Eeek, it's 2009!

Happy New Year! Or at least, it will be if we can defy the deadlines and get our latest comic ready for the Thing.

I've written a new Walking Wounded 6-pager to go into Massacre for Boys in Colour, and as I've got nothing better to blog I thought I'd explain a little about how this story came about.

Necessity being the mother of invention, the main reason why I wrote this script is because we really need a new Walking Wounded story in MFBIC. They're our main brand, especially at the Thing, and we don't want to turn up without a new WW adventure.

Then I needed an idea. I actually find it pretty easy to come up with new concepts for Walking Wounded strips, I think it's because their universe has been going round my head for the better part of twenty years. This one started off as a response to Paul Harrison-Davies' fine zombie pinup (see previous posts). The image was so powerful it gave me the pivotal moment of a story pretty much straight away.

So it had to be a tale featuring our old friends, the Nazi zombies. But I needed a new setting for them, and that's where my wife chipped in by reminding me about high-concept horror Snakes on a Plane. Okay, so it's not that great a movie, but Zombies on a Plane, now that could really work...

As the plot was now taking shape, the title became obvious. I had called the first Nazi zombie appearance "Island of Terror" after a 60s British sci-fi movie I greatly admire, and so naturally their return would have to named after that film's companion piece, Night of the Big Heat.

So that gave me two more important details, as I could scarcely now set the strip during the day or omit to finish it with a good deal of flames. After that, it was pretty much a case of transcribing into Microsoft Word what I had in my head. Well, almost. Comic scripting is pretty technical so I had to have each panel on each page planned before I actually wrote the script. That's essential if you don't want the finished comic to be crap.

Now I have done all the writing I need to do so I am going to spend the next few months as a publisher...