My blog posts over the last five days have been a rough outline of The Komic’s origin story. The Komic is a graphic novel about a super hero comedian I hope to someday to draw and write.
Where does the story go from here? I have oodles of ideas.
One story line involves a spate of people dying from heart attacks in Odd Port. Or are they heart attacks? No one can prove The Komic is killing people, but many believe she is. Whenever there is a suspicious death someone asks, “Was it natural or was he a victim of The Komic?”
Lily Puddly, a.k.a. The Komic, has nothing to do with the deaths, but they are a boon for her business, the Odd Port Funeral Parlor.
One of those deaths is the son of Odd Port’s senator, Senator. Just to clarify, Senator is the senator’s name.
Senator Senior is convinced that The Komic killed Senator Junior and he intends to have vengeance. He becomes another of The Komic’s archenemies because super heroes need more than one archenemy.
Congress holds hearings on banning comedians. Hey, it’s no more absurd an idea than congress holding hearings on baseball. Famous comedians will testify and weigh in on the subject.
Another story line has Max Marie, comedian and archenemy of The Komic, hacking into her computer and copying a file with some of her killer jokes in it. He then emails it to people he has beefs with. Lily Puddly discovers the hack and rushes to warn the victims not to open the emails. Some she reaches in time and others, alas, grinned to death. There must be closed coffins because the smiles on the corpses are so gruesome.
As The Komic’s fame grows people ask her to help them commit suicide and murder. The Texas governor proposes they get rid of lethal injection and have her perform more “humane executions.”
Some requests she flat out rejects. But others, especially those from abused wives and children, she thinks about.
Lily Puddly and her sidekick, Jack Spencer, will go out and study the situations, meet the people involved, and eventually Lily will tell a joke in private to a bully. Right before she finishes she’ll lift her sweatshirt, reveal The Komic T-shirt that you can get at Cafepress for $21.99, and say, “I am The Komic. Change your ways or I will come back and tell you the punch line and you’ll die laughing.”
Now you may be asking yourself a question I’ve been asking myself: how am I going to write jokes so funny that people die laughing from them? I’m good, but I’m not that good. Besides, who’ll buy my comics if I kill my audience? Not to mention the potential lawsuits.
My solution is that when The Komic is telling a joke, you won’t see much of the text because it’ll be partially covered with laughter or a thought bubble of what she is thinking as she’s telling the joke.
Also, in my fantasy I will not only create this series of graphic novels, but I will have a loyal fan base. These loyal fans will submit jokes for The Komic to tell, jokes with no punch lines. It’d sort of be a variation on The New Yorker‘s caption contest.
And of course a graphic novel needs to have graphics. That’s one of the things I’m most excited about. Magazines’ cartoons are getting smaller and smaller so if I add too much detail it looks like a black blob. But I love drawing details.
I envision every page of The Komic being a very complicated drawing full of absurd little details. At the bottom of each page I’ll have thought bubbles I’ll call “Deep Thoughts.” It’ll be sort of a variation on “Can you find ten things wrong with this drawing.”
Alas, drawing detailed cartoons takes lots of time. Currently all my time is spent
drawing commissioned cartoons and selling old ones on my web site. If only my dogs didn’t insist on eating and I didn’t insist on drinking a pint of Oregon craft brewed beer every night.
Kickstarter anyone?
Murder Cartoons for use in magazines, presentations, etc.