Pilot Season: JOHNNY CHAOS layout

I've been buried under deadlines all week, but I found a little time to work on the next concept for my Pilot Season project, JOHNNY CHAOS. After looking through the old CHAOS material from my closet, I decided to make a few major changes, including turning Johnny into a teenager as opposed to the slightly cynical twenty-something from this projects earlier incarnations. I also found myself shifting his origin around a bit, since I'd stolen some of my ideas for Johnny and incorporated them into the FADE novel.

Now that I've got all of that sorted, here's a look at my design for the presentation piece I'm working up to go along with the new proposal. Hopefully I can steal a little time this weekend to do the finished piece.

Pilot Season: DESTINY WALKER

And here's the first of the four concepts for my Pilot Season project. For those who don't know, I've decided to take four projects that have been sitting in my closet for years and rework them into new proposals. Each week, I'll be putting a new one here on the blog, and whichever concept gets the best reaction will be turned into a 32-page one-shot.

First up, DESTINY WALKER, FREELANCE WITCH...

DESTINY WALKER in "The Horror of Hartley Hall"

For centuries, the women of Destiny Walker's family have protected humanity from the evil forces waiting in the shadows. Armed with ancient magicks and forbidden knowledge, they have single-handedly held back the tide of darkness.

But the power that Destiny's family wields in battle carries its own dangers, and Destiny's mother -- tempted by the promise of even greater power -- turned her back on humanity and joined forces with the darkness.

Now Destiny is forced to assume her mother's place as humanity's guardian. Wary of the magicks that corrupted her mother, Destiny relies more on her wits and twin .45s than her supernatural inheritance.

But her promise to never use magic is put to its greatest test when Destiny investigates the death of Lord Hartley, a collector of rare artifacts. Hidden beneath his ancient manor house is a terrible secret that could turn the tide in the war against the darkness.

A secret somehow connected to Destiny's own mother.

Pilot Season: DESTINY WALKER pencils

Here's a peek at the rough pencils for the DESTINY WALKER presentation piece. Usually, I'll rough in the basic shapes and then add some detail later in another round of pencils before I ink a page. For the Pilot Season pieces, I'm planning on just doing a slightly more detailed rough like this one, and then added any additional detail in the inks. We'll see how well it works out.

Pilot Season: DESTINY WALKER layouts

Started in on laying out a presentation piece for the DESTINY WALKER one-shot I'll be proposing as part of my Pilot Season project. Still playing with some different ideas, but after researching various clothing options from the period, I've at least settled on a basic outfit for her.

Pilot Season Preview (UPDATED)

Over the weekend, I finalized three of the four projects I'll be revising for my Pilot Season project. As I mentioned earlier, they're all based on pre-existing concepts from the boxes in my office, including one of my very first original characters, Johnny Chaos.

The first three projects are:

DESTINY WALKER, FREELANCE WITCH in "The Horror of Hartley Hall"

TWILIGHT & FENCHURCH in "The Black Pearl of Askotha"

JOHNNY CHAOS in "Ghost of the Machine"

I'm still debating what the fourth project will be. The 32-page limit is too short for a lot of the concepts I've been developing over the last couple of years, but there are still one or two that might work as short one-off stories.

I'll be posting the first Pilot Season proposal by the end of the week, so keep an eye out. Now I just need to find time to work up a presentation piece.

UPDATE: For the handful of people wondering what the longer projects that have been knocked out of the running were:

THE OCTOBER GIRL, a 90+ page graphic novel. Since I've already folded the main character into the FADE novel, this one will probably stay in the files unless I find a new approach to it that adds to FADE instead of taking away from it. And if I ever did it, I'd really rather have Michael Gaydos draw it.

FADE: SIGNS & WONDERS, a series of inter-connected short stories that began in NEGATIVE BURN. I abandoned this project three stories in when the FADE material started to go in a very different direction, but I still feel guilty that I never completed the story. This one I WILL do someday, but probably not until AFTER the novel is finished. And I'll have to completely redo the stories that have already appeared.

WALK THROUGH OCTOBER, a one-off graphic novella. This was one of my very first projects at Caliber in the early 90's. I put out a version of it that I wasn't entirely happy with (I was working for Disney and drawing an issue of STARMAN while working on it), and I've long been planning to expand it. I started work on a prose version of it that I intended to pitch as a heavily illustrated Middle Grade novel (I was hoping to talk the previously mentioned and disgustingly talented Michael Gaydos into doing the illustrations), but the idea for the FADE novel was coming together at the same time and I decided to focus on the new material instead of 'fixing' the old stuff. Still, I'd really like to do a new version of this story. It ties into FADE in an oblique way, so maybe after I'm done with the novel, I'll pull it out of the files again. I considered including this in the Pilot Season options, but if I did it as a straight-up comic book story, it would run to at least 90 pages, if not more.

My Own Private Pilot Season

So I've been thinking... I've got a bunch of potential work-for-hire projects coming down the pike, with a number of other possibilities floating around out there, but having dug all of this old art from projects that never went anywhere out of the closet, I'm thinking of taking one of them, re-doing it, and putting it out as a one-off special issue.

Whichever one I end up doing, it'll have to be short -- no more that 32 pages -- and relatively self-contained story-wise, which knocks a couple of contenders out of the running right off the bat. But that leaves at least 4 other concepts that I could develop into a one-shot.

The other limitation will be that the project has to lend itself to a quick and loose art style, since there's only so much time in the day and I would like to have a life outside of my job. Not to mention the fact that there are at least 2 people out there who will murder me unless I finish the Fade novel soon (Hi, Dan. Hi, Jim.). Luckily, the concepts I have in mind will all work with that kind of look.

So here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to take 4 of the concepts I've got sitting around and work up short pitches for each of them, along with a pinup or sample cover to give an idea of what the main characters would look like, and then post them here on the blog. Whichever idea gets the best response will be the project I end up doing.

Once the project is chosen, I'll start working on it in-between my other projects, posting the progress as I go along, from sketches to final pages. And if it turns out well, I'll see about getting it published through one of the many great small press publishers out there. And if there are any small-press publishers (or even big-press publishers) out there who want in on this, drop me a line and we'll set something up.

I'll post the first project proposal next week, so keep an eye out. I'm going to try and put a new one up every week, and have the final choice by the end of the month. Obviously, feel free to check them out and let me know what you think of the various options. The final decision will be down to you.