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Was at Dublin City Comic Con this weekend, well, the Saturday (the Sunday was mother’s day and ended up staying home for that)

Was good to be at a con again, I suspect it’ll take me to go to a few to find my feet at the things again, covid having done a number on everything really. Met some new friends (hello Alan and Ellie) and to my suprise and delight, actual fans. (Not as suprising to me as it was to my son who was also there)

Anyway, did some portfolio reviews and gave some advice, so, to the best of my recall, here is some of that self same advice:

If you want a career in comics, make sure you have three months worth of living expenses in the bank at ALL times. Any less than that and you’re in trouble. Here’s why – if you’re looking for work, it could take month. If you get the work, could take a month to do it. Once you finish and invoice for it, could take a month to pay – simple. Three months. Though, to be perfectly honest, if you can, you owe it to yourself to bank six months at all times, this industry is HARD.

If you’re a writer with a submissions package, figure out what your end game is, I think some people see the submission’s package as some sort of “if I built it they will come” but it really helps to know what your goal is. A graphic novel with a publisher? Pitching short stories? Self publishing?

And honestly, in many many cases all you really need is a single page synopisis of the complete story (including any exciting twists and turns and plot twists it may contain – you want the reader to know it’s got twists, but you want the publisher to know what those twists are) and maybe six pages of written story comics. If you’re pitching to a publisher, some will also want six pages of the story drawn, but it will depend and you may find yourself with an accepted pitch where they love the story but want a different artist (surprise! this has happened to me more than once)

Some lettering no/nos – if you’re lettering yourself good lettering will rescue a comic and bad lettering will destroy it, if you’ve a budget pay a letterer and if you don’t then try and learn how to do it right – plenty of good resources (I’d avoid names like CLINT and words like FLICK – and the unfortunate sound effect UNTSS UNTSS UNTSS which went behind a moon and read like an entirely different word! make it UNZZZ UNZZZ UNZZZ)

If you’re starting out and you’ve a partner who has no real interest in comics but wants to support you, draw a comic and show them and ask them to describe what’s happening in the unlettered comic (and don’t give them any hints) where they get it right, you did a good job! well done! where they get lost it’s confusing and you need to fix that!

Black placement on a page – try and use blacks to help tell the story and direct the reader’s eye – sure, it’s important to get light sources right, but also you can make up light sources! comics are super flexible that way!

Establishing shots are important, in a scene where two characters interact you’ll need to show the reader at least ONE panel where we see them both together, without that it’s hard to know if we’re cutting between scenes or if there’s any connections between them at all.

Writers: for the love of god, start small! Write one page complete stories, get an artist. “I’d like this to be an eight page miniseries” – ME TOO! But realistically, big names can’t get eight issues of a miniseries out there, it’s a hard market. You’ll have more luck with a graphic novel, and even better luck with short stories. You cut your teeth on short stories, those are the things that build your craft muscles up quick (to mix some metaphors)

Finally, if you’re after advice and that advice takes a long long time, because you’re not really clear about what you’re trying to do and then after 45 minutes say “well, I’m really trying to make a six issue miniseries about an NFT character” do not be surprised if whoever you’re talking to folds their arms, gives you a stern look and tells you they’re not that interested.

From my new weekly web comic series “Null Space” – you can keep up with it over at www.pauljholden.com/series/null-space  

(I’ll try and put them here too, but if you wanna cancel your patreon, that’s cool – on the other hand, it’d be really cool if you didn’t then I could passivily collect some dosh for just doing silly comic book stuff without worrying about it!_

I’ve barely tracked what I’ve done and it felt like I did nothing. Partly just down to me not being abkle to keep the workload straight in my head, but it turns out I did more this month than I expected (with the caveat that I can only invoice for completed pages (pencils and inks) and I need to do about 18 to make enough money to pay the bills and service debts and pay the tax man every mont).

So the top level how much work is pencils: 24 pages, Inks 14.

I finished inking Wormy and Me – a 10 page short for Ahoy comics.

Then I pencilled and inked 12 pages of Dredd – two episodes (I though I was running late, but two in a month is ok)

And finally, pencils on a Medal of Honor story (true stories of American soldiers who’ve won the medal of honor which pay ok(ish) and require an insane amount of research not to mention the moral headache I have every time I do one – so this is the last one)

And, upon discovering that I’m due to have a leopard from Lime street finished, I ended up pencilling a chunk of that over the weekend. It’ll be late, but the editor tells me I’ve plenty of time.

Didn’t enjoy not tracking it all, week by week I like knowing if I’ve done enough, this month I felt like I hadn’t (and really I sort of haven’t)

Outside of that, we filmed part of the short film we’re doing as the final poart of this short film course for making short films I was on. So that was a fun non-comic day.

(Yesterday was the 28th year of me meeting my wife, so I didn’t do much work then. just lots of emails first thing in the morning)

Coming up this next month:

Dredd ep4 and ep5 and finishing leopard (6 pages of inks) and inking the Medal of Honor stuff (maybe – we’ll see)

No time for fiddling in the world of the 64 page digest, nor even for doing this other creator owned pitch. I need to have a 48 page month before I can bank the time to do anything else…

Anyway, new month, let’s go

I have spent yesterday and today making a fun little zine. I tend to do a small print run and drop them off to some local comic shops and see what happens (what’s the worse that could happen, right?)

It started with the idea of using an A4 sheet to produce something, I thought “micro-fiction!” that’ll do! So I took an A4 sheet and did exactly that, I fancied the logo being right in the centre with stories wrapping round it, and it looked like the above image (you’re getting a bit of dredd in there too!)…

Then I tidied it up a bit and typed it up and dropped it in to Affinity Designer (which I’m not terrible comfortable with but figured this isn’t THAT complicated) then it hit me, I could fold the comic around the central logo 

And it worked surprisingly well! In fact if you fold it right it’s sort of self standing, making it it’s own little presentation thing too.

Anyway, some hand drawn images and now we have this…

And you can have it too…

(The trick to folding it is fold the left side behind the logo, then the right side then do the bottom and then do the top and boom, a freestanding ‘zine)

Thought you’d like to see the cover… it’s gonna be a gorgeous looking book. 56 comic pages, linked to essays, each essay has been individually hand designed to integrate with the art, it’s properly lovely looking and I’ve seen and felt the quality of Liminal 11’s other books, and they are incredible. Very excited for this.

So, the 64 page graphic novella has a title: Witness.

It’s a fun thing to write stuff. I frequently forget because I do it so little. For me it’s all a puzzle box, how can I tell the plot in the pages I have, lets split them up in to sections, how to get from that section to this section. Eventually you get it all vomited up and then you start looking for what your story is about, early doors I introduced one new guy into this band of fierce soldiers and it was gonna follow him, from the kickoff I had him as the toughest dude around, he proves himself by beating the crap out of everyone else in the room. Then I wrote the whole thing and realised, no, this makes a lot more sense if this guy is unsure of himself, and they don’t trust him – so he went from someone who introduces himself by telling everyone how great he is at combat, and flying (which sets up the fact that later he’ll be the only one capable of flying a ship) to him becoming someone whose great at combat and flying – as per simulations and written exams, so entirely unproven.

Anyway, I’m gonna give you the prologue – right from the start I wanted to show a team and then for them to lose one person so our hero can step in. 

Warts and all, is what you’re gonna get, so here’s my prologue notes:

Prologue, we establish how tough these guys are and what a formidible team they make. They are introduced to the new guy, “Green” – the new guy’s father is a well known politician, and they don’t understand why he’s with a bug hunting crew. Green, determined to show he’s committed tells them he’s trained in close combat, alien biology, explosives and is a grade 2 pilot “holy shit, that’s more than you captain!”

Because this was a draft, I hadn’t really realised the prologue was really that first sentence – everything after that is part of act 1. Prologue then became a seven page section. Nice big intro page, then trying to make use of the fact odd numbers are page turns, I set to work with the bullet points:

Prologue

1. Opening scene, epic battle, troops vs alien creatures, on an unknown planet, the sergeant turns to us and screams “Vasquez!”
2. Vasquez, chewing a cigar, hears the sarge shout “Light em up” we pull out, Vasquez Vasquez, “With Pleasure, Sarge!”
3. We see aliens, burn, we watch as the troopers lay fire in to them.
4. One of the troopers looks happy as a clam, firing into the monsters, We see behind him a creature has escaped the fires.
5. Cut to another trooper, he’s shouting over “DeMarco!”. Demarco turns, but is gutted by the creature from behind.
6. The original trooper blasts the creature to kingdom come. And runs over to DeMarco, who’s essentially cut in two.
7. Demarco, close up “It’s getting dark” trooper, “Man, you good, you good, stick with me Demarco, we’ll get you home”. Pull out to reveal DeMarco is missing most of his insides.

I thought that was a fun little seven pages – couple of good big actiony splashes and a neat little twist trying to give a reason to go from page to page and especially get you turning the page.

Next, scripting this (I’ve literally just scripted this first seven pages, we’ll see how it goes when I get a full draft of the script done)

Tried to stict religiously to the bullet points (and for clarity, this is digest – about A5 size, so I can’t really do too much in one page)

Page 1

Full splash, a team of eight soldiers (though incl Sarge we’ll only see seven here), being led by the Sarge are attacking some sort of weird bug like alien which , there are hundreds of bugs clambering over some sort of civilian transport. The sarge has turned to us and is shouting at us…

CAPTION I dropped into these men’s lives in the middle of tragedy.

SARGE VASQUEZ!

Page 2

Panel 1

Vasquez, heavily armed (maybe a mech suit?) chewing a cigar, cocking a fire arm.

SARGE (OFF) Light ’em up!

Panel 2

Close up of Vasquez, smiling.

VASQUEZ With pleasure Sarge!

Panel 3

Close up of Vasquez’s weaponary unleashing hell.

SFX BUDDABUDDABUDDABUBDDABUDDABUDDA

Page 3

Panel 1

Bugs are being blow apart

Panel 2

Close up of Demarco, watching the carnage, he’s no longer firing his gun.

DEMARCO Hahah, lookit them!

Panel 3

He takes aim at one lone critter, smiling as he does so.

DEMARCO Now, where do you think you’re off to you,

PAGE 4

PANEL 1

He fires, behind him something larger lurks. (maybe a bigger bug like creature, or some sort of assemblage of them)

DEMARCO HAHAHAHA! GOTCHA!

PANEL 2

Rodriquez, aiming at the creatures, spots tthe thing behind demarco

Rodriquez DEMARCO!

Page 5

Splash, Demarco gutted by the bug monster/thing

SFX SPLEURCHHHH!

Page 6

Panel 1

Close up of Rodriquez as he sees Demarco

Rodriquez SUNOFA…

Panel 2

Rodriquez splays the demarco gutting creature with gunfire

Panel 3

We see the creature get blow away, Demarco is on the ground.

Page 7

Panel 1

Rodrueqiz is nursing the head of Demarco

Demarco It’s… It’s getting … dark.

Rodruqeiz Naw man, stick with me soldier. You’re good…

Panel 2

Demarco, essentially missing the lower half of his body (maybe it’s around somewhere), Roriquez nursing him (upset, knows it’s a lie)

Rodriquez You’ll make it…

And… that’s it for the first bit. The caption at the start is because after I’d laid out the bullet points, I decided I’d add narration from our new guys POV throughout, something that’ll add just a little layer about who he his and his self doubt and his rising to the challenge.

Anyway, it’s aliens and I don’t care…

If I allowed myself any self doubt on this I will not do it, but by making a conscious decision to go “doesn’t matter if this is bad, it’s mine. I’m doing this for me” it’s been easier to get this far. 

Now I’m gonna do some character design and maybe see if I can draw a page or two of this silly thing… (before attempting more script!)

Attached some art from what I’ve drawn this month, it amounts to one episode of Dredd, two episodes of Leopard from Lime Street, and one 10 page one off by Paul Cornell (no images, sorry!) for Ahoy.

Penciled 28 pages this month, and inked 46 – a number so insane, I’m not sure it’s accurate, but I guess it must be? (certainly the ticks in my weekly diary suggest it is)

Anyway. My prodigious rate has slowed, to a not unreasonable but still a bit bonkers one complete page per day, seven days per week. I think I can afford to slow to about 6 pages per week, and have a day off. Wherein I might … do unpaid comics work (because I am incapable of very little else)

six pages per week, over four weeks is 24 pages, at, say a reasonable page rate (this isn’t my actual page rate, but a good ballpark to work with) around £150 is £3,600 per month (about £43k per year), a third going to the taxman means your take home is £2,400. (Don’t weep for me, I know this is good money)

But that’s never how this stuff goes. Far more likely I hit a couple of months of forty pages then absoloutly nothing at all for a few months. Or I do a graphic novel for £100 per page on the hope the backend will see me right (or because there was literally no other work in the offing).

I love my job but if there was a way to do it and earn a regular fixed salary with sickness and holiday pay, I’d jump at it.

I’ve been thinking about doing a 64 digest graphic novel for some time, I love the format (if you’re from the UK it’s most commonly known as the commando comics format) and a few years ago I documented how I think such a thing could become an ideal kickstarter format. 

To run down the basics of it:

64 pages, digest sized (one – three panels per page) is actually, probably equivalent to a 16 page comic book. So actually pretty reasonable to get down while doing other work. Then you’ve 64 pages of original art that could be packaged and sold with copies of the book at a premium rate (lets say you split the pages in to A and B groupings, or say Splash and Continuity pages, and then you offer a fixed page price at say, £100 for a splash and £60 for a continuity page) which both include a copy of the comic, and say you have approx 40 continuity pages (a potential total of £2,400) and 24 splash pages (a potential total of £2,400) you’re looking at, at say 64 people being able to fund £ 4,800 of the book (I mean realistically you’re looking at a lot less people than that buying original art, but it’s NOT that outrageous and these are the ceiling figures).

Obviously, you’ve got to factor in production and postage costs too, but actually if you can get 4k out of sales of 60 or so people, then you can afford to print 500 copies, and the rest of the sales become pure profit.

AND — if you can do better than that, well, that’s amazing and actually makes it not only a fun little side project but a viable source of income in your career. Money from that can pay you to do the next one and the next and so on. 

But there’s a few things that have killed it – one has been covid. I was originally mulling this all over pre-covid .The other dampener, oddly has been feature creep and people volunteering to write stuff for me. I have no idea how long a project like this will take, and once you bring someone else in to it, there are expectations of and suddenly it’s not quite yours any more. 

I think, as an artist, I’m pretty good at subsuming myself into the story I’m telling. It’s rare I’ll add story elements unless I’ve talked it over with a writer and suggested things, BEFORE they’ve committed anything to paper. Once they’ve written it, it is locked in as far as I’m concerned. But I could spend two months drawing a writers story between things, and find myself running a kickstarter and getting a handful of backers and now I’ve let down myself and the writer… Anyway, I think in the back of my head I’ve always pictured this as being high risk, low reward, which is the worst kind of project to rope anyone else in to. So I needed to do one for myself, by myself. I mean, if it works and is a rip roaring success, let me tell you I will NOT be long in contacting some writer friends who I’m sure would love to do this (but I‘d only do it if I could pay them something like a page rate first)

Anyway, I’ve plotted a little story for one issue of this, a one off that – I freely admit comes out of love of various things and I’m gonna embrace the cliches, and is probably a little weak and not great and etc, but I’m doing this for me, so if it’s weak I’ll suffer through it  (it will be fun to draw, if nothing else) (I mean I’ve drawn for Rob Williams, Gordon Rennie, Garth Ennis, Kenneth Niemand, and more, so I’m used to working with writers who know what the f they’re doing…. so of COURSE it will look ropy in comparison).

So, the question is, how in to the weeds do you want me to get in this here patreon about this project (which may or may not hit a dead end?) I’ve got today to do some writing, and probably nothing for a few weeks, but then the how of writing might turn out to be an easier task than I thought (I’m writing it in bullet point fashion, each page is one bullet point, each bullet point contains one to three sentences with each sentence being a panel)

The genesis for the story is that moment in Aliens where PFC Hudson asks “Is this gonna be stand up fight, sir, or another bug hunt?” And while this isn’t aliens fan fiction (and isn’t space marine fan fiction either for that matter) we follow a team of Marines, as they encounter something much more horrifying than a bug hunt.

(am I tempted to call it Bug Hunters and ask Jerry Paris for both permission AND a cover? yes. YES I AM)

Being ye olde weekly journal as recorded in the annals of comic artist PJ Holden…

I dunno, is this stuff interesting?

This was the week I finally finished Skulduggery Pleasant…

Anyways, lets talk about my week – monday, deadline for leopard – we’ll that hurdle was cleared the previous week. Went up to Newcastle (NI) to see my bruve, ended up inking one page..

Tue caught a bloody mouse, discovered on Wed – when the council arrived – that there was a bloody great big mousehole in the bathroom that let them get in from the walls. So he dropped poison down there…

Finished Skulduggery, started Dredd Poison, me and Rob Williams, 8 weeks. Pretty pleased with how part 1 is shaping up, should be a good un.

So, this week I inked 14 pages and penciled 6. Which isn’t bad at all.

Also, decided to ink Dredd traditionally, I’ll be honest, there’s a horribly mercenery reason behind this – I can sell these pages and they should have a lot of Dredd on them, so worth having. But, also, I haven’t drawn on paper in ages (I want to say a year but I have a horrible suspicion it’s been closer to three) and it’s just nice to see marks on paper again.

There are panels I lean on a lot, panel shapes, compositions, etc, and honestly, I’ll do them without thinking because they work for me, but I’m trying to rethink some of these choices and make more interesting (or at least, more thoughtful choices).

Take this panel:

<figure>Panel 1</figure>

Absoloutly fine. Dredd gets to a door, door gets opened. Not terribly interesting, but largely doesn’t need to be, this isn’t high drama. But the next panel, is an almost identical composition and so I needed to rethink it. Initially I went for this:

<figure>Redrawn Step 1</figure>

This is a bit better, I think. Pulled out more it’s an establishing shot, much easier to see we’re outside at a doorway. But still, that old habit of mine of keeping everything on an eye/just below eye level. What if we wanna move up higher (giving us a little more distance, a little more of the location?)

<figure>Third go…</figure>

SO I think this is better from an angle, though the danger with panels at these angles is they feel voyeuristic, like you’re standing beside someone watching the proceedings, I mean if I added a window frame it would feel even creepier…

<figure>Creepy much..</figure><figure>Too creepy..</figure>

Anyway, that’s not what we’re after (I mean it COULD be, and if it was, it’d be great… but it’s not…)

Since a panel isn’t alone in it’s composition, it’s judged by what went before and what comes after, I check the previous panel and find – OF COURSE – I’d gone for an almost identical angle on the previous page (last panel) and this (the first panel on this page) feels a bit… like the time gap between them is immediate… I want it to feel like more time has elapsed, so a cheaty way of doing that is to flip the horizontal of the panel…

<figure>Still works!</figure>

And in context, this flipped panel feels better (you’ll have to take my word) but I feel like I’ve lost a little of the atmosphere of that second attempt, so I’ll take another swipe at it…

<figure>rejected</figure>

I think what I’m losing here is some sky, and at this angle (birds eye view) I’m not gonna get it, so time to go low… really really low…

<figure>AH-HA!</figure>

This has enough in it that I think this could be the one, so a quick refinement later and…

<figure>YES!</figure>

One thing that I’ve started thinking about on this new Dredd strip is… how much does this bit look like a scifi book cover (and how little does this look like something I’ve drawn before?) and this scores it on both counts. We’ve take a functional but dull panel (in my drawing of it, at least) and turned it into its own little sci-fi tale. Pleased with myself now, let the self loathing recommence in 10 … 9 …