Thought I'd share some of the art from a pitch I did last year with Patric Reynolds and letters by the incredible Jeff Powell. Jeff has done book design and lettering for just about everyone but I first noticed his work on Olympus from Image, his lettering on that book was outstanding. Patric is currently doing work for Dark Horse. He did an Abe Sapien one shot, a Serenity one shot and just completed the Let Me In adaptation. Patric is an amazing artist and during some time in-between projects last year, he was kind enough to do these pages. Sadly we couldn't get anyone to bite.
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The story is called "Blinded" and was to be a three issue mini-series. The story centers on a man named David White who has protected the city for the last 25 years as the superhero, The Blue Bomber. David is retiring and being honored at a banquet for his service to the city. Everyone who is everyone is at this banquet and during his acceptance speech something in David snaps and he uses his powers to take the entire room hostage. The three issues deal with finding out what caused David to turn on the people he's spent his life protecting while the police to try to figure out to diffuse the situation and ensure no one gets hurt in the process.
Patric's art on these pages was everything I had hoped for with this series, however looking back on it now, I think we chose the wrong 5 pages to present. These five pages really make the book like your standard superhero book when that couldn't be farther from the truth. Anyone who knows me knows that I don't read many super hero books. My pull list hardly ever has anything from Marvel or DC in it. As a writer, right now I really have no desire to ever write those kind of books, that's not my goal in comics. I would only do a book about superheroes if I could do something different and I thought I did something a little different with Blinded.
One of my favorite writers is Aaron Sorkin. Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip remains one of my ALL TIME favorite TV shows. After watching that I got hooked on the West Wing and then hooked on Sportsnight and Blinded has something in common with all three of these shows. While all three shows were about a specific subject matter (politics, late night sketch comedy, sports) that's not what those shows were about. And while Blinded has superheroes in it, it's not a superhero book. In fact the few pages we pitched are about the only pages in the entire three issues that actual show him doing any superhero kind of stuff.
To me, Blinded is the struggle of a man who's gone through a horrific event in his life and is trying to deal with it. This man just happens to have super powers. These pages are a flash back to one example of him doing his job (yes in this world, being a hero is a job. He has a desk, he works for the city and he has weekends off...) because I wanted to show people what that was like for him, but the story really is about who David is as a person and being a hero is part of what makes David who he is, so we had to show some of that.
So looking back on it, I think we should have chosen different pages to pitch because I don't think the true nature of Blinded came across in the pitch. Patric suggested the pages because they were the few pages in Issue #1 that actually had some action. But you live and you learn.
However working with Patric on these pages, seeing him bring this story to life, even the very short life it had has been one of the most fun times I've ever had as a writer so far and I can't thank him enough for taking time out of his crazy busy schedule to do this. It means more to me than I think he knows.
We were rejected by my first choice publisher, but another major publisher said they really liked the art and the writing, they just don't publish superhero books.
Who knows maybe one day we can find a way to bring this story to life?
-jesse
See the pitch pages HERE.
