VOODOO DETECTIVE writer/creator, R. Thomas Favino, got to sit down with Marco Lopez over at Monkeys Fighting Robots, to talk all things VOODOO! Click the link below, to check it out!
I was fortunate enough to sit down with Marco Lopez, over at Monkeys Fighting Robots, to talk about comics, collaborating, VOODOO DETECTIVE, and why you should back our upcoming Kickstarter for it!
How do I avoid being a colossal failure?
Stop worrying about it.
embrace the fact that you will be a colossal failure. you are going to spectacularly fail. and then you will remind yourself that every single person you have ever admired, just like you, tried something and fell on their ass so hard they bounced.
BUT you admire them because they picked themselves up, learned something, and did better, then did it again, and again, and again.
and if they fail again? Rinse and repeat.
I’ve done it. my friends have done it. my heroes have done it. I will do it again.
it’s better to try and fail, than not try at all…
and if anyone tells you differently, they are a spectacular coward.
Failure is just an opportunity to improve.
The #Kickstarter for Black Suit of Death #2 is live! Are you #WorthyOfUtopia? http://thndr.me/LMEUnH
From the creative trio of R. Thomas Favino, Dominic Black and Laura Lee, comes VOODOO DETECTIVE. A pulp-fueled horror comic series, starring Jackson Delmond, New Orleans’ resident occult investigator. Come along, as he navigates his way through the dark and disturbing world of the swamp-filled, supernatural South. The first collected volume, Old Wounds and Other Tales, which boasts 48 pages of eerie, occult awesomeness, has already completed production and will be heading to Kickstarter in July 2017! For the latest in news and reviews, follow us here or check us out on Facebook at: https://www.facebook.com/voododetective/
Working on some stuff for some things.
One of these things is @voodoodetective related, and the other one is equally as cool...
Mr. Bendis, I need your wisdom! I have a concept for a story I'd like to write, however I have a small problem. I cannot come up with good and unique names for my characters. When you are writing a brand new title with new characters how do you come up with their names? Any advice you can provide would be awesome of you, Sir! Thanks
Over the years I’ve had many opinions on this but I have settled very concretely on the following: What Would the parents have named the character?
By trying to answer this question for yourself you start to develop who the parents were, where they came from, what their relationship to the world and pop culture and their history is…
Not only will you come up with a better name than what you would’ve come up with if you’re trying to think of something “” cool, you will also have done some major world building around your character. Even if it’s stuff no one ever sees. The fact that you were able to get that name out of that material makes everything about what you’re writing that much richer
Also, this is where people get their names from. They are named by someone. If it’s not their parents then who? that’s a story too.
Miles for instance. I know exactly who he is named after, I know who named him, and I know why he has his mothers maiden name and not his fathers. Will I ever get to that in the story? I don’t know. But if I do. I know it
World building 101, folks.
My ability to proofread increases by 1000% after I hit “Submit”.
this is often because when you’ve submitted something (like fanfiction to ao3) it will be in a different font, size and framing than in your word processor. The text will look different in the new environment so your brain stops skipping what looks familiar (like a typo that has been there since the beginning).
So, tip: revise your work in a different font and size. I guarantee you’ll catch more typos and mistakes than otherwise.
For all my writers (ones I follow and the ones that thankfully follow me)
Thank god it isn’t just me. Definitely going to have to do this!
This explains so much.
Welp. We did it. We made a comic book. That’s right. Laura sent the final colored pages in and I wrapped up the remaining lettering just a few hours ago. VOODOO DETECTIVE: Old Wounds and Other Tales is no longer just a thing that exists in my head. It’s real. I’m sorry, I gotta say it again: WE MADE A COMIC BOOK!! I’m so ecstatic right now. This is, without a doubt, bucket list stuff right here. And it would not have been at all possible without the hard work, dedication and skills of both Dominic Black and Laura Lee. We didn’t know each other at all, when I reached out and asked if each of you would consider working on MIDNIGHT OFFERING with me, and we wouldn’t be here today if you guys hadn’t taken that chance. I owe you both more than I can ever say. I’m so happy to have gone on this journey with you both and I am beyond proud of all the “voodoo” that we did here. Sooo… what happens now? Well, a lot. Now we shift fully into marketing and promoting . We get this thing into the hands of early reviewers, who will (hopefully) say gushy, incredible things about what we’ve made, and entice others to check us out. We reach out to people ourselves, who we think will dig it, and put it on their radar. We start finalizing our Kickstarter campaign, select a launch date and we make sure all of you here know exactly WHEN that is. So, stay tuned!
As production winds down on Old Wounds and Other Tales, we want to invite everyone to check out the 16-page Digital Ashcan that made the rounds at Emerald City ComicCon and the Kingston Comic Con earlier this year!
This Ashcan features the fully re-lettered 8-page MIDNIGHT OFFERING, as well as behind-the-scenes process material and a tease of all the amazing things to come.
We’re really quite proud of what we’ve collected here and hope you find it as enjoyable to read as it was for us to create. And, if you do, please feel free to SHARE it, so that others can do the same!
VOODOO DETECTIVE stars Jackson Delmond, New Orleans’ resident occult investigator, who uses his strange gifts to investigate horrible crimes and defend against deadly threats throughout the dark and unforgiving world of the swamp-filled supernatural south.
Each volume of the series will feature four separate, unique, serial-anthology style adventures that pit Jackson against the very worst kinds of monsters in this world… and any other. From writer R. Thomas Favino, artist Dominic Black Colorist Laura Lee, comes a collection of stories that are completely fueled by a love of gritty crime, the sensational Marvel horror titles from the 70’s & 80’s, and the works of Warren Ellis.
The first volume, Old Wounds and Other Tales, is currently wrapping up production and will launch it’s Kickstarter campaign in the coming months!
VOODOO DETECTIVE is an occult/pulp/horror comic series from creators Dominic Black (A), Laura Lee © and R. Thomas Favino (W). Currently wrapping production, VOODOO DETECTIVE will be heading to Kickstarter in the coming months.
Stay tuned for more!
Rules:
- be a follower - only reblogs count as an entry - no giveaway blogs - you will be contacted after the giveaway closes, and you’ve got 48h to respond. Otherwise another winner will be drawn. - giveaway post will be tagged as #fleshwerks’ giveaway, for your blacklisting convenience Prizes: - each of the three winners will receive a portrait of their OC or their chosen fictional character. Examples on the banner! Deadline: MAY 25, 2017 IMPORTANT: winners can request a postcard-sized print of the work they receive, printing and delivery paid by me.
Cleaning out my filing cabinet, I found this handout that I made for my mini-comics class. Hope it’s helpful! Remember, it ain’t only for comics. Self-publish short stories, collections of drawings or sketches, or blank for journals/sketchbooks, etc.
(Reblogging because I’m doing a talk for teen writers tomorrow and sending them to tumblr is a lot more cost efficient than printing up a ton of handouts)
Couldn't help but reblog this. It doesn't get any more DIY than this.
BEAUTIFUL CANVAS lands on shelves in two months, and Sami Kivelä and I are so passionate about this book that we have made a Digital Ashcan Preview for everyone to download completely for free.
This PDF is no fool’s gold, either, because it’s 32 pages of everything you need in order to hook you and leave you knowing you need this comic in your life.
Download the ashcan directly to your tablet and read the good word straight away - and then, if you haven’t already, we’d really appreciate you contacting your local comic shop and preordering the comic because we truly believe in this book and want to see it land in as many appreciative hands as possible.
BEAUTIFUL CANVAS is a 4 issue mini through Black Mask Studios, illustrated by Sami Kivelä, coloured by Triona Farrell, lettered by Ryan Ferrier, edited by Dan Hill, and written by me, Ryan K Lindsay - and it’s the best work we’ve ever done.
I’m gonna interrupt my new regularly scheduled programming for a minute, to spread the word about @beautifulcanvas, a new four-issue Sci-Fi Gonzo mini series from @ryanklindsay and Sami Kivelä, coming to you out of Black Mask Studios in just a few short weeks.
Attached is a download for the crazy full 32-page ashcan, provided to whet your appetite. So, check it out, fall in love, and remember to jot down that FOC code at the end, so you can get the rest of the story when it drops. I know I will.
I read something the other day that helped me put a name to a feeling that has been gnawing at me for awhile now. The thing I read (from the always honest and insightful @jimzub) talked about the notion of consuming a finished piece of art and judging it, not just for its successes or failures but also for our own imagined successes.
I’m talking about the thing that lets us look at a creation, see all the places we think it missed the mark, and tell ourselves that we wouldn’t have done it that way. That we would’ve done it better, had we been the ones to create it.
Now, that’s a dangerous way of thinking. Not only does it allow you to fill your head with the belief that YOUR ideas are somehow worth more than SOMEONE ELSE’S hard work, but it also convinces you that your ideas are ENOUGH. And they really aren’t.
Look, here’s my thing with ideas: I love them. But, man. They. Are. Addictive. It feels so damned good when you have an awesome one, that’s it’s easy to get hooked. But those feelings can quickly wear off once you try to hammer those ideas down into anything tangible. Because that’s where they get tested. That’s where you are forced to prove if they work and, more so, whether they have any real valuable or not. And, usually, that’s where most ideas start to fall apart.
Unless you have the conviction, the determination, and you’ve made it a habit of working on your ideas until they really do work, you do the one thing you absolutely shouldn’t do: You stop.
You put them away, say you’ll come back when you can spend more time with them, and save yourself the embarrassment of the truth. Because ideas that don’t work lead to creations that don’t work, and you KNOW that you’re better than making bad creations. At least, that’s what you’ve been telling yourself all this time…
Look. I’ll be honest with you. I do it. All that stuff above. Hell, I do it more often than I want to admit and I’ve been doing it for awhile now. And the thing that frustrates me the most about that fact is that I KNOW I’m a less effective and capable creator because of it. Because I’ve created less content on account of it.
And I guess that’s what this is all about. That gnawing feeling. That thing I couldn’t name, but knew I was being affected by: It’s my EGO. And it is getting in my way.
Which may sound a bit harsh and somewhat dismal but, really, it’s quite freeing. Cuz now I know what it is. Which means, when I see it coming around again, I can call it out long before it gets too close to slow me down. And THAT feels like progress already.
I’ve got a confession: I didn’t really know what Tumblr was when I first showed up. I just knew that other comic creators were here and, seeing as how I was trying to establish myself as one, as well, I thought I should be here, too.
So, I set up this page, named it after myself, came up with a clever byline to tell you who I was, and then went about searching for all the comic related pages I could follow. Then all the sequential artists who were showing off their work, and then all the web comics that looked interesting. I really wanted to make this place Comics Central for me.
And it was. Kind of.
I’ve seen some really awesome stuff on here. Tons of cool vintage covers to reminisce over, a bunch of clever comic strips poking fun at the industry today and even some really interesting insights from established creators who seemed to answer every question they get asked, no matter how random or profound. But I could tell that something was missing. Because, again, I didn’t really know what Tumblr was all about. More to the point, I didn’t really know what I wanted Tumblr to be about. I mean, yeah, I was here, and I was Tumbling (?) things I saw and liked, but, really, I was mostly on the sidelines. Just watching all this stuff come my way but not really putting anything out there myself.
Well, as of today, that’s gonna change.
I wanna be more proactive. I wanna REALLY make this place my own. I wanna make this a place where I talk openly (and regularly) about the things I love dearly, the things I’m trying hard to accomplish, the things I struggle with, the things I’ve learned so far, the things I still need to learn, the things I… well. You get the idea.
As you can see, I’m now calling this place Thinking in Panels, because that’s really what I do. I filter every single idea I have through the lens of being a sequential story first. I think it’s simple and honest and tells you exactly what you can expect when you come here.
So yeah. There ya go. And here we are. And I got one more confession: I’m really excited about this. I think it’s gonna be a good thing for me, and I hope it's something you enjoy, too.
I feel self conscious about not posting any completed pages lately but I promise I’m making comics! After submitting to the Millarworld Annual I was approached about collaborating on several projects and have been trying to balance my time working on them to complete everything by this summer. This probably gives you an idea of my terrible scattershot approach to drawing comics. A lot of the time I’m experimenting with color and brushes before finishing the line art in every panel.
First row of images from a short scripted by @rthomasfavino
Second row from a horror short written by @patrickbarb
Last three pages are from a weird short I scripted based on an idea by one of my college classmates Jay Wilson.
So, yeah. @rossradke and I are cooking up something fun for a thing. Looking forward to talking about it more soon.
This.
The first appearance of Hellboy by Mike Mignola
LONG COMIC BOOK RANT INCOMING:
Okay some things need to be said:
1. If you’re going to write a smug thunk-piece about the “failure” of “diversity” in comics, maybe don’t use the cover image of a book that’s had 4 collections on the NYT graphic books bestseller list, won a Hugo and cleaned up at Angouleme. Just because you HOPE it’s on the chopping block, oh Riders of the Brohirrim, doesn’t mean it is.
2. I will tell you exactly why Ms Marvel works: it didn’t set out to be Ms Marvel. We were originally going to pitch it as a 10 issue limited series. I had a 3 issue exit strategy because I assumed we were going to get canned. There was no “diversity initiative” anywhere–getting that thing made at all was a struggle. It was a given that any character without AT LEAST a 20-year history would tank. Everybody, myself included, assumed this series was going to work out the same way.
3. That freed us–by “us” I mean the whole creative team–to tell exactly the story we wanted to tell. We had nothing to lose, nothing to overcome but low expectations. That gave us room to break a lot of rules.
STUFF THAT IS DIFFICULT TO REPLICATE AND IMPOSSIBLE TO PLAN:
1. Unexpected audiences. We are at a point in history when the role of religion is at a tremendous inflection point. What I didn’t realize was that the anxieties felt by young Muslims are also felt by young Mormons, evangelicals, orthodox Jews, and others. A h-u-g-e reason Ms Marvel has struck the chord it has is because it deals with the role of traditionalist faith in the context of social justice, and there was–apparently–an untapped audience of people from a wide variety of faith backgrounds who were eager for a story like this. Nobody could have predicted or planned for that. That’s being in the right place at the right time with the right story burning a hole in your pocket. Plenty of other stuff I’ve written and liked has fallen with a huge thud. That’s the norm. Exceptions are great when they happen, but hard to plan.
2. The paradox of low expectations. The bar was set pretty low for Ms Marvel, but because of Ms Marvel’s success, that bar got set much higher for similar books that came later.
STUFF THAT IS ENTIRELY AVOIDABLE:
1. This is a personal opinion, but IMO launching a legacy character by killing off or humiliating the original character sets the legacy character up for failure. Who wants a legacy if the legacy is shitty?
2. Diversity as a form of performative guilt doesn’t work. Let’s scrap the word diversity entirely and replace it with authenticity and realism. This is not a new world. This is *the world.*
3. Never try to be the next whoever. Be the first and only you. People smell BS a mile away.
4. The direct market and the book market have diverged. Never the twain shall meet. We need to accept this and move on, and market accordingly.
5. Not for nothing, but there is a direct correlation between the quote unquote “diverse” Big 2 properties that have done well (Luke Cage, Black Panther, Ms Marvel, Batgirl) and properties that have A STRONG SENSE OF PLACE. It’s not “diversity” that draws those elusive untapped audiences, it’s *particularity.* This is a vital distinction nobody seems to make. This goes back to authenticity and realism.
AND FINALLY
On a practical level, this is not really a story about “diversity” at all. It’s a story about the rise of YA comics. If you look at it that way, the things that sell and don’t sell (AND THE MARKETS THEY SELL IN VS THE MARKETS THEY DON’T SELL IN) start to make a different kind of sense.
Incredibly well said, and every single one of these points hold definite truths.
