ANATOMY OF LIES, PART 01

Because many of you are interested in such things, I'm going to start a a string of posts dealing with the creation of a comic book. Since YOUNG LIARS is my new book, let's go through the process. Back in the summer of '06 I was probably 80% done with my graphic novel SILVERFISH and wanted to plan on what would be next. Talking with my editor at DC/Vertigo, Shelly Bond, I really wanted to pitch a series. I was kind of sick of doing mini's and coming up with proposal after proposal every couple of months. I wanted a home, so I could get down to the business of creating comics as opposer to just ideas for possible comics. We talked and the first suggestion was to revamp an old DC character. Completely revamp. Along the lines of Gaiman's Sandman being based on the old gas-mask wearing Sandman.


We went through a list of names and I really like the name Bullet Girl who was an old character I never heard of. But "Bullet Girl" seemed right up my alley. So I worked out who this Bullet Girl was, what the world would be like, supporting characters, etc. Click on the pages here you can read what was the final polished version. There was a dozen versions before this, but this is what went to Karen Berger and was rejected....

Stay tuned.

(Note: Don't take all the info in the proposal too seriously a lot about the characters changed or fell away as I got to executing. However, as part of the proposal I did lay down the plots for the first six issues in detail and decided there might be too many spoilers to print here.)

SPLENDORIFIC

One of the most fun things I've done recently is illustrating two stories for Harvey Pekar's AMERICAN SPLENDOR.  Anytime you can work with a legend you should do it, especially if it's up your alley, which this was.  Harvey works in a pretty unique way.  As you can see, this is one of Harvey's scripts.  He takes a sheet of paper divides it into a bunch of panels and writes in the words.  GREAT!  I loved this for a number of reasons.  One is that it makes total sense.  As someone who writes a lot of comics, SO much time is wasted trying to write interesting words on paper to convey something to an editor or artist.  It really doesn't transfer to the page.  So I'm sure this saves Harvey a ton of time, which is point number two.  It takes so long to write a comic (My 22 page scripts are usually thirty or more pages of writing.) that you can lose your way.  Doing it like this is much more immediate.  And lastly, I suspect as a writer, Harvey gets the feel of making comics this way as opposed to feeling like a novelist or screenplay writer. 

Harvey's stuff is autobiographical, of course, and one of the challenging parts of interpreting one of his stories is that he writes in the moment.  With these scripts you get what's there.  Harvey's not standing over you telling you what the subtext is, or what he really meant when he said this or that.  So you have to take a point of view and convey that through Harvey's written words.  I guess I'm sounding a lot like a method actor here, which sucks, because that stuff gives me belly aches, but regardless (or irregardless if your from Jersey like me) there's a lot of room to bring a lot to the story, and because it's Harvey you feel like your searching out something important.  Some universal TRUTH to what it all means...An HONESTY...(damn method actors...)....

Young Liars Logo Nogo

Everyone's been asking (well, one guy) about the Young Liars logo.  You saw my sketch.  I drew the guitar/gun and this was my sketch for the lettering.  I was thinking more of a whimsical "cut paper" feel, but the final, even though it's a bit (a very bit) more slick than my usual low-fi approach, it looked so cool to me, so there you go.  

How I Wrote Elastic Man by The Fall

Just cuz it's comic book related.  Just cuz I like to feel this way sometimes.  Life is SO hard... Oh, woe is me....

HOW I WROTE 'ELASTIC MAN' by The Fall

I'm eternally grateful/
To my past influences
/But they will not free me
/I am not diseased/
All the people ask me
/How I wrote "Elastic Man"


Life should be full of strangeness
/Like a rich painting
/But it gets worse day by day
/I'm a potential DJ
/A creeping wreck/
A mental wretch
/Everybody asks me/
How I wrote "Elastic Man"


His soul hurts though it's well filled up/
The praise received is mentally sent back
/Or taken apart
/The Observer magazine just about sums him up
/E.g. self-satisfied, smug


I'm living a fake/People say, "You are entitled to and great."/But I haven't wrote for 90 days/I'll get a good deal and I'll go away/
Away from the empty brains that ask/
How I wrote "Elastic Man"


His last work was "Space Mystery" in the Daily Mail,/
An article in Leather Thighs/
The only thing real is waking and rubbing your eyes/So I'm resigned to bed
I keep bottles and comics stuffed by its head/Fuck it, let the beard grow/
I'm too tired,/I'll do it tomorrow/
The fridge is sparse/But in the town/They'll stop me in the shoppes/
Verily they'll track me down/Touch my shoulder and ignore my dumb mission/
And sick red faced smile/
And they will ask me/
And they will ask me/
How I wrote "Elastic Man"

Young Liars #3

Young Liars #3 is about to come out, and if I must say so myself.  It's great!  Course to say different would be  silly of me, since I spent all those days drawing and writing it.  Chopping down forests, milling paper, grinding iron to build a press, finding slave labor, etc.  And after all that work...TA-DAH!  A masterpiece.  Also, in all that work, a slight snafu.  The cover was printed WITHOUT the usual word balloon.  Mistakes happen, but by the miracle of modern appliances, Vertigo was nice enough to provide me with a corrected version to post here for all three of you to see!  I hope the missing balloon doesn't completely destroy your faith in America and it's allies abroad.  God bless.

Best Last Ever

F for Fake was Orson Welles' last completed film. It's a documentary--of sorts--created almost entirely in the editing room out of unused pieces of a French documentary about art forgery combined with Welles...doing magic tricks. From the 40's through the 60's, Elmyr de Hory was one of the greatest art forgers of all time. He could churn out perfect Picassos, Modiglianis, Matisses which fooled the best experts. In 1969 writer Clifford Irving wrote a very compelling book called "Fake" about the life of de Hory. Clifford Irving then became famous penning an "authorized autobiography" about the reclusive Howard Hughes, which turned out to be a complete hoax.  Welles, himself famous for his fake alien invasion in his "War of The Worlds" radio broadcast, his thinly veiled biography of William Randolph Hearst in Citizen Kane, and his general shoot-myself-in-the-foot brand of shyster filmaking was fascinated by all this fakery and made this film. In the process he not only exposes practically all reality as being fake (or at least indistinguishable from reality), but celebrates fakes, fakery, fakers, and, of course, himself in the process.   The greatest director of all time?  You won't hear an argument from me.  Goodbye Modigliani!

With Hand To Forehead I Put Pen to Paper.

They mystery of the creative process is...mysterious.  Who can know what moves the heart, what forces from beyond conspire to move the artists hand to reach beyond himself.  To reach into the great mystery of existence itself and pull a piece of the great almighty and give it mortal form.  Who can know these things?

Not me, that's for sure.  I sit down and draw.  Sometimes I erase and then draw again.  Sometimes I'll even erase a second or third time.  After that I usually crumple and start over.   I will say one thing, sometimes I complete a sketch and I say to myself, "Man that is good.  David Lapham, boy, you are a frickin' GENIUS."  Then, like, two days later I look at that drawing and I laugh.  I just laugh and laugh and laugh.  Then I crumple and start over.

Like the great Picasso once said, "It's like printing money."  And we're all sure he meant that in the most artistic way possible.  

It's YOUNG LIARS, You Fool!

So this is the latest and greatest.  Young Liars.  My new monthly from DC's Vertigo imprint.  That means I get to curse and decapitate people.  (Cheers) But it also means I can get back to the kind of gut-wrenching,  in depth character studies I do in Stray Bullets that have made me bigger than Elton John  on the transintercoastal- continational stage.  

Young Liars tells the story of wannabe guitarist Danny Noonan and the girl he's utterly obsessed with, Sadie Dawkins.  Sadie has a bullet in her brain which has turned this three dimensional human being with all her pesky flaws and charms, into a happy-go-lucky adrenalin junkie who just wants to fight, and dance, and (once discovered) have lots and lots of sex.  Now Sadie who formerly wanted nothing to do with Danny obeys his every command!  What a lucky guy.  Only it's not so lucky when Sadie's billionaire, retail-giant father sends his Pinkerton "detectives" after Danny, Sadie, and their group of lying, back-stabbing friends.

Variety said it "reads like a great rock song sounds," aintitcool.com called it "lightning in a bottle," and weeklycomicbookreview.com said "...not a panel or line of dialogue that's meaningless or wasted.  And the art is top notch."  I'm very happy for the kind words because, like the cowboys said before they cocked their Winchesters, "The only good review is a good review."

If you're a fan of high drama, brutal action, unrequited love, killer midgets, revenge, obsession, castration, and kick-ass female protagonists then this book o' mine will blow your mind.

The Early Life of A Boy Named Killerpup, Intro

One of the main reasons I decided to start a blog was to refute some of the rumors swirling around certain circles about myself and what happened before.  By that I mean before I was a cartoonist, before I was married, before I had two beautiful daughters.  Before all that I lived a life of dreams and nightmares.  I traveled all over during my competitive playing days and once saw a man disemboweled in an alley in Vienna. I saw my best friend have his head split open, climbed to the summit of Mt. McForester, and lied to save myself from frostbite.  I have on numerous occasions worn disguises for personal gain.  I ran for my life so fast my flesh was ripped from my body.  I met a hobo, mugged a mugger, and held a gun in my hand with the power to do the most monstrous things.  I have learned from all this that the truth will not set you free.  The truth will usually get you slapped, punched, chased, beaten, kicked, stabbed, and or murdered or hobbled, and I choose not to practice it whenever possible.  The next "Early Life" post will be a proper beginning as I tell you about something horrible that happened when I was six that changed my life forever and just might change yours.