Black Salt

I am very excited to announce I have been hired to write the first issue of Black Salt, a martial arts and action comic based on the screenplay by the same name.

Actually, that’s not entirely accurate. I was hired is more like it. I was hired in February and have already wrote the script, revised the script, had the script approved and received payment. I would have made this announcement earlier but I wanted to wait until my script was finished, and I wanted to get permission to talk about the project from Owen Ratliff, the brains behind the Black Salt franchise.

Owen’s Ratti Entertainment Inc. has been working on the Black Salt intellectual property for the past five years. The franchise includes, but is not be limited to, an apparel line, comic books, trading cards, toys, animated series, video games and feature film trilogy.

An excerpt from my approved script for issue #1 has been distributed to a handful of artists Owen has selected for his short-list of potential illustrators. The artists were asked to draw one of the pages from the script. JC Grande turned in his finished page earlier this week and I quite like it. Perhaps I will be able to post the test pages on this here blog when the artists have finished them.

Owen is also looking for a colorist, and has a handful queued up to color a test page. The project also needs a letterer, but it looks like Ed Brisson got the job based on a recommendation from me. I also heard from Manoel Magalhães this week and it turns out he had responded to Owen’s ad for artists. (Manoel recognized my name on the script!) Owen liked his work and asked him to do a test page, but Manoel isn’t sure if he was going to or not. Manoel said his style of artwork might not fit the story.

That’s all the news I have about this project for now. I’ll keep you informed as it progresses.

The Artwork is Finished

Manoel Magalhães sent me the last page of The Three Princes earlier this week. As you may recall, Manoel has been drawing the pages out of sequence. The final page he sent me was, in fact, page 19, which is just past the halfway point in the thirty page story. The arrival of this page means the artwork for The Three Princesis finished. All thirty pages have been pencilled and inked by Manoel.

I zipped the thirty pages of artwork and sent them via yousendit.com to Ed Brisson, who is doing the lettering. He’s currently working on a client project so he will get started on The Three Princes in early to mid April.

Here is panel 4 from Page 19 of The Three Princes. This character is Paddy Duke. Who he is and why he has a gun I am not going to say. You will have to read the comic when it is available.

Artwork by Manoel Magalhães

The Shootout

There is within The Three Princes an intense shootout. Imagine the sudden roar of approaching vehicles, the rattle of tommy-guns echoing off the buildings that line the narrow city street. A man goes down and his companions rush to his aide, one helping him off the ground and into the safety of a vehicle, the others laying down covering fire with their own machine guns.

The whole affair unfolds over three pages. As Manoel submitted the page sketches I could see the elements of my script were accounted for but something just didn’t seem right. The placement of one of the vehicles and the characters’ positions relative to it were confusing me. There appeared to be an issue with continuity.

We exchanged a number of emails about these three pages, I describing what I felt was wrong and Manoel trying to explain how he approached and interpreted the script. We were both communicating openly and honestly but we just couldn’t get those pages to click even after a couple major revisions.

Then Manoel had an idea. He drew a sketch that showed the position of the vehicles and the characters during the scene. I took one look at it and realized why Manoel and I weren’t seeing eye to eye. I envisioned The Boxer’s car as being parked, and Manoel was envisioning it as being in motion, meaning that Twitchy was pulling up to pick up The Boxer, and in doing so was shielding Grady and The Boxer from the Italians’ gunfire.

I was trying to see the pages as I had written them. I wasn’t thinking about how Manoel drew them. I wasn’t seeing those pages as he saw them. Once I saw his sketch though it clicked and I could understand the artwork. All that remained were a couple minor tweaks and then we had three stellar pages. Manoel has since inked those pages and they are among my favorites in The Three Princes. 

Shootout sketch by Manoel Magalhães

Halfway there!

At the end of November, Manoel Magalhães inked the fifteenth page of The Three Princes, signaling the halfway point of our project and cuing me to pay him. As agreed to in our terms, I paid Manoel half of the agreed to amount upon the completion of the first fifteen pages. We had decided to use xoom.com to transact. I am happy to report the service was easy to use and that Manoel received his money in less than a week. I’d recommend xoom.com to anyone needing to send money to somone in Brazil.

Meet The Three Princes

The three princes referred to in the title of my crime comic are Grady, Doherty and Michael, three twelve year-old boys growing up tough in 1920s America. They are the centre of the story so one of the first things Manoel Magalhães tackled was their look.

We first meet the boys on page 3, panel 1. They are described in my script as follows:

MICHAEL, GRADY and DOHERTY are (see photo references) leaning casually against a brick wall. Michael has his back against the wall, thumbs hooked in his pants pockets, a smoke hanging from his lips, doing his best to look tough and succeeding. Grady is in a similar pose, but his arms folded. He too is smoking. Doherty is next, shoulders slumped and his eyes downcast, nowhere near as tough looking as his two friends.

The photo I am referring to is one I found on http://www.shorpy.com/, an excellent Web site filled with stunning high definition photos from the early 20th century. The Web site would provide me with a number of excellent photo references for life in the 1920s. Here is the photo I provided to Manoel as a reference for my three princes…

This picture is of three newsboys from 1910. I loved the rough and tumble look of these boys, youngsters who were working long and hard hours, out on the streets, busting their ass and making no apologies. I also loved the look of them smoking cigarettes, the cut of their clothes, but most of all the look in their eyes. Lastly, the fact that the middle boy has his arm around the boy on the right made me feel these three boys were tight friends, the kind of guys that would do anything for each other. They were the inspiration for my three princes.

Working from my script and using the photo as a reference, here is what Manoel sent me as a first draft of page 3, panel 1. (Please note, this panel has been cropped.)

Manoel had the look and feel of the boys right. I was immediately fond of Michael on the left and Grady in the middle. I felt though that Doherty on the right and Michael had too many similar characteristics. I felt their hair and hats in particular were similar. I asked Manoel to take another crack at Doherty and here was the result:

The hat didn’t change but Manoel tried something different with Doherty’s hair. I was still wary and thought we had better try something more drastic. I suggested to Manoel that Doherty would never wear a hat and that he would have shorter hair than the other boys. Manoel was quick to reply with the following:

Bingo. This spoke to me. Here were my three princes.

A few days ago, Manoel started inking some of the pages I’d approved to date. Page 3 was one of them. Here then is your first look at Grady, Michael and Doherty in their finished form. Folks, say hello to The Three Princes: