jasonfranks

 Cover concept for a GN  called DEUCE I am working on with Nic Hunter.



-- JF

 
Last night a friend asked me what the main project I was working on was, and I didn't have an answer--it varies from week to week. In the process of explaining this I became a bit startled by how buried I am in writing projects. Here's a quick rundown:

Prose:
Just submitted the reformatted Bloody BLOODY WATERS, with newly streamlined chapter 13. It's looking nice and svelte at 100,000 words.

FAERIE APOCALYPSE: Back onto that next month. The last chapter needs a new draft to bring it in line with the current state of affairs and then probably one more quick proofing before it's ready to submit.

Gotta knock out a new story, about 7000 words, for BADASS FAERIES 3. Not sure if Stevo is coing to cowrite or not this time. I've got the concept and the direction nailed down and I'll probably start next month.

Another novella I'll  be starting soon as I get details from the editor. 

XDA ZAI is backburnered until all fo the above are out of the way, although I did produce a short story for an anthology submission that will probably become a chapter last month. Can't wait to get back onto ithis.

Comics:
KAGEMONO is coming along nicely; I have about 60 pages in hand. Three more stories are in progress and the book will go to print once I have them.

MCBLACK: Dave is inking. All of the drawing is done on my end, I'm just doing final cleanup on the last 12 pages... fixing backgrounds or small details. 

THE SIXSMITHS: Cooking along. Look for the site to launch on the 30th, right about when we expect to brace the publisher. I'll be at Kinokuniya bookstore in Sydney on Free Comicbook Day (May 2nd) promoting the project.

DEUCE: is currently in Nic's hands. Don't have a deadline as yet, but I'm hoping I'll have some pages to show around at Supanova in June.

CERBERUS: Project with Tom Bonin that I've been keeping close to my chest. I just finished the first draft of #2. Tom will start drawing some sample pages soon as he gets caught up with his other obligations.

UNGENRED: Status unchanged. I will probably write one more short for this, but the material I already have is, I think, sufficient to complete the book. 

-- JF

I've been fairly quiet on LJ lately, but there's a lot going on. Here's a bit of an update on the main stuff that's underway:

KAGEMONO 
The 2009 book is logistically the biggest project I've worked on and it needs constant tending, but it's coming along well. Most of the artists are producing pages and I even have the cover underway before the last minute, for the first time in history.  This is also logistically the biggest project I have put together. Don't have a final pagecount yet, but it's going to be in the 70-90 page range. I'm not sure what to call this one, since it combines what was going to be the #3 and #4 issues (and then some) and I'm changing the format. Perhaps it will get a subtitle instead of a number. Not sure if this is it for Kagemono or not, but if it does continue it will be come an annual book. 

DEUCE
Should ramp this up in a month or so, once Nic finishes his obligations for Kagemono.

MCBLACK
I'm going through the last issue fixing problems in the pencils. At this point I've rethought and redrawn two entire pages and there's probably one more that needs similar treatment. I'm still way ahead of the inker, so I don't feel like I'm farting around too much. After 3 years I am quite keen to get the bloody thing out.

UNGENRED
Pencils for my story are finished, Cory Laub will do the inks. Renan just needs to put the greywashes on his triptych story.  That leaves one last story outstanding, which  J. Marc will be drawing.

THE SIXSMITHS
Marc is also working away drawing THE SIXSMITHS. It's coming along nicely and we'll be pitching it soon. I hope to launch the website simultaneously; more details ont he project when that occurs.

FAERIE APOCALYPSE
Making progress, but it's painful and slow. Final polishing is never fun, and this project in particular requires every bit of attention I can throw at it. I'm still in the third chapter, which has always been the longest and most complex part of the book.

And... some more stuff, some of which it's too early to talk about and some of which it's too late. But I think that's enough for thispresent moment.

I hope that's not too many plates int he air, but any way you spin it, it looks like I'll have a pretty big output this year.

-- JF

DEUCE:
Dramatis Personae

George Bodenham
A businessman who may have had some dealings with some mafia guys… but probably not. Deuce’s first victim.

Moira Bodenham
George’s widow. Moira’s completely shattered by her husband’s death; all she can do is cry and cry and cry… but god help anyone who interrupts her.

Richard Bodenham
George’s brother and business partner. Richard is macho and tough-talking, but also nervous and emotional—he goes from depressed to paranoid as the story progresses.

Sharon Bodenham
Smart, impatient and resourceful, Sharon works in the IT department at a university. You might call her 'feisty', but you'd probably be understating it a bit. You might say that she's difficult to be around, but even though she'll brook no nonsense she cares about her friends and her husband, Richard. Sharon will snap at you if you if you waste her time, but she keeps her head in a crisis and she doesn't hesitate to act.

Alvin Winch
A friend and former employee of Richard and George’s, Alvin’s a family man who has gone on to work for a big firm. Even so, George helped him acquire an account with the Tortelli Holdings, who might, just maybe, be mafia. Or, you know, just kind of Italian. Alvin’s a bit of a wuss, but he’ll do what he can to protect his family and friends.

Lydia Winch
Alvin’s wife, Lydia, is a bit of a Stepford model. She’s perky and upbeat and resilient, no matter what.

Well, maybe not quite.

Ali Nahas
Ali’s a single guy a bit younger than the rest of the group. He’s a 3D artist by day and a ladykiller by night. Lock up your daughters.

Detective Remmel
Police Detective Remmel is practically retarded. He’s slow, stupid, and obvious. He’s the joke of the Homicide department, and no other cops will partner with him. Naturally, he’s in charge of the investigation into George’s death.

Deuce
Deuce kills people for pleasure. He doesn’t speak, but he whistles or hums sometimes. He likes coffee and cigarettes, although he doesn’t smoke and he doesn’t appear to eat or drink—he treats them like props. He’s really hard to see, although he’s not invisible... it’s almost as if people pretend he isn’t there. Traffic lights turn green for him. Locked doors open without him asking them to. The bad guy, the black sheep, the bastard right royal, the bad dude... you love to hate, except you don't really hate him, because he is far too cool. Deus ex Machina; a walking plot device, he knows the story is about him and he loves every second of it.

Deuce isn’t exactly the God in the Machine; he’s the Deuce.

And now about five thousand words from Nic:

Kay, so, here's the low down:

DEUCE
Script: Jason Franks
Art: Nicholas Hunter

FORMAT:
Approx a miniseries or a graphic novel comprised of  6 x 22 page chapters, standard US format (or perhaps 3/4 size). Full bitchin' colour. Note: pagecount is an estimate.

GENRE:
Suspense/ drama/ horror/ crime/ weird shit

AUDIENCE: Mature readers. Coarse language and nasty, nasty violence.

PRODUCTION/ PUBLICATION: I have a particular publisher in mind, but I can see this book at a number of others. We'll pitch once we have 22 pages in hand.

HIGH CONCEPT:
Deconstruct the conventions of a slasher movie without irony.

If you've seen Michael Hanneke's FUNNY GAMES you're on the right track. (The original version, anyway; I didn't see the English language remake but I believe it's shot-for-shot the same)

PLOT
When George Bodenham is murdered on his way to work by a maniac with an Uzi machinegun, there are a lot of questions to be answered. The event took place in broad daylight, on a busy street in the middle of town during rush hour... but nobody saw it happen and nobody remembers the assailant.

George's friends and family don't know how to handle it. What could George have been involved in? Who else is involved? What the fuck? They're ordinary, decent people; young married couples mostly, they have no idea how to deal with this. To make matters worse, the police detective assigned to the case is a borderline retard. They try to deal with the death as best they can and go back to their lives, but it's too late.

The murder, 'Deuce', is amongst them, wandering through their lives unseen and unnoticed-- not really snooping, just hanging around, waiting until it feels like the right time to kill another one. And then another.

Who is this guy? He doesn't hide. He doesn't speak. He just walks around, plain as the day, doing whatever he likes... and he's really lucky. Traffic lights turn green for him. Doors unlock themselves for him. Guns misfire when they're pointed at him. He's just some deuce... excuse me, deus ex machina horror movie villain, right?

But that does that even mean?

OBJECTIVES:
The first objective is to show a realistic view of ordinary people coping with terrible events, without resorting to melodrama. No former green berets, no dark secrets, no soap opera dramas... these people are citizens. They're flawed, they're weak, but they're honest, law abiding types who are just settling into their lives as adults. Some of them are more resourceful than others; some of them seem as if they could be heroes, in the right circumstances... or they think they could be... but those circumstances are the sort that only occur in the movies.

The other objective is to tell a scary fucking story without using any of the standard slasher movie toolkit. No hiding in the shadows, no startle effects, none of that shit where the bad guy moves really fast when he's off camera so he can crop up somewhere unlikely. When Deuce bends the laws of physics it's brazen: we see it happen right in front of us.

Next up: character sheets and a couple of Nic's production sketches.

I have a project called DEUCE in the works. Written by me, art by the omnipotent Nic Hunter (my collaborator for the WORK! anthology and a couple of other short stories).

Ok, I admit it--DEUCE isn't really a new project. It started out a screenplay that I wrote when I was studying script writing in college. But it's been a pet project ever since, in various different incarnations.  It's one of those projects that I just need to see through.

I was talking to Nic about pitching a GN or a miniseries and this was the concept he liked best out of the dozen or so I hit him with, so I reformatted the first part of the script into comics form. He liked it, so I turned out a complete first issue.

It's a difficult piece. Nic did layouts for the first issue/chapter and there were problems. It's a challenging story to draw as well as to write and I have to admit, Nic kicked my arse when it came to doing his part. I rewrote it, he redid the thumbs and offered some new ideas. I rewrote it again, he went and adjusted everything yet again...

We spent two months planning out the first issue, but we've now settled on the layouts and Nic is off drawing it. I think it's looking shit hot; couldn't be happier with it. In the meantime, I've a first draft of the second issue down.

It helps that I have the screenplay version, but it's really just as much work to reformat that into comics as it is to write new script--there are traps to fall into when making the transformation and I think I hit every single one of them in the first issue. Hopefully I've avoided most of them this time around; I will continue to blog about that effort as I go, and I'll also show off some pages as they come in.

Peace out,

-- JF