Q&A 44: Solving, Missing Years, Omnibuses
Chris Wichtendahl asks:
"I recently collected physical copies of Bad Machinery and Steeple (to go with my hardcover Giant Days set) and I wondered if you'd ever put out the whole mad run of Bobbins, Scary Go Round, Bad Machinery, etc into some sort of omnibus format. I know you've mentioned before the challenges in collecting some of the earlier webcomics work, but I would happily sell my second-favorite kidney to pay for that omnibus. "
I could, sure! It would involve re-scanning and recolouring all the original hand-drawn Bobbins comics, and remaking another hundred or so that I did in Adobe Illustrator from scratch, as the the Zip disks they were archived on were destroyed by a faulty drive in 2001. Then I'd have to reformat all the square comics I did for Scary Go Round to fit with the portrait format ones I did. And I'll have to reformat all the horizontal strip format Bobbins strips that I've re-scanned/recoloured/redrawn at the same time so they fit in a portrait book. That done, I can compile them all into a 3000 page volume. I'll be laying this tome out myself, so it's going to be quite a lot of work when you put all that stuff together, but for the few hundred people who would buy it - sure. I can run a Kickstarter for it. That's going to increase the workload but this project has to be done right. I can't put Bad Machinery in it because Oni own the publishing and media rights to that, but that saves me having to reformat all those landscape format comics into portrait format. Or perhaps I can license them back to myself?
I am being a little unkind here, but only in fun, it's a fair question. I know there are people who would like all this material in print. But the answer is no, and a firm no for now. Scary Go Round was a webcomic that I originally printed because enough people wanted a hard copy twenty years ago. Neither it not Bobbins were ever designed for print, not to create satisfying page turns, or beautiful books. The print versions were artefacts of their time, and I have rejected multiple offers to reprint them - partly because I don't ever want to have to promote this formative work as new. It's not that I don't have affection for those comics, but I'd rather use my time working on new material than curating the old. I feel like time is slipping away from me as it is.
Terry Moore is a good example of someone who is always beating the drum for the old Strangers In Paradise material - new editions, Kickstarters, a real care for his old library, which I believe he has now handed over to Dark Horse after several years where he and his wife handled it all. Terry's work - black and white, comic book format throughout - suits this sort of curation. My back catalogue is a mess. It's chaos. I will never have the necessary attention to give it. But I appreciate that you care about it.
Chris also asks:
On another note, I know you've said you wouldn't want to bring the Giant Days characters into the present day, thereby eliminating 8 years of potential stories. Do you think those 8 years are ground you'd like to cover one day?
I think this is a foggy area. I refer back to my previous answer - if I have to keep going back, how do I go forward? I can do a Susan/Daisy story for fun, or an Esther story (and I have!), but as soon as I have to deal with the grand continuity of it all, it isn't fun any more. All my historic series have this problem. The existence of Savage Sword of Susan reflects this.
I'm nearly 50: I might not come up with many more new characters who can carry a story. And the weight of expectation the existing ones carry at this point makes it hard for me to commit to a project for long.
At an event a couple of years ago, I asked Jaime Hernandez how he balanced the great weight of the Love and Rockets continuity, jumping back and forth through the locas' lives to tell stories at various points, growing older with the characters. He seemed to have a lightness of spirit about it. I would say that I view the same experience with an increasing sense of dread, torn between pride in what I have created and decades of separation from the younger self who was responsible, and in some ways, a safer pair of hands to look after all this.
At times like this, I remind myself that my continuity is policed by a very (very) small, though vocal, segment of my readership, who love continuity a lot. The author's only sane route out of this zone is to ignore them.
BONUS QUESTION:
Rand Brittain wants to know:
Is there a reason why Charlotte, a professional "solver" in a comic of the same name, so rarely finds herself actually attempting to solve a crime? I would have assumed you just weren't comfortable with doing long-form mystery comics if not for the fact that Shauna has her own spin-off dedicated to solving murders!
I think the whole raison d'etre of Solver is that Lottie has lost her mystery solving mojo in Wicked Things, so she solves non-mysterious problems instead. I had a long list of potential mysteries for her to solve in Wicked Things, but it only ran for six issues, and Solver is (thematically) a response to that professional failure. Shauna's series was a way to use some of those Wicked Things plots; as I have detailed elsewhere here, Great British Bump-Off was a Lottie story, as was Kill Or Be Quilt (in its original form, 'Patch of the Day'). But Lottie does solve the original Wicked Things plot in the second volume of Solver.
Ultimately, there were ten Bad Machinery books, and Wicked Things, and Murder She Writes, plus GBBO vols 1 & 2. It's possible I simply said everything I wanted to say about mystery with Lottie, but still enjoyed the other possibilities of the character. I hope that's a fair answer.
Comments (18)
I'm not sure where to ask this question, so no worries if this goes unheeded. I was curious how you've found the experience of putting Steeple on Webtoons. I've enjoyed rereading the series, Steeple is a personal fave of mine, and I'm wondering if it has been worth it for you given the hoops that Webtoons makes authors jump through. As a fan of yours from the early Scary-Go-Round days, I'm just happy that more people get to read your work. At the very least, it's apparently made one satanist in the comments section pleased with how their religious practices are portrayed.
I actually just finished reading Solver vol 1 yesterday, and had a great time with it - great job there!
Life is the ultimate murder mystery, anyway.
*Something* is gonna get you.
That seems like a fair answer! I guess I just read some of your musings on "what sort of comics can I make as my pencils and audience grow old and grey", and wondered if you'd ever considered just going full Columbo and having someone new get murdered every week. (This... has anybody ever actually done a murder-of-the-week webcomic in that sense? It seems like it would actually be fairly well-suited to the medium if you could get the pacing right).)
The older I get, the more depressing I find the reliance on murder as a trope across all media. "Landfill murder" I call it.
I feel like I've heard many authors point to continuity as a great enemy, so much so that I feel mildly ashamed to love it as much as I do.
There's nothing wrong with enjoying continuity. But continuity doesn't just apply to story, but also to aesthetic, which ties me as a cartoonist to drawing a certain way, to writing a certain way. Long-term that provides a structure which is helpful to ongoing production, but at times feels like a straitjacket. Prolonged continuity demands more consistency, more rigour on my part, because mistakes become ever more possible.
How funny to see a Q&A about omnibus SGR -- just this week I was feeling nostalgic and was poking around to find where SGR was available. EDIT because enter did not make a new line: I was also chuckling along reading the first answer, and took it as a weary jest, since I work in publishing and sometimes get sweet, generous, unknowing "Well why don't you do this?" sort of questions from relatives and occasionally friends, who can't begin to imagine all the moving pieces and archival files and just how much *work* goes into layout. I'm quite happy to have you spend that time creating new stories or even silly doodles!
OK yeah, that sounds awful. I wouldn't wish that process on anyone, and 3000 pages would probably throw my back out just from reading it. And that also makes sense. Better to move forward than endlessly fill the gaps. Your work sits alongside the "foundational texts" of my youth (the Pern novels, the first two Dragonlance trilogies, the Hitchhiker's books, Elfquest) as stories I retreat into when all... this... gets too much, so I'm always going to want as much as I can get of my favorite characters. Thanks for taking the time to answer. 🙂
Your answer is more than fair. Though it's always nice to see Lottie solve a mystery, she's such a wonderful character that I love to see her interactiong with her friends and family with a clever turn of a phrase, along with her strong, confident, but charming personality. Even though Solver might be done, I'm hoping that we get to see her bun in your future work.
Thanks Sy. If Solver is done, Lottie will return in some other vehicle, I am certain of that.
Your reasons for not putting your old comics into print again (or for the first time, in the case of Bobbins) make perfect sense, but I am glad that the lion's share of them are still available to read/buy digitally. Maybe if you hadn't already put together those Scary Go Round collection eBooks, you wouldn't prioritise doing that now, but it was a great way to keep the stories accessible without them drawing too much focus away from new comics. Tangentially related - have you thought about putting more of your comics onto Gumroad, or is it not worth it because too many of the people who would want to pay for digital copies already have the PDFs from being Patreon supporters?
I've had adding more recent things to Gumroad on my list for ages. I made the mistake of having an multi-pack item called "Everything" whose name becomes a lie if I add anything else. But now you can "retire" a product while keeping it downloadable for people who bought it in the past so I can look at adding newer stuff soon.
I'm happy with you expending your limited reserves of time & energy on making new things rather than endlessly curating your past work. The former scholar in me hopes that someday, a qualified editorial mind tackles the "chaos" and lovingly assembles it into a form that can be revisited by posterity.
I'm not sure I'm "notable" enough for such a treatment!
-FOR QUESTION 1- I could likely be looking too much into a simple joke, but I don’t see why both Bobbins and Scary Go Round would occupy the same omnibus together. And even if I see the merit in SGR, I can absolutely see why Bobbins doesn’t need the physical treatment. (Would also not be possible for a full set anyway, since there’s one strip that just outright uses a screenshot from The Sopranos). For a hypothetical SGR book, it obviously wouldn’t look the best, but I think you could get away with just having the boxed strips be placed as they are onto the wider portrait pages. I have no experience with making comic volumes, so it’s likely i’m very wrong. -FOR QUESTION 2- It does seem like the main question should be “Is there something interesting and new I can do with this character?” Sometimes there just isn’t (either in general or just because of a lack of ideas for the time), and that’s fine. -FOR BONUS QUESTION- This relates to something I put in the Q2 part. If a character isn’t being retired for good, it’s at least good to give them a break, even if years go by. New creativity for older ideas work the best when you’re able to take a step back. -EXTRA NOTE- I like the fact that you aren’t afraid to be honest/blunt in these QNAs, or in general with questions and statements. It makes reading these very insightful into how you see your creative priorities and process.
My feeling is that any omnibus series of the kind Chris is talking about should be the same format. He's effectively talking about a completist's John Allison library, I think, so I wanted to detail the peculiarities of such a project "done right". I worry that I am too honest in some of these Q&As and sound like I am a miserable bastard!