of my putting them together. Wagner is a writer I met back when we were both still working at Silent Devil, and he was kind enough to let me crash inside his camper last year at SDCC. His first comic effort, Fiction Clemens is currently being published in a three issue prestige format mini-series from Ape Entertainment. Issue Three should be hitting stands this month. Wagner's writing has a constant flair for being pretty far out there in terms of its weirdness. It's really a must read for anyone whose a fan of LSD or Terry Gilliam movies. I knew pretty soon after I'd figured out what I wanted to do with Less Than Three, that I wanted him to write me a story for it. I was surprised when the story he turned in was a bit more sedated and sweet than I was expecting from him. Not to say a story about a homeless man in love with an inanimate object doesn't fill the Wagner weird quota, but even so, there's something a bit more grounded here. To complement Wagner's work, we went through a list of artists we both liked and discussed them until we came down to Josh Boulet. While we've not gotten more than the first couple of pages turned in from him, Boulet has been cranking out some really cool looking stuff. The things he did with the story logo are exceptionally cool, but we'll save that for when people can actually hold and read a copy for themselves.

<3

So let it be known!

Just got word the other day that the book has been officially announced at Emerald City Comicon and I can thusly begin blabbing about it in public, so here goes...


Third piece of published work will be appearing in this lovely looking little book of grit, grime, and Western style insanity. It's called Outlaw Territory and it's coming out through Image Comics this September, sporting a twenty dollar price tag and collecting over 30 short stories by various creators. Seriously, I've had a glimpse at some of the art from the other stories in this book. Deadwood ain't got shit on Outlaw Territory. It'll be 100% ol' fashioned, rootin', tootin', grandma-humpin' good time. Other stories written and illustrated by the likes of and an all new stories some of comics finest current working creators including Dean Motter, Greg Pak, Khoi Pham, William Simpson, as well as Scalped creators Jason Aaron and R.M. Guera. This and a peppering of myself and some of my lesser known, but just as talented friends and contemporaries, it's a pretty formidable line up to stand in the same line as.

Here's a glimpse at a page from my own short called Savage Practices as illustrated by the skilled hands and brush strokes of Christopher Mitten. (Illustrator of Wasteland, Past Lies, and Queen & Country: Declassified for Oni Press.)



Chris has turned in all eight pages of the story and they all look just as amazing as this one. Not a single thing I can complain about. This book has been an honor and a treat to work on and watch grow and I hope it sells out three times over when it hits stands in September. In my life, I've never been a Western fan and I never thought ever be asked to write something like this and even have near as much fun doing it as I have. Hell, it even inspired me to write my own Western series that I hope to be pitching around San Diego time with my buddy Marvel and DC inker Jay Leisten co-plotting and drawing. Obviously, I'll speak more of this project in due time, but I'm finished scripting the second issue and it's been the most purely fun writing experience I've worked on in a good while. If all goes as planned, it'll be something pretty epic.

Finally, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention the real brains and driving force behind Outlaw Territory, Michael Woods. Michael's the editor and creator of this whole project, so without him, I and many others involved would never have had this wonderful opportunity.

Preorder this book and when it comes out feel free to shower me and everyone else involved with praise, gifts, and cash money. It's been a long road in getting made but it's going to turn out beautifully.