The Cutting Room

The Cutting Room

Understanding...

Monday, October 12, 2009

When E and I conceived this comic, I was a bit nervous about decapitating The Master Explainer, the putative Scott McCloud. You see, he’s the guy that inspired this webcomic to begin with. This summer, I reread his seminal book Understanding Comics. It was even better than I remembered, so I picked up two of his other works: Reinventing Comics and Making Comics.

They left me so charged, so electrified, so utterly inspired, that I called E and begged him to give me some scripts so that I could start making webcomics. E agreed, and we started doing this thing we’re doing. And one day, I sent him a loose outline for a strip featuring my hero. And the next day, I got a revised strip returned to me featuring my hero’s beheading.

What did I do? What could I do? I emailed Scott McCloud, asking for his permission for a friendly decapitation. Surprisingly, the man agreed to it and wished me luck. How frigging cool is that? So, here’s the strip. I’ve never beheaded someone that I respect so much before.

You want to reinvent comics now, don’t you?
-C