Oh, what to do with STELLARA ULTRANOVA?

Sunday, November 24,  11:14 am

So, as per usual, I've become obsessed with something and I've been turning it over and over in my head the last few days.
The initial obsession started when I "discovered" a new (for me) glamour model on the internet (she's apparently been around since 2013?). And yes, "glamour model" is a euphemistic way of saying I found some nude pictures of her. Anyway, she's rather amazing looking physically, and she triggered an almost immediate creative response from me (uh..., no seriously) to try and use her as the physical model for a sci-fi character named Stellara [pronounced Stell-LAHR-uh] Ultranova. For quite a while, I've been toying with the idea of creating a sci-fi character, and one that seemed full of possibilities was Anachronia Sands and her TIME COFFIN (the working title for a another comic idea). Hell, that's still an interesting idea.
But, now I have a new obsession.
Except, I can't figure out what kind of character I want Stellara Ultranova to be, besides resing in the broad genre of science-fiction. Part of me is thinking some kind of sci-fi/underground comix vibe, so something more off-beat and reckless than in a more mainstream approach. I had an idea for a one-off movie poster sometime ago parodying/referencing ONE MILLION YEARS B.C., except in this case it would be called ONE MILLION YEARS A.D. and then I thought maybe that basic concept might work as a series or at least a story for Ms. Ultranova. So I started spitballing some plot ideas and I considered Stellara's character being trapped as a soldier in this space war and a close female friend of hers waiting for Stellara back on Earth and that seemed like an interesting situation/character study, although in the version I ultimately came up with it became very downbeat and sentimental and I wasn't sure about that for thew overall tone of the story. I mean, my initial inspiration was very Barbarella and pulpy, and then this other idea with her and her friend, while still employing sci-fi tropes/concepts, etc. was ultimately very moody and character driven, almost a contemplation of loneliness and possibly PTSD for Stellara's soldier character. Genuinely interesting and worthwhile pursuing, but also a completely different and not light-hearted take on this character. Then I wondered if I could combine the two ideas, but... I don't know.
And then, just before I went to bed last night, I wondered about Stellara being an Edgar Rice Burroughs-type of character, but obviously a female-take on it. So, in other words, she'd be some unwitting Earthling sucked into a whole new sci-fi fantasy world and fighting to survive in a hostile, exotic and fantastic and most-likely scientifically implausible environment and culture and ultimately achieving great heights in terms of status, success and romance. That seemed like a promising imaginative journey and challenge to take. But, I don't know.
I don't now, I don't know, I DON'T KNOW!

nuts.

I should... just do some drawings of this character, by god. That would be a productive step and maybe seeing her fleshed out on the page might lead to some other more workable ideas.
Ugh. Okay. Whatever.

12:33 pm

So, curious about other sci-fi heroines out there, and somewhat self-conscious about how derivative my ideas are, I looked back on Travis Charest's SPACEGIRL strip. It seems that Charest's inspirations are less about the character and more about the spacecraft and tech of his fictional world. True, he does only a strip at a time for each "chapter" and by "strip" we're not even talking more than a single panel, let alone a whole page! So, you have to cut him some slack for that. But still, having said that, our first look at the Spacegirl character in the story is Chapter 2 and it's not much of a reveal of her. The next glimpse is pretty much a silhouette in Chapter 5 [UPDATE: Since I first published this post, the links to the SPACEGIRL comic no longer seem to work. Or at least, you can't go to a specific chapter. So, follow the first link (I updated it) to see the whole series and then find the individual "chapters" (actually, panels) from there. Sorry!]. We see her a few more times in the following chapters, but there are no close-ups. Again, Charest is being economical because essentially each chapter is a single rectangular panel, so there's some plot advancement he has to consider for each composition. Still, the first time we glimpse a new character, a very Emperor Ming-type villain, I'd say our first look at this villain reveals more of him than what we've seen of Spacegirl. So, I think that's fascinating. I mean, it's obvious that Charest's interests in what he wants to do with the strip are more focused on the sci-fi trappings, homages to the past, and space gear, which is fine. But, Spacegirl has no name and she seems disposable, a simple fill-in-the-blank to do whatever the story needs.
Meanwhile, another sci-fi fantasy heroine which I think is more successful in terms of her character grabbing your imagination right from the start is Julie/FAKK2 from Heavy Metal. Based on Julie Strain, an imposing physical presence to start with, and dressed up in a revealing "costume" and armed to the teeth and constantly brandishing her weapons with a snarl, you immediately get attitude from this character and a sense of where she's coming from mood-wise, without knowing anything about her or her situation. I'm hoping I can do that with Stellara's character.
Of course, another strong sci-fi character, although in films, is Ripley in the ALIEN film franchise as played by Sigourney Weaver. That's an inspiration.
Unlike Julie Strain, the model I've been looking at has none of Ms. Strain's personality in her photos. In fact, there are some photos where I think she's uncomfortable with the situation or at least distracted. She's very hit or miss. By the way, I've been hesitant to reveal her name for legal reasons, at the very least, but I should call her something, so I'll just give her first name, Emily. Even physically, sometimes she looks simply spectacular, and then sometimes, she looks awkward as to how she poses herself for the camera. Part of it has to do with her physicality. She's not only endowed, but she's also long-legged and broad-shouldered. In some poses it's quite an intoxicating blend; in other shots, it's somewhat amusing seeing how she carries herself. Sure, part of it is because of her specific circumstances, like trying to negotiate walking with high-heeled shoes in a grassy field, so she seems like an awkward fawn. Although some shots I think are part of a whole shooting day, so maybe they were never meant for public use, so I'm cutting her some slack for various goofy candid shots. But in some "keepers" she occasionally has a less engaged look, so again, she's hit or miss in terms of her attitude (or whatever you want to call it) in her pictures and how she regards the camera. Unlike another model named Emily, Emily Ratajkowski, who's also quite fetching. Ms. Ratajkowski, for instance, seems very consistent in her almost distant mood in all her photo shoots. So, with the Emily I've been scrutinizing, she seems less plugged into that blank, detached model stare that some models have (though, not in a bad way) and E. Ratajkowski definitely has (and definitely not in a bad way). But today I stumbled across some gifs of a photo shoot Emily was in and she's rather charming in very brief glimpses, so that's nice to see. Anyway, I digress.
By the way, the Barbarella character I mostly know by the Jane Fonda film. That film is also a possible influence on Stellara because I like the strong, weird fashion vibe of her character.

One of my (numerous) problems is my creative impulses are at odds with each other:
1. Foremost, I want to do something extremely pulpy, derivative and exploitative, like low-budget sci-fi trash cinema from the 80s. The ERB reference resonates here. Also, Fukitor by Jason Karns does, too, except not so disposable and coming across like a tossed off one-joke premise; so, in my case, I'd like to have much stronger character development and working of themes and plot.
2. Which ties into my other creative impulses, wanting to do something worth reading, so I'd like to have some character development, a reasonable plot, and not be completely exploitative. ARGGHH! I just need to try it out for a few pages, do my best and see what turns out.

Alright, I should get my ass motivated to do something constructive.
More to come... hopefully...

DAY 2

...of my unemployment, to be specific.

Tuesday, February 9, 2016

Yesterday my wife had the day off, so my first day unemployed I didn't really do anything because we were both sort of goofing off during the day.
And to further nit-pick, I didn't count Saturday and Sunday (even though I got laid off Friday) because, you know, the weekend. Yesterday (Monday) I would've regularly gone to work if I was still gainfully employed.
So, today I'm officially considering this my first crack at living unemployed. Got it?

I have a list of things to do today, and some of those things I've been letting slide for months. Because I'm a procrastinating bum.
So, I'm trying to update my three blogs on Blogger and set to work on doing a mini-comic, something I've always wanted to have in my portfolio/resume, but never seem to accomplish. So, that's something I'm going to work on this week. I'd love to be able to "spew it out" in a single week, but I can't seem to set boundaries on: 1) how many pages I want to do (8 minimum) or 2) what size page  I should make the comic, either standard comic book size (6.75"x10.25") or mini-comic size, which in this case is an 8.5"x11" sheet of paper folded in half (ie. 5.5" x 8.5" page).

Reasons to work at mini-comic size: The actual mini-comic size is what Jason Karns does self-published comic FUKITOR at, and I love FUKITOR. Some issues/stories are more inspired than others, but the artwork is always tremendous. Also, one of my main inspirations to do a mini-comic was because of a mini-comic that Dan Clark worked on as a kid with his friend, Adam Owen. I worked with Dan at Great Arrow Graphics from 1998-2003. Towards the end of my stint at GAG, a few of my fellow employees and myself formed a group called the Crabapple Club, with the hope of creating a comic book. These founding members were: Dan Clark, Pam Cichoki, Josh Hrizak, Will Rice and myself (Terry Kimmel). We never did put out a single issue, but I remember Dan showing me this little B&W comic book he made with Adam back when Dan was a teenager and he was heavy into the guys who created Image Comics (Rob Liefeld, Jim Lee, etc.). The cover itself was black line art printed on red paper stock. Adam wrote and drew the 8 pg. book and Dan inked it. For the life of me, I CANNOT remember the name of the comic but it was about a superhero who had flamethrowers built into his suit sleeves and he burned criminals to death (with the distinctly evocative and awesome sound effect of "FREEEAWWWW!!" as the flames whooshed out of his costume's wrist tubes). Maybe superhero isn't the right word; vigilante is the more accurate word. But the dude did wear a costume and mask. His origins are vaguely suggested: a criminal element destroyed his family and his life (disfiguring him in the process in the final panel reveal--oops! Spoiler alert!) and so the reader is expecting to follow further adventures of our anti-hero as he exacts vengeance on the villains who wronged him.
I actually started writing and drawing a special edition of this comic, a so-called International Version, fueled by my viewing of Italian writer/ director Renato Polselli's DELIRIUM starring Mickey Hargitay and Rita Calderoni. I saw the DVD around the time I first saw Dan's comic, and there are two versions of the 1972 film. There's an additional sequence for U.S. audiences - a framing sequence actually - set during the Vietnam War, and in the International Version, there's more explicit and weird, lurid material. In my idea for re-doing the comic, I was going to create a whole new page (sometimes more than one in a row) that would be inserted between EACH page of the original 8 pages of the comic. These pages were supposedly "cut" from of the more explicit International Version of the mini-comic. In fact, I debated translating the dialogue into Italian or Spanish also, whatever language I'd be able to do. It was a conceptual thing!
I left GAG in 2003, four years before Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez's GRINDHOUSE double-feature was released, so I wasn't actually thinking and articulating in terms of "grindhouse" but essentially, that's what I was doing.

[NOTE: BTW, I "blame" the group name on Dan-- I mean, credit for the "Crabapple Club" moniker goes to Dan, ha! Meanwhile, Pam and I still meet semi-regularly in hopes of finally putting out that FIRST comic, which sounds extra pathetic since I haven't worked at GAG for TWELVE AND A HALF FREAKING YEARS now. In fact, Dan is the only GAG member still working at GAG. But our new "splinter" comic book club name is the Apple Corps., in deference to the original name.]

I actually e-mailed Adam a few times asking him if he minded me doing this with his character, and I think for the most part he was fine with it, but as I continued alluding to the possibility of how over the top I might go with the additional pages I think he backed off a little. So, I may do a variation on his anti-hero but make it mine, especially since he's not following through on continuing this comic he created years ago. Actually, Adam started doing another comic, GREEN PIECE, a sci-fi comic with a lizard detective who solves interplanetary crime. I can't remember if he created the character himself, or in conjunction with writer Jason Degroot. I want to say Adam was friends with Jason, and Adam actually created GREEN PIECE, writing and drawing the comic. But I remember Adam sometimes having guest artists? Inkers? But Jason wrote a few of the comics. Well, you can check out some of these comics on Smack Jeeves webcomics hosting here. And although the last GREEN PIECE comic was posted four years ago, Jason seems to still be creating work on the site with other titles, part of his Repercussion comics line.

Alright, I've been wrestling with this damn blog post all morning and there's other crap I should be doing. So, more to come.

Stay tuned, y'all!