I’ve been lettering all day and haven’t been able to fit in a blog… after
Randall Month I got pretty used to posting every Wednesday. Being that I work from home with only 3 cats to keep me company (all 3 are sitting on my desk right now for some reason), my main source of human interaction is internet message boards. I’m a pretty avid user of the Bendis Board but I also peruse various Star Wars message boards. (My screen name will stay a secret as I have the death sentence on 12 message board systems) The hottest topic of Star Wars message boards isn’t as much the polarizing Prequel Trilogy as it is the Original Trilogy and its various Special Edition versions.
Now I’m admittedly a Star Wars and George Lucas fan. The flicks inspired me beyond imagination and I admire the flannel-shirt-wearing curmudgeon for doing things his own way, even if people don’t like it and give him endless crap for it.
Sure the Prequels weren’t the originals but I still say they’re better than your average Hollywood studio fare… most of them are focus group tested generic flicks with 8 different screenwriters. I just watched X3 a few weeks back and how they managed to screw that up after 2 successful predecessors and literally volumes of amazing stories already written for them, I never figure out.
Back to the Special Editions topic, there’s a huge group of Star Wars fans that believe that Lucas has no right to go back and tweak the Original films. Some think the movies are so beloved that they no longer belong to him but rather to the fans, while others think that his tampering is ruining the films. Both of these theories I strongly disagree with.
On a much smaller scale when I look back at my old comics there isn’t a page that goes by where I don’t want to redraw or rewrite panels. I’m never happy with my work and I don’t think there are many artists who are. Comic book great Erik Larsen
wrote about it in his weekly column over at
Comic Book Resources. Even during Randall month I went back and added captions and tweaked dialogue and I’m sure I will again when I put the mini comic together. Creating is a never-ending process that, hopefully, is constantly evolving and improving. You learn more every time you do it. If a guy who made billions from his creation still thinks he can do better… that’s a pretty healthy thing.
As many great athletes have said when they retired… "once you feel like you’re not getting better it’s time to hang ‘em up."
Anyway, Chapter 2 of Randall is in the penciled stage. I’m not going to go back to weekly updates as originally planned but rather to one huge chapter update. Looking back, I think the story lost something when you could only read it one page per week… with the strip moving into more story I think it’s important to give all the information in one shot.
So, if you have yet to join the
LazyComix Mailing List… head on over and sign up. You’re guaranteed not to miss a page if you do.
Thanks for reading,
Randy
