Notes from the Field: Covering it all!

I thought it was time to reveal the cover of The Overman Book One. Covers are the hardest thing to come up with and this was no exception. I think the first issue is generally the hardest and then each one after that needs to really carry along the over-arcing theme of the series as well as the contents of what's inside.


There is truly no formula for a great cover.

But the closest one to it would be something that is provocative with a hint of story or ambiguous moment that involves the audience. Ultimately my job is to get you to pick up our book even if it's for a quick flip through.

In the months to come I'll post the other covers and talk a little about the psychology and reasoning why we chose the images we did...though it may just blow up in our face if all our deducing and figuring amounts to nothing and the book gets cancelled. I hope by Crom that is not the case.

Next time I'll post all the thumbnails and roughs I went through just for this issue. It's quite mind-boggling I assure you.


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The Story Behind The Writing: The Computer Fad

I dug into the ancient vault of Overman scripts this morning and found a page that references computers and compact discs. I made a conscious decision a few years later, during one of the many drafts of The Overman story, that I would make no mention of computers of any kind. While the setting is clearly futuristic science fiction, including some pretty strange technologies, I wanted to approach the story from the angle that there would be no recognizable computer imagery anywhere in the story.

It's reasonable to assume that in 200 years, computers will have evolved so radically beyond what we know today, that they won't even call them computers. This thought connects back to artificial intelligence motif, which has been explored in about a million science fiction stories, and it's nearly unavoidable in science fiction. I believe AI is coming, and it's not even a very startling concept for most people. The Overman was probably once written with that theme as the central focus, but like everything else in the story (well, most everything), the plot twists and turns into something entirely different. I don't think the concept of AI is even that interesting these days. If artificial intelligence is coming, I think the only interesting aspect is wondering how the world will deal with it.

Scott Reed
http://www.websbestcomics.com/

Notes from the Field: Marketing Phase Two

This past week we got our shirts in. It's the start of the second phase of our marketing campaign, though small...we hope effective. The goal here was to create a design that was universal yet specific for those who are in the know. We hope you'll agree and order yourself one no matter if you read the book or just want to be known as, "Not Human" (and if you couldn't tell from the photo the letter is blue with the same logo treatment as the front for the "o"). You have been warned.

Scott will hopefully have ordering instructions in the PURCHASE section of the site. If you don't make it to Wizard World Chicago then you'll be able to order them online for $20 + s/h ($3.00).

I'm still coloring Book III at the moment and working on the cover of Book IV as well as marketing materials for the upcoming months. By Scott's calculations (see that god-awful countdown clock that makes me feel inadequate) I have very little time to finish the next two books. I'm hoping with the strange events in Book IV I'll be able to catch up...as the first 15 pages are probably the most disturbing images I've ever had to choreograph. I feel like I'm channeling Kubrick and Cronenberg's enigma of the living dead!

So enough posting...back to work.

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The Story Behind The Writing: 1 Chapter Down.

I don't dwell on the past that much, generally speaking, but in the case of The Overman, it's unavoidable. The script that Shane is currently drawing from was developed over many years, and if you've been following these last few blog posts from me, you'll know that the story has undergone numerous overhauls, some of which were so radically different that they are barely recognizable to me as I shuffle through this stack of dusty, yellowing scripts.

I'm supposed to be writing about The Overman, but since I'm currently writing the sequel, my mind is focused much more on what happens after this 5 issue Image series concludes next year. I just finished writing the first chapter of the new book today, so I'm in a celebratory mood. Between working a full time job (I recently accepted a position as Creative Director with a local marketing company), penciling my other comic, Champion Of A Lost Universe, and finishing the handful of private comic commissions, it hasn't been easy finding the time to write. But I'm a firm believer in the notion that if you want something bad enough, you find the time to make it happen.

I don't have much commentary to make about this week's script excerpt (above right), except that I ask that you keep in mind that I wrote it 15 years ago, and I cringe a little when I see most of this stuff. It's piled high with grammatical stumbling, but for the purposes of this blog, I'm releasing it all here, regardless of it's flaws.


Scott Reed
www.websbestcomics.com

Notes from the Field: Acclimation

A full week and some change in this new contract position and I'm doing better. Not great but better. At least I'm not as grouchy with the change in my sleeping/gym/and work schedule. I've had to seriously reassess my work output and not kill myself to compensate too much for the change.

That being said, I still wish I could do this faster, but quality is going to make more of a lasting impression of I don't.

Here are some of the initial concepts for the prisoners on Eudoxus. Suffice it to say, I wised up a bit and pushed it further. Specifically I honed in on the quote from Dr. Annita Grey the administrator of Eudoxus.

"Eudoxus is not a prison."

It'll make more sense when you actually see the issue in question. At every twist and turn where I would tread a typical path I'd catch myself and reroute/rewire my thinking. Most design for sci-fi entertainment tend toward the cooler colors and cold architecture. I found something that I think would be less practical in some ways and yet make sense for those living long-term away from Earth.

This is an early version of Francett. She looked quite slutty in the only way that Euro-soviet block women can look. Too euro-trash than what was called for. Since she appears later in the book, I had to rethink her as more of a symbol than a quasi-human. I went the opposite direction and made her pure to the point of almost transluscent. In both instances however I did my best to create the perfect specimen of male companionship. Something that I believe everyone would have a difficult time in losing.

Every aspect of this series has had as much thought put behind it as I would do for any film or videogame. The experience should feel as unique. I hope you'll agree.

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The Story Behind The Writing: The Overman II

While Shane is 'hitting the board' as he puts it, every day producing new pages of art for the forthcoming The Overman mini-series from Image Comics, I'm now hard at work thinking about the future. The future of The Overman, that is.


I'm excited to let you know that I'm now working on the first draft of the follow-up, in novel form. For now, I'm referring to it simply as 'The Overman II', for the purposes of distinguishing it from blog news and updates related to The Overman. Yes, I do have a title for the book, but I'm not revealing that for a while. Shane knows it, and if I can persuade him away from the drawing board long enough to design the logo for it, I'll post it here when the time is right. I have 8 pages written as of today. I'm writing a little bit every day, and again, when the time is right, I'll begin posting chapters online, probably coinciding with the publication of The Overman #1 in December. For now, I'll post a paragraph from the opening chapter...just to get ya thinking.





'A horrendous transformation had occurred to the boy that became a man bent on quelling civil war and restoring peace to Russia. The man was now gone, not even a shadow of a thought of humanity remaining, and his consciousness had turned into a slow moving evolution of bio-mechanoid disease, a black knowledge of something indefinable but horrendous, a key, a symbol, a pattern of a shape that directed him, an aberration of iconography that delved deeper into his brain, scattering everything he had known in favor a simple image of a circle, broken at it's end, with an arrow pointing down. '




If it sounds like I'm getting ahead of myself, it's because I am. I could write a sequel to The Overman regardless of it's level of success, because there are vast possibilities with this story, and I'm having a blast tapping into that again as I'm writing. But realistically, Shane and I need to make sure that The Overman will succeed before diving into pre-production on a sequel. I believe that The Overman will not only succeed, but it will be a huge explosive success...but only if you tell everyone you know about this book, including your local comic shop owner. Word of mouth can be more effective than any marketing strategy, especially considering the insular nature of the comics market. So I'm passing the buck to you. It's out of my hands now, you see. It's up to you to make The Overman succeed. Pass along the url to this blog and website and explain to them...no, WARN them that The Overman is coming.


Scott Reed
www.websbestcomics.com

The Story Behind The Writing: Do The Evolution

These script excerpts from 1991 or 1992 sum up The Overman surprisingly well. "The end of the world. That's what it's about." reads the very first line of dialogue on this page (below, left). It's a very odd experience for me to revisit these earlier incarnations of The Overman. I'm finding bits and pieces of things which live on in the final version of the script, though I haven't seen these dusty old pages in years. The page below also includes, I am pretty sure, Shane's hand-written notes.

This excerpt describes a meeting between weapons smuggler Elvis Everly (referred to in the script as 'The King') and Nathan Fisher. Everly has a brief scene in the final version of The Overman, but this scene sets all of that up, with Nathan drinking a soda in a bar because he's combating alcoholism, waiting for Everly to arrive. Everly then gives Nathan directions to a missing *servol-conn unit. (See preview), but the two clash later in this version of the script, in a high speed car chase. For various reasons, Elvis Everly's role continued to diminish as the Overman went through additional drafts. The car chase remains intact, but in a totally different circumstance.

In the second page (right), I was writing a scene in which Omakon agent David Crowse is visiting the Moon prison, called North Clavius Socio-Prison in this draft. The prison was renamed later to Eudoxus, for no better reason than I think it is a bizarre-sounding name, and it is an actual region of the Moon. There is a Dr.Fields in this draft, probably an early incarnation of Annita Grey.

All of these scripts precede the Internet and email. Shane and I corresponded via snail mail for years, and the process usually went like this: I typed out the scripts on a Brother word processor using an archaic Epson dot matrix printer or some other now-outdated printer, mailed it to him, and he would typically send back his notes along with roughs or photocopies of the finished art. His letters often included brief character sketches. He also created elaborately painted portraits of some of the main characters, as well as many other designs. I have a few letters that remain unsent, because as I was writing I probably decided to simply call Shane up. We would then discuss whatever it was I had started writing in the letter. As a result, there's some interesting stuff I have in the vault, in addition to the script excerpts, that will shed some light on this early development of The Overman.

Scott Reed
www.websbestcomics.com