See below for the amazing Page 1, along with the original rough layout. Hannah really knocked this out of the park and I can’t wait to see the rest of the pages. She is doing some amazing work and I’m really excited to see this pitch come together
Back to writing!
-jesse
Hey Everyone
I am excited to say that the script has been locked and we are moving forward on the pitch. Everyone is really happy with the 10 pages we’ll be putting together for the pitch and I for one am really excited to see this come to life. Hannah spent last week working on the layouts for the pages and they look great. Check out the rough for Page 1 below. This is one page in particular I am really excited about seeing fully drawn. I think the first wide shot will look pretty sweet and I’m loving what she did with the temple.
I’ll post the final page once it’s finished so you can see the comparison. But for now enjoy!
-jesse
Hey Everyone
I want to try and keep this page updated as much as possible, so I thought I would share a test page from the pitch I am currently working on. If you’ve looked at Hannah’s blog, she has a really amazing style and we’ve been experimenting with a couple of different styles for the look of the book. She has what she calls a “line” style and a “no line” style. She did the first test page in the “line style” and it looked great, but the page was a little dark and it felt like something was missing. So she did the page again in the “no line” style and all I can say is WOW! The new page is amazing and I am really excited to start working on the actual pitch pages. So check it out for yourselves below. The original page is on the left and the new page is on the right.
Hope you enjoy!
-jesse
Still plugging away at the new pitch with Hannah. Finished another draft of the script for the 9 pages we’ll pitch last night and just waiting to hear from a few people if I’ve nailed it on this pass so we can start getting the pages drawn. I think this new version is much better than previous drafts, so I am confident we’ll be starting drawing soon. I really can’t wait to see Hannah bring these pages to life. Also we just brought the incredible Thomas Mauer on board to do design and letters. Thomas is the fantastic letterer for a bunch of Image books right now, including two of my favorites, Gladstone’s School for World Conquerors & Graveyard of Empires among many other titles. You can check out his work here. I can’t wait to see what kind of design he comes up with for the pitch.
We also need a title. As I said the story is about dragons and the title that popped into my head that sparked the idea for the story was “The Last Dragon”, but this has been used in a film, book and also another comic book Dark Horse put out this last week. So we need something new and different since our story is nothing like these other stories.
Hannah has been working on a test page, trying out some different styles for the art and I think this latest style is the one we’ll go with. Really loving the way this panel has turned out.
Hannah should be finishing up this test page in the next day or so and once we lock the style of art as well as the script, we are off to the races. I’ll keep you posted throughout the process.
-jesse
Hey Everyone. So I thought I’d share a script I wrote last year. Viper Comics had a writing contest and you had to write a 5 page story about an established character, but if I remember it correctly they wanted to see this character (or characters) in a different type of situation than they are normally in.
Unlike a lot of aspiring comic book writers, right now I have no desire to write Marvel or DC characters. I much prefer coming up with my own stories and creating something original. But in this situation, I was forced to use an existing character. I wasn’t sure what to do and thought about it for some time and then it hit me. I’ve been a big fan of the story “Casey at the Bat” since I was a kid. I loved the cartoon they showed when I was younger, it’s just a cool story. To me, Superman immediately stuck out as being the perfect “Casey”, so I decided to do a spin on the poem pitting a Marvel team vs. a DC team with Superman playing the part of Casey.
I did not win the contest, obviously, but I was pretty happy with my script and thought it would be a fun thing to actually see come to life. So I’ve been casually looking for an artist for this but have had no such luck as of yet. So I figured I’d at least put my script out in the world if nothing else just to share the idea and maybe get some feedback on the script. If any artist reads this and would be interested in drawing it, let me know. writejessewrite at gmail dot com
So here is the script. I hope you all enjoy!
-jesse
Thought I’d share some of the art from a pitch I did last year with Patric Reynolds and letters by the incredible Jeff Powell. Jeff has done book design and lettering for just about everyone but I first noticed his work on Olympus from Image, his lettering on that book was outstanding. Patric is currently doing work for Dark Horse. He did an Abe Sapien one shot, a Serenity one shot and just completed the Let Me In adaptation. Patric is an amazing artist and during some time in-between projects last year, he was kind enough to do these pages. Sadly we couldn’t get anyone to bite.
The story is called “Blinded” and was to be a three issue mini-series. The story centers on a man named David White who has protected the city for the last 25 years as the superhero, The Blue Bomber. David is retiring and being honored at a banquet for his service to the city. Everyone who is everyone is at this banquet and during his acceptance speech something in David snaps and he uses his powers to take the entire room hostage. The three issues deal with finding out what caused David to turn on the people he’s spent his life protecting while the police to try to figure out to diffuse the situation and ensure no one gets hurt in the process.
Patric’s art on these pages was everything I had hoped for with this series, however looking back on it now, I think we chose the wrong 5 pages to present. These five pages really make the book like your standard superhero book when that couldn’t be farther from the truth. Anyone who knows me knows that I don’t read many super hero books. My pull list hardly ever has anything from Marvel or DC in it. As a writer, right now I really have no desire to ever write those kind of books, that’s not my goal in comics. I would only do a book about superheroes if I could do something different and I thought I did something a little different with Blinded.
One of my favorite writers is Aaron Sorkin. Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip remains one of my ALL TIME favorite TV shows. After watching that I got hooked on the West Wing and then hooked on Sportsnight and Blinded has something in common with all three of these shows. While all three shows were about a specific subject matter (politics, late night sketch comedy, sports) that’s not what those shows were about. And while Blinded has superheroes in it, it’s not a superhero book. In fact the few pages we pitched are about the only pages in the entire three issues that actual show him doing any superhero kind of stuff.
To me, Blinded is the struggle of a man who’s gone through a horrific event in his life and is trying to deal with it. This man just happens to have super powers. These pages are a flash back to one example of him doing his job (yes in this world, being a hero is a job. He has a desk, he works for the city and he has weekends off…) because I wanted to show people what that was like for him, but the story really is about who David is as a person and being a hero is part of what makes David who he is, so we had to show some of that.
So looking back on it, I think we should have chosen different pages to pitch because I don’t think the true nature of Blinded came across in the pitch. Patric suggested the pages because they were the few pages in Issue #1 that actually had some action. But you live and you learn.
However working with Patric on these pages, seeing him bring this story to life, even the very short life it had has been one of the most fun times I’ve ever had as a writer so far and I can’t thank him enough for taking time out of his crazy busy schedule to do this. It means more to me than I think he knows.
We were rejected by my first choice publisher, but another major publisher said they really liked the art and the writing, they just don’t publish superhero books.
Who knows maybe one day we can find a way to bring this story to life?
-jesse
I am working on a new comic book pitch with a fantastic artist named Hannah Christenson. All I can tell you about the story now is that it has to do with dragons. See below for some sketches she’s been working on and stay tuned for more info. If you want to see more of Hannah’s amazing work, check out her blog.
Thanks for stopping by. I’ll update this blog from time to time with updates on my writing projects. I’m mostly working on some comic book pitches right now. Also a couple of years ago I started a comic book company with two of good friends called Saint James. If you’re interested in what we worked on please visit: http://www.WhoisSaintJames.com
-jesse
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