Wednesday 25 March 2009

Silver Age




While I feel guilty for not steaming right on into The Jock #3, since I've been drawing again, I've not really done any sequential stuff for myself and I want to get some pages done so I can take a decent selection to the Brumcon this year. As I'm currently stuck for ideas (although I could do a chapter of the female character glimpsed in my Odds and Ends collection), I thought I'd return to my old standby character Silver. Rather than finish off the story begun in #1 years ago, I thought I'd go back and rework an older strip.


I had to dig out my old issues (after a nostalgic root through my old small press issues--an era which could be a post in itself--that unearthed other forgotten projects such as Wolf Who Thunders, a five issue supernatural Western that I had completely plotted out page by page but threw out when a movie nicked my twist a few years ago) and despite dodgy art, I was quite impressed with the storytelling. I was drawing regularly then and was obviously firing on all cylinders as the layouts were pretty vibrant. I've been so worried about getting the finishing stage of my stuff lately that I think I need to get a bit creative with some layouts , so I'm gonna work on some Silver before moving on to some other samples.


I'm gonna return to an old strip that stalled TWICE (the original version being the second one above) and hopefully have some fun with this. Maybe third time's the charm and I can get my mojo back. Silver, despite seeming like a comedic knock off of Hellboy (both having semi-anthropomorphic sidekicks doesn't help dispel those suspicions either!), was originally created as an idea to submit to 2000Ad but I decided to keep him for myself, especially when his dialogue tends to write itself. Coming up with a beginning can take some time but once it occurs, I'm usually off and running and the high density of panels and dialogue per page prove that I have more than enough material to get into a small space.


Silver debuted back in 1994 (!) in a series of occasional strips in Stephen Prestwood and Jason Falkiner's Flipside/Otherside flip comic before jumping over to their followup title, Dark Zone. Silver also crossed over with Darren Powell and Chris Askham's Sin and Davey Metcalfe's (blogspot spellcheck suggests Montgolfier as the correct spelling, y'know!) Debasers for a couple of strips, which is why both Darren and Dave turn up in cameos at the start of the A4-sized Silver #1 in 1999. This was a vast improvement over the earlier shorts (which were collected with a new short for a one-shot that sold out at 1995's UKCAC event).


I still have the resolution to that issue's cliff hanger in my head but I think that ship has sailed, but as I never completed the tale of Silver and Marv's trip into the heart of Texas to save a mythological figure, I think that's ripe for revisiting instead.


I need new light bulbs for my lamp (my living room light being OK to ink by but a bit dim to pencil by) so once I do, maybe a pic or two next week (fancy doing a Lois Lane and a Barbarella) then on to the Silver stuff. Here's hoping this is a better shot for the gobby spook fighter...

1 comment:

Rol said...

Yay! Looking forward to seeing Silver return in his 15th Anniversary Year.

(God, we're getting old.)