I’m actually posting this earlier than usual. It’s only 10am here in CO where I drew this thing in my sketchbook on a kitchen table. I’d like to think I could work from anywhere in the world but the truth is I miss my studio :( - DW

I woke this morning face down in a bowl of eggnog and nothing but scraps of brightly colored paper to cover my shame and knew that my attempt to work through the holidays had been a spectacular failure.

Page 19 is still on the drawing table and the fact that I now have $140 in Borders gift certificates means it’s going to stay there.

I’m off to live at the bookstore. I plan to read, make impulsive purchasing decisions and drink Seattle’s Best until my gut bursts.

Predictably, next week Arrant and I will resume our break-neck pace of one page per week.

-dw

Are you slacking, resting or are you fortunate enough to be able to dictate how you will spend this portion of your life? Whatever the case please burn this latest OWT page into your mind. All the preceding pages are here as well, I’m confident you can figure out how to access them.

Gratefully,

Mistuh Dee Double You

Cartoonist Mario Boon of the upcoming series Texas Strangers (Image Comics) said this about this page over at The Engine: “That’s the smartest way to draw lyrics I’ve ever saw. I really get the feeling this is music that is intangible and can really go through you. Kudos! Tthis page would look great as a gigantic poster!

Thanks, Mario!

Hello children. If you don’t know WTF is happening in this story you should read the story so far. You can do this by clicking the chapter links to your right, neatly arranged by our loving blog daddy Steven Goldman.

Sincerely,

Your Electronic Babysitter

To catch-up and/or review what’s happened so far on 1 Way Ticket, look to the right and click on Chapter 1 and 2’s Catch-Up Pages

1 Way Ticket is written by Chris Arrant and illustrated by Daniel Warner

To catch-up and/or review what’s happened so far on 1 Way Ticket, look to the right and click on Chapter 1 and 2’s Catch-Up Pages

1 Way Ticket is written by Chris Arrant and illustrated by Dan Warner

Here we are, in second scheduled Skip Week between chapters 2 and 3 1 Way Ticket. Last week, I talked about music in comics…. this week, I want to talk about music in .. well, my life.

Amidst the late nineties, I was part of several local bands that some might say failed spectacularly. But in doing so, we had alot of fun. Degredation. The Silent Couple. The Velocet. Adagio. Memento Mori. Those were the names of the bands I played in. I started as a keyboardist due to 12 years classical piano training, but was quickly pulled into the allure of bass playing following the likes of Peter Hook (Joy Division, New Order) and Simon Gallup (The Cure). I’d always been a student of music, starting with my piano training but also going to my college majoring in radio broadcasting and culminating with performing in bands.

The initial allure was the performance in front of crowds, but once I was “in” I grew to love the practices and camraderie (or lack thereof) that permeated the relationships in a band. All the local bands practiced in a group of storage sheds (as homaged in Chapter 1), and on weekend nights it became a band camp of the best kind with up to 12 to 15 bands playing simultaneously in their badly sound-proofed sheds. It became a subculture of sorts for a few years, with pseudo-groupies coming to sit outside their favorite band’s shed to hear what they were working on, but more importantly, to be with them in this stripped down moment. From the grindcore bands such as Circle and Cede to the grunge throwbacks the Lunge Puppets to my own particular persuasion of gothy new wave / rock, it was all there. Even the cops routinely coming by to cite us on noise complaints.

It was these years that gave me such an interest in the “behind the scenes” or “inside baseball” approach to musicians. And although I ultimately fell out of actively playing in bands, those experiences still color the way I see and create things to this day.

That’s where 1 Way Ticket comes from.

Come back next Wednesday as we begin chapter 3 of 1 Way Ticket, where we learn the effects of Sully’s spectral guitar.

The idea of depicting a comic about a band has been something that’s followed me around for years… since 1995 to be exact. Not realized until 11 years later in my collaboration with Daniel Warner in 1 Way Ticket, those years did not hamper the image but colored and added to it. In those 11 years I’ve been in three bands, played 60+ shows, and went to thousands of band practices, wrote lots of comics, wrote lots period, and saw from the inside and outside the unique relationships brought about by being in a band. Getting that kind of feeling, those stories, into comics form is is both a challenge and a promise not just for music fans or for comics fans.

As a purely visual medium, comics would seemingly be an improper medium to depict the exploits of a group of people producing music: that which cannot be heard in it’s depiction. Pushing past that, the problem lies with how to visually, staticly, represent music. One of the earliest, and most widely recognizable, attempts at this would probably be Charles Schulz’ Schroeder in Peanuts.

Depicting musical notes and sheet music, even if people cannot read music, is commonly used to denote the playing of music in comics. While it does allude to music being played, I think everyone agrees that it falls far short of evoking the intended results of simulating music. Sound effects are also an option, but that effect has almost become a cliche of American comics and it’s hard to shake their influence and their hints at the 60s Batman TV series.

Trying to reach this synaesthesia of using static images to evoke music was one of the big concerns in making this comic, and one of the reasons I approached Daniel Warner to do it. Stoked by his artwork in the Cocopiazo miniseries from SLG, our initial conversations consisted of me and him talking about ways to depict music. Using music notes or sound effects weren’t discussed much, but it was more about reaching to the primal part of comic illustration: using color, lineweight and perceived motion to act as building blocks to get people in the mindset to imagine music. Probably the closest example to what we’re talking about (minus color) would be Bryan Lee O’Malley’s Scott Pilgrim series.

We’ve teased our technique in chapter 1 of 1 Way Ticket, and the upcoming chapter 3 (in 2 weeks) promises to show this off in full regalia.

But what do you think are good examples of music in comics?

To catch-up and/or review what’s happened so far on 1 Way Ticket, look to the right and click on Chapter 1 and 2’s Catch-Up Pages.

1 Way Ticket is written by Chris Arrant and illustrated by Dan Warner

Thus ends chapter 2, leaving unanswered questions like: Who is the person in the river? What does Webster want? What happens to Sully? Where can I buy that bad ass guitar? While we put the finishing touches on Chapter 3 to begin on November 29th, the next two Wednesdays will have some special content about music, comics, music in comics, and origins of 1 Way Ticket.

In parting, I’d like to give a shout-out to Criminal Records in Atlanta’s Little Five Points. An ideal mixture of music, comics and style all in one small cramped store. If you’re ever in Atlanta, you shouldn’t miss out.

New to the comic? Read the story so far

1 Way Ticket is written by Chris Arrant and illustrated by Dan Warner