Thursday 1 January 2009

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...

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