This time we look at some of the latest work by one of our favorites, David Dye: The forthcoming Bush Fire, and two stories written by Roger Stitson, Tales of the Blue Sage and Cut Down.
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Critiquing Comics #175: More from David Dye
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Tim and Mulele,
thanks once again for taking the time to read and critique my/our comics. A bloke can always appreciate unbiased reviews of his work. Regarding “Blue Sage” – the first chapter was written as an experiment to see what the public’s reaction to it would be. Bits of it were shown on Facebook and people seemed keen to see more. A publisher said he would print it in his periodical, but only one issue of his anthology mag was printed and by the time we realised the second edition wasn’t coming out Roger and I had prepared another 3 chapters. A year later nothing else was printed so Roger decided to finish it off in one last extended chapter. He was developing the characters and hoping to expand on them over another few issues. Roger says “Turning a sample 8-pages of an undeveloped story into a serial with chapters, then turning it off again in order to abbreviate and finish it in 5 chapters has created problems for it.”
“Cut Down” is more typical of Roger’s writing and a better story because it was written in a more organised manner.
Regarding “Bushfire!” it was inspired from an event from my firie days and quickly put together as a contribution to a charity anthology comic for the devastating bushfires here in Australia last summer. Initially the editors were happy with the length but they hired more and more contributors which resulted in the decision that it was too long to go in the printed product.
“THEND” is residue from my youth when myself and a school mate used to end our expressive writing compositions in this way. The French have “FIN”; we had “THEND”. Our teacher never commented on it … we thought we were funny 🙂
Thanks for your comment! The backstory on Blue Sage makes sense – a bit hard to write under those conditions, when the expected length of the story keeps changing!