Erik Larsen/DAD!
The only person I really wanted to talk to today at the convention was Erik Larsen. For all of you non-comic book people, he’s the head guy at Image Comics. Whether or not you agree with his opinions, I think most people will say he’s an intelligent guy who has a strong understanding of comic books and how the industry works.
After waiting in a brief line, I got to talk to him one on one (because the building was being evacuated, see the post above). I told him that I was working on a personal project, not something I’m really considering submitting to places, but even so I was hoping for advice.
Larsen said, “Let’s see what you got.” So I handed him my test-pages for “DAD!” the documentary-graphic novel I’m working on. I explained to him that I could tell something was wrong with the layout or overall aesthetics but that I’m just not experienced enough to know what. I asked him to not just tell me “This sucks” but to please explain why it sucks.
“So you just have these actors posing for you?” he said after thumbing through it real fast. He also laughed.
“No no no,” I said. “That’s real. It’s a documentary graphic novel.”
He got a really surprised look on his face, said “Oh wow” and then went back to the beginning and actually read it.
About halfway through he asked me some things, like who took the photos and that kind of stuff. I explained to him that for these pages, my neice did the photography, but that for the rest of the graphic novel I did. I also explained that I have a film background and “shot” the whole thing as if I was doing a regular documentary on DV.
Larsen just continuted to read it and was nodding to himself as he was going through. When finished he simple said, “I really don’t know what to tell you. This is different. I’ve never seen anything like this before. I think it works. There is a problem with the lettering being too big, I’m guessing you are doing that yourself?”
“Yes,” I said. “I’ve been teaching myself how to letter for the past month.”
“Make the lettering smaller and then another thing you may want to do is start looking for photos that have dead space. You want to try and take advantage of that dead space so your panels don’t look so busy, but other than that it works.”
MAN! So there you have it. A comic book professional I really respect looked at my project and didn’t say it sucked! It just feels nice to show the project to someone like him and see that he got it. Yes he laughed, but once he realized it was a documentary he got it!
So now the next step is to finish teaching myself lettering and to get about 15 to 20 pages done. I want to take those pages with me to SPX in a month and talk to some of the smaller/indie publishers about what they think.
I’m also really hoping to get a chance to to show it to Scott McCloud. I’m trying to set up a one-on-one interview with him, like I did with Brad Meltzer (I promise I'll post my Q&A soon. I just need to write the article first). McCloud is another creator who I really respect.
So I’ve been trying to teach myself how to do lettering in a comic book. I need to learn so that I can do my documentary graphic novel about Dad. What I didn’t realize until now is that lettering is a bitch.