My search for comic book characters to use in my entry to the Viper Comics talent comics treaded water in the swamp of minutia over the weekend. I felt my long time familiarity with the character of Wolverine would generate comfort and material, but I found myself working from an image I could move forward or backward from. The sensation struck me like a storyboard artist’s single cool graphic that inspires the director to say to the writer, “I don’t care how you get there or how you get out, but that, that scene needs to be in the movie.” Do I anchor this image as a challenging scope definition or banish it as a creative block?
Leaving the image provides a solid escape-type plot, some good humor, and a great way to avoid monologing or captions since I’d be pairing two characters. The run-up and the run-out elude me…and them’s my plot.
Dropping the image leaves me starting over with none of the above, including my starter character: Wolverine. A clean slate may not be bad since there so many characters are available from all of comicdom I’m sure I could write anything and then go huntng for a warm-body to slide into one of the roles. Certainly I’d have to do a little editing to caulk the seams, but not much I’d bet.
I’ll stick with the image through the end of the day. Map out a concept on the whiteboard. And abandon the image and move on if nothing usable shakes out.
Day 380