Earthling! Does every story need to end with a fight?

Above is a page from my graphic novel for young readers called Earthling!. One of the issues that haunted me while creating Earthling! was my hope to end the adventure story without a hand-to-hand fight to the death between two main characters.

It is so easy to have your main characters fight to solve the big issue at hand in your story. But with plenty of Hollywood movies providing endless blood-soaked-battles, why do it in a young readers graphic novel?

I ended up with a chase. Laser blasts. Some threats. But for months my ending also had a big direct confrontation between Bud and Principal Lepton. Fisticuffs ensued. But I always thought it was the wrong way to go.

Ultimately I found a way for the tension to be released in an exciting fashion sans punches. It felt resolved and complete. The characters actions were true to who they were and I did it without a big fight. There is, of course, a confrontation, actually several confrontations. And the characters are allowed to see things from new perspectives. But I hope I accomplished that with as few punches as I could.

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Earthling! starts off 2013 with good karma

Earthling called out as a good read by Geekdad over on Wired. Nice way to end 2012 or start 2013…Whichever you prefer.

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Earthling! for TWO BUCKS!

Hurry, hurry, hurry, step right up! Get in line now for the digital deal of the winter solstice!

Amazon dot com has picked the ebook version of Earthling! to sell via their Kindle store for $1.99!

This is deal of a lifetime. Or should I say a ‘deal of a space-time’? What’s a Kindle? Why the Kindle is one of them tablet devices on which you can read books and look at the moving pictures and play games every waking hour!

Now Earthling!, being a snazzy 256 page graphic novel in full color, well, it will look best and work best on the Kindle Fire or Kindle HD. You know, something with color.

From now until December 22nd, I think, you can get the full graphic novel on the Kindle for a great price. I don’t know how many Kindle’s are out there, I don’t think Amazon tells us that. But If you have one, or know someone who does, why not pick up Earthling!? And I think…I’m not 100% sure, but I think you can buy it via the Kindle App on a Mac, transfer it to the Kindle reader on thei Pad and read it on an iPad as well.

So, Merry Christmas and Happy Chanukah and Happy New Year! Get Earthling! for $1.99 on the Kindle. Or is that ‘for’ the Kindle?

The New York Times said of Earthling!, ” “Earthling!” is the debut graphic novel by Mark Fearing, an illustrator and animator, and it’s an exhilarating hoot.” and “What’s pleasing about “Earthling!,” and will be especially so to tween readers, is how adrenalized and fast paced it is: loads of Whoosh!, Scree! and Thunk! action in the service of suspenseful, inventive plotting.”

So get your digital copy now!

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A new Earthling! review.

Here’s a newish review of Earthling! at books4yourkids.com. I know, I know…I’m not supposed to repost reviews. I’m trying to not even read reviews. I’ve read bad reviews of some of the books I’ve done and I think about them for weeks.The reviewer may be right or may be wrong. But either way the book is done and there’s nothing I can do. So it’s better too glance at them for a moment at the very most.

Anyway, this is a long review featuring lots of art. I love that the art gets a chance to be seen by perspective readers and buyers and I like that the reviewer appreciated that Earthling! is a BIG story. I wanted to craft a big adventure story. Not a slap-stick filled fart-joke fest. Not that there’s anything wrong with those though. I just didn’t want to do that. And I think I cut out the one fart joke. My hope is that Earthling! is a book a young reader will pick up and get lost in. Maybe think about later. And hopefully something they will finish. It can provide a good sense of accomplishment for a young reader to get to that last chapter.

I just finished reading a book I’ve been reading for a month or so. It can be quite sad to flip that last page and feel like your friends are gone. That’s how you know you’ve read a good book.

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A newish Earthling! review.

Here’s an Earthling review from a book blog. I have friends who keep an eye out for reviews. They tell me about the good ones. I try and stay away from most reviews of my books. It’s not that I think I did a perfect book and all reviewers are wrong. It’s just that in typical artsy-fartsy personality fashion, I don’t need to find additional reasons to doubt myself.

From the review:

“I intially saw only the black and white advanced reader copy, but now I’ve also seen the full color version and it’s just as awesome as I thought it would be. I am usually a reluctant fan of graphic novels, let alone stories about aliens, but this book is fun, silly, and entirely engaging…Fearing’s drawing style is detailed without being overwhelming and clever without being coy.”

Visit the Earthing! website!

Buy the book on Amazon.com.

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Earthling! Wherefore art thou?

The image above is a blueprint of Cosmos Academy. The school that Bud ends up attending in Earthling!. Click on it and you can actually read what it says. Go ahead, I’ll wait while you click on it.

OK. You’re back now. Let’s move on.

Earthling! will be out soon, and this is your reminder that I will be signing copies and drawing random pictures and doing an alien worlds craft with kids at Green Bean Books on Saturday, June 30th at 2PM.

And if you are saying, “I’d sure like to know what the book looks like and maybe read a little before making a purchase.”  Well, go over to the book’s website and you can read the first chapter online!

Or read a review by Win Wiacek from when the book was released in the UK in February.

Or go visit Ken Min’s blog, He’s the guy that colored the entire book and made me redraw stuff.

Earthling! is my attempt to write a Sci-fi epic for readers as young as 5. So yeah, it’s crazy, right? So order a copy from Green Bean Books or your favorite bookseller as soon as you can. Because you know, I’m having my mom buy up as many copies as she can.

There is a Facebook page for it, but honestly I haven’t done much with that. I understand I am supposed to push it, but I’d rather have that conservation here on my blog. Heck, I’d rather you buy a copy than LIKE the books page on Facebook. Double heck, maybe in a few more weeks we can all pitch-in together and buy Facebook as it’s not exactly a company with a growing value.

Now back to my regularly scheduled diatribes.

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How I Made a Graphic Novel – Part 2?

Yes, the title of this post has a question mark. I have posted a few times about how I developed and created Earthling!, my graphic novel due out in July from Chronicle Books (Order a copy now! Like the book on Facebook! Read the first chapter for FREE on the Chronicle Book website! Visit the official Earthling! website!…Ok. I’m done now…)

This post will examine the development of a single page, from rough to final, full color art. I am leaving out most of the technical gobblygook. Resolution, file formats ETC.

It all starts with the manuscript. The story developed while working with my friend Tim Rummel and notes from my editor at Chronicle Books. Once the script was given an ‘OK’, no easy feat in itself, I started in on rough art.

As I was the writer AND artist on this project I didn’t worry about breaking the script down to what illustration goes on each page. I hoped that I was doing a good job of doing that when I wrote it. I was picturing the book as I worked.

Below is the ‘final’ rough sketch. This ‘final rough’ is built from sketches that have been revised and scanned in to design the page. I drew most pages 2 or 3 times. I sketched the entire book out once before revising.

This is the black line art, or inked page. BTW this file is at 1200 dpi, at 100% of final printing size. So the art was approx. 6.5 x .8. I’ve added the details and refined the rough.

Below is the color only file. This was done by Ken Min after I sent him a 400 dpi file on the line art.

Below is the text file. This was put atop the final art files when the magic-printing-gnomes made it all work on paper. Most of the thanks for that goes to John Lind, who designed the book, and the good folks at Chronicle Books.

And below is the complete page. With crop marks.

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Earthling! Reviews from the UK.

This is a toot-your-own-horn-while-you-still-can post. So toot-toot. Earthling! has received some nice reviews in the UK recently. The book was released in the UK in February, but it won’t be available in the US until July. Earthling! is a young reader graphic novel I have been working on since 1972. OK. That’s not true. But it did take a bit of time to get done!

This one is from Christopher King. Check it out here.

Here’s an excerpt:

‘…What follows is a thoroughly enjoyable and engaging graphic novel for children, with a commendable plot based around themes of science and the needless misunderstanding and paranoia of unfamiliar cultures.’

Here’s one from Win Wiacek. You can read it here, and by the magic that is clicking be taken to the review. I love clicking.

Here’s an excerpt:

‘Funny, thrilling, wildly imaginative and utterly engrossing, Earthling! blends elements of Tom Brown’s Schooldays with Joe Dante’s Explorers and Harry Potter’s best bits with the anarchic wit of Rocko’s Modern Life or Camp Lazlo to produce a delightfully compelling adventure yarn with endearing characters and a big, big payoff. This is a book any sharp, fun-loving kid can – and should – read… and so should the rest of you…’

And here’s another review here on Readaraptor.

And an excerpt:

‘I really would recommend this graphic novel to all kids in the 8-12 range, especially if they have a thing for aliens and space. Bud and the friends he makes have to fight the baddies and get Bud back to earth without his identity being uncovered and it makes for a great adventure. If you kids like comics and great illustrations they will probably love this one too, it was a great read and I’ll be passing it on to my stepson to see what he thinks of it too!’

And one more. This from the blog, We Love This Book.

And an excerpt:

‘This is a very good example of one-shot graphic novels for the under-twelves. The page layouts are easily readible; the characters and the author’s own inking are boldly and simply defined while never being over the top….The plot is great fun, covering as it does the propaganda against Earth on board the school, the sport, the escape plans – and Bud’s new-found life with his new alien friends. It’s a very successful debut piece from this creator – it ticks all the boxes and shows great promise for future works.’

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250 pages of graphic novel later…

Earthling! (my graphic novel, being released by Chronicle Books in July of this year) is now a few months behind me.

It was a very rewarding experience and if you like world building, there is nothing comparable, if you happen to have the 4 years to work on it.

Enough time has passed since I finished Earthling! that new graphic novel ideas are starting to take shape. It’s like any difficult task you face, the further you are from it, the more willing you are to tackle it again (For those who have children, you will immediately get this point!). You learn from every project you complete and that creates a desire to try it again. To make it better next time. Or at least not worse.

I recently read some GN’s I have sitting in my shelf. What I found odd was that the books that stuck with me, are not the ones most (critics, reviewers…) would consider the best written or the best illustrated.

The ones that stuck with me are the ones that created the strongest reality distortion field. The ones that I enjoyed the most had an internal coherence that I find difficult to describe. The combination of words and pictures can create a very persuasive alternate reality. I suppose this isn’t that different from some critics saying Stephen King isn’t a great writer from a technical perspective. But to most readers who pick up a novel by him, the characters and story force you to keep turning the pages. Whether he is an accomplished writer from a technical perspective or not, the greatest hurdle a writer faces is creating a story that makes people want to turn the page.

Many of the graphic novels I loved are not technically perfect, but they left me with such a strong lasting impression they became my favorites.

Some of the best written and drawn GNs (like Ordinary Victories by Manu Larcenet ) made my favorites list but others stay with me because the whole is greater than the sum of their individual elements. There is something unique about the depth of the world created in a graphic novel that becomes the most important aspect.

It just makes it that much harder for me to define exactly why I love the ones I do. Nothing can draw you in and surround you quite the way a good graphic novel can. They allow the total immersion you get in a novel but also speak to the brain with images like film does.

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NASA discovers Cosmos Academy?

OK. Totally misleading headline. But NASA is having a new conference about materials from beyond the solar system on Tuesday the 31st. Maybe they found something from Cosmos Academy!

What’s CosmosAcademy? Well, if you read Earthling! (due out in July from Chronicle Books) you’ll find out. But the NASA press conference should be interesting in any case. Keep up with it at LiveScience.com. And read the first chapter of Earthling! online at Chronicle Books! Then you too will know what Cosmos Academy is!

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