Almost a year after I started, Arcanopocrypha is in a form to be downloaded (40megs) for all to view and whine about. So far, I’m getting really good responses from people and I’m excited to see what doors this will or wont open.

I blame Warren Ellis for this story. And Johnathan Hickman. And Brian Michael Bendis. And I thank them. In the last two years, they’ve been laying down some words that finally triggered in my mind to stop wishing and start doing. Specifically it’s been a combination of “now you tell ME a story” and “get off your ass and do it” and “commitment.” Since I started, and really committing to these scripts, I’ve never been nicer. Since I saw people read my stories and say, “you know, this doesn’t completely SUCK, Bob,” I’ve given myself the benefit of the doubt that I can pull this off.

I don’t think this story, Arcanopocrypha: the Journey Box, is the best. Of course, it’s not the new Watchmen, or anything other that a story that meets my emotional needs. Strangely, I don’t care if you like it… scratch that… I don’t care if you dislike it. Either it’s going to speak to you the way it does me, or it’s not. I hope it does but I’m ok if it doesn’t.

Since my work has become visible, I’m seeing a transformation - of how I see the world, how I see others, how I view myself versus what the world is, how others behave, what I truly am. I’ve always been bitter about the fact that we - humanity - could be so much more. Nicer in every way, but we deliberately choose not to. It’s very similar to the way people say things, “Like that may be so, but I believe in God so it must be wrong.” We COULD be a society that works towards the benefit of all. But we deliberately choose not it because something… else… something in OUR MINDS tells us to stop. Something in our minds is telling us to FAIL, but it’s our choice to listen.

It’s our choice to become authors and artists and creators of our future. Or we can choose to let others create the future for us, which isn’t necessarily bad, but it’s definitely less than optimal. But I’m no longer on the fence about this, and you’re welcome to come with me on this journey, but I’m going to expect you do deliver. And I want you to hold me to the same high standard.

Bob Kelly, April 2009

So, for the few (looks to be about 20 of you) readers of this blog/site should know my updates.

Juan’s really beginning to cook with gas! Everyone who looks at his work responds with “HOLY SHIT Look at that!” It’s an amazing feeling, not just pride in my book, and not just that the art is great, but the fact that people react positive and sit down to read it.

I’m putting together an ashcan, which I’ll put here for a download as well.

I’m still looking for 2 more artists for the Ellis “Form a Band” - almost had one and then realized his artwork needed a different story. He’s great at portraits with big eyes, so I incorporated that strength into the story. Today, I finished the story Arcanopocrypha: Samael, and have it set for another experimental publishing on the net.

W00t.

OK, a while back Warren Ellis told a bunch of people to “FORM a BAND.”

I’m gonna quote him in full here:

Warren Ellis via Bad Signal, “Building the Imperfect Beast,” 08-12-2008

Okay, I’m pretty sure I did do this last year, but I
think it’s reconfigured in my head since then. So.

What you need is one writer and three artists.
Essentially, you decide to Form A Band.

And you decide up front that all the money from
the anthology comic is divided 4 ways equally.
This is for simplicity’s sake — people argue this
point with me all the time, but I have had
publishers say to my face that they avoid
anthologies, especially creator-owned ones,
because THE SUMS ARE TOO HARD. Keep
it simple. 25% for everybody.

What you’re going to do, you see, is one writer
writing three serials for three artists.

You’re doing a two-dollar book. That’s FELL format.
A 24pp unit, all on the same paperstock, including
covers. “Guts” of 20pp, with the “cover”, constituting
4pp, wrapped around it, yes?

Three 6pp episodes is 18 pages. Your cover and
inside front cover for indicia etc are 2pp. So that
leaves you 4pp, including the back cover, to play
with. Use them to interleave the serials, use them
as backmatter, let the artists take turns doing
full-page pieces, whatever.

The cover art is a rotating job between the three
artists.

Collect it every six months as a 128pp book (therefore
still splitting everything four ways) or collect each
serial on its own as best fitting (each book therefore
splitting 50/50). (As is blatantly obvious, but people
like to ask these questions instead of thinking for
themselves.)

Go and do it. I need something to read.

Form a band, boys and girls. Form a band.

OK, let’s look at the hurdles
1) I had to form a company so that my ass isn’t too liable as a self-publisher,
2) I had to create a legal agreement,
3) I’ve had to recruit artists (which I did find one - he’s great to work with, top notch.)
4) Some serious bitterness on my behalf, but oddly… I’m better for it. I’m a hell of a lot happier in this last six months.

Oh yeah, and I had to write the scripts because that is what I want to do, y’know, write stories. As opposed to be a publisher.

It’s six months later and I’m looking at now 5 finished scripts, one in final-final, four in finished draft stages, a ton of undeveloped ideas, and no artists on the horizons.

So, I’m putting this out to twitter-verse, and facebook, and all the other places once again.

I’m looking for few good artists. Actually, I’m looking for two good artists who will commit to the project. I know that royalty projects are difficult, but if you’re wanting to break in, and you love comics, here’s an opportunity for you. Please forward to any artists you know.

For us to shop this story, an artist needs to commit to the following:
1) Character Design - based on my descriptions, you will design the main characters of the story.
2) The first 5-6 pages of the story so that we can shop it to publishers. No page rate will be paid for these first few pages.

Legal Agreement Abridged
You and I co-own the characters. I own story. You own the character designs (what they look like) and receive royalties based on that design. If a different artist comes in later and redesigns the characters, you will still receive a smaller royalty amount for ownership. The story and characters are completely licensed to Heresy Research Labs to be repped - in short, HRL’s job is to get others to license and print the comics.

Here’s the detailed license. Feel free to print out and take to a lawyer.

Body parts in 30 minutes or your organs free.

So, I’ve been finishing up the Gotham Killfiles, the story that will forever go up on the shelf until I’m rich and powerful. I needed to write Killfiles because it was pushing on my frontal cortex until I just got it out of the way. I’m waiting on some research books to be delivered and stumbled across a couple of concepts that made me think of a new IP.

The first idea came from China, where they’ve decided, in the interest of efficiency, to create buses which roam the vast China lands performing state executions. They’ve forty of these buses. They harvest the organs, because that’s legal in China. Hell, it’s a growth industry.

All your organs belong to Usszzss
I knew this was going to harm my brain. There’s nothing inherently wrong with executions - we got 6.6 billion people and a few more dead wont really make an impact. I’m looking at the long term here, of course. By executing those deemed culturally offensive, we will cull the society challenging by reinforcing the gene and meme pool that supports the monolithic governments. The only choice would be to drop out of that society (”go underground”) or to establish a mimicry survival trait.

This Darwinistic cultural war will give rise to subcultures competing for memetic resources, that is to say, people. What kind of laws would make it necessary to allow for

Don’t click on me
And humans became a demonstrably provable viral medium this week. In Twitter, the “DON’T CLICK” url caused many twitters to propagate itself. Humans, by seeing a “Don’t Click” immediately clicked. And pending on the circumstances, then spread the virus itself. Lots of people have willingly participated viral bombs, but this was a pure infologic transmission that used our infovore brains against us.

And then I found Buck Angel, which is a transman with a porn agenda.

The intersection of these events will become The Organ Grinders, a tale of black markets, after market parts and pieces, and a disturbing poke in the eye… but we’ll see. All I know is I’ve got pages of notes and ideas that are bugging the shit out of me on a St. Valentine’s Night.

Here’s the world wide premier of the first page of my first comic.

Click to view in Detail

If there’s a theme I’ve experienced with television and pop culture, ever since I was a kid, it’s the “I wish I hadn’t missed that phenomenon. I missed Highlander in the theatres because I never heard of it. Later, I missed the shows Nowhere Man and Threshhold, both of which I blame network tv. And yes, I’m one of those geeks that thought SportsNight was the best thing on TV.

Recently I hunted down the Warren Ellis’ Global Frequency pilot - don’t ask me how because then RIAA would have to sue me, effectively a dead-on-arrival TV show due to [insert favorite Hollywood rumor here]. What amazes me is that someone could watch the show and not carry it through, especially after spending the money and time to get something like this off the ground. The show is based on Ellis’ Global Frequncy comics - which is something I never got into.

For those that are not going to see it ever, the story is simple: It’s the end of the world [or humongous terrorist attack or very large natural disaster - you get the picture] and Michelle Forbes gets to play the cold hard bitch that going to save it, including recruiting you. Strike one: how can you deny Michelle Forbes a role she’s born for? Hollywood hates strong women, and has been particularly rude to Forbes, in my opinion.

You have the very cool Warren Ellis twist on it, in this case a psychic quantum bomb, but that’s not the important thing: the Global Frequency is potentially everyone - smart, skilled, or simply the best available person at the moment.

As big as Ellis’ internet ego-footprint is (here and here), I picked out an underlying idea that’s common with a lot of Ellis’ work: we’re all on this planet together and it’s a good thing. This is something we’ve seen on his run of the Authority. Strike two: Ellis’ viewpoint is perfectly represented on the show.

The characters include a hot repressed librarian er, physicist who has yet to let her hair down - her first exposure to the audience is effectively a very common character reaction to a corpse: the humorous barfing scene. It’s a great exposure to the character and humanizing moment.

Add to it Aimee Garcia’s sonorous voice (and body) as Aleph, the comptroller of the group. She humanizes much of the story and characterization bringing the three different characters together - a role that would’ve allowed Garcia to have some of the best lines in the show.

The end of the show forces an excellent character choice that would’ve killed most shows in the 80s and 90s, but is perfect for Post 9-11 television.

Plus - San Francisco! What better place to put a freaky storyline?

So what was the problem? I don’t know. The conspiracy theorist in me says the ideal is dangerously democratic. The cinematic fan tells me it was shot far too dark, whcih could’ve been my recording. Wikipedia has it’s own theory. Either way, while I’m a bit of a Warren Ellis freak, I regret finding good things out that have already been cancelled. Feels like I keep missing the important calls - the good news is that I’m planning on getting copies of the trade paperback today.

All my life, my mother has wanted to weave rugs - big, fancy rugs that people hang on walls. She’s not exactly been successful at doing it. For a woman who has managed to raise two children by herself, had a profitable career, and a trove of friends who she loves and loves her back, she’s only attended a few classes. All my life, she’s placed obstacles in front of her to prevent her from doing things. Slowly, she’s learning how to get around these obstacles. I’ve learned from her example, and I hope to have returned the favor.

It’s odd, these obstacles, it’s like navigating around your self, your mind, your structure of the world.

For my own dreams, I’ve finally removed one of those obstacles from my path that I’ve been worrying over. These have been the type of worries that wakes one in the night in bone-chilling panics. The price of doing business has cost me a lot - money, career, friends - most importantly friends, and faith in myself. I’m leery of paying that price even though I know there’s more coming in the future. Well, after finding the right legal council, I’ve finally done it.

On Tuesday, at 2:45 I signed documents officially creating Heresy Research Labs, llc. It’s mission is to create entertaining copyrightable materials for licensing and publishing. I like that mission: I’m here to create fun, of all interests, and with a name like Heresy, I’m hoping to break a few rules.

I’ve got heroes - well, minds that I admire - all of whom have said, “I’ve shown you, now you show me what you can do.” I am so tired of having reams of written material that goes unpublished, unseen and un-commented on. There’s only one way I’m going to improve and that way requires me to my material in front of others.

My first project will be Arcanopocrypha, a collection of short stories I’ve written for a graphic novels format, with a single overall arc. I’ve discovered a wonderful artist which I’m hoping to expand my business relationship.

I love twisting the minds of those who will listen, and I really want to play rough. Stay tooned, I’m going in!

Woot! I’m excited about this: basically, I’ve got an opportunity to write 3 comic scripts, 36-42 pages each. Working with the team to find some artists, but we’ll see. We’re looking at self publishing (expensive, but controllable) and hopefully be able to flip it around into a successful career path. More to come!

Johnathan Hickman has written a very important work - and yes, it’s a comic book, named Transhuman. He addresses most of the important concepts of posthuman intelligence in today’s capitalistic world. Who is going to get there first? How are they going to get there? And what rules are they willing to break?

In a fun homage to the Dot-com boom, Hickman basically introduces the average non-signularity tracking reader to the concepts of transhumanism. But more importantly, the funding of becoming Transhuman. And he doesn’t treat it lightly. In the post-Watchmen world of superheros, the powers aren’t important as the story around them, and the characters.

Transhumanists are already “outside the norm” as we stand today. We’re having to change our name, and while we attend TED conferences, we really aren’t accepted by the mainstream. Hickman does a great job bringing these types of characters to life, and those who wish to take advantage of them.

Some Singularity searchers will complain that it’s not realistic (cough), that once a Transhuman event occurs, our souls (cough) will transcend or some other bullshit, but they’re the people who are jumping on the bandwagon without looking deeply enough or reading hard enough.

And then there’s Hickman’s take on non-Human intelligence, which I must say really sticks it to you. Read it and find out. Available at all COOL comic book stores around.