Last week, I said I’ve begun developing a new comics project and that my goal is to chronicle its development here in this humble newsletter. I’m going to do my best to walk you through my creative process as it happens.

But first, you’ll need to be brought up to speed. Let’s start with what I’ve got figured out so far, and how I figured it out. The following took place over the last two months or so:

WALK

I begin with nothing. Except, I guess, a general vibe I’d like to capture: something warm, classical, and romantic. But that’s it. No characters. No story. No nada.

My partner and I go camping and I bring along Where the Heart Beats: John Cage, Zen Buddhism, and the Inner Life of Artists by Kay Larson1. Part of the book details John Cage’s decades-long partnership—both professional and romantic—with the dancer Merce Cunningham. Which sparks an idea:

What if the comic was about dance?

INSIDE TURN

A problem presents itself almost immediately: I know almost nothing about dance as an art form. My first real exposure to modern dance was, perhaps unsurprisingly, through a movie: Wim Wenders’s documentary Pina. It presented dance as something that could be abstract, nonlinear. It was beyond my intellectual understanding, but I felt its power.

I first saw the movie over a decade ago, but it left a very big impression on me. In particular, I loved the interludes where dancers performed in public locations—on city streets, on trains, within nature—invisible to their oblivious audiences. It reminded me of another Wenders’s film, Wings of Desire, the humanistic way that movie portrays the unseen fantastical reality of our daily lives.

Another thought occurs: the collaborative relationship between dancer and choreographer could be seen as akin to a writer and artist in comics. One provides the story (or the steps), the other brings it to life. There will also be an inherent challenge in capturing what makes dance compelling (i.e. movement) in still images.

So, anyway, yeah, maybe something about dance?

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PIROUETTE

Then I think to myself: what about that book about Arab folk dances that has been sitting on my bookshelf unread for the last 15 years?

You see, I own several books that exist as… idea seeds I’ve planted in my library/garden. They are books containing something that I just know, somewhere deep in my bones, I will need one day for a story or project. As an example, Spectrum #3 featured a sequence set at Mardi Gras in the ‘30s, which allowed me to finally exorcise myself of a coffee table book (Mardi Gras: New Orleans by Henri Schindler) which I’ve held onto for years.

The aforementioned book on Arab folk dance is called Serpent of the Nile: Women and Dance in the Arab World by Wendy Buonaventura. The main reason it caught my eye is it is full of high-quality reproductions of photos, paintings, and sculptures from across the Middle East, mostly circa the turn of the 19th century.

But does that mean now that the story needs to take place in ancient Cairo?

Well, maybe. At least in part.

FREE SPIN

My next mental association with dance is the Ballets Russes, specifically their costumes designed by the Russian painter Léon Bakst. One of my single biggest influences is the Final Fantasy series of JRPGs. The series’s main concept artist, Yoshitaka Amano, was himself inspired by Bakst’s colorful costume designs.

So now I want to include this too. How do I feature modern dance, dance from the ancient Middle East, and early 20th century Parisian ballet—all in the same story?

ENCHUFLA

What if I use the different eras of dance as the story’s overall organizing principle?

What I mean by that is: graphic novels are typically a collection of six 22-page single-issue comics. Applying this kind of framework—having a central idea or theme be the primary focus of each chapter—has been helpful for me in the past when it comes to organizing my thoughts.

I used a similar concept in Spectrum. Issues 2, 3, 4, and 5 were thematically tied to the CMYK color model.

For this project, this kind of structure would manifest like so:

Issue 1 - Arabic folk dance

Issue 2 - Ballets Russes

Issue 3 - Salsa?

Issue 4 - Waltz? Modern?

Etc.

Now all I need is a conceit that allows me to thread through these different eras.

IMPETUS

I ask myself: what else has been inspiring me lately? I remember another film I’ve seen somewhat recently in theatres: the 4k restoration of Tarsem’s The Fall. The movie uses a framing device of an injured stuntman (played by Lee Pace) recounting a fairy tale to a young girl while recuperating in a hospital. The fantastical “story within a story” sequences are the fairy tale as imagined by the young girl.

I think: what if I steal that? Perhaps mix in a little Cloud Atlas influence for fun.

And just like that, I have some semblance of a structure to use. Now all I need… is a story and some characters.

We’ll address that next week.

BOW

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