~DemonicBunnyComics

I just wasn’t to say quickly before I begin, that this is A) Incredibly long, about 2 and a half typed pages, and B) That I did not initially write this with the intention of making it a journal. It was actually just something I wanted to write for myself, so I reference some things I never really talked about here on dA. All you really need to know is I had a lot more ideas then I let on, and that I may come back to them at some point. Those issues aside, I think this is a good way to let you all know where my heads at and what I plan to start going forward. So, with that in mind, here we go…

As I begin to think about starting anew with my character creation and comic story, I cant help but look back on what I have previously created, and inevitably failed to bring to fruition. The Demon Side, The New Reaper, Just Another Day, World to Come, and my various unnamed projects.

I look at these and see an interesting pattern. They either sit firmly in the grounds of reality (Just Another Day, Tessa and Lily, unnamed vigilante project), or are extremely grounded in the realm of the fantastic (The New Reaper, The Demon Side, World to Come, unnamed Ninja Project).

It seems that, neither of these two extremes ever seemed to work for my narrative abilities. One allowed me too little flexibility in subject matter, eventually having the narrative become too preachy (JAD with Erics rants), or the concept as a whole relying too heavily on shock value, and just plain being a story I have no right to tell (lesbian relationship in Tessa and Lily). On the other end of the spectrum, we have stories that are far too generic (Unnamed superhero project), too cheesy, and influenced by far better works (The Demon Side), giving characters too much power, making them unrelatable, and, dare I say it, Mary Sue-ish (The New Reaper). Or, an idea so over the top and, imo, unique, its so good its simply out of my reach at this point (World to Come).

So what to do? I cannot seem to stay within the confines of the human drama successfully, nor can I limit myself when given the whole sci fi sandbox to play in. What to do?

They do not lie when they say that inspiration comes when you least expect it. For me it was lying in bed the night I killed the New Reaper. It was hard to do to say the least. I created the character nearly 4 years ago and a day hasn’t gone by when the whole story wasn’t on my mind. It was the cornerstone of a lifetime of work I had planned, its final chapter to be my magnum opus and secure me a place in comicdom history with the likes of Frank Miller, Jeff Smith, and Dave Sim. To realize that the last 4 years have just been wasted hurt a lot, but despite my efforts, I just couldn’t see a way to bring the story I had planned up to the level I wanted it to be. I couldn’t read Sin City, Bone, or Cerebus and envision Virgil’s tale anywhere near the same league of quality as these masters of the craft I so diligently serve. Perhaps it was too much of me to expect, a still young man of a mere 19 years to be able to craft something in the vein of these much older men who have been doing what they do best longer then I’ve even been alive. But these are the stories that I hold dear and as such inevitably become the measuring stick I use for myself, and I am falling too short.

As I sat in bed at around four o’clock in the morning, I knew sleep would escape me until I gave my life purpose again. Besides my lover, Brittany, my stories are all that I am and all I can ever hope to be. Just a few mere hours ago I had taken the sum of my being and discarded it in shame. Without renewing my own sense of purpose, I knew I would not be able to rest. I needed a new character. A new story. A new beginning. A new reason to live.

And so I thought. I referenced my lifetime of experiences both in the real word and the realm of entertainment, searching for that thing that would spark a whole new journey for me to embark on. New lives to create, new places to construct. As I lay in my bed in the wee hours of the morning, I began to once again play God.

Then they began to arrive. I loved noir. Do a detective story. A hardened private eye in the mid 1900’s. He’s got his own small time investigations agency, connections to the police, and a reputation the criminals fear. He never leaves home without his fedora, his smokes, or his .357 magnum. Awesome.

Awesome, but far too clichéd. Everyone’s seen a movie or read a book with that guy in it. He’s stock. Generic. Been done a million times. People would pick up that book, then look at 20 other books with the exact same guy on the cover, then put it down and move on.

No one would care.

So what do I do? I do what I’ve always done at this point in the creation process. I take an idea that works in the real world and start adding things that don’t. A little fantasy mixed with reality is the perfect formula for innovation, right?

So this guy…he’s a PI all right. Used to be a cop….was suspended from the force…never bothered to go back. Starts up his own place. Only before he does that he’s upset. Pissed off. The bastards at the force didn’t approve of his overly aggressive methods, despite the fact that they got the job done. So he does what any washed up guy does to escape his problems. He hits the bottle, hard. Guy has Jack Daniels over for breakfast lunch and dinner. Doesn’t let himself have a single moment to tell his ass from his elbow. Problem is, when you’re drunk you do things and don’t remember doing them. Guy wakes up one day and realizes he’s got this fucked up pendant around his neck, a weird book in his hand, and a pain in his chest somethin fierce. Takes off his shirt and realizes he’s got a weird sort of tribal marking carved nice and neat over his pectorals. Flips through the book and figures out its some kind of book of incantations. The guy is a PI, but he also has magical powers…

I stop here. The stupidity I come up with sometimes. The ridiculous image of a buff, 1940’s PI with a six shooter in one hand and a spellbook in another and I realize maybe I’m a bit too tired to be thinking creatively right now. In 20 minutes I had made the same mistakes I have been my entire “career.” Confining myself to the real world, I’m too generic. Add in some fantasy, I take it too far, becomes too cheesy.

There’s gotta be some kind of balance. To ground the story in reality, keep the character human, make him interesting, relatable. But to be able to make him something MORE than human, to be more interesting in a way that transcends the everyday, a sort of real world magic…
It hits me like a ton of bricks. The answer so obvious in retrospect, I’m surprised I never thought of it before.

Magic…that’s it…

I had recently watched “The Illustionist” with my girlfriend a few weeks back, and we had been discussing whether or not the main character Eisenheim actually had magical abilities, or if he had just been a master of illusion. I figured it was probably a mix of both, he must have started out with simple illusions, but with all the things he had been pulling off, given the setting, there had to be more to him than that.
Just before I went to bed I had been watching a marathon of “Criss Angel: Mindfreak”. Again, I had to wonder if there was more to this guy than simple illusions. Though more often I was considering tampering during post then actual magic, the idea was still there: that this real man was more than just a man.

And that was the answer. Magicians.

They’re normal people, but more so. They’re just like you and me, but better. They do things we don’t understand, that we don’t comprehend, but we see it all the time. And we always wonder if they really are more than human.

Magicians are the real world superhuman. And that is what my story will be about.



More details as I come up with them...its still in the early phases of what I guess you could call preproduction. I know I rarely follow through with stuff, but I hope you'll all come with me on this new path I've decided to take. ^.^;