"Valid" update

The second and final prologue of "Valid" has been added to the site.  I'm not sure if I'm going to add full chapters from here on out, or just a few pages at a time. 


Spiritman is coming along more slowly than we'd originally hoped, but it's coming along.  I am trying to help Paul out with the lettering, but it's going to take more time and effort to get it right than I had initially thought.  I'd never really thought about it before, but I'm seeing now that the lettering is an art form in and of itself.  As a writer, I'd always treated words as a simple tool for conveying ideas.  But I'm finding out that the style and form of the words in a comic are just as important as the words themselves.  On a very basic level, it's the difference between "Pow." and


!!!POW!!!!


Paul's done with the artwork up to page 10, but almost all of the pages aren't lettered.  If I can't get up to speed in time, Paul will letter the second issue. 


Scott
edgiscript3@yahoo.com

The beginning of "Valid"

Hi there.  This is Scott, the writer for Spiritman.  This is my first blog on the Gorillahead site.  Although I haven't blogged very often in a few months, I usually blog over on the Spiritman site since that's the site I'm exclusively involved with. 

Well, until now.

Paul and I had been discussing what to do with Spiritman one day when I asked him about Lordamus and the Gorillahead side of things.  He said that what was on that site was pretty much finished and due to his work on Spiritman, nothing new would come out on Gorillahead for a long time.  That made me feel bad for Gorillahead.  It's Paul's original site and I didn't want his involvement with Spiritman to turn Gorillahead into an "archive only" site.  I thought that Gorillahead deserved some updates too.  And, quite frankly, my writing duties take far less time than Paul's "everything else" duties.  I've finished writing issue #3 and Paul's trying to get issue #2 finished.  (Which, by the way, he's shooting for the end of January/early February if you're interested.)  So I decided to, with Paul's permission, add some updates to the site. 

I have several plays that I've written that I thought maybe we could use to update the site periodically, but come on.  Really?  Plays?  How many people really care about that?  Oh, sure, there are a few, but it's a very select audience that wants to read plays on a website rather than watch them performed on stage.  So I didn't want to go there. 

(Side note just because I'm thinking about it.  My e-mail address comes from 4 of my plays:  The Executioner, The Dream, The Game, and The Interpreter.  E-D-G-I-Script.  That's all.  Now back to business.)

But I did have a few stories in mind that I could work on.  I chose Valid for a couple of reasons.  1)  Most of my other stories may someday become other comics and I'm kind of hanging onto them for that reason.  And 2)  I've actually written other versions of Valid and I know how it ends.  My other stories have no endings as of yet because they're intended to continue on in some form or another. 

I'm going to release small segments now and then on Valid to get them out more quickly.  I'm still writing for Spiritman, and also the novel format is different than what I'm used to so it slows me down a little.  So you won't see "Chapter 1," but rather, "Chapter 1 - part 1," and so on. 

And since I'm going to write a piece at a time, I'm not going to talk much about it on these blogs.  I don't want to give anything away before its time. 

So, I know it's not another comic, or even art (well, not visual art anyway), but I hope you enjoy it. 

Have fun.

Scott Snyder
edgiscript3@yahoo.com

Why are you interested in comic books?

I have always loved stories that display a struggle between good and evil.  My dad served in Europe during World War 2. He had a collection of photos that he took while he was there. Some showed the aftermath of the Holocaust.  The struggle between good and evil on display.  Also, there was the idea that I could somehow have a part to play in this struggle.  Would I be good or evil? I choose good.

In comic books I found endless stories of super heroes and super villains participating in this great struggle. As a child I dreamed of having super powers.  What would my role be? As an illustrator I love bringing stories and characters to life. I want to constantly improve at the craft of comic books, and there is much to learn.  Is my role in this great struggle limited to art making? When the mythic struggle spills over into our nightly news broadcast I ask is there a greater role for me to play?  I know this. When Peter Parker was teased he didn’t bring a gun to school and shoot up the classroom.  When we read stories about characters who display a nobility of spirit our own spirits are raised.  There is value in that. We need more of that.  That is why I am interested in comic books.

Read my comics at www.gorillaheadcomics.com