Pop Culture Junkie – Episode III: “deadCENTER 101: Comics by a Couple of Knuckleheads”
I’m a comic book nerd.
I’ve been one since I first peeled open the cover of an issue of Fantastic Four when I was five years old way back during the Ford administration. And this sadly misunderstood God Bless American art form has imprinted itself on me like a baby chick and has influenced the entirety of my career path (I’m a multi-hyphenate copywriter-graphic designer-broadcast producer-all around creative guy).
And I make no secret of my pushing-40 comic nerditude, a fact which led deadCENTER ladies Kim & Cacky to invite me to help create a comic book page to explain the elements of the film festival to the potentially unaware masses.
A “deadCENTER 101” if you will.
Since I’m the writer and have less of the burden of work to fulfill, I happily agreed, and brought in one of my creative collaborators, OKC artist Robert Wilson IV, to illustrate it.
Robert and I are co-creators of a “superhero sitcomic” entitled ‘Knuckleheads.’ The concept is simple: what if you were chosen by aliens to be a superhero but they accidentally gave your powers to your fat, lazy roommate?
We’re shopping the property around for a publisher but recently released a self-published, black & white edition of our premier issue: ‘KNUCKLEHEADS SPECIAL EDITION #1.’ It’s available at comic book stores around Oklahoma City as well as for online ordering at www.CrystalFist.com. It’s well worth your money. End gratuitous plug.
So once Robert was in he and I got the goods from our deadCENTER pals in terms of what the most important messages should be. A full page “ad” seems like a lot of space but it goes by pretty quickly. So he and I spent about four hours brainstorming at a local coffeeshop and established the basic storytelling of the page. We sent a rough thumbnail sketch and initial script for approval.
After a couple of slight changes, Robert went to work. We sent the penciled art in for feedback before Robert inked it (or “traced” it, if you’re a fan of Kevin Smith’s ‘Chasing Amy’). We’d originally wanted to showcase various genres in the middle and have homages to the connected comic book styles (“Romance!” “Action!” “Comedy!”) but the decision was made to go broader in the categories: Feature films! Documentaries! Family Films! It wasn’t quite as much fun but Robert threw in caricatures of Morgan Spurlock and Michael Moore so that worked well.
Robert then lettered and colored it and it away it went! It’s now appeared in print and online and, because we took the opportunity to plug ourselves at the bottom – one of the benefits of in-kind (free) creative work – we’ve actually been approached for a paying gig from a fan.
It was quite a bit of work (mostly for Robert, I’ll admit) but the results have been wonderful and we’re hoping that, by breaking down the explanation of what deadCENTER means and what a film festival is, we can help convince more people to check out deadCENTER X this summer.
