Getting back in the swing of things...

With baseball season wrapping up for Little Pirates (ending with a painful 1-14 record - pictured left my leadoff batter Xander on deck before a game) I hope to get back to blogging regularly. Let's face it, the more I can blog the less shameless self promotion I can shovel... er... post, and the more fun I can put out there.

But not today.

It's been a while, so I have to throw out some info updates and give a little self promotion.

If you have been following me on twitter @BrettTHarris (and can manage to get through all the proud papa baseball pics) you are aware that we have taken a brief hiatus on the current www.adventuresinpulp.com story, "Four Horsemen."

Illustrator extraordinaire Matthew Childers has been crushed with work at his day job (which includes work on the new DC "Superman Hall of Heroes" promotion). We hope to start putting up the pages for the second half of "Four Horsemen" on June 5. We have introduced a good witch, an evil king, an evil wizard, a samurai, a knight, a cowboy and a soldier.  For the second half we will put them all together with an army of the dead and hilarity will ensue. It's a big departure for both of us stylistically and is working better than either of us thought it would. So come by and check it out if you haven't already. As always "Adventures in Pulp" is a FREE site. So you can't beat the price.

Still up and also available for FREE are the complete short stories "Dick Ruby and the Case of the Little Green Men" and "Hawk and A Handsaw." Dick Ruby focuses of a 40s era private eye who stumbles onto an invasion by little green men from outer space. And H&H takes us inside a super-hero insane asylum. We are pretty proud of them. They even have page by page writer and artist commentaries to give fans a peak behind the curtain.

Our first foray into "Free Comic Book Day" was a success. We had sampler books available exclusively at Mountain Empire Comics in Bristol, TN and Johnson City, TN. Matt even did some sketches and signed some books (below) at the Johnson City store. I had intended to sign for the Bristol store, but the Avoca Pirates game schedule kept me from making it.

We have also upgraded our "Adventures in Pulp" site store in coordination with Society6 and now have clothing and prints featuring our flagship character Dick Ruby: check it out at  http://society6.com/AdventuresInPulp

Matt will be at HeroesCon in Charlotte, NC June 20-22 and I will be joining him on Sat. June 21st. We will have a table with some goodies and would love to get some feedback from "Adventures in Pulp" fans. We still have several stories waiting in the wings, including: "Ashes of the Immortals" (formerly titled "Starlight") which, like our first three tales, is a short story that gives us a chance to play with different styles and genres.

We also hope to have an announcement soon in regard to "Jigsaw World." Fans who purchased our black & white convention exclusive or have read the sneak peak at www.adventuresinpulp.com will welcome the news.

We will both be attending RobCon in Bristol, TN Saturday, August 2nd. Again, we will have a table with some goodies and would love to chat with "Adventures in Pulp" fans. As we plan for the future, what we decide to put up at www.adventuresinpulp.com can be influenced by fans. If you can't make it to HeroesCon or RobCon please leave a comment in the comments sections of the "Adventures in Pulp" site (not only do we read them, we will respond). We would also love to hear from you via e-mail and twitter (our contacts are on the creators page).

So with a 1-14 record was it worth the delays? 
You betcha.
Xander had a great year. Moving up to the 9/10 year old level, I assumed he would be playing left field and batting at the bottom of the order. He split his time starting at prime positions: Catcher  (left) and First Base (below #1). For 13 games he was batting either lead off or in the two hole, with an average of 267 (slugging 400) and lead the team with OBP of 656 and 17 walks. He stole 28 bases (of 30 attempts, below #2), went 7 games without a strike out (5 of which were in a row) and scored 1/6 our total runs for the season. He even won the hit portion of the MLB "Pitch, Hit, and Run" competition sponsored by our local MiLB affiliate (below #3), the rookie level Bristol Pirates. He even got to take the mound for the first time (below #4).

Baseball Delays, Dick Ruby Voting, More Horsemen...

I'm sorry for the lack of updates. I've been a little busy trying to get the Little Pirates ready for opening day, which is a little more than a week away. Other than comics and sci-fi, my son has expanded my horizons to make me a late in life convert to the glory that is baseball. You gotta admire a kid who cosplays Capt. Kirk at RobCon, quotes "Doctor Who" and can turn on a fastball. I hope to start posting regularly even when I am not commenting on our website.

Today however...

Adventure in Pulp's "Dick Ruby" continues to move up in www.ComicMix.com March Madness - Best Online Comic Vote. We are now down from over 300 webcomics to only 32 and voting will continue on round three until midnight tonight. It is still FREE to vote but you can "purchase" additional votes by donating to the www.heroinitiative.org charity. Hopefully "Dick Ruby" will make it to the next round. Again, for all of you who voted: Thank you. For all of you who went above and beyond and donated to give us some extra votes: A SPECIAL THANK YOU. Even if we come up short, the Hero Initiative is a great charity. Remember those donations are tax deductible. So please honor us with another vote.

The second installment of our third story "Four Horsemen" will go tomorrow up at www.adventuresinpulp.com.  We hope you swing by and give it a try. It's really different from what we did with "Dick Ruby and the Case of the Little Green Men" and "Hawk and a Handsaw," and we are pretty proud of it.

You can also follow me on twitter @BrettTHarris. Even better, send me a tweet. I would love to hear from you!

Remember if a few days go by here and there it's all his fault...

"Dick Ruby" Makes It to the Next Round at Comic Mix and "Four Horsemen" Launches

Well, Adventure in Pulp's "Dick Ruby" survived the seeding round and first round in www.ComicMix.com March Madness - Best Online Comic Vote. We are now down from over 300 webcomics to only 64 and voting has started on round two. It is still FREE to vote but you can "purchase" additional votes by donating to the www.heroinitiative.org charity. Hopefully "Dick Ruby" will make it to the next round. For all of you who voted: Thank you. For all of you who went above and beyond and donated to give us some extra votes: A SPECIAL THANK YOU. Even if we come up short, the Hero Initiative is a great charity. Remember those donations are tax deductible. Voting for this round goes through until Sat. 11:59 pm. Please honor us with another vote.

Today is the first day of Spring and our first installment of third story "Four Horsemen" is now up at www.adventuresinpulp.com. We hope you swing by and give it a try. It's really different from our first two stories and we are pretty proud of it.

Also remember you can follow "Adventures in Pulp" on Twitter for all the latest updates @AdventureinPulp (no s) and you can follow me @BrettTHarris as well as our Illustrator Matt Childers @mattcdrawsalot. We hope to hear from you!

Epilogue, Part 2: Fitting Finale (aka Cheap Word Play)

ADVENTURES IN PULP WRITER'S COMMENTARY

HAWK AND A HANDSAW PAGE 13

http://adventuresinpulp.com/hawk-and-a-handsaw-week-13/

            Our final page, goes as scripted. Three simple panels. We start with a bang. Matt does a fantastic job with the action here. For a claustrophobic story with a lot of action taking place off panel, I knew I wanted one big action moment.

            Next in panel two, we see our parody of the original Captain Marvel. I think any abused kid in the world would LOVE to be able to say a word and turn the tables on their abusers (I know quite a few adults who would like ringside seats to such an event). There is something really satisfying about the switch here. Originally, I scripted the scene with Commander Miracle as an adult still in torn children's clothes, but at some point Matt and I agreed that he should be full on hero. You can see him picking up the saw which was clearly set up on panel one of the last page.

            We get to the final panel. I gotta tell ya, it is perfect. We see that the title of the story was much more than just the quote from Hamlet (as discussed on page ten), there was a double meaning. We have Hawk (Knight Hawk) and a Handsaw (or in this case a bone saw). It was a cheap naming joke to end on, but so was naming a pedophile Dr. Peters. Sometimes you just gotta roll with it. I frequently warn writers that no matter how much you write, it will never look the same as in your head. Matt achieved the unachievable here. It is EXACTLY as I imagined it. He nailed it. Our second story came to a close with a very satisfying note of perfection.

 

            That's it for the "Adventures in Pulp" commentaries for a while. I will do one for our next story "Four Horsemen" starting the weekend after it wraps. "For Horsemen" begins TOMORROW at adventuresinpulp.com. Until then, I will still periodically post about random things I find interesting. In between you can find me on twitter @BrettTHarris.

Epilogue, Part 1: King of the B's (aka Abrakadabra)

ADVENTURES IN PULP WRITER'S COMMENTARY

HAWK AND A HANDSAW PAGE 12

http://adventuresinpulp.com/hawk-and-a-handsaw-week-12/

            With Baxter and Dr. Destructo's storyline was wrapped up and nailed down, I had laid ground work for the close sequence back on page 4. We revisit Dr. Peters getting ready for surgery when he decides to get in another "session" with William. Peters takes another turn here. Going from arrogant, pompous and condescending on the first three pages to sympathetic on pages four and five and finally to creepy and disgusting. Not bad for a secondary character who only appears in seven pages of a story.

            Right off the bat I lay the ground work for the final panel of the story on the next page. Matt expands my five panel script to seven very powerful panels. The best being the "smile in the shadow" panel. With that one panel we have moved from a super hero story to a horror story. (apropos for the material). Matt and I both sweated the "drawstring" panel, worried how far is too far for a site that has been striving to be all ages, but it works I think. There is not a lot to say here other than I really like this page overall. Matt does some great work here and story wise it works great as a set up for the finale. With the magic word "abra-kadabra," we are propelled to the big finish.

Resolutions and Debates

ADVENTURES IN PULP WRITER'S COMMENTARY

HAWK AND A HANDSAW PAGE 11

http://adventuresinpulp.com/hawk-and-a-handsaw-week-11/

            Matt and I had a lot of debate on this page. My original idea was to do a single panel (this was scripted before Matt and I had the final page discussion on "Dick Ruby" about full page panels). I wanted the aftermath of the climax to be a single panel with a lot of clues to hammer the resolution home. Kind of like looking at a table after a meal and trying to figure out what everyone ate. Little crumbs all scattered about. My idea was a high angle looking down at everything. Here is my original page description from the script: A single panel page. A bird's eye POV looking down on the entire room. Two hulking orderlies are inside the door looking confused. Dr. Felicity is hog tied and gagged in the center of the room. Her power bracelet is lying on the floor next to her, the blue jewel is cracked. Another lipstick sized device is lying nearby and it is projecting a recorded hologram of Felicity from the last page saying "And about to die." The bars on the window are melted away and there is no sign of Baxter. About a day after the page was to go up Matt called and suggested ending the story with page ten. I seriously considered it. Ten ended with one heck of a hard punch and, like "Dick Ruby," would give a great "what happens next vibe." However, for it to work would mean moving up our "B" story (which was set up earlier) and was planned to play out over pages 12 and 13. It would need an additional page to bring it all together. It was really tempting. But reordering the pages and doing such a drastic last minute restructuring would have blunted the original ending and it would have required putting up three pages prior to the new ending which had already been up for over a week. It seemed a bit like a cheat to regular readers even though most would find it after the fact. If it were a print book not yet going to press, I probably would have gone that route. So, we decided to keep the structure in tact and Matt came up with a different version of the page. It was a great page, packed full of the "crumbs" as well as some great unscripted touches (I love that Dr. Destructo apparently lost a shoe in the scuffle with Baxter). It had the elements I felt need to be there but there was still some debate as to the panel with the orderlies. On one hand, it was obvious that Dr. Felicity/Destructo was left to be discovered so they seemed extraneous. On the other hand, actually seeing someone make the discovery would give a certain amount of emotional satisfaction to the reader. It also rules out any idea that she would/could escape before being found. Again a common trope of comics is the elaborate inescapable trap which is actually always escapable ("Batman" 1966, I'm looking at you). I really wrestled with it and even second guessed the final decision after it was up in the early days, but I'm glad we went with what we did. With time to reflect and look back at it as a finished product, this page achieves what it needed to and the ending we went with on page 13 really has some punch and irony that page 10 might not have had as an ending.

            Dissection: Beyond the discover of the hog tied doctor, the other "crumbs" I wanted scattered about also include: The melted bars and no sign of Baxter indicating he had an escape plan in place. The recording. It was his plan to expose her. The fact that Baxter left her alive. This shows that in true Bronze Age form, heroes are not killers (and Baxter might be quite sane as well, thank you very much). The broken "Demon's Eye" bracelet. Originally, I wanted a completely unresolved plot point, much like one I buried in "Dick Ruby" but I'm actually mentioning it here because our print edition will have some bonus pages, and I decided to address that plot point in those pages. ("Dick Ruby" readers will have to search and guess. Maybe we will have a contest at some point). Why is it a plot point? Keen eyed readers will recall that a volcano could not destroy the bracelet and that it "could not be destroyed by such pedestrian means." So how did it get smashed?  An excellent question. But I won't answer that one. Instead I will answer this one: If everything is wrapped up, how come there are two more pages? Dear reader, please recall the mute abused pediatric case of William Watson, last mentioned on page four.

Ruses Run Deep and Wide

ADVENTURES IN PULP WRITER'S COMMENTARY

HAWK AND A HANDSAW PAGE 10

http://adventuresinpulp.com/hawk-and-a-handsaw-week-10/

            Ok so we come to the big climax of the Destructo/Baxter portion of the story. It's a jam packed page but really effective. Matt did a fantastic job, so much so, that one would be hard pressed to realized that there was a lot of last minute re-working. It was scripted as a seven panel page, which was rare for me. After "Jigsaw World," I intentionally tried to lower my panel count to give Matt more room to show off his art work. Ironically, several times (as I have noted on previous commentaries) he would add panels. This time around it went up to eight, but I'm not sure how much was by choice. Because of the quirk of spacing and line count the script page ended with Baxter's line, "You lose." On the next page of the script was the last panel. No partial sentence or anything at all to let Matt know it continued on the next page. So he drew it to end there. tI could have happened to anyone. After the straight-jacket incident I would check against the script, but this time I didn't have to. The initial draft of the script did not have Baxter quoting Hamlet and spelling out the title for readers. As I told friends and family the premise and the title I would get blank stares, no one was putting the two together. So I did a second draft adding the line. When I saw that line was not there, I knew Matt was working from the old draft. A frantic conversation later and it was fixed. I think it only took him a few minutes to rectify both issues. It was amazing. Panel three became an inset, he moved panel four from the bottom left to the top right, slid everything over, dropped in the new line and the new panel and "Presto!" It was all fixed. It was an editorial slight of hand that was genius and more importantly: Seamless.

            Matt gave me a lot of grief over the "Femme Fatales" issue as I mentioned on page eight. However, while doing these commentaries, I noticed something. Originally I wrote panel two (which he split into two panels) with Destructo/Felicity behaving in a condescending demeanor. The dialogue is the same, but I literally having her patting Baxter on the head like a pet or a child in my description. Matt went the other way. He decided to have her embrace him and seductively whispering in his ear. If you recall back in "Dick Ruby," after the big reveal, the Queen Alien also seductively caresses and even licks the ill fated Eugene Lucas. No judgments, just making an observation... that kind of speaks volumes.

             I wanted a flashback sequence as part of the big reveal. Not only would it get us outside the walls of the institution for a few panels, but it would serve as a visual reminder that Baxter and Carlos were more than just inmates but actual super heroes. A big thing for me on this page was the monologue. A common trope in comics is the moment the villains spell out, in detail, their plan in an arrogant display of bravado (usually as a mask for exposition) and I wanted to turn that on its head by have the hero do the monologue. The big reveal that it was all a trap and that Baxter could get free at any time would be the exclamation point on this particular arc. Matt did a fantastic job with the image of Baxter standing there holding the straight-jacket. He is strong and powerful looking and complete juxtaposition to the previous page where he looks so weak and anything but intimidating. I subtly foreshadowed it back on page four with the line, "So this has been a ruse." It was a shout out on multiple levels. Dr. Felicity's act was a ruse, one which we double dip with the Dr. Destructo reveal as was Baxter's imprisonment. There might even be another ahead. Who knows?