Unspeakable Horror!

When I started writing comic book scripts in late 2006, I knew it would be satisfying to see those stories translated into works of visual art, but I didn't anticipate how awesome it would really be.  At first, I thought that I wanted to see the artist's images on the page exactly as I had seen them in my head.  However, after seeing Bartholomew of the Scissors turned into art by Daniel Crosier, I now know that the best part is the surprise of discovering how the artist interpreted the story and the characters.  In other words, the best part is seeing how the artwork doesn't resemble what I pictured in my mind.  The best part is seeing how the artist transforms the story with their own style and artistic sensibility while still staying true to the original vision of the script. 

As many of you probably know, there are different schools of thought about how a writer should write a comic book script.  Some believe the writer should control every aspect of the page, designing the frames and directing everything the reader should see on the page.  On the other hand, I believe that the writer should just tell the story of what happens on that page (with lots of visual imagery in the writing), and then the artist decides how to tell that story with frames and visual art.  This way gives the artist a lot more creative freedom to tell the story with their own style and vision.  From my perspective, this is the best scenario because the artist is the expert at transforming stories into visual images.

It is an honor to be working with artist Daniel Crosier on Bartholomew of the Scissors.  Every page he has created has been full of surprises and discoveries for me.  I am perpetually surprised to see how he brings the characters to life with his unique style of creating facial expressions and human figures.  And with each page, I discover something new about the story that I never considered before.  Daniel's art presents me with new ways to interpret the story.  At the same time, he deeply understands the script, and he completely understands what I was going for in the storytelling.  The combination is amazing.