I sat down to do some writing and realized I had no idea what to write about. I called my writer friends for tips. One said to start at the beginning. I tried it: I was born as a small baby in the late seventies when the daffodils bloomed.
Another writer friend suggested that I write about what I know. I tried that: This story begins the week that I saw four poops that were shaped like penises.
Another writer friend suggested that I write about the differences in growing up in the Mississippi Delta and living in Vermont. I tried it: In Vermont people eat corn muffins as a breakfast muffin – right along side a blueberry muffin or a bran muffin. In Mississippi a corn muffin is eaten as a dinner accompaniment used to push peas or sop up gravy.
And maybe there was a story in one of these, but I couldn't figure out how to write the parts that connect up the separate thoughts. How could I write a story without the connectors? A comic book was the only solution I could think of. Then the problem became that I cannot actually draw.
First I tried to use real photos gimped (which is the free version of photoshop) into submission for the pictures, but it was way too much work and looked sort of boring.
The set up to this one is an old lady sweetly saying to Apple, “Oh, aren't you sweet? Are you pretending to be on a horse?”
Then, I tried using pictures of people that I found on the Internet and dropping them into real pictures. Like this:
Again, it just wasn't as interesting looking as I was hoping for, and required more searching of the Internet than I typically care to do.
Then in a flash of brilliance in the middle of the night, I decided to try making paperdolls to use. That way I could use a real photograph background and just pose the dolls like they would be in the scene and photograph them. A tweaked version of this idea is the method I ended up using. I made a handful of the dolls, cut them out, and photographed them lying flat on paper. I gimped out the background to be transparent and dropped them into a real digital photograph of the background. I sized them, colored them, text bubbled them, and was quite content with the result.
I intended on making more versions of the customer paperdoll and adding a bigger cast of characters, but this is what my life has been like lately...
There was also an issue with content. I did a trial comic that started like this...
However, Ben said I went too blue in the ending. If Ben, the guy who made a joke about having sex with the Power Rangers last night, thinks its too blue, it is probably too blue.
Do you remember a few years back when there was a whole flock of memoir writers who wrote these wildly successful memoirs, and then it was revealed dramatically on the television that they had actually made-up their memoirs? Somehow Oprah was tied into the story. I never understood why anyone would lie about being creative enough to invent a story. Isn't that way cooler than just recording what really happened? That is why I'm going to tell you that what I'm going to show you in the comics that will follow is completely fictional. I know it won't seem that way because the main girl is married to a dude named Ben who looks a lot like my husband and because she has the same kids and job and house and name as I do. You can trust me, though, it is all made up because I am, indeed, just that creative.
Please check back to see the actual comic.
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