Published on January 20th, 2017 | by Richard Boom
Sisterhood: How it all began…
I had a dream…
A daydream…
I wanted to have my own comic. Or even a label of my own, but Boom! Studios beat me to it, I guess! O wait, I wanted to have my own comicon, but darn KABOOM-Comicon sounded a tad too much like Mark Millar’s Kapow Comicon, I guess.
All kidding aside… (not really but perhaps I will get to that another time) I did have a daydream which came to bloom and is coming to life. And this is how it all started.
I started going to a comicon (FACTS in Belgium) in 2004 (I was 31 at the time) and this was the first time I took a sketchbook with me.
I have met artists before (Joe Jusko, Brian Pulido, Amanda Conner, Jimmy Palmiotti, Benitez, Finch) but never thought about anything else but to have a comic (and just ONE even, not a pile!) signed and personalized and not till I met Dwayne Turner (Spawn artist) did I ask for a sketch. But not for years later did I first end up with a sketchbook in my hand at a convention and started collecting sketches and commissions.
Mostly due to the fact that I got to working behind the tables at a comicon (FACTS again) arranging the Artist Alley and such and the network I created (as an art agent, or just arranging something for someone and getting a sketch in return) did my collection of sketches, commissions grow to such an extent that I can honestly say I am having difficulties remembering all the artwork.
I did want to have a special ‘theme’ in my sketchbook and since I was reading a cool Mummy-story (written by Justin Gray and drawn by Eliseu Gouveia) at the time, the theme was not a difficult one to come up with. I wanted something original and fun, and not be the next fanboy asking for a Superman or a character a certain artist is famous for. Not that there is anything wrong with that… it just was not me.
Fast forward to 150 Mummy-pieces and a few years later and I start developing an itch.
And that itch needed scratching.
I was not sure what that itch was until a few folks told me if I based the theme on “something” from “someone” and when I told them about the idea to have an ‘original’ sketchbook they would look at the art and say “this would be a cool comic”.
And actually, I think I agreed. But I never wanted to think past the love I have for the art of Eliseu and story of Justin.
A few years earlier a german artist (Sedat Oezgen) asked me to write a story for him. A comic which he could then do his personal magic with. I agreed in doing that and without any clue how to pursue writing comics, I just “did it”. And he loved what I did with the full script I turned in. The project silently died unfortunately as life just sometimes intervenes, but it sure made me happy at the time and when the time came that I realized what the former itching needed as scratch-pole I thought about that great experience and it all came together.
So I started thinking about it more and more as the weeks progressed, developing ideas, situations and characters and got excited about it. Until I realized that at thát specific moment in time I just could not find the time to really dig into it and produce a 32 or 36 or even a 22 page story.
I am not sure about the situation anymore, but it was the time I had too much going on, that is for sure. A dayjob, trying to build my Art Agency from a local adventure into a global-spanning entity. Something like that.
I was however very fortunate that I had this network of people and during the whole process I let of some steam with some folks and a few got their own mojo flowing, I guess you could say. Not before long Viktor Kruithof and Rodrigo Monteiro and Justin Lee Fox turned in some amazing stories and the art came in page by page, pinup by pinup, cover by cover…
And then… it all went silent for a long time.
I will talk about the silence, my collection, my friends and more in my next columns and hope you will accompany me through this time-travelling memoires as it lays the foundation to the undertaking of finally getting the comicbook into print somehow!
Artwork provided here by Eric Basaldua (colors Lahsido), Greg Capullo (colors Sean Ellery), Jinky Coronado, and Leroy Soesman.