Mad Science and Monsters

Hey guys,

First, I want to apologize for being so sporadic over here, I'm pretty terrible about keeping up with this mostly because I don't have a hell of a lot of updates. So I guess we've got a bit of catching up to do... not too much, as mostly I've just been writing my ass off. Giles is finally on to doing pencils for Igor #2 after several more delays (none his fault) so be looking out for that soon. We'll be doing pre-orders through the website (igoroccultdetective.com) to help us cover printing costs. So yay for that. American History Z ought to be coming out in March which will feature my story "Z-Men" with art from the awesome Sean Von Gorman (The Secret Adventures of Houdini) I'll keep you posted when the Diamond Pre-Order starts for that bad boy.

Anyway... here's what I really wanted to post about.

So, I'm getting pretty close to the end of writing Igor: Occult Detective, I have four issues and two shorts to go before I am completely finished scripting the entire series. First and foremost, this is the first time I have completely finished scripting anything longer than a mini-series or graphic novel, which is, hey, a cause for celebration. However, I can't help but feel a little sad about the whole thing.

Igor was one of those ideas that just sorta struck me out of nowhere (probably while watching James Whale's Frankenstein) and once the seed was planted I just couldn't get it out of my head. I had planned on only doing six issues, a nice self-contained mini-series. But then something happened... I kept having more and more ideas. And damn good ones. It was practically effortless to come up with new plots for Igor and Mr. Frank to get into. I quickly fell in love with the characters and the world they exist in. But I knew it had to end somewhere. Giles only has so much time and he's already dedicating most of it to Igor and I know he has other projects he wants to work on as well... never mind the fact that I'm sure he's sick of me by now. So I planned it out... twenty issues and three shorts (not including the one page we did for Magic Bullet #3) would be enough to tell the stories I had to tell.

After, I finished plotting Issue #20, I got hit again... another batch of stories popped up in my brain. So I talked to Giles, figured some things out and decided there was another way to handle this batch of stories (which I will reveal eventually... right now I'm keeping it under wraps until everything is running smoothly.) So, essentially I ended up with twenty issues, ten shorts, and one single page story... over four hundred and eighty pages of Igor stories.

And it has been some of the most fun, most challenging and yet easiest comic pages I have ever written. Writing Igor never feels like a chore, it never feels like work... even the research is enjoyable. Other stories I've done or ones that I'm currently doing... some of them just feel like the job. Igor never feels like that. When I want to take a break from another story because I'm frustrated or lost or whatever... I go back to Igor. That's why I'm so far ahead on it. And I guess I'm just sad to see that go soon.

I'm sure it helps that Igor is a little bit of everything that I love... a little Lovecraft, a little Poe, a little Doyle, and a little comedy. It's essentially everything I adore put into one comic book. And there are a lot of other things that I love (sci-fi, samurai tales, westerns, socio-political zombie films) but I guess I'll always have a special place in my heart for mad science and monsters.