So. Our first Velicity Jones daily strip, The Blind God Affair, is wrapped, and we hope you enjoyed it.
By way of a special bonus - as well as something to feed all you proces junkies out there - we're going to lift the curtain on the story and take you behind the scenes...
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| The original, unlettered art for episode 1 |
What no one really knows is that Velicity Jones was originally conceived as a daily strip.
I'd already done a lot of daily strips for the 2000AD fanzine, Zarjaz, with Dave "Bolt-01" Evans and a whole range of artists, and I wanted to do one that was completely original. I came up with the idea of a dimension hopping super spy, but I realised it was probably too much for the limits of a finite daily strip (and too big a commitment for an artist to take on long term), so the idea was shelved. Although, not for long...
Around that time, myself, Bryan Coyle and Bolt-01 put together a proposal for a mini-series that didn't land, but - in the weird way the universe likes to work - we got the chance to pitch something to David Lloyd for Aces Weekly. Velicity Jones seemed like the perfect option - albeit a stripped down version of the original concept.
But the idea of doing a Velicity Jones daily strip never went away.
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Some of Bryan's original sketches for Mabel McCarthy |
There were a lot of discussions about it, but nothing concrete, until, eventually, I started tinkering with some ideas and wrote out two outlines for two different strips.
And that's where the fun started...
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| From Bryan's sketchbook |
I actually wrote a complete script for a daily strip, but - due to a communications cock-up and some fun and games with shared cloud drive folders - Bryan took the outline/breakdown for the second strip and drew The Blind God Affair from that.
Yes, we did this "Marvel Method."
For those of you who don't know, "Marvel Method" is a technique pioneered by Stan Lee in the 60's, where the writer provides a plot to an aritst, then the artist draws the entire story from that, interpreting it as they choose, then the writer comes back in to write dialogue and captions.
(I have lots of thoughts and opinions on "Marvel Method," which I may elaborate on in a future post, but they can be boiled down to: "I do not like it.")
So, now we had art but no script.
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| From Bryan's sketchbook |
I asked Bryan if he wanted to write the script for it, seeing as he'd done...pretty much everything else, but he declined, so it fell to me to come up with something. Including a title.
Anyone who's read the Velicity Jones series - and I'm guessing (hoping!) there's at least one person out there - knows we have a very specific way of telling each story (and, if you're wondering what that is, I urge you to go and check the previous stories). So, I had to figure out a way to adapt that, not only into the daily format, but also to the existing art.
The outline I gave Bryan wasn't as detailed as I would've liked (thanks, Past Me!), but it had just enough of the building blocks in it to actually write a script - although, looking at the outline again as I write this, I'm amazed at how much changed when it came to the script.
Here's an example:
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| On the top is my original outline for the episode, and underneath it the complete episode. |
Why did that change? I've praised Bryan's storytelling chops at length, but this, I think, is the clearest example of his mastery of sequential narrative: he made everything so clear and easy to follow on the page that it all but demanded those changes to the original story. Or, it did to me, anyway.
So, yeah. That's the not all that interesting behind the scenes story of The Blind God Affair.
Will we do it again? Well, let's wait and see...
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| From Bryan's sketchbook |
Remember, Velicity Jones: The Hand Of Glory is in Aces Weekly #72, and you can get it directly from the Aces Weekly website for £6.99 (with 5 other stories).
Worth noting that final image: there was a plan to have the first or second episode be a title card, but that idea was scrapped. Still, the picture above was one of Bryan's early sketches for said title card.
