No Desperate Housewives or Boston Legal Makes Chris A Dull Boy

Right now I'm watching Voltron breakdance. Excuse me... I... I have something in my eye. It's just so beautiful..

I forgot to mention it on Friday, but I finished up my script for Gone To Texas, Phil Looney's Western anthology. The artist for the story is J.M. Hunter, and so far he's been great to work with. He's been really open to my art suggestions, and he's even helped out with some rough dialogue I wasn't satisfied with, so I think it's going to work out okay. Hopefully I'll have some concept art soon, and you can check it out here on the ISB.

The story's called "The Wages of Sin," and it's about a bad guy who becomes the sheriff of a small town out west, but then his past catches up with him in the form of a gunslinging Pinkerton detective. It's pretty cliche, I guess, but what're you gonna do with six pages? There are a couple bits of dialogue in it I like though.

Writing a six-page mini-comic was pretty hard for me. It's not a lot of space to work with, especially since it's a mini-comic (about half the page size of a regular comic). Warren Ellis once mentioned a rule Stan Lee came up with about not having more than twenty words of dialogue per panel, so I tried to stick with that since I don't want to cover up too much of the art. Also, I tried to keep to a six panel grid (usually four square panels and a fifth one running the width of the page) so there'd be enough space for Hunter to work. If nothing else, it'll give me an idea of how much I can cram into the comics page.

Before I wrote it, I watched Yojimbo, on loan from Chad (Criterion Collection, biznatch!). Since it was remade as A Fistful of Dollars (and is itself apparently an uncredited film version of Dashiell Hammet's Red Harvest), it had a definite western feel to it, and some awesome dialogue. For example:

SANJURO: Get me a coffin.
GONJI: Don't give up yet!
SANJURO: I'm not dying. I have quite a few men to kill first.

That is bad ass.

I wanted to put The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly on while I wrote to have some appropriate background noise, but the DVD I had of it didn't work. Wouldn't even load up a menu. Hopefully, I can exchange it for the special edition, which I believe contains over twenty-three restored minutes of Clint Eastwood, Eli Wallach, and Lee Van Cleef staring each other down.

Man. That movie's awesome. When Lee Van Cleef walks into that guy's house in the beginning and just sits down and starts eating the guy's soup like it's no big deal... I believe the phrase I want is "super-pumped."

Oh, and while we're on the subject, does anybody out there know what the name of this page's music is? I frigg'n love that piece, but I have no idea where I can find it. I'm pretty sure it's Ennio Morricone, and I've seen it used in everything from Kids in the Hall to, well, Red Dead Revolver, but I've never seen the title. It's driving me nuts.

Also, I'm thinking of adding a "Best of the ISB" links section to the sidebar there. Best being a relative term in this case. Thoughts?