I’m a big fan of Frank Frazetta, but I’ve never attempted to draw in his style…until now:
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Godland Finale Signing at New Dimension Comics Pittsburgh Mills Mall
on December 10, 2013 at 7:55 pmPosted In: Blog
6:00-8:00 PM at New Dimension Comics at Pittsburgh Mills Mall in Tarentum. Meet the co-creator of Godland, Tom Scioli, and celebrate the release of the Godland Finale, culminating the series’ epic run.
My box of Godland Finales.
It’s the culmination of almost ten years worth of hard work. This is a nice moment.
Five copies of Godland Finale, when lain side-by-side, form a Decuple-Page Spread. If Jack Kirby didn’t invent the Double-Page Spread, he at least perfected it in every imaginable way. Jim Steranko later resurrected and amplified the Kirbyesque Double-Spread, before creating the Quadruple-Page Spread, which necessitated the purchase of 2 copies of Strange Tales to view it. Frank Miller and Jim Lee did a Sextuple-Page Spread in All-Star Batman and Robin, which actually folded out, so you only had to buy one copy. Alan Moore and J.H. Williams III took it as far as you can with the finale to Promethea which, when liberated of its staples, unfolded into a giant double-sided continuous image poster. The next step would be a graphic novel that, when you break its spine, unfolds into a giant continuous-image quilt.
Here’s the fourth draft:
The story is coming together. I just finished going over it to figure out the fifth draft. The big challenge here was “untangling the middle.” I have A beginning. I have AN ending, but the further the story gets from those two poles, the more tangled and hazy the events are. Reading through it, I was able to figure out ways of grouping events and a general order for them to unfold.
I had a substantial amount of lead time and tried to do as much work figuring out the shape of the entire span of the first big arc of the series. That lead time is starting to erode, and I’m glad I did all this preliminary work, because a story this big, with this many characters would be very intimidating had I started cold when presented with the deadline for the first issue.
I just approved the printer’s proofs for Godland #37. It will be in stores December 11, 2013. If you’ve never read an issue of Godland before, please start with this one. Godland Finale is a heady, intoxicating, hyperactive comic that nothing, not even the preceding 36 issues, can prepare you for. The closest I can come to describing it is as a fusion of two of my favorite Futurist comics: Hunger Dogs and Dark Knight Strikes Again, but even that doesn’t do it justice.
One of my favorite things about collaboration is the way the sum of the parts add up to something that could not be achieved otherwise. The collision of the various elements have created a visual reading experience that is genuinely new, the likes of which may never be seen again.
I want to thank my co-creator Joe Casey, colorist Brad Simpson, Letterers and Graphic Designers Rus Wooten and Sonia Harris for making this “Very Special Issue” very special. Also, thanks to Jonathan Chan and the Image Office for getting this Finale into production as quickly as was humanly possible.
See you on 12/11/13.
