Rob Schamberger Makes Comix

March 26, 2008

TOO Late Finale! Plus Commentary!

Click the link below to read the archives, and then come on back here below the cut to read this week's installment and the commentary!

And there it is, the end of my second graphic novel. I don't really want to comment too much on this last part because I want you the reader to draw your own conclusions. I just hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed making it for you.

I'll be continuing on this with 'Too Soon' coming, well, soon. This world is also explored more in my new monthly at Wowio 'Batesville', which I hope you're all reading and enjoying as well.

Posted by Schamberger at 06:12 PM

March 19, 2008

TOO LATE Week Fourteen! Plus Commentary!

Click the link below to read the archives, and then come on back here below the cut to read this week's installment and the commentary!

My girlfriend's in the news business. Not as heavily now as when I first wrote this, but she's still in the biz. I just want to go on the record here and say what Eddie Mann states about the state of Kansas City journalism wasn't influenced at all by her. It's a fictional character's opinion. A lot of what Mann's stating here may be influenced by my own opinions, however.

This opening spread has a nod to Hitchcock in it, so see if you catch that.

The next scene takes us to the area around the Power and Light District and the new arena. The P&L has been a source of debate here in Cowtown for as long as I can remember. It's still up in the air if the whole deal will pay off, but I like the ideas behind it, even if I'm not overly thrilled by a lot of the execution.

And the full page of Hannigan's reaction to learning about Mann's nature? I think it may be the best page I've done to date. I was trying to do something akin to Jim Starlin's work on Warlock and Captain Marvel, you know, where Warlock has some sort of mental breakdown and does some overacting? This sequence came out really swell, I felt.

Posted by Schamberger at 09:55 PM

March 12, 2008

TOO LATE Week Thirteen Plus Commentary!

Read on for this week's installment and commentary, and click the link below to catch up on the archives!

Eddie Mann is walking through the skywalk that connects Union Station and Crown Center. There's several breathtaking views from it in several situations.

One night, several friends and I were at Union Station working on comix and a huge thunderstorm hit. It was raining so hard that we didn't see a point in going out to our cars, because, man, it was like the ocean was falling from the sky. So we went to the skywalk and stood there watching the storm all around us with the amazing lightning display and the sheets of water falling all around us. It was truly awesome.

Posted by Schamberger at 06:23 PM

March 05, 2008

TOO LATE Week Twelve! Plus Commentary!

Click on the image above to check out this week's installment, and click on the link below to read the archive! Then come on back here to read the commentary for this week's installment below the cut!

The waitress in this scene is the only character to appear in both this book and in The Black Chamber. She was also the bank president's secretary. There's also a hidden reference to The Black Chamber that appeared earlier in the book. Reading each book individually you wouldn't think there's any sort of bigger story going on, and reading the two together you still wouldn't see it yet, but I'm definitely building to something a lot bigger with the whole meta-story.

I was inspired to do the double-page spreads like this by Jim Steranko's adaptation of 'Outland'. I'd offer you a link to it but it would become painfully clear just how much better of an artist Steranko is than I am. Anyway, I like the device because you can set up the scenery with one panel and then you can devote the next eight or so to working with the characters. You'll see me doing this a lot more effectively as the book goes on, especially in the second-to-last scene.

Posted by Schamberger at 06:43 PM

February 26, 2008

TOO LATE Week Eleven! Plus Commentary!

I'm looking for four artists to work with for a series of vignettes that will explore the Unbroken Circle world a little more. These stories will appear on the AIV after Too Late has wrapped to give me time to work on the sequel, Too Soon. I'm open to all styles. I want four artists who can deliver six pages a month for four months. There is pay involved, which I will be happy to elaborate on to the folks who inquire. Please email me at robschamberger at gmail dot com with a link to examples of your sequential work. The more you have to show me the better! I'm really looking forward to hearing from all of my fellow artists who are interested in having their work appear on the best webcomics collective on the world wide web!

Click the link above to read this week's installment, and the link below to read the archive at Wowio, then come on back to read the commentary below the cut!

I've been in jail three times. The first was for about half an hour and I had myself bailed out. No big deal.

The second time I was in for about fifteen hours. This was a slightly bigger deal, especially since it was Wyandotte County lock-up. I started out in holding, watching some dude puking up blood and seeing the guards not give a flying fuck, had a cop try to intimidate me and then get enraged when I laughed at him for doing so, and made a lot of the observations that Eddie Mann is making in this installment. Things went for the worse when I got transfered to G Pop (that's General Population for those of you not up on the slang). My cellmate in holding was an old dude who looked like Snoop Dogg's grandpa. We'd gotten pretty chummy, telling stories about fuckin' bitches and gettin' away with crimes. The guy told me he'd never had a mortgage or a lease in his whole life. He'd just party as hard as he could until he'd get locked up, do his time, wash, lather, rinse, repeat. His whole life. The guy looked like an old man, but shit, he could have been my age with a lifestyle like that.

So, we go up to G Pop, and all of the guys sitting at a table know Snoop Dogg's Grandpa, and we sit down with them and start telling war stories. It's a while before I realize I'm the only white guy sitting at the table, which is a real non-issue to me, but I'm forgetting how all sorts of classifications come up when you're on the inside. They start asking me more and more personal information, and I'm not feeling too comfortable so I make my way over to sit and read a book. I think it was an Orson Scott Card book. Yeah, I was desperate. So I sense someone sit down next to me. Right next to me. I look over and it's a white dude with a giant ass swastika tatted on his neck and a tear-drop tat below his ear.

Great.

He leans in close to me and looks me square in the eyes, and says, no shit, "You'd be smart if you stick to your own race, boy." Fuck me runnin', I was scared beyond all compare. Here I am in the orange jump suit and it all starts crashing in on me: I don't belong here. I politely let the guy know that I'll heed his advice and go back to reading my shitty sci-fi novel.

Finally, 'lights out' is called. I used quote marks for that because they don't actually turn out the lights. You just have to lay down on your cot in this big ass gymnasium. I'm laying there, ON MY BACK BECAUSE MY ASS AIN'T GETTIN' RAPED, and I feel a kicking at the end of my cot. Son of a bitch. I open my eyes and there's that Aryan Race motherfucker staring down at me.

"Get up, it's time." Get the fuck out of here, this can't really be happening. But it is.

I look over at the guard and he just nods and says, "You better get up." Damn it.

I look over at Snoop Dogg's Grandpa who's in the cot next to me, and all he says is "Give me your toothpaste and shampoo. You ain't gonna be needin' it no more." I reluctantly hand it over to him and get up to face the man who I'm sure is going to show me why prison is called The Pokey.

He claps me on the shoulder and says, "Good luck, brother."

"Uh, yeah, uhm, you too, bro." The guard opens the door to me and I walk into this overly bright hallway. The door closes behind me and I can't see where it was anymore. It's like I'm in the white room from 'A Clockwork Orange'. I'm bedazzled and don't know what to do. I just stand there, slackjawed, until a voice stirs me to action.

"Step into the door," a piped-in voice tells me.

"What door?" I ask.

Then a door opens in the wall in front of me, sliding open.

"Fuck you, I ain't getting in."

"Just get in the damn door, Schamberger." I step in and realize that it's the elevator which brought me up to G-Pop. I realize my bail had been raised and they're processing me to get me out. I was never so happy to see my mom and stepfather, but I don't think they were overly thrilled to see me at eleven PM that night.

My third time was also in WyCo lock-up, but was not nearly as bad. I got picked up on a Saturday morning after the cops had raided a crackhouse and had done a drunk stop outside of Westport, so all of the cells were full. They put me in the waiting room with cushy chairs and satellite TV. For my third time in jail, I watched Braveheart, The Outlaw Josey Wales, The Last Action Hero (which was punishment, I'll give 'em that), and Conan the Barbarian. Then my folks got me sprung again.

I decided that was enough for a lifetime and haven't gone back since, nor knowingly done anything illegal since to put me back in.

Posted by Schamberger at 09:23 PM

February 19, 2008

TOO LATE Week Ten! Plus Commentary!

Go on over and read this week's installment then come back here below the cut for the utterly bizarro inspiration for what Eddie does to commune with the dead!

Also don't forget to check out the archives:

I don't think folks noticed the first time Eddie was communing with a spirit (Meghan's a couple weeks back), but he wasn't wearing his trademarked hat. On the first page of this week's installment we see Eddie take his hat off to be able to speak with Marcus' spirit. I wanted this to be one of those things that's not actually addressed in the story, but to serve as a subconscious cue that he's talking with the dead.

The inspiration for this came from possibly the creepiest kids' show ever made. That would be:

Today's Special told the story of the mannequin Jeff who would only be brought to life when a magical hat was placed on him. Here's Jeff, a woman in a bad pants suit, and a couple of horrifyingly scary puppets:

Yikes, that's some creepy shit. Anyway, the show scarred me as a kid because I kept wondering what would happen if a living person put the hat on, you know? If putting the hat on the mannequin brings him to life, would a living person putting it on die? What about if you put it on a corpse, would it turn into a zombie? This is the kind of shit that kept me from falling asleep at night, folks, and that I was finally able to turn into something positive.

Here's the intro to the show. Beware, it may creep your shit out:

Posted by Schamberger at 09:25 PM

February 12, 2008

TOO LATE Week Nine! Plus Commentary!

Click on the link above to read this week's big installment!

Once you're done reading, come on back here below the cut and read the commentary!

This was a really fun segment to do. It was great to really open up on the inks and have some fun and be sloppy. I'm overall really happy with how this turned out.

When I was writing the script, I actually got on Google Maps and plotted out the course that these two took for the chase. I knew I wanted it to start at the Majestic, and then I had them go through back alleys and side-streets and wind up in the Quality Hill area. Then I planned out the trajectory of the bullet to have it end up just by Bartle Hall.

For the chase, I switched to vertical panels rather than my normal horizontal, to give the rhythm of the chase a greater sense of urgency. To me, it feels more chaotic having these tall strips of action that feed into one another, and then paying off with the big double-page spread.

I'd originally planned this to be another four to ten pages, but cut quite a bit since it felt like it was taking up quite a bit of real estate in the book, as I'd cut down several other scenes as well. But the book has been really text-heavy up to this point and it felt good to air it out here.

Posted by Schamberger at 09:30 PM

February 05, 2008

TOO LATE Week Eight! Plus Commentary!

Click on the link to read this week's installment and then come on back to read the commentary below the cut!

My favorite way to write is to really put a lot of research into the characters and then just let them do their thing and try to keep up with them while chronicling what they're doing. It's really great when a character surprises me with a turn of phrase or doing something that I myself wouldn't do.

The molasses bit in here was one of those great moments. I was very much writing Mann as Marlowe so I tried to have him come up with ways of phrasing things that people normally don't do, like turning "Slow as molasses" into "You ever pour molasses?"

But it was here that Meghan did something I didn't see coming. Once I had Mann ask her that question, I stopped and thought on what her background was, and realized, you know, she probably hasn't. Hell, I never have either. That moment in there was one of my favorites in the book and I still get a chuckle out of it on every reading.

Also of note: The Boston Molasses Disaster. I'm totally going to write a graphic novel about this some time in my life. I came across this while I was thinking on the whole molasses thing. Yes, I put that much research into every little line. It's a miracle I get anything done at all.

Posted by Schamberger at 10:06 PM

February 03, 2008

Wrap Party

Last night Katy and I hosted the wrap party for Too Late. It was mostly a way to thank everyone who participated in getting the book made, but also friends and family. Everyone seemed to have a great time and also enjoyed taking a look at the finished book.

The six months I spent working on this was the hardest I've ever worked on anything in my life, and I think that shows in the final product.

Thanks again to everyone who helped with making the book, and thanks again to everyone who could make it out last night to the party!

Here's some choice photos from the event below the cut. You can see more in my MySpace profile.

In my office I set up all of the pages on my drawing table and then on the screen I had the finished lettered and colored book. People enjoyed seeing the pages and then what I did with them to get to the final look.

Our first guests to arrive were of the fuzzy variety. And no, I don't mean hobos, because we all know hobos can't make it to anything on time. Up above is Korma, our six month old kitten, and here's my old gal Monkey:

Preparations were completed and we were readay to partay!

That's Katy trying out the salsa we made for the shin-dig. I say 'we made', but all we actually did was pour some Mama Sacorra's mix into a couple cans of tomatoes. Good shit, though!

Guests began to file in and the festivities were well under way. For some reason we didn't get any pictures of my mom and stepdad, nor of my buddy Brandon's wife Robin or the star of the book David. Camera shy, I suppose. My mom played Nintendo with Ashley, Robin's daughter and generally got into trouble with Roger breaking my stuff. I had to kick them out for being public nuisances. Jerry! Jerry! Jerry!

This is Jamie and Andy. Jamie's going to be a lead in the next book, 'Too Soon', and Andy was a principal in 'Black Chamber'. Andy's character will be forever memorialized with the immortal line "I fucked your mother."

Here's me being serious:

And not so serious:

The hosts of your party, Mr Rob Schamberger and Ms Katy Ryan:

Possibly the only picture taken of us that doesn't completely suck. I'm not the photogenic type, if y'all couldn't tell.

Here's Korma and Dana. Dana was the model for Meghan Hannigan in the book.

Here's Jamie again, as well as the Butler's Cherryh and David. Funny story: David and I have actually known each other since Kindergarten. We hadn't seen each other since high school, and then one night Katy and Cherryh and our circle of friends had a get-together. Katy and Cherryh worked together at the Star, see. Anyway, David looks at me and asks my last name, I tell him, and he reintroduces himself to me. Small fuckin' world! David also lived a couple houses down from my best friend Brandon, who was also at the party. They probably hadn't seen each other in a decade or so. David plays Marcus Goodman in the book.

That's Cherryh. She modeled as Alderman Hannigan's secretary. Cherryh's got a new job at the Star as the mobile journalist (or MoJo as it's called in the biz) for their new imprint 'Ink'. We went to one of their functions Friday night. She's also a personal trainer, for any of you fat-asses out there looking to get in shape.

Here's Nick, who modeled as Everett in the book. He's really fun to draw with all of the defining features and he gets a lot of emotion across. He's also an amazing web designer.

Here's the lovely Ashley partying with the party animal Korma. She's my best friend Brandon's stepdaughter, and in case you couldn't tell, she's adorable. She and Korma wore each other out with a laser pointer.

And here's Brandon and I recreating our favorite wrestling match. Hey! There's nothing gay about professional wrestling!

Party people in the hizzouse!

Me supervising the proceedings. I had to write a few people up for misconduct. It's going in your permanent files, peons!

The devoured trough of salsa. People L-O-V-E-D it.

The international sign for "Bed time, baby." With the party successfully complete, Katy and I were plum tuckered out and ready to call it a night.

Thanks again to everyone that could make it out!

Posted by Schamberger at 02:25 PM

January 29, 2008

TOO LATE Week Seven! Plus Commentary!

Click on the link to read this week's installment, then come back to read the commentary below the cut!

I was really excited with the double-page spread in this installment after I'd drawn it. It felt like I really broke through a couple of boundaries with my art after I'd finished it. First just on the draftsmanship of pulling off the first panel felt like an accomplishment. More importantly though was the storytelling here.

I was moving around the camera, getting more emotions from my models, and then in execution I played around with being outside the apartment and using different visual cues to make that (hopefully!) not seem confusing. I set up the birds in the first panel, then showed them again in panel six and paid off in panel seven. (Off-topic, but I'd wanted to draw pigeons ever since reading Sandman issue eight, and I totally stole from Mike Dringenberg in my rendering of them)

I had a few more break-throughs like this later in the book, in the last couple of scenes, but I'm still excited by this spread.

Posted by Schamberger at 10:07 PM

January 22, 2008

TOO LATE Week Six! Plus Commentary!

Go ahead and click on the link and then come back and read below the cut for the commentary!

Kansas City's becoming a pretty big art town, and that can be seen most evidently in the Crossroads District. This is where most of the galleries and studios are, and on the first Friday of every month new exhibitions are put up and folks from all over the area come out in the thousands to look at and buy the art.

I think it's great that the city's residents are making it financially realistic to become a fine artist.

Posted by Schamberger at 06:41 PM

January 15, 2008

TOO LATE Week Five! Plus Commentary!

Go on over and read this week's installment, then come on back here and read the commentary below the cut!

I work with models for all of my shots. I've been doing this for a good long while now, and I've gotten a pretty good routine down. I'll have them actually doing most all of the things you see here, so that I get them in motion and things seem more fluid that way.

This scene was fun though, as the guy who was playing Marcus hadn't done any work like this before. I told him he had to get up in the other model's face and yell at him and act intimidating, and he turned to me and said, "I don't want to get angry at him. He's my friend."

To which I replied, "Pretend it's me." He got pretty convincing after that.

I really like this scene, though. I felt that a lot of it came out really strong.

Posted by Schamberger at 09:52 PM

January 09, 2008

TOO LATE Week Four! Plus Commentary!

Go on and read this week's installment, and then come on back here for the commentary below the cut!

This was maybe my favorite part of the book to research. I'll be honest, I was essentially ignorant of the Foundation until I started working on the book. I'd heard some buddies talking about a jazz club somewhere that didn't open until after midnight, that touring musicians would go to after their shows, most notably Eric Clapton.

I wanted part of the book to be set in the 18th and Vine district. When I sat down to write, though, I realized I didn't know anything about it. I'd never even been a patron of any of the establishments down there, shamefully enough. So I decided to start reading up on it, getting into the history, and I was just amazed by how much has happened there, in these few blocks.

Then actually going to the Mutual Musicians Foundation to do the photo reference was...how do I put it, it was an all-caps EXPERIENCE. Just simply cool. Being in that room, looking at the pictures of all of the people who have performed there, man it was awesome.

Making a graphic novel, it's one of my greatest pleasures in life. Doing the research, the script, the thumbnails, the photo ref, drawing it, and finally getting the feedback from my readers, I love every part of it.

Posted by Schamberger at 08:39 AM

January 02, 2008

TOO LATE Week Three! Plus Commentary!

Luxury shopping in a pig farm! An honest politician who may be a liar! Jazz fans! All of this and more in this week's installment of TOO LATE!

Commentary on this week's installment after the cut!

People say 'plaza' two ways here in town. Some say 'plah-zuh' and others like myself say 'pla-zuh'. There doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason behind why some say it one way and others say it another, but I've always been amused by it. No one actually calls it 'The Country Club Plaza', though, except for their own advertising. I don't think there's an actual country club located there, but I could be wrong.

The Plaza is one of those places where you go on a date, but most people I know can't actually afford to shop there. It's mostly a bunch of snooty people who frequent the district, called 'Plaza People'. They're fairly notorious for not just walking right out in front of your car, but if you're on foot, trying to run you over. My girlfriend lived there for a while, and Alderman Hannigan's apartment is based on hers, especially the view that we'll see in a later installment. I don't think she ran anyone over.

The Plaza is of course most well-known for the big Christmas lighting ceremony done every Thanksgiving. If you see pictures of Kansas City at Christmas time, you're probably seeing pictures of the Plaza. There's a big to-do made about the ceremony, but essentially it's just someone flipping a switch, the lights come on, and the crowd goes "Yay."

And it's all built on a former pig farm.

Posted by Schamberger at 09:03 AM

December 26, 2007

TOO LATE Week Two! Plus Commentary!

Also! The first Wowio issue is now available! Download that suckah for free and I get paid!

After you've read this installment, come on back here and read the commentary!

I made my first full-length comic when I was twelve as a project for school. My second one was when I was thirteen and I did it over the summer. It was an anthology, but the character that I kept coming back to was Mystery Man. Here's the cover from that comic:

I had just read Dark Knight Returns and Watchmen for the first time before doing this, so he was definitely an answer to that sort of comic, to the best of my thirteen year old abilities. Pretty much an emo hyper-violent Batman analogue.

But I just friggin' loved this character. I kept coming back to him, building his world around him. I made spin-off books and crossovers and all of that great kind of stuff. I probably did around two hundred pages worth of material on this character over a three year period. He kept evolving as I grew as well.

Here he is hanging out at the Country Club Plaza from his second comic and in color from his third:

Then I've got him looming over the Plaza in an obvious Bruce Timm animated Batman homage and then from a 'Golden Age' adventure when he fought some vampires:

Then here he is in probably my best illustration of him from that time, followed by a cover for the last version of him I did, where he was sans costume and just a wandering bad-ass getting into trouble:

So, I'm sure you're asking what this trip down memory lane has to do with 'Too Late'? This book is my latest take on him, of course. Eddie Mann. Mister E. Mann. Mystery Man. Sure, it's one of those things that will probably only amuse me and half a dozen other people, but it's cool to me to see the culmination of nearly a decade and a half's work in this book.

This is actually the only scene in the book that I redrew, except for the first page from this scene. It was the first time I'd drawn some of the characters, and the first of the double-page spreads I'd done as well. A hundred pages of drawing later, and I felt that what I had just didn't hold up to the quality I felt I had in the rest of the book, so I went back, redesigned the office, laid out the shots differently, and did a better job of capturing the characters' likenesses. I'd show you the first version, but I'm kind of embarrassed by them. Sure, I'll show you stuff I drew as a kid, but I'm not going to show you what I did six months ago!

Posted by Schamberger at 08:43 AM

December 19, 2007

TOO LATE Week One!

Here it begins, the first installment of my new book, 'Too Late'! Finally!

I hope everyone enjoys reading it as much as I enjoyed making it!

Go ahead and read it, then come back here and below I'll have some commentary for you about what went into making this installment!

I shot most of the reference for this around 7:30 at night in early spring in the Kansas City River Market area. I've always loved the feeling this district evokes, and the architecture always looked to be fun to draw. Turns out that it was.

I ended up not having quite enough reference for the script I had, so I went back to get a few more shots. I was riding with my girlfriend and her friend who lives in the district, and as we pulled in there was writer Dennis Hopeless walking his dog. I hung out the window, yelled obscenities at him, flipped him off, then jumped out to shoot the shit with him. My girlfriend and her friend went on their way, and Dennis and I walked around as I got my shots and talked comics. It was a really cool thing, here I am doing a comic about Kansas City, and I run into another Kansas City comics creator.

The script for the dialogue was originally a radio drama script I had written up but never got produced. I liked a lot about it, especially the bits between Mann and Nguyen (I totally just typed that as 'Wang') and didn't want to see it go to waste.

What I thought made it work as a radio drama was what led me to only use shots with no people in them for its current comics incarnation. See, the characters that still work so well for radio are the ones that work to the medium's limitations, like The Shadow. Guy turns invisible. That's PERFECT for a radio drama. War of the Worlds: First done as a news cast, the second half is someone reading from their journal. So what I came up with was a blind detective.

Then I thought, well how do I make a blind detective story work in a visual medium? I ended up going with disembodied voices, and as revealed on the page following this sequence, it's what Eddie's seeing as he walks around the area, reflecting back on those events.

I hope you dug the first installment, and I look forward to sharing the next one with you in a week!

Posted by Schamberger at 08:37 AM

December 15, 2007

Drawn!

Well, mostly. The stuff on the left is all penciled and in varying stages of completion. The pile on the right is totally done.

Man, this feels great! I am SO excited to share this book with y'all!

Posted by Schamberger at 04:43 PM

December 12, 2007

Looking Back, Ahead, and Around

So 'The Black Chamber' has wrapped and next week will see the first installment of 'Too Late'. If you don't mind, I'd like to take a look back at Black Chamber, give some thoughts on Too Late, and talk a little about my home town Kansas City to boot.

LOOKING BACK: THE BLACK CHAMBER

The ending was the first thing that popped into my head about this story. "I killed Osama bin Laden in 1998." Then I worked my way back from that, telling the kind of story which I like to tell. Stories about relationships between people and how they can go wrong. The most emotional pain that you can feel is when someone you're close to turns on you. A lover cheating on you, a parent who runs out on you, a long-time employer letting you go, and the list goes on.

My dad left my mom while she was pregnant with me. He and I have a strained relationship, and I'd wanted for a while to express those emotions in a story. The girl I was with at the time had a similar relationship with her mom, and a lot of the ways Jodie would talk to Dennis came from overhearing her.

The ending is one of those questions I've been asking for awhile. What if everything leading up to 9/11 and everything that's happened since was all planned? Playing with that question opens up even more questions and seemed like something that I could generate a lot of great stories from.

The ending and the relationship between Dennis and Jodie were the two things that drove the story for me. At the time I was obsessed with Koike and Kojima's 'Lone Wolf and Cub' and paced the book similarly. In hindsight that didn't work out as I'd intended it to. Probably the biggest gripe about the book I've heard is that you can read the whole thing in about twenty minutes. I can see that, and with hindsight being 20/20 I'd probably add another two hundred or so pages. Que sera, sera. I do think the ending is the type of reveal that sends the reader back to look through the book again, which I also intended.

'Black Chamber' was the first graphic novel I wrote and drew. It definitely has that 'first book' feel about it, but I'm still proud of what I accomplished here. In 2003 I decided to start drawing again after five years of not doing so, and Black Chamber is the first fruit of those labors. I learned A LOT from doing this book, and I hope that my next book will show some improvement.

LOOKING AHEAD: TOO LATE

With 'Too Late' I set out to do two things: Write a love letter to Raymond Chandler and another to Kansas City. The Chandler stuff is in my lead character Eddie Mann and how he interacts with those around him and how he views his surroundings.

But I didn't want to do just another PI story. Retreading old stereotypes wouldn't do anything for me or for you the readers. So while reading Chandler's 'The Long Goodbye' (my personal favorite) I came across the line (and I'm doing this from memory) "speak for the dead" and the whole story came together for me. A lost soul tasked with speaking for those who no longer could defend themselves. The title came from something I ran across in Chandler's journals, a list of unused titles. One of them was 'Too Late for Smiling', which I shortened down as a nod to the man.

So then I set out to work up the story. This book is way more heavy than Black Chamber was. More panels, more pages, more dialogue, more more more. I probably spent a couple of months on it. While writing I was also going around town and mapping out where everything would happen. One scene I even used Google Earth to plot out a chase scene.

I was stuck on the death scene of Eddie, though. And no, I'm not spoiling anything to you here. The lead character is dead and that's revealed in the first scene. It was that first scene I had to NAIL though. I ended up merging in a radio drama script I had written but was never used and did something I'd had good success with on a shorter story. See, there's no characters shown in the first seventeen pages. It's all disembodied voices floating through Kansas City's River Market area.

I was 'playing jazz' with putting the book together. Some scenes were tightly scripted out, others were given the room to do whatever they needed to do. Some ran longer, many shorter, but I think it gives the book a little more of an organic feel that I'm, well, jazzed about.

Jazz music plays a big part in the book. I'm a big fan of Miles and Bird and Coltrane and Dizzy and Ella and Mingus and Ladybird and just about everyone else. Researching into it was a blast, too. There's a place here called the Mutual Musicians Foundation that doesn't even open up until around midnight on the weekends. It's free for musicians who show up with their instruments and a small cover for everyone else.

It's the very soul of improvisational jazz, just a big jam session where folks who more than likely haven't ever played together get together in this tiny but hugely historical room and make something wonderful happen. You might get kids from UMKC's music department showing up, or maybe one of the local legends like Max Groove or Pat Metheny sitting in, or big-time touring musicians coming through town will go there after their shows. Eric Clapton's shown up and played 'til the sun came up. There's all kinds of legends around when Prince showed up and wouldn't let anyone leave until way into the morning.

These are the kinds of things I wanted to build my book around.

About halfway through writing the book I started getting all kinds of ideas to make a series out of the concepts I had laid out. Spirits speaking for the dead? That writes itself, man. So I'm already planning the follow-ups. Hopefully y'all like what I've got here well enough to allow me to share those stories with you as well. Plus it wasn't until last week when a commenter brought it up, but I've thought of how Black Chamber will tie into this larger mythos and is the first pebble that will start the avalanche towards where I want this series to go. I'm not about to tell you how it fits in, though!

LOOKING AROUND: KANSAS CITY

Kansas City was the setting for Black Chamber, but its history is a major part of Too Late. The town's got a lot going for it and I wanted to share that with the rest of the world. I hope those of you who read these stories and live elsewhere will maybe become just that much more interested in what the Paris of the Plains has to offer.

I'll see y'all next week with the first installment of Too Late. I'm excited to start sharing it with you, and I hope you'll enjoy reading it as much as I've enjoyed making it.

Posted by Schamberger at 12:52 PM

November 04, 2007

Colored!

Posted by Schamberger at 07:14 PM

October 01, 2007

Hmm

Posted by Schamberger at 10:42 AM

September 27, 2007

Some pages just come out Right

Posted by Schamberger at 05:11 PM

September 11, 2007

Some pages just come out Right

Posted by Schamberger at 09:40 PM

September 09, 2007

Eighteen Illustrations of a Man and a Bottle

All work and no play makes Rob a something something.

Posted by Schamberger at 05:22 PM

August 19, 2007

Some pages just come out Right

Posted by Schamberger at 05:32 PM

August 09, 2007

A 'Too Late' Preview

Posted by Schamberger at 03:03 PM

June 29, 2007

015 and 016

Posted by Schamberger at 08:19 AM

June 25, 2007

014

Posted by Schamberger at 05:17 PM

June 17, 2007

013

Posted by Schamberger at 06:34 PM

May 26, 2007

007

Posted by Schamberger at 12:44 PM

006

Posted by Schamberger at 12:43 PM

May 24, 2007

005

Posted by Schamberger at 05:27 PM

May 23, 2007

004

Posted by Schamberger at 05:57 PM

May 22, 2007

003

Posted by Schamberger at 10:15 AM

May 21, 2007

002

Posted by Schamberger at 07:41 AM

May 19, 2007

001

Posted by Schamberger at 03:16 PM

March 14, 2007

Too Late for Smiling

That's the title of my next project. It is, put in the most cliched way possible, a neo-noir with a twist. It's going to be very much a Kansas City book, even more than Black Chamber is. I'm aiming for 200 pages. I'm setting it up to be a 'pilot' for a series that I can write for other artists to draw. (Side note - has that ever been done before? Using a graphic novel to lauch a series? I'm sure it has, but I can't think of any off-hand. Dreadstar maybe? The Elric stuff by P Craig Russell? I know it's been done a lot in television, the original Battlestar Galactica leaping to mind. It seems like a smart thing. A lot of Vertigo series don't really pick up in sales until the first collection hits. Why not just start with that?)

I've got the basic plot down, and I'm fleshing out the characters and the mythology right now. I'm hoping to get a fairly well-written plot done soon, and then begin scripting in earnest. Over the weekend I picked up 'The Notebooks of Raymond Chandler', and there's a great bit in there about writing a novel, and hints to effectively flesh it out. I'm going to try that out with this, but modified to fit the form I'm working in.

Posted by Schamberger at 09:12 AM