Someone asked if they could read The Return of the Gods:Twilight of the Super Heroes , The Cross Earths Caper and The Green Skies seperately or whether they all had to be read together. I thought I had answered that question before but...
The books are designed so that you can read each one (Green Skies is a three parter so you need to read all three) one and they are self contained. Return has a definite "end" so you can read the book and that's it. The same applies to Cross Earth while The Green Skies ties everything together and is epic in itself. All three arcs make up a complete saga.
Some comments:
"I read Return of Gods (sic) and at the end I just sat there and aliens invading, the giant robot, gods and all the other stuff had my mind reeling. this is what comics should be like and if this was in a weekly comic I'd be buying it!"
"Read Rturn(sic) and I thought I'd give the Cross Earths a go. You certainly like twisting plots! After Return I understand why the two characters wanted nothing to do with Zom!"
"I've now read The Green Skies. The plot twists and turns and the number of characters almost mess my head up. I think I get why you divided everything up into chapters now. I can read a chapter, go away and think about it and realise things that I never noticed -I checked and yeah its all there. Go to the next chapter and the same thing. I would love to see the scripts for this series they must be voluminous!"
Right. Firstly, Return started out as something that would have been in a Fleetway comic -the story I've told before. I'm glad no one has said "its in black and white -why not colour?" But had Fleetway gone ahead there were two short-listed colourists so you would have gotten a colour comic. But as an Independent publisher a colour book would be 3-4 times the cover price.
Taking Zom from his one off very brief -almost cameo- in a 1940s comic and m,aking him the catalyst for what is going on while appearing to be just a bystander was not intentional. Read the next paragraph. It's only in The Green Skies (if you read it) that you realise Zom was involved more than you might think in Cross Earths and the characters were right to "Beware of Zom!"
Now, scripts. That's how I earned my meagre comics living. Writing for Fleetway, Egmont and Marvel UK. I only write scripts for other people and those are written starting with a blank sheet of paper and a vague idea in my head. No complicated notes or thumb nails (why bother -just do it). When it comes to Return, Cross Earths or Green Skies there is no script or plot. Well, there were notes for Green Skies (GS) but I basically threw them out rather like I did notes for Return.
While I was working on GS I stopped as I wanted to check something completely different in the Krakos Sands of Terror book (reference to a god) and on turning a page found Krakos briefly confronting The Many Eyed One -the dark evil...read the book. Anyway, I looked and realised that I could notremember writing or drawing that scene but as I tend to clear any project out of my head once it is done I wasn't too shocked. However, as often happens, I then found a stack of books toppling and Journey of the ID fell and opened up...and I saw the cameo of The Many Eyed One...I then realised elements from this book were in GS and they all tied in (which is why a redesigned Journey of the ID is included in GS).
Other elements go back to the original Cosmic Fulcrum, Ultimate Game and Invasion Earth 1987 stories. I have no idea how the mind works these things out and never sit down to think about it -it just happens and that's it. I did try to work it out one day, with the help of someone, and had Part I of GS been scripted there would have been over 300 pages of script with notes to tie this or that in further along. I left it at that because I thought it was pointless but the other person eventually worked out that I would have had some 1000+ pages of script and notes for Parts I-III and my guess is that typing that lot up would have taken years in itself and my slow blled diabetic eyes and arthritic hands would have stopped working by page 200!
To put that number of pages into perspective. In the late 1980s (there is a photo of the scene somewhere) I worked and lived in a two berth caravan. On the desk is an old cast iron typewriter and next to it two reams of recycled copier paper that I typed scripts on. The two reams seen are in fact scripts for 4, 6 and 12 issue series as well as others scripts for publishers. A ream is hidden under thetable and that was full of typeed projects and scripts for radio and other non comic work. So in total about 1,500+ pages. I wore out type writers (I was typing from 0800-0200 hrs at times) which is why I got the cast iron one. That number of pages is in the medium figure range that was worked out for a GS script.
As I have a couple thpousand A3 pages of art that are hard to store plus lots of A4 work imagine the problem I'd have with 1,000-1,700 pages of script and storing them! And what purpose wpould that many pages serve other than to be burner fodder?
No script, plot twists and so many characters is the reason why I have someone proof read a book before publishing!
Also I had to design the look of the book -covers etc as well as putting them together and there were some 10 rejected covers for Part I, 3 for Part II and Part III had 6 rejected covers. Taking this all in now it is not surprising that my hand did not want to work for weeks after and that my eye sight became blurry (oddly, my mother always claimed something else would do that to me).
That's comics!
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