PJ Holden's Blog

Yo Yo and kid Yo Yo are a superhero team I invented when I was about 12 years old. A Father and son team of crimefighters who fight evil with Yo Yos!

Anyway I talked about them in a podcast I did a few years ago and ended up writing a four page short story about them (written with Scott Ferguson one of the people I podcast with)

It appeared in a irish language comic (and the original story was one I cooked up for use with Nanas and Custard, a crimefighting hero and his pet monkey who faught crime in the pages of the magazine Toxic (not the original comic from the 90s, the kids magazine from the 2000s)

One the podcast, I did a quiz called “Hero or Made Up When I was 12” – Yo Yo and kid Yo Yo, obviously I made up at age 12, but also the Red Bee – a superhero who kept a a bee (called Kevin) in his belt buckle. This is a real superhero, one that is now in public domain.

Anyway, I came up with an idea that would throw Yo Yo and kid Yo Yo together with The Red Bee – and here’s all of the script I have of it. 

Yo-yo and kid yo-yo in Killer Queen

Page 1

Giant Killer bees on the loose the human sized queen bee has demanded that central city give her 10 billion gallons of honey (or “liquid gold”) yo and kid yo-yo will go under cover…

Page 2

They’re under cover. Queen bee reveals that if the city doesn’t deliver then she will shrink the whole city to bee size. The queen leaves with her drone army commanding the three of them to move the massive ray in position. Yo yo and kid yo yo are surprised, they turn and see the red bee who is also undercover.

(Yo yo, kid yo yo and the red bee had thought they’d blended in perfectly…)

They’re surprised at each other.

Page 3

The Red Bee reveals he’s been undercover this whole time and yo yo and kid yo yo are here they can help, his plan is to use Kevin his trained bee to tell all the other bees that the queen is cray cray. Yo yo scoffs at this plan, his plan is to use the yo yo to knock out every single bee one at a time.

Kid yo yo looks at the shrink ray and says “i have a plan”

Page 4

Queen bee angry with the city, activates the shrink ray. The red bee, Kevin, yo yo and kid yo yo leap out of the way. It doesn’t appear to work.

Page 5

The queen bee sees in the city, a vast lake of honey! The city has acquiesced to her demands, she flies down, dives into the honey then yo yo puts a cup over her, she’s been shrunk, they’d reversed the polarity of the shrink ray and had shrunk her and army of bees… the end.

I wrote this in 2018 – I suspect I was going through a bit of “I should write” phase. It’s nothing but a plot synopsis, and to be honest I’d forgotten so much about it that the end made me laugh. So I thought I’d pop it up here since it’ll never ever see the light of day otherwise. BTW: I’ve never read a Gwenpool story in my life, I have no idea why Toronto (except i think I once did a deadpool sample that was set in toronto).

Also, this might work for another character, but I’d have to come up with a Lobo like/superhero that’s a bit daft.

26 March 2018

Gwenpool goes to a restaurant in Toronto, downstairs she starts shooting all round here, then slowly it’s revealed that this is an annual event for her, as one by one the patrons die but are replaced by newer/scarier versions of themselves – weird blob like aliens in humanoid form. “I do this every year, if I don’t the little buggers would just take the place over!”. Eventually everything is calmed down, everyone seemingly dead “Oh, they’re not dead. As a matter of fact, they’re a single organism, that splits up, but doing this every year just keeps it at a manageable level. Plus, it’s fun, y’know?”

A Sudden shunt of wind, Gwenpool forced out a hall and a door.

Then through the gap in the door, a gooey alien blob like thing comes out and starts hammering the doorway shut. Gwenpool’s eye’s widen as the alien creature withdraws, and an arm slivers through the gap and draws letters over the doorway “Please leave us alone – we’re just trying to run a nice restaurant”.

Gwenpool “I mean, I assume they’d take over the world. To be honest, I’ve never really asked them”.

I had an odd thought yesterday, lying in bed, and it was this: 10 x 4 page comic strips are 40 pages, or, better, a 20 page comic is only 5 four page strips.

And I like the four page strip format. I realise it’s not to everyone’s taste, but I just love the short story format, you can get in and get out and say something quickly. Doesn’t have to be big doesn’t have to be clever, at four pages it simply has to entertain.

So I’ve written a four pager, and I’ve a couple of ideas of four pagers, and I’ve thought up another – and between it all, I think I probably have at least enough for 20 pages of comics.

So as it stands, it’ll look like this:

ALONE (the one pager about an Astronaut stranded on the moon, expanded into four pages)

The Small Print (silly twisty forthy horror)

Welcome To Earth (working title, The Galactic Federation decides to welcome planet earth in to it’s council – a comedy scifi)

And two more strips I’ve yet to come up with – though given the format just requires a silly idea I can turn into four pages, and I sort of know how to do that – I think it’ll be fine.

Scripting four pages is doable, I’ve done it before. Scripting five x four pagers should be possible. 

Of course, I’ve got to find the time to draw them, then face the harsh realities of making something like that work on kickstarter.

Ideally, I’d raise enough to pay for the books and pay me a page rate of around – let’s say £200 per page (why £200? that’s roughly what commissioning that work would cost) 

That, of course, would be lovely, but it would mean finding £4,000 (assuming I don’t pay myself for the cover) PLUS the cost of printing and distribution. Let’s say that costs £500 for 1000 copies (so per copy is about £1) getting 4500 out of kickstarter … well, it’s not impossible, but it’d be very hard.

Horrible, unrealistic back of the envelope maths suggest £5 per copy is ok to ask for – putting £4 into your pocket after print costs, but to get £4k you’d need to sell 1000 – or your entire print run! yikes (and that’s not even taking into account kickstarter fees and postage which will drain that total more)

So lets say you decide to pay yourself half your page rate – £100 – not great, but that’s doable if I’m doing other things and this is just a fun hobby – then I can make it back selling (obviously) half the print run – 500.

So you really need to figure out ways to get people to pay MORE than a fiver – even selling the original art – let’s say you sell 10 pages at £100 each – £1k, that brings you close. But that’s a lot of pages to sell. Maybe selling sketches (but that becomes additional work) at £50 per sketch with an issue – limit that to 20 – you could raise £1k that way, now you’re up to £2k while only selling 30 comics. Which leaves you 970 to sell, assuming you sell the ENTIRE run (again that’s unlikely, if not impossible) you’ll make £3,880. So a total of £5,880. Actually pretty good amount of money.

But, having looked at Kickstarter and knowing my audience, I suspect the best I’ll be able to do is sell 100-200 copies. From that, maybe I’d sell 10 pages (assuming I HAVE 10 pages to sell, and they’re not all digital) and maybe I’d sell 20 sketches. But even then it’d leave (generously) 170 people – at £4 profit each a total = £680 – or, taking the page sales and sketch sales in to account £2680 – I’d’ve covered the print cost (and left myself around 800 copies in stock) and … uhm… you know, I would probably be content with that.

Ok, I’ve talked myself up and down. I need more research, and to get precise figures. A LOT is gonna depend on whether I could upsell to original art (which – again – may not exist!) and sketches.

But it sure would be nice to have a way top just write and draw comics and know they’d find an audience, that will pay for the work to be done…

Look, I hsouldn’t do this. This is script that hasn’t been edited (and the last script I did write it was so heavily redrafted there was barely anything left from first to last draft) on the other hand I’m at my brother’s house and I can’t do any inking up here and I fancied pencilling the first page, so here it is.

My plan, on Monday is to see if I can get some notes, do another draft (largely around dialogue though unless someone suggests an idea so brilliant that I’d be an idiot not to include it) and then maybe pitch it to some anthology title somewhere – if not 2000ad. I can’t really submit it to 2000ad until I’ve finished the work I’m currently doing for them. Though maybe a second draft will convince me otherwise. If it doesn’t go to 2000ad I‘ll look around for an anthology, I think my preferences are, in no particular order (though I’d have to submit it one at a time, so I’d probably look for who’s paying/whether it’ll see print/what can it do for my career):

Heavy Metal (though I’m not mad keen on their NFT stuff) but I think they’d run the art and let me colour it and I’d probably try and push the art a bit more, more ornate, more HM.

RazorBlades – James Tynion‘s horror anthology – though it’s not quite horrific enough for that (I’d probably have to push the body horror more?) 

Ahoy Comics (their “Snifter of Terror” would be a good fit…) 

Shift Comics – a new UK anthology? cool.

The 77 – a pretty successful kickstarter backed UK comic, also cool.

There’s lots of factors when you’re thinking about submitting work; I like shift and the 77 and I’ve done something for the 77 in the past, but I’m not really expanding who sees my work in these anthologies – they are primarily UK anthologies and it’s likely they’re 2000ad crossover audience is pretty big. Plus the page rate would be pretty low (at a guess – not nothing, and creator owned, and it’s only four pages so it’s not like I’ll get rich doing it) so I think this will be my fallback option (unless I don’t just hoik it up online, but I find stuff sort of disappears when you do that)

AhoyComics would be fun, I like the books they do, it feels in my wheelhouse, though a four pager isn’t going to have much impact, it expands the publishers I’ve worked for  and they can probably pay US my page rates. Not sure about ownership. 

Razorblades would be great, as far as I know it’s creator owned work, so I get to keep the copyright (a thing not true of 2000ad) and it would be good to get in the orbit of Tynion who seems to be going places. Page rate I’m not sure about, but it’s the sort of venue I’d consider not worrying about it for four pages.

And finally Heavy Metal, sort of vague ambition to be published in Heavy Metal, certainly would’ve been a brilliant thing to say in my 20s/30s, now, in my 50s, it’s a little nostaligic notion even as I realise it’s not the magazine of my youth (and nfts? eyeuch)

Anyway, this  is the sort of shit that goes through my head. Hope you like this page 1, it may end up looking nothing this by the time I find a publisher / home for it and it gets an editor inspired rewrite…

Hey ho, so I’m awful at updates, in my defence everything on a macro scale in the world is terrible and everything on a micro scale is similarly awful.  In fact, it’s largely why I’m not really blogging anymore. It’s just … too much.

That said, here’s an update:

Work that I can talk about ; well, finished all prior commitments, now working through a couple of simple things, primarily a war thing (short, 8 pages) more chimpsky – I’ll post some art when I can – and … a DC strip – following the adventures of Dr Psycho, the Joker and King Shark. It’s only 15 pages, but it’s lots of fun.

After that I pick up the pen for a 40 page thing I’ve been putting off for about a year, while other work piled up.

(Work that I can’t talk about, actually there is none, I’m entering the panic stage of being a freelancer after a lovely few years of solid work)

Now, all that said, I’ve written another story, this one is fun little thing originally written as a very overloaded two pages. I don’t think there’s enough in it, to be a 2000ad horror story (but who knows maybe I’m being too hard on myself) but here’s the second draft of it for your amusement.

When an offer is made for your soul, it’s important to read all of the small print…

Let’s try and convene some sort of weekly update.

Week 1!

Where am I, well, on the drawing table I’m finishing (at last!) the Lion and the Eagle. 9 pages of inks to go and done! It’s been a slog, I’m pretty happy with a lot of it (some bits more than others) the entire thing is digital – I find it works out better with war stuff where I can just gather up reference on screen and cheat with 3d models.

Once I’m finally done with that, I’m doing a short war story for a thing – tbh I’d rather not be, but I’d promised this over a year ago.

I’ve also another short thing, I don’t wanna talk about – but – while it’s short – it represents a promising break in my career, much like getting the first multiparter for 2000ad did (which was 3 years in to working for 2000AD). Approached by an editor to do a thing. It’s only 15 pages, but … look I promise you’ll see some of it when I get started. I’m very tempted to go back to pencil and paper for this one.

And thirdly/fourthly, I have more chimpsky to do, and a second part to a kickstarter project I was involved in last year.

I am running very late on a lot of these prior commitments, blame covid (and a big chunk was me drawing Soul Plumber which started as a drop in commitment to do a few pages and ended with me drawing maybe 60-80 pages? All between Lion and the Eagle issues 3 & 4) and family commitments, I’m still acting as a part time carer for my brother – who lives 50 minutes away, and who I end up staying with a couple of nights per week. More as a psychological carer than any actual grafting so it’s not hard work, but it is difficult to get in to a drawing flow when you’re in somebody else’s house. 

Anyway, more next week!

Sitting here thinking about 2000ad and accidentally came up with a terror tale pitch. Sometimes I post these half hearted thoughts on twitter and I get people saying “you should have sold that as a story” and the reality is i lack time(and possibly ability) to do so. So instead I’m gonna do these half formed thoughts here where if I *do* decide to actually pitch them then I can.

so here we go:

Terror tale: Tower

a team of modern day abandoned Building spelunkers have found an enormous tower, with vast basements. As they get further and further into the basements there are ghostly apparations. Then we see another character. Tall and in shadows, beside him a shorter character with a stammer sh..sh..should we stop them? No let’s see where this goes.

the climbers discover wonders machinary not unlike the mines in forbidden planet. The ghostly things get weirder and weirder.

soemthing happens. The shadowy figure decides to intervene, but it’s too late.

the people become trapped in the machines.

short guy “th… they’re trapped”

shadowy figure “yes. I’m afraid they are. No matter. The machine will consume them and use them and when the time is right I’ll send some droids in to harvest the new thrills. It’s been a long time but Kings reach tower may yet prove useful”

and With that Tharg and a run down, almost Frankenstein-like shell of Burt-1 walk away from the long abandoned Kings Reach Tower. 

Happy birthday 2000ad

yay! Suddenly, out of the blue and unbenkowst to me, my 2000ad debut as a writer is out this week, prog 2268. Once the prog hits I’ll show you the pitch and the script and the notes and then the new script (which was radically different from the old script, though the synopsis is identical.) In the meantime, here’s page 1!

So here’s what’s been happening, finally finished Soul Plumber – the six issue mini I helped out on – issue 1, pencilled 2 pages, issue 2 layed out 12 pages, issue 3 did all layouts and half the inks, issue 4 the same, issue five mostly the same and issue 6 mostly the same. All while trying to get the war book done!

There’s a few pages to be finished they’re on John – but will check in on monday and see if he needs me to help out (deadline is the 10th, so it’s doable but tight). Last couple of days I’ve inked between two-three pages a day on it – distilling super complex stuff into simple comic books (draw the Sistene chapel! the seven headed beast of the apocalypse! A crowd of thousands watch as 11 million aliens form for horses galloping across the sky…!)

Anyway, this weekend back on to the war book! I’ve forty pages to pencil and ink in the next … uhm… 28 days? (ok that’ll slip, but I’ve already pencilled the first 12)

After that a short (8 page) war think I’ve been putting of for yonks, then the second book of the v2a thing that I did last year – forty pages of post apocalyptic mad max style shennanigans. Was meant to do this last year, but you know… things got away from me.

Nothing solid planned after that, I’m gonna miss the insane workload I’ve had the past five/six months. No time to holiday, no time to do anything but work – but at the same time, I might have time to write up this second future shock/terror tale 2000ad pitch idea I’ve mostly finished (the first one sold, and I drew it just not sure when it’ll see print)

Have high hopes for some DC work though – they seemed very happy with the work I did (and I wrangled the deadline and kept the book on schedule – even as the script was running late) so it stands my best chance of a crack at the big two. I might try and take the time to send some samples to Marvel (I’ve drawn one page of marvel material, so I’m on their books, but no-one knows me from Adam over there) and I’m pretty sure Kenneth Neimand will want to do more Chimpsky (as will I)

Anyway, normalish service will resume and we’ll see how that goes. But I surely miss all the lovely money from all the extra work…

[I’ll be cross posting this to my blog but with less insider info!]

Never sure if it’s too early or late to post the old xmas card – but sod it, you get to see these things early.

Looking forward to next year; got a ton of stuff in print and I’m fairly optimistic about what’s ahead [it’s to feel your career has stalled, but Soul Plumber has fairly turbo charged things a little, exposure to DC editorial has been invaluable – hoping it lands more work, but we’ll see!]

I’m still working, and likely to be working up until XMAS eve-eve, so I’m sure you’ll see more posts by me later!