Or Johnny Ghoul, or Johnny Spade (or, from twitter and Ian Lineham, Johnny Coffin) are all names I’m mulling over for a funny little four page detective story set in Archangel, City of Monsters (where humans comingle with vampires, werewolves, cat-ladies, zombies, invisible women and any kind of monster you’d find in a b-movie).
I’d originally written the part of the detective as a human (this city has ‘em) but it just felt wrong, and then I realised why – he was, frankly, the dullest character on the page. So I mulled it over some more, and I honestly don’t think there’s any story couldn’t be improved by including Frankenstein. So I rewrote it for Frankenstein’s monster as detective, including making all of his dialogue mumbly and murmery and using heavy text captions, which was much funnier (to my eye) but still … not there yet.
Then following a few serious binges of the walking dead, which I’d stopped midway through series one, because I had young kids, one of whom had been in and out of hosptial a LOT when he was younger and I was too squeamish to deal with the tv show after that – but now my kids are 18 and 15 and I no longer lie awake at night worrying about them, so let’s blow up all the zombie children Rick Grimes. Anyway, after a bunch of walking dead, I thought – let’s make him a zombie. And the name Johnny Rotten, Undead Detective popped into my head and I thought “Yup!”.
So I refigured it and scribbled up some detailed layouts for the four page script and it all worked. It all worked lovely. If I’ve time I might spend it drawing this up.
But of course, I’m left thinking … that name… will it be a problem? So I’m in a bit of a limbo state over the name.
I still love Johnny Rotten. But Johnny Zombie has rhyme appeal even as it feels a bit generic, Johnny Ghoul is good, but suggests he investigates the undead or something and he’s not, he’s just your average gumshoe in a world of monsters. Though I did like Johnny Spade, suggesting graves and Sam Spade. Anyway, I will read any comments and take them on board.
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I do wonder if anyone is reading this, it feels like the early days of blogging where you were guaranteed that no one would read it, then slowly, through webrings and rss feeds and just a gradual constant drip drip of blog posts you’d find that yes, people were coming, and then twitter became an massive dopamine mine, you could hit again and again multiple times again. I suppose this is healthier. I’d like people to read it, but not so many I can mess up my career by saying something stupid (I do remember other artists saying they enjoyed my blog but they’d never post any of the things I’d post just in case – these weren’t horrific opinions they were simply me admitting some days I couldn’t draw very well. It’s still the case, but I’m better at keeping it to myself.
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Oh still at the old Inktober thing. Running out of funny things to do with it already. We’ll see… (I don’t check the list until I’m doing that day then I have to read it and go “Oh!”) this was done with pen and ink, not a medium I’m any good at any more (or ever, really) god, I miss being good with a brush. I suspect I need better glasses. And hand-eye coordination. Computers have ruined me for traditional art!!!
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