Woggy #28: Modesty Blaise

Sometime last year, I was browsing the staff picks shelf at my favorite local bookstore when I came across Modesty Blaise, the original 1965 novel based on a comic of the same name and written by the comic's creator. I had about a year previous enjoyed the movie, which was (I've since realized) based on the novel. I was just in the mood for some good fun fiction, and it turned out to be amazingly better than I had even expected. Oozing with fab 60s style and awesome spytastic butt-kicking action I had expected. An amazingly progressive cultural attitude and extremely well-developed, truly feminist heroine I did not.

As the book mentioned on the jacket it was based on a popular newspaper comic series from the same era, I instantly wanted to read not only all of the remaining novels in the series, but also wanted to find out if in fact one could get any of these comics in readable form.

It turns out that there is not one, but a whole series of graphic novel compilations of all the various storylines of the comic. My husband got me the first of the series as a gift, and I tore through it right away. It was different storyline-wise from the novel, but all the basic elements that I enjoyed were the same, plus in graphic novel form, it was all the more interesting and stylish. I couldn't wait to read more but wasn't sure where I'd get the books. Turns out, my husband said, he got it at the comic book store.

I have mentioned before in this blog my ambivalent feelings regarding comic book stores. These feelings were not assisted by a pre-Christmas shopping trip to a large comic book store in the Charleston, SC area in search of some suitable age-appropriate comics for my husband's young teenage cousin. The owner of that establishment, as well as the establishment itself, reinforced all of my old collegiate memories and stereotypes (did I mention the giant chain-mail costume that was also on sale there? Or the cockroach crawling around on the bookshelves, or the COMPLETELY inappropriate comic the guy recommended for our young giftee... but I digress...)

As it happens, I do have a small comics shop right in my neighborhood. It's presence has been known to me since moving to Seattle. It is in fact one of the pleasingly "old-Seattle" establishments remaining in my neighborhood that leave me in a general way, enjoying the interesting cultural mix of grub-meets-fance that is present all around my neighborhood. I have even thought of going inside. And yet I have remained always outside the door.

So, it was with some relief that I agreed the other week to join my husband for a weekend outing to the shop, since he knew I wanted more books, and he also had a book he wanted to get. But fate was not in our favor. That weekend as it happened, was our local Comicon, which I realized would be probably the worst weekend for me to attempt visiting the local store, if it in fact was even open. So we made a rain-check for a future weekend.

Prejudgments notwithstanding, my desire to read these books is high, and I've got someone to help me with moral support, so I'm confident that I soon will have the next few books in my hands. And after that, there are many, many books remaining in the series, not to mention all of the remaining novels in the newly republished novel series, and I intend to someday read them all. This, I swear!

Things To Complete this Woggy Project:

• plan a visit to the comic store
• actually go to the comic store
• buy the next couple books in the comic series
• read the next couple books in the series
• repeat, repeat, repeat, until all have been read
• buy the next novel in the novel series
• read the next novel in the series
• repeat, repeat, repeat until all have been read
• kick mental butt with my fabulous breadth and depth of Modesty Blaise fan knowledge

Updates! Woggies #8, #10, AND #16!

Yes spring has sprung, and it's verdant atmosphere has brought about updates in not one, not two but three woggy projects, all within the past two weeks!

Woggy #8 Update: "Lil' Me"

With my notebook-buying obstacle out of the way, and my proper time-era enhancing pandora station created and at the ready for inspiration, my mind and hands were set free to begin with the drawing. After a small bit of research to verify a few additional time-accurate details, I started my concept drawings and began the intro to my first book. I was a little slowed for a bit after completing the introduction, trying to decide what the story for this first episode/issue would be, but after a bit of brewing I was able to successfully work out a storyboard for the whole issue.

At this point all that is left is to sit down a little bit each day and continue the work on the final, finished-drawing versions of the storyboard for this issue to be finally complete. Time intensive to be sure, but right now the road is clear and straight up through the end of this book. Hooray!

I can now check some items off my Woggy To-do list:

X Dig up my old plot and story notes, and my folder of character drawings
X Sketch out a plot for my introductory episode/book
X rough storyboard the book

And for the record, I have begun working on:

• draw book #1

Things Left To Complete This Woggy Project:

• finish drawing book #1
• admire fab new book!
• repeat process for several more books
• research publishing graphic novels/ comic books, including self-publish options
• begin sending out stuff/ doing whatever initial stuff i need to do to pursue publishing of first few books
• continue making more books
• consider creating a dedicated website for the books
• write more to-do steps

______________________________________________

Woggy #10 Update: Understanding Comics

In the course of me working on the drawings for Woggy #8's introduction, I ran into a bit of a problem figuring out how to represent a particular action sequence that was very important. Considering how to solve the problem, I thought immediately of Understanding Comics and figured there would probably be something in there that might help me figure out a good approach.

Funny enough, the place where I had stopped reading, or more specifically the chapter I had bookmarked as the next one to begin, covered exactly the topic I was needing to read about. So that afternoon, while I had pulled the book off the shelf thinking I would just flip through to a section I had already read, for a few references and words of advice, I ended up instead sitting down and reading a whole new chapter of the book. In this way I not only learned what I needed to know for Woggy #8 right when I needed it the most, helping me solve my problem & inspire me, I also inadvertently completed a new step towards completing Woggy #10 at the same time.

Items I can check off my Woggy To-do list:

X Take book off shelf and begin reading again
X Consider buying another book from the graphic novel section! (actually did this a while ago, as mentioned in the last Woggy #8 update)

Things Left to Complete This Woggy Project:

• Set aside an evening or afternoon
• Read more of book
  
• Repeat until book has been finished

______________________________________________

Woggy #16: New Bed

Completely unrelated to the above two woggy updates, I am happy to finally report progress on this woggy. A lovely spring day brought us out for a walk in the park, and subsequent walk home right past one of our favorite furniture stores down the street. While there we both saw a bed frame we both liked and discussed it as a possibility, and found a fab couch on super discount, which after a half-day's thought, resulted in our decision to buy it.

While it was a couch purchased, and not a bed, those of you looking at the poster above might have noticed these are not unrelated. A new couch in the house brings about a quite urgent need to remove the old one, especially when one lives in a small downtown condo. Mind ever-quick, I jumped on this opportunity to point out that we would probably save alot of time and effort if we added the box spring and old bed frame to our flyer, since we already knew we were going to get rid of them.

And thank you, terrible economy, someone has already offered to take both of these worthy objects off our hands and out of our house within the week.

Of course, this means that from now until the date of bed frame delivery (to say nothing of all the steps in between) we will be sleeping on the very basic and chic "mattress on floor" layout, the ultimate in minimalist bed furnishment. But no one said progress was without its downside...

Items I can check off my Woggy To-do list:

X go to a store to look at a bed
X put our box spring and frame up for give-away
X give away our stuff to give-away person (ok, this one's almost checked off..)

Things Left To Complete This Woggy Project:

• go to more stores to look at other possible beds
  
• decide on a bed and buy it
  
• get our new bed delivered
• say, "Hey, doesn't our new bed look great?!"

Update: Woggy #8

Back in October, I had mentioned my Lil' Me (working title) cartoon was a woggy I had hinged much of my medium-term professional aspirations on. Well, especially since this is a woggy I truly have my heart set on actually completing someday, I have come to face certain facts over the ensuing months, and have thereby decided to drastically alter the path of this little tadpole's future.

In fabulous amphibian fashion, this Lil' Me cartoon project does hereby officially transform into the shape of ... a comic book! Yes, seeing all the technological and other hurdles before me, and the inevitable complications of the task that are impeding this project's progress, while all my fab concepts, characters and ideas continue to chomp at the bit telling me to just hurry up and get on with it already, I've decided the best way I can get on with this in a way that will allow it to fruit into reality as close as possible to my vision is to create a comic book series instead. (how's THAT for a long sentence!! Take that, Mr. Dickens!)

All of the essential elements will still be there. The characters and stories can stay the same, and it works fine with an episodic format. the only thing that will have to be missing will be my fabulous theme song, which was the seed that started this whole project in the first place, but I will probably figure out some way to make that work in a comic book. Or, maybe I'll just sing it to myself while I'm drawing.

Best of all, I can return to the format I prefer anyway, which is the drawing on paper. In an instant I have erased all technological hurdles in my way!! And, even better, With me getting all my episodes out in comic book form, it will still be possible for them to be one day picked up as an episodic cartoon, with someone else doing all the fancy-pants work and me just letting everyone know the general idea of how everything should turn out.

I first started to think about this as a possible solution to my problem when I saw the movie Persopolis (which by the way is really awesome and I really reccomend you go see it if you haven't), most especially when I saw the DVD extra where they went behind the scenes and talked about how the movie began as a graphic novel by Marjane Satrapi, who also co-directed the film.

I've mentioned elsewhere in this wog that I've always been drawn to graphic novels and comic books, but have always felt a bit like a fish out of water whenever I was around them. My recent purchase and reading of Best American Comics 2008, as well as Lynda Barry's highly inspiring and wildly creative What It Is (which I am still in the middle of), have helped me find some more courage in that area, helping me to see this art form as a medium that might be just right for me, especially in the case of my "Lil' Me" story.

Then a defining moment came one day when I heard my sister, who works as a professional graphic artist, mention how much she'd really like a drawing tablet, which she does not actually have, causing me to look over at my dusty and paper-buried graphic tablet on my work table, considering exactly how long had it been since I had last used that thing anyway? And would I ever in fact be really using it for anything more than a glorified mouse before it became obsolete? Surely it could be put to better use by a professional who actually would use it everyday (i.e., my sister). This was in fact the most defining fact of the many facts I had brought myself to consider over these past several months.

Then on a recent visit with family, I found myself saying to my Grandma, who had just asked me what projects I was working on, that I was making a comic book of the cartoon I had told her about before. So there it was, I realized. I guess that's really what I was going to be doing, after all!

The last hurdle that was standing in the way of this official transformation was the purchase by me of some actual blank notebooks. Being a writer I have many blank lined notebooks lying around the house, but up until today I had no blank blank notebooks anywhere. Whenever I draw or "doodle" as I like to refer to it, I usually use either blank computer paper, or my favorite, sheets of white "typing paper" (or as they call it now a "writing tablet") which are quite nice for drawing on, but come in a tear-off pad, which is not very useful when trying to create a cohesive work of many pages that follow each other. I'm happy to say that I purchased not one but two blank notebooks today, of the size and binding I like most in their cousinly lined-paper forms, and am now officially ready to embark on the next phase of this woggy adventure.

I hereby rewrite my woggy to-do list...

Things Left To Complete This Woggy Project:

• Dig up my old plot and story notes, and my folder of character drawings
  
• Sketch out a plot for my introductory episode/book
• rough storyboard the book
• draw book #1
• admire fab new book!
• repeat process for several more books
• research publishing graphic novels/ comic books, including self-publish options
• begin sending out stuff/ doing whatever initial stuff i need to do to pursue publishing of first few books
• continue making more books
• consider creating a dedicated website for the books
• write more to-do steps
  

Woggy Project #10: Understanding Comics

Like many people of my gender, I did not grow up reading comic books. This is not to say I was entirely unfamiliar with the medium, of course. I read the newspaper comics every day, and if I do remember correctly, much of every rainy-day fun book I ever remember reading/ activity-izing contained alot of what would probably be considered graphic storytelling. The memories are vague, to be sure, but I definitely remember a comic-drawn George Washington telling me all about the Minutemen.

As an adult, I have read and collected a small collection of books that I now realize are basically of this genre, even though their location in the bookstore made me unaware of this fact. Wanting to understand various facts about Relativity, Physics, and other topics, I gravitated towards the books which told these facts using pictures rather than plain words. They have names like Relativity Visualized and Introducing the Universe.

Also as an adult, continuing my enjoyment of newspaper comics, I did find a few which when put into book collections do actually find themselves shelved with the graphic novels rather than humor. And, as a fan of animated films whose primary feature is not their accessibility to the grade-school demographic, I have found myself really liking a whole host of films which, I am told, have graphic novel counterparts I should probably try reading one of these days.

So for a fairly long time I have had the general impression that comics might be something I'd like to try. However, while I can't deny the evidence that I should be interested in them, there has been a mighty obstacle standing in my way, and that is the culture of comic books and comic book stores. Having attended a college that was not only filled with geeks but specifically filled with male geeks at a ratio of 3:1 female geeks, it was of course completely impossible for the institution of the comic book store to have escaped my notice. I had, in the course of palling around with friends inadvertently found myself inside of these mysterious buildings on more than one occasion, and in an attempt to be one of the guys tried in vain to make sense of the culture, or at least to blend in. Suffice it to say that while I occasionally managed to find something that I could actually stand in front of for more than a few minutes without giggling, rolling my eyes, being horrified, or needing to suppress a strongly impending feminist tirade, those moments were very few, very far between, and never long enough to get me past the sea of content that was clearly not for me and all the way up to the register with my wallet.

Any female who is reading this and is still somehow unaware of what I'm talking about, let's just suffice it to say that it's a bit of a boy's club. And a strange one at that, stuck somewhere in adolescence where there is plenty of discussion of girls, unless one actually shows up, in which case she better get out of here because who wants a stupid girl around here? For additional assistance and reasons, you may want to more closely observe Comic Book Guy from the Simpsons.

So anyway, this takes me to today's subject (yes, finally, I know...) which is the book Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud. Having occasionally voiced my dilemma over comic books, I had found this book recommended by several male (and comic-book-reading) friends as not only a book I might actually like to read, but also one that might demystify some of the mystifications I was experiencing.

Very happily, buying this book did not require me actually having to visit a comic book store. My favorite bookstore actually has a very civilized looking "Graphic Novel" section, where I can stand and look over the shelves and still feel like a grown up lady in a bookstore reviewing my sophisticated literature choices. I still feared that some "Comic Book Guy" might be lying in ambush to ask me "Excuse me lady, and I dooo use that term loosely, but the romance section is that way," or worse, that he might just rip the book out of my hand and give me a disdainful sound with a curt "I don't think so; " but it seems my fears may have been a bit exaggerated.

So, I got the book home and began reading it along with the remaining pile of books I brought from the store. And I did really like it. Very interesting and thoughtful and educational, even. But like many other books, it somehow ended up set aside one evening not to be picked up again, and eventually made it back onto the graphic and art book shelf, and I haven't gone back to it since. I'm looking forward to it, though!

Things to Complete This Woggy Project:

• Set aside an evening or afternoon
• Take book off shelf and begin reading again
• Repeat until book has been finished
• Consider buying another book from the graphic novel section!