Comic Redux

As a writer, you want to believe you can write anything. While I consider myself primarily a novelist, I have turned my hand to other forms of the craft: Non-fiction, from essays and reviews, to this blog; fiction-wise, I've done short stories, teleplays, screenplays, comics, even some poetry and song lyrics, for what they are worth. My preferred genre is F&SF, though I have written some techno-thriller and mystery novels. How well I did in any of these arenas is debatable, but I managed to make some money in most of 'em, so I can't complain. 

I was noodling around on the Dark Horse iPad app and realized that they had done an ePub if my Star Wars graphic novels series, Shadows of the Empire: Evolution, so I picked up a copy. This was a five-issue miniseries that came out a few years after the novel. 

Looks pretty good on an iPad. And as happens more often than not when I go back and look at something years after I wrote it, reads better than I remembered ...

This was my one foray into comics. I figured I could handle it because of all the TV animation I wrote, the main difference between that and comics being that the pictures move in one and stay still in the other. And my intent when I wrote the comic book episodes was to use as few words as possible, letting the pictures tell the story. I was–still am–happy with how that worked out. There are more than a few pages whereupon the dialog is minimal or none at all, only a few sound EFX. I dunno what format DH uses these days, but back then, I copied Neil Gaiman's format, and it allowed me to tell the artist (Ron Randall) what I had in mind. I tried to play to his strengths: I asked him what kind of b.g. he liked to draw, and offered those so he could do it. I thought he did a great job on the pencils. And since this was right about the time DH was switching over to computers, the colors came out vivid and clean. 

Don't see myself going down the graphic novel road again, but it was a notch on my handle I was was happy to add ...