Jon Lewis of True Swamp and "
Modern Norse Elf Lives"
on his current creative activities:
To my chagrin, I've been unable after several attempts to make any substantial sales to DC since losing the
Robin slot. For the moment, I've given up on the "professional writing" thing. It was awfully nice making a living from writing for two years, though, and (duh) I'd love to do it again. Anybody who knows the secret tunnel entrance to TV Scripting Land should lemme know.
All this year, I've been temping at a kitchenwares/housewares company. The upside to making a living from office work is that all my creative thought goes to my own stuff. The downside is that there isn't much time or energy left over to work on it, so stories progress slowly. The other downside is my overly busy imagination – I'm chipping away at about five different stories right now:
1. The next
True Swamp. This is begun, but not very far along yet. Since it'll be another large "annual" size like the last two, don't look for it anytime soon.
2.
Neverglades. This is an approximately 30-page one shot about a pair of fishermen. It's an urban fantasy with characters who look like Muppets. This is halfway done in pencil... once pencils are done I usually ink very fast, so it could conceivably be finished by the end of the year. I've had terrific response to this one from early perusers.
3. A story about a superhero team, close in visuals to my
Ghost Ship pirate style, but with normal panel grids. I'm drawing this in my sketchbook when I'm in a certain mood. Probably the result of the myriad story ideas I couldn't use in my mainstream superhero gig because they were either too weird or too innocent. I'll make it into a digest-size mini when it's done, unless I decide to drown it before then.
4. A related genre piece, this time a 30-page traditional barbarian fantasy. Protagonist is a pseudo-Lapplander in a pointy wool cap, with fetish carvings dangling off him, wandering through a frozen landscape. Violence, shamanism and such. Imagine a slower, more atmospheric Conan, except drawn in the most line-reduced, simple and cartoony, unmacho style possible. This is completely written and thumbnailed in my sketchbook – it just needs to be drawn. But do I really want to share this side of myself...?
5. The first 24 pg. issue of a rebuilt
Shellmen. This is the closest to finished. Certainly the only thing that would have a chance in hell of being done in time for this year's SPX. Jeff and I actually solicited this a few years ago, but Diamond lost the file, so it didn't appear in the catalog. I got angry and used it as an excuse to sidetrack onto
True Swamp Vol. 2, so this has sat completely pencilled and partly inked ever since. It's the beginning of a wholesale reconception of the Shellmen serial I was doing in
Spectacles. If you never saw it, it's similar to
True Swamp, but the animals and creatures are those you'd find in the city, and the city in question has been hit by some kind of physical and metaphysical catastrophe (or Violent Unexplaned Event, to borrow a perfect term from Peter Greenaway). A new title is needed, as the allusion in "Shellmen" is way too obscure, but I don't have one yet. A few pages overlap with what came out in
Spectacles, but those have been redrawn and rewritten. Instead of jumping from character to character every few pages as in the old incarnation, the idea is to follow one character per issue; in the first issue, the toad Arkel. I've taken this out dozens of times since its inital abortive solicitation and stared at it. Lately, I've finally laid some ink to the remaining pages again. If I decide I can stand the thought of having TWO densely-philosophical intelligent-animal-ensemble-cast-worldbuilding stories in progress, then I'll make a 24 pg. digest mini of this for SPX and wait for there to be 100 pages or so amassed before going to Jeff for a "proper" publication... it's financial doom to publish anything shorter than book-length in independent comics these days, after all.
Those are all in addition to dozens of ideas for short stories I don't know what to do with. And
The Frost Changes, which needs a rethink.
I'm sure it'd be better if I just focused on one project for a year at a time or something, but that just ain't my head.
True Swamp
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