ed_rex

Details from page 1 of 'The Laughing Fish', Detective Comics #475, February 1978. Artwork by Marshall Rogers and Terry Austin. Batman copyright © by DC Comics.

The meme continues ...

26. Let's talk art! Do you draw your characters? Do others draw them? Pick one of your OCs and post your favorite picture of him!

There was a time when I did a lot of drawing and I at least contemplated making a living as a cartoonist. That dream came to a crushing, tearful end, sometime in the very early 1980s, when I read an issue of Detective Comics pencilled by the late Marshall Rogers (see accompanying panel) and "realized" that I could never be the artist he was, and so threw down my pen.

At least, that's how I remember it, but the chronology according to the Wikepedia link above suggests my memory is once again distorting the truth to make a better story. But at any rate, it is true (I think) that in the early 80s I had what I believed was the profound realization of my own limitations as a draftsman and that I cried about the loss; and it is true (I know) that my last completed comic book was an issue of Captain Canada, numbered 22 and dated December 1, 1978. (Which actually parses with the Rogers memory, if I push the date back to about that time instead of placing it in the 1980s. But I digress.)

Cover of Captain Canada #2, January 16, 1976. Click here for a larger image.

Cover of Captain Canada #22, December 1, 1978. Click here for a larger image.

Whatever the exact date, I gave up on drawing, convinced I had at best only a talent which hard work could see me developing to a point of competence, not genius. I had no burning desire to settle for being the next Sal Buscema.

As I think the images show, I had actually grown significantly as a cartoonist and I am no longer so sure in my judgement at the time that I didn't have the necessary inate talent to make it with my pen.

But I did give up, and I don't think I'm likely to embark on the training that would permit me to develop my skills to a level I would find acceptable.

"The Question" illustration by Chris Graham. Click here for a larger image.

Which means that, no, since I gave up cartooning I have not drawn any of my characters and neither has anyone else since 1981, when Chris Graham (whatever happened to Chris Graham, I wonder!), illustrated a scene from "The Question", which I printed in the first issue of a school magazine I edited, The House of the Dying Tree.

Looking at Chris' drawing for the first time in quite a while (the man did it in ball-point pen!), reminds me that I do still fantasize about seeing my name in print on a book, complete with cover drawing or painting.

And in truth, should I get The Jewel of Eternity into publishable shape, I think I already know who I want to paint a cover illustration. Might you say "yes" to a commission, Nelly?

( Click to see all the questions )

More memeage: In this edition, Young Geoffrey ponders the words of folks he admires.

I had a couple of interviews yesterday — we'll see whether I qualify for a security clearance; if not, getting a decent job in Ottawa is going to prove a little, er, problematic (no, I haven't given up on freelancing. There's a possible ghost-writing gig coming up in September, but neither am I any longer willing to live on spit and promises to coin a phrase). Anyway, if I don't look too terrible, tomorrow you folks (all three of you?) might be lucky enough to see me as be-suited eye-candy.

Which is a roundabout way of overtly copping to the fact that I missed yesterday's entry to this meme.

I opened up the file and started typing, but found it too hard to concentrate, whether due to stress or to the many possible answers to today's question. Should I talk about the usual genre suspects like — Tolkien or Delany, or the more obscure, like Arthur Kostler or Mary Midgley.

But then, what about Peter Watts or Kim Stanley Robinson, Melville or Heller, Woolfe or Lapham or Klein?

The list of good published (and usually at least somewhat famous) writers who have impressed and/or influenced me — whom I "admire" — would get pretty long pretty fast.

So instead, I'm going to talk about a couple of you, Livejournalers whose words I've been reading for some years and whose thinking and craft I've watched (usually with pleasure) change and develop over more years than I care to admit.

( Click to see who I'm talking about! (That oughta pump up my aenemic numbers!) )

( Click to see all the questions )

More memeage: In this edition, Young Geoffrey talks about world-building and why most of his stories seem to take place at the same sidewalk cafe.

( Click for Question 12, 'In what story did you feel you did the best job of worldbuilding?' )

( Click to see all the questions )

More memeage: In this edition, Young Geoffrey discusses the act(s) of creation.

( Click to see all the questions )

9. How do you get ideas for your characters? Describe the process of creating them.

Character creation usually comes in two forms for me, and is greatly dependent on the where the story they're in will be coming from. In other words, my ideas for stories generally come in one of two flavours: situations or characters.

Situations are more common and, in that case, they often come with characters attached, particularly if I'm inspired by either a real-world (read: authobiographical) situation or a wish-fulfillment situation (think: smut).

Basically, characters and plots are, for me, most often developed intuitively. A situation occurs to me and I begin to think about what sort of person — someone I know, someone I've heard of, someone entirely made-up? — might be involved in it.

Or, and maybe more interestingly, I will deliberately set out to write a certain kind of piece and then struggle to find a suitable character for it.

Most recently, with The Jewel of Eternity, I was inspired by my then 15-or-so year-old neice's enthusiasm for the revival of Doctor Who. Simply put, I wanted to write and adventure story along similar lines, something that would please my neice.

Said something, I determined, would be even better with a female protagonist, and so I began to write, with only the vaguest idea of who that heroine might actually be.

If I remember rightly, she was first physically-based on a girl on whom I had had a mad, unrequited crush while I was in high school. But the character never seemed right, she never came to life; she was only a cypher with a physical description, being put through the paces of a generic fantasy novel.

In short, the lack of a fully-realized character meant the novel was going to suck.

I don't remember when I realized that my heroine's father was a Nigerian immigrant, and that she was a dark-skinned half-black girl, but when I did everything else fell into place (well, much else; if everything else had fallen into place, I rather imagine the second draft wouldn't be moldering away in a drawer somewhere. I need to pull it out and finish the god damned thing — which is the sort of feeling I was hoping this exercise would give me). I realized her mother had died very young, that she had been raised by a loving but stern father and had fought hard for her indendence from him. She was a loner and a bit of a nerd, but capable of socializing and even becoming good at the latter when the novel opened.

She became a person in my writer's eye and that made a great deal of difference not just to her but to the plot, somehow.

Which, I realize, is mostly a very long-winded way of answering Question 9 by saying "I don't know, most of the process of creation is sub-conscious."

But that seems to be what happens in my case.