Aaron and I spent this past weekend at the Appleseed Comic Con. Personally, it’s my very favorite show of the year. Maybe because it’s our hometown show. Maybe because we know more of the people here (both behind and in front of the tables) than other shows we travel to. But ask anybody who’s exhibited here a few years and they’ll tell you the same thing. There’s just a great vibe here, man.
Last week I talked about the biggest change we made when collecting Book 1. We made a number of smaller revisions as well, which may have gone unnoticed by all but the most dedicated readers. Here are two that focus on pacing and atmosphere.
We added a page into Issue 2, during the introductory sequence for Adrost. The new page adds some nice pacing to the scene, stretching the important intro out a bit and giving the sequence a bit more dramatic weight. It also gave us a chance to introduce an important character – Baron Lord Ardam.
Before we inserted this page, Ardam was introduced alongside Kadin a couple pages later. That introduction worked fine, but Ardam is a rather important character in our saga, and the new page gives him a little more heft. It also shows some of his garden, which we see again in Issue 9.
We inserted another new page into Issue 3, when Arion and Aliyana have returned to Athelica and are walking through the city. For the Book 1 cover, Aaron produced a couple variations of Athelican cityscapes, so we decided to adapt one for a new interior page. The scene worked fine without this page, but it definitely adds a huge sense of scale and atmosphere. It also shows subtle character work, too, as Aliyana continues to stride away from Arion, demonstrating their differing outlooks on the merits of this city.
In storytelling, little things can make a big difference. It can be hard to stop and smell the roses when you’re wanting to get to the exciting bits of the story. But never underestimate the pull of a slow burn. Taking the time to set your world up right can pay big dividends down the road.
Next week, the rest of the Book 1 changes. But before that is my very favorite con in the great Midwest — Appleseed! Our hometown con is back for another great weekend, and you can find us and loads of Black Rose swag right up front. Stop by and say hi!
Issue 6, the conclusion to our first story arc, was released in print around March 2012. Before continuing on to Issue 7, we collected the first six issues into a trade paperback, a common practice in comics for businessy reasons I’m writing another post about. Normally producing a trade is pretty easy: just grab the issues, slap into a single document, add a title page and you’re set.
In our case, though, we took this opportunity to make some small revisions to the story. I’m going to dig into each of these in detail – if you’re interested in the nuts and bolts of comic making, there are some good lessons here.
Issue 1 was originally released with a two-page intro scene that utilized the “How We Got Here” trope, flashing forward to the climax of Issue 6 where Arion is restrained and thrown overboard by Trellis and his crew. Here’s the old intro:
Of all the dumb ideas that Chris and I have had on Black Rose, this was probably the most dumbest.
I do understand why we chose to start things this way. Issue 1 is focused on Arion’s last days in the Athelican Army, which is important material to cover for his character but not indicative of the continuing tone and content of the ongoing story. So we decided to start Issue 1 with a flashforward of this climactic scene, reassuring readers that there was more variety on the way.
But as we began to publish the successive issues, we realized that the flashforward wasn’t working:
So the trade was the perfect opportunity to right the writing. We scripted a new four-page intro that focused not on our protagonists, but on the underlying conflict between Ishtakar and Athelica and their opposing worldviews. When we transitioned Black Rose to a webcomic, we led with this new intro. You can see those pages starting here.
I’m really proud of the revised intro. It says a lot with very little, and doesn’t try to hook the audience with action or other gimmicks.
Next week: the other changes we snuck into Book 1 when you weren’t looking!
So when we last saw our intrepid heroes, Aaron Minier had invited his two good friends to work with him on a comic book, and they told him what he’d done so far was great but also get rid of it and start over.
He took it well.
Fortunately, Aaron’s art style had been evolving since he’d first started Black Rose pages back in 2003 – he was already thinking about going back and redrawing some of the old material. So if the art was going to be reworked, why not the story too?
Over the next few years, the three of us had lots of brainstorming weekends. Now that we had pressed the reset button, what did we want to bring over from “Ye Olde Black Rose” (as we came to call the prior incarnation) and what new ideas did we have? It’s a much better group dynamic to be co-creators and co-conspirators rather than Boss and Hired Goons.
We also drew ideas from another source. During our early college years, Chris had started drafting a fantasy story tentatively titled Wrath. It didn’t get too far in development, but I remember doodling some concept art for it.
A fair amount of Wrath ideas started to work their way over to Black Rose. Chief among them was the character of Ardam and his imposing fortress of Adrost. At this point, it’s hard for me to imagine Black Rose without Ardam – he’s really squirmed his way into the story just like the parasite he is! Some names also came loose and found their way to new characters and places, such as “Athelica.”
We were all pretty excited about the new direction for the project. Aaron wanted to start drawing as soon as we finished scripting Issue 1, but Chris and I made him wait until we’d scripted the entire first arc of six issues – we were fairly certain that we’d want to go back and tweak as we went along. Issue 1 was finally released in print in 2010, the culmination of 2-3 years of brainstorming, writing, and drawing.
It wasn’t the last time we’d go back and make changes, though, as I’ll talk about next week!
I met my writing partner, Chris Arndt, in kindergarten.
Yes, kindergarten.
Like most elementary school friendships, Chris and I would have probably lost track of each other over the years – except that when I was in second grade, my family moved into a house just three doors down from Chris’. So clearly, destiny. Although we went to different schools, we hung out all the time, playing with Legos and Micro Machines and creating intricate tales for our imaginary worlds.
When we were in middle school, Chris started writing some of our stories down, and by high school had pulled me in as an editor and collaborator. This continued through our college tenure, culminating in us finally releasing our first novel in a small self-published run my senior year.
(See, Aaron, I’m showing some of my embarrassing old art too, ha!)
So when Aaron Minier started looking for a new writing partner for Black Rose, he naturally thought of us. (For the life of me, I cannot remember when exactly Aaron asked us to join the project, but it was sometime in the 2007-2008 timeframe. So around 7 years ago already!) We agreed, excited to work with him on a project, and he sent over a few docs containing general plans for the story so we could peek behind the scenes.
Ah, poor Aaron. I think he assumed Chris and I would pick up Black Rose right where it left off, and continue along the plans previously outlined. I think Chris and I probably assumed that at the outset too! But there was actually much less background material written than I had expected – what had been written was rather vague and would require a lot of fleshing out.
As Chris and I started brainstorming, other ideas started swirling. There were a lot of ways we felt the overall story could be improved, and tonally we wanted to do something far more grounded – more a novel than a comic book. The two of us gradually agreed: starting over, keeping the two central characters but freeing us from the previous style and continuity, would be a story we were much more interested in telling. It would give us a chance to create something fresh instead of trying to pick up what was ultimately someone else’s story.
I recall some awkward conversations with Aaron as we carefully broached the topic: “So… how much of this could we, you know… change?”
Our grisly fate revealed next week!