ESSAY // 3.07.03

GREAT APE GENESIS
By Patrick Neighly

The story so far: Inspired by having a self-published book picked up by a major publisher, our hero decides its time to dip his toe in comics proper. Eschewing pitches, he opts instead to self-publish right out of the gate. This is the second in a series of articles about the creation of GREAT APE, a 32-page metaphysical screwball comedy, with monkeys.

The basic concept for GREAT APE had been rattling in my head for six or seven years by the time I decided to write a comic book. Luckily, it appeared that the idea hadn't occurred to anyone else in that time - it was still mine to explore.

I think I got to page four before the story took control and wrote itself. By her second sentence, my protagonist, Jenny Lamplighter, had crystallized in my head. I was channeling her dialogue as quickly as I could type. And with her came the other characters, unbidden but demanding to be involved. I have no idea where this screwball comedy version of GREAT APE came from - my original concept was a serious hard-SF thing.

The complete script exploded onto the page in one afternoon, more or less in published form. I know some writers swear by multiple drafts, but I'm in the camp that sees first drafts as more or less fully formed. That's the core, primal version, and my limited experience with fiction has taught me not to mess with it. To change things significantly is to tell a different story, and I'm telling this story.

But I needed someone to help me tell it.

After a few failed attempts scouting online fora for an artist, I decided to place an ad on Digital Webbing, initially promising payment on the back end like many small press operations. The site is a valuable resource, but unfortunately it's cluttered by artists either unwilling or unable to work on a professional level. Easily 95% of the responses to my ad were instantly dismissed, due to unpublishable artwork, outrageous page rate demands or simply reading between the lines. After an interminable volume of emails beginning: "Dude! Check out my site!" I began to despair. But a small handful of responses yielded promising leads.

A word on collaborating with an artist - money. You are unlikely to find a quality artist without fronting money, however little. And fair enough, because your artist will spend much more time with your script than you will, and until you build buzz the project will sell based solely on your artist's ability to dazzle potential readers. I recommend a page rate plus a percentage of the back end, unless your artist is a full co-owner of the property, in which case neither party should expect the other to front cash.

After an aborted attempt with an artist who turned in fantastic character designs but balked at actually doing the sequentials, another collaborator was drafted in. I met Brahma, a South American artist who had previously published through Image, via a Digital Webbing ad. We'd begun work on a graphic novel, but Brahma loved the GREAT APE script and agreed to put our other project on hold for two months to draw it. While our graphic novel is jointly creator owned, GREAT APE was fully formed at that point and Brahma opted to take a small page rate and royalty over splitting ownership and revenue. I decided to make a show of good faith and pay him a significant part of his page rate up front.

Sometime in October, Brahma turned in his first character designs. Despite reservations about the look of some of the characters, I okayed the designs and production began. This was my first real mistake. You will live with your book for the rest of your life - if something about its execution doesn't feel right, take care of it early.

But after fifteen pages, we both realized something wasn't working. Brahma honed his character designs and opted for a different illustration style. The contrast is shocking - the details don't change much on any given page, but the tone is day (original) and night (final).

The shift in styles meant that there was no time for Brahma to adjust some key panels in the climax, so we agreed to find another artist to finish select illustrations from his breakdowns. An artist friend stepped up to the task, and by early December all 32 pages were complete.

But what to do once those inked pages came in?

Fortunately, I live with a graphic designer. Anne Marie is an occasional comics reader, and I thought her relative unfamiliarity with the medium would bring some interesting tensions to the project. She agreed to do the production chores for GREAT APE for free, reasoning that she could add the finished book to her portfolio as a fun conversation piece. However, my experience with Anne Marie is the exception - most creators will likely need to have at least a passing familiarity with a layout program like Quark, or pay to outsource that part of the project.

Anne Marie spent more than 100 man hours cleaning up high-resolution scans and creating the master Quark document, designing the front and back covers and interiors, and lettering the book. We used the excellent free typefaces available from Blambot, creating dialogue balloons in Illustrator before porting them into the Quark file. GREAT APE is part screwball comedy, with rapid-fire verbal exchanges that required careful placement of balloons. Anne Marie managed to come up with a balloon style for these exchanges that complimented the tone of the story while standing apart from traditional layouts.

She also worked her Illustrator wizardry to clarify a few details in the climax, meshing the redrawn panels with Brahma's style and digitally inserting a character who had been accidentally omitted in a key scene. With our print deadline coming down to the wire, it was time to build a cover.

Despite our time crunch, I rejected Brahma's first cover illustration - although it was a great image, it had no inherent drama, and I felt it gave away the story's twist too early. I made some suggestions for a second attempt, and ended up with a dramatic scene of Jenny and Ulu being menaced by a stylized ape shadow. The original image became a pin-up inside the back cover.

Anne Marie colored Brahma's illustration, adding a 1940s noir typeface to tie into the moody image. The final touch was a shocking yellow border, a relic from early efforts to mimic National Geographic that never quite went away.

Files completed, it was time to find a printer. Which is, as they say, a story for another day.

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Journalist Patrick Neighly is one half of the team behind ANARCHY FOR THE MASSES: THE DISINFORMATION GUIDE TO THE INVISIBLES (FEB032367). Learn more about his forthcoming GREAT APE (MAR032308) at www.madyakpress.com.