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About Emma Newman

Emma Newman writes short stories, novels and novellas in multiple speculative fiction genres. She is a professional audiobook narrator, and a Hugo Award winning podcaster. Her current podcasts are ‘Imagining Tomorrow’ and ‘Tea and Sanctuary’. www.enewman.co.uk

The Script

Comic script - this is exactly what happened to my son in the small hours of this morning. I only saw the messages when I woke up, and he told me what happened once he was awake. It made me laugh, and I immediately thought it might make a fun comic and Beanie agreed!

A young man (if you want to base him loosely on my son, he’s 16 years old, tall, short brown hair, blue eyes) is about to leave his room but spots a huge spider on wall next to the door (it is on the wall that the door would rest against when open and the dressing gown hanging on the back of the door would brush against where the spider is) . 

He is terrified of spiders, so he can’t open the door. It’s the small hours of the morning.

He leaps onto his bed on the other side of the room, a bookcase blocking the line of sight between him and the spider and tries to phone his Mum who is sleeping in her room across the landing, and message her on WhatsApp, but her phone is on ‘Do not disturb’ so there’s no answer. 

Panicking, he phones friends until one finally picks up - ‘Help! There’s a huge spider in my room!’

Friend: What colour is it?

Beanie: Black? Brown? I dunno! It was BIG

Friend: You’re okay, I don’t think they can climb.

Beanie: IT’S ON MY WALL! (throughout the rest of this exchange the friend also now freaking out is just making Bean panic even more!) 

Friend: Oh, that one can climb then! Just dash out the door!

Beanie: It’s by the door, I can’t get out!

Friend: IT’S IN YOUR ROOM?! 

Beanie: Yes, I told you this!

He peeps round the bookcase. The spider is gone!

Beanie: It’s gone!

Friend: THAT MEANS IT COULD BE ANYWHERE!

Beanie’s eyes flick to all the posters it could be hiding behind, and all the clothes and stuff on his floor it could now be lurking under.

Beanie: YOU ARE NOT HELPING!

He hangs up and hides in the duvet. If you think that a final shot on the spider’s hiding place would be a good ending, do add that in, but happy to end it on Beanie hiding.

 

Artists Notes

One of the goals of the project was to try and work with as many writers as possible, and so I told every writer "Don't worry - I'll take any format of script" - there are sort of comic script standards, and attempts have been made in the past to really hammer them in, but for the most part every writer I work with works a little different anyway. That said, this script required a lot of thinking about to get the most out of the story (you can argue amongst yourself whether that's what I did).

Firstly there's a sort of action limit in comics, every action will usually require one panel - character opens door, walks through door, locks door? that's three panels. I felt like, on this script, there was too much going on to fit in the super limited single page I had, plus some of the action I wanted to build it up a bit more, so I knew I'd be putting a bunch of panels towards the getting ready to go out (because build up build up build up build up PUNCHLINE!) I also knew I wanted the dialogue interaction to have that ratatatat rapid delivery, which meant I'd get a single panel for that set of dialogue. This meant brutalising the story a little, cutting out the contacting of his mum and going straight to the friend. I also wanted a little end note on the spider - I thought that would be fun, a happy little chappy. (remove the last spider panel and the page feels like it's not quite finished - it's a figurative and literal full stop)

The manga shading effect/speedlines came after I'd drawn it and realise it would work better with a little bit of manga (tonally too, fits a teen), and the coloured lettering was because I needed someway to quickly distinguish the two sets of dialogue (I decided to eschew clip studio's balloon lettering tools a) because it would take ages to get exactly how I want it and b) because I thought I could add more character to it that way. The background of the room is pretty much a direct tracing of my teenage son's bedroom (which is so quintessentially teenager it looks like a set from a modern John Hughes teen comedy). (And it's all my son's work, he's done that all without parental help)

Anyway. This was finished the day before publication, but I think it turned out ok.

Oh, and because I drew it, and then slathered lettering all over it, here's the page without dialogue...

Earth as Alien Planet

I love stuff like this, soldiers laying in a battlefield with wounds found they survived better if their wounds had been glowing overnight – 

“During the 2 days of fighting at the Battle of Shiloh in 1862, over 16 000 soldiers lay wounded in cold, muddy fields waiting for rescue.   During the night, some of the men noticed that their open wounds began to glow in the dark  A  greenish blue glow”

“The men had no explanation for this strange glow.  Doctors discovered that soldiers who had reported seeing their wounds glow had a much higher chance of survival than soldiers who did not.”

https://twitter.com/Flaminhaystack/status/1428367354421944322

Flash Forward Bonus

This is what I’ve beem spending most ofof time on at the moment. 160 pages. I don’t want to talk too much about it (vaguely supersititous about these things) and I’m not even at the halfway mark yet. But I will try and get some sneak peaks up as I go… 

Friday Flash Forward

Things to come, a pin up I did. I entirely forgot I promised to do this pinup, when asked I couldn’t remember a damn thing about it, and hadn’t realised I’d actually drawn a sketch (in which, I’d unhelpfully added the note – “should look cool, not sure how to do it”. Not sure if it succeed to be honest, but here it is.

I’m still mulling ove rhow best to put stuff I’ve done in the week just past here, right now I’m gonna preload a bunch of things you’ve not seen yet – since they’ve yet to appear in print. In order to avoid any stepping on publisher’s toes, I’ll try and limit it to small press or sketches or some other smattering of things.

Fun with Reference!

Sometimes, when I’ve got a war comic on the hop, I’ll create a file for reference and drop ref in to it, using clip studio’s 3d tools I’ll download a 3d model (using sketchfab.com) I’ll bring it in to clip studio and render it out as a couple of useful angles and then I’ll use that as the basis for the pencilling (I’ll copy and paste the ref gun into the page and make it a pencil layer and ink over it)

IT’S A CHEAT!

The return of the Patreon

Hey ho, decided to come back and mull over patreon. I think I can think of a way to make it work – Monday will be a look back, I’ll find something old and post it up – usually the lineart, sometimes the pencils. This will be for level one patreons.

 Friday will be more interesting, I think. Friday will be “The Week So far” – I’ll drop bits and pieces of what I’ve been working on. This will be for higher level patreons.

My plan is to set two patreon levels – $2 and $5 (and maybe $10 for you billionaires out there, determined to spend all your money supporting artists)

This new way of using Patreon will start in September – that’s when the tiers change. (and there will be tears)

Before then I’ll start to build the muscle memory/habit of shoving interesting things up here maybe with a Friday update – available to every level of Patreon, so you can see what you’re getting.

Look, thanks for sticking with me, if that’s what you’ve done (and apologies if you just haven’t been paying attention and the whole thing has happened without you realising)

I don’t think I’ll ever be able to make Patreon afford to pay me to make comics, so instead I’m gonna use it as a little window into my work-life here.

(Clearly, I’m not in a position to have to ponder the ethical questions of what would I do if substack offered me $100k to do a comics newsletter, but until patreon do the same thing, I think I’ll be very happy to make a nice even $100 per month off here…)

Some art!

This is the entire black and white art from the Judge Dredd story three kings by Kenneth Neimand… you may have missed it. 

I designed the robots to look like the rock ’em sock ’em robot, a point missed by a number of common taters who suggested they just didn’t look very interesting (a fair point, next time I’ll be less subtle about it)

Struggled with the inking on this, and ended up starting with pen and paper and almost immediately went all digital. Sometimes it’s a struggle.

Things that went nowhere…

Gosh, I’m amazed some people have stuck around. I guess you’ve probably forgotten this is even a thing, patreon slowly leaching money out of your account and over to here, where I’ve rudely not posted anything for some time.

I guess the big problem is having things to post, but, you know what… if you can keep a secret, what I think I’ll start doing is posting work that I’m in the middle of here. DO NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES PUT ANY OF THIS OUT IN TO THE WILD! Cheers

It’s all gonna be here for you. This is from an idea that a writer pal and I were bouncing around. It wen’t nowhere (pandemic took over).

Maybe it’ll be resurrected at some later date. Who knows. Any way. Get ready for weekly updates…

One Small Step

My youngest son has introduced me to Junji Ito how does a magnificent line in existential dread and horror, so I’ve been playing with that with a view to seeing what I can do in short one page form. I’ve written ideas for two other things done, but here’s the only one I’ve fully written, drawn and lettered. Hope you like!

An ending of sorts…

We’ve decided to stop (well, this is more on me than John). Monster Macs has been fun, but much more work than the folklore stories and a bought of illness (I’ve IBS which will flare up occasionally but has recently stolen over a week from me) means we’re (ok, I am) getting much more behind that I would have wanted.

By way of apology, I’ve uploaded a pdf the folklore thursday stories.

We’ll still be looking for a home for monster macs, and, hopefully a publisher interested in investing for us to work on it. 

For now, I just want to say thank you. 

If you download the file, and cancel your patreon you should save yourself a little bit of cash. 

Hopefully you’ll continue to enjoy whatever work John and I put out, you can see me on twitter.