Life is funny. I remember sitting in the train with Carmen and Saskia and I told them how there would be no more Imaginary Muse. I’m happy that Ulrik asked to work on the magazine for three issues and I got to tell three stories. Two were in the fridge for a long time. Still, I think they only got better, maybe I need a different metaphor.
I was thinking of starting my own comic magazine, because Imaginary Muse proved that it could sustain itself. For each issue there would be no follow up unless it sold enough copies. But making comics asks a certain level of commitment and patience and another hurdle was that most artist I heard talking about doing their own story wanted it to be for adults. And what I really wanted was starting a comic magazine fit for all ages. So that idea became another one for the fridge.
When Safa from CAPSLOC approached me with the idea to do a comic for lonely youth I thought I had to do it alone. Because of the hurdles mentioned before. I also didn’t think it was right to bring in people from outside the draw club. At the very least they’re the ones that should be asked first.
I knew Vik had the skills to contribute to the project. So he was the first one that came to mind. Freddy’s story is interesting. We presented three stories for the project, all of which had different situations of being lonely and different solutions for fix it. But then we were asked to add a fourth story. One that features social media. I had a plot, but Luciana came up with a better and then Vik took the plot and made it his own story. Complete with a whole research document. It was nice to see how that developed.
I had seen Lieneke draw very nice manga characters. So I wondered if she could handle a comic book story. The first story, which was referred to for a long time as the swings story, also had the youngest characters and I thought she could draw them in a cute way. She proved herself in both regards and even had the confidence to change the composition of some panels. She also got to name the trendy series of this universe: Super Jumpers!
Denver got to try something out for story three: story boarding. He also did a very good job. He made a very good first draft and came up with some challenges for me. When I knew I was going to draw this story I had my plot already in mind, but Denver decided to put a big part of the story on the actual move from old place to new place. In my mind that part was devoted to mamma Janice trying to kick Simon out of the house and make new friends. So I had to drop the images in my mind and step into the unknown with Denver. We had a working lunch in which we pretty much laid out 90% of the story. The character designs were also a nice collaboration with Denver giving the set up with some cool character designs and us using that as a base for the name and look of the characters you see in the final story.
Saskia had worked on a comic before (Metro 010), so my doubt was if she was willing to it again. As she knew the amount of commitent that is required, nonetheless she was happy to meet the challenge and succeeded. I knew Luciana is quite committed to her own project, but found another one happy to join the team. Luciana got into it and even came up with a title for story four.
Things came full circle yesterday (the moment I was writing this). Traveling back from a D&D session with Vik, Saskia and Carmen. Carmen had not read the comic yet, but I had brought it along. It’s always nice to see when things come across the way you intended. As Carmen was reading Saskia noticed and was reminded of all the moving boxes we had to draw for our stories.
Life is funny, because from the time I was approached for the project and until way past the presentation it didn’t occur to me that life had opened the fridge and gave me the opportunity to make a comic for kids with a team. I mean it’s not the serial comic magazine that I had in mind, but hopefully this comic will find it’s way to children and will help them to solve their loneliness or even inspire them to help others. So the dream became something better than I had in mind earlier.
As for doing a comic all by myself: Stay tuned True Believers! ;-)
More info for help and the online version of the comic
An interview with radio Capelle about the comic and draw club Capelle
Capelle news: Lonely Hearts Club Comics against loneliness under youth launched!
Municipality Capelle: Comic book against loneliness under youth
Het Kontakt: Capelle Comic against loneliness under youth launched!
