So this is my second blog and from the limited response to my first blog, I am concerned. To my knowledge the only people who have actually viewed this blog are my wife and brother, and that is just a little depressing, but as I always say, "it is what it is," so let’s keep trying. To all of you who may join my blog here and after, I urge you to read my first post and comment on it.
In continuation to my first blog, I have been thinking about this new world in which our hero resides and I have come up with some city names and would like the thoughts of all of you. Here are some of the city names and how I picture them in comparison to the cities of our world:
Empire City: Equivalent of New York City. Notably the home city of Gabriel Messenger (Angel of War). Phoenix City: Equivalent of Chicago. Emerald City: Equivalent to Wichita/Kansas City. Angels Port: Equivalent to Los Angeles.
Also I feel that it is important for a comic book company to have heroes that reside in the same city to interact on a consistent basis without there being a feeling of them being part of the same book. I think I would like to introduce one or two other characters that would not necessarily be tied to this book but would reside within Empire City. I am thinking of another younger character, possibly non-super powered to introduce, as well as an older character with super-powers to introduce. I think the older character is important to help establish a history of superheroes in the world. I am struggling to avoid this character being too much like characters from other companies. I think it should be someone that is used to working alone and is somewhat anti-hero like; someone whose personality forces Gabrielle to question whether he wants to be a hero. If any of you out there have ideas feel free to submit them, I may not use them, but I do want to know what people would actually want.
On a side note, in regards to our current government spending, I would like to say a few words. No matter how people sugar coat it, Obama is pro welfare, and that is a socialist ideal. Now I am not going to say that he is trying to make our country socialist or is even in favor of that, but what I will say is that most of us can look around us and even in our own lives and see the signs that there is less and less responsibility and accountability in not only this country, but the world. I am what I would call a Conservative, by which I mean I believe that government should be as small as possible and should only be responsible for regulating interactions between states, multi state and multinational trusts (companies that have a monopoly), foreign policy and our military. If we as Americans want health care then we should be obtaining it through our state governments and we should be willing to pay more taxes to obtain it, otherwise, go and get it yourself. If our country really wants to fix health care, then make it a competitive business again. Stop allowing health insurance agencies and doctors to work together to monopolize the treatment process and make them compete for our business.
The worst part of this stimulus package is that there is very little relief for those of us who did the right thing, and got appropriate mortgages, has had jobs, have worked and raised families and have not put ourselves in a position to need all of this government support. I want to remind everyone that this country was built on the individual’s ability to succeed, not the government's ability to coddle people. We all have to start taking some responsibility in the fact that we put our trust and money in these people's hands.
Lastly, though I know none of them will ever read this, I address our administration. As someone who has worked as a child abuse investigator and has seen the welfare system first hand, let me tell you something... if you give people an inch they will take a mile. The people that are going to go out and take advantage of all of this money are most likely the very ones that deserve it the least. For those of you who do not think parents and will have kids just for the money they get from welfare think again. I have worked with families that have forced drugs on their kids, and talked poorly to and about them, and even been instigators in their problems at school, because if they get them diagnosed as ADD or ADHD they get an extra check from our government each month. You want to fix our fiscal problems, then this country needs to readdress the welfare system.
Sorry, I know I get worked up sometimes, but I just cannot help it. I will say that I know that the majority of people mean well and try to do the right thing, but in a society where we are becoming more and more dependent on our government every year, I am becoming more and more cynical.
I will try to limit this kind of stuff. Thanks for reading and PLEASE get the word out and tell your friends, if you like this blog.
JP
P.S. Now this is a good idea: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29891754/.
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
Introduction
Hello to all that are reading this...
My name is Jason Padua and I am an odd fellow with a lot of ideas but rarely any follow through. My latest adventures are this blog and the company I would like to eventually grow from it.
I would like to start a comic book business that could possibly be a model for the industry going forward. I want to build a comic book company that is almost solely online. Readers would subscribe to the comic book cite and have access to online versions of the books. The books would still be hand drawn but rather than looking at reprinted versions of the artists rendering, you would see the actual drawings digitally scanned and posted. Instead of having to search comic book shops to find the issue that everyone else says is the corner stone of a character, this would be easily accessible with just a simple search.
Now this is only the very beginning of the process. The name is only a working model right now and is based on my children's names: Raven and Talon. I am what I think to be a decent writer but, I am definitely no artist, so I will soon be developing a web page and linking this blog to it. When I do I will be looking for artists to submit samples of their work and maybe become the first of my new venture. I have already started the first issue of the first character and would like to introduce you all to Gabriel Messenger:
Angel of War #1
Origins
(Opening frames: it is night time in an unknown city. The landscape is dark, but potted with lights from buildings all around. Flashes of lightning give the reader a glimpse at a very large and dark Gothic cathedral. There is a boy, seventeen years of age sitting on the edge of the building. The boy is scarred down the left of his face and has what appears to be a tattoo of angel wings on his shirtless back. He has long, curly, jet black hair, bright green eyes, and his skin is very pale. He is very muscular but still very thin and awkward. Lying nest to him is what appears to be some sort of weapon but the reader cannot see it fully.)
Gabriel Messenger (yellow narration): “You know it becomes apparent in every person’s life that they must analyze the events that have led them to where they are. When I stop to consider where I was a week ago to where I am now, it is amazing how much has changed in seven days versus the last seventeen years of my life. I guess to really understand though I have to go back farther than all of that…to the very day I was born.
(Second set of frames/Flashback: Inside of a hospital we see a woman giving birth. It is clear that she is in a lot of pain and having trouble. There are multiple people in the room, but no family or friends apparent. The woman is very young, approximately 18 years of age. As the frames progress the doctors are running in and out and she is giving birth. There is an extensive amount of blood as the woman appears to be hemorrhaging.)
Gabriel Messenger (Narration Continues): My mother was only a child herself. She was no one special from what I know. Years of my asking questions of my grandmother have led me to understand that she was a beautiful girl who never felt understood. I guess no teenager feels understood, but that’s life. My mother had me when she was only 18 but died at the time of my birth. (Final frame shows a nurse holding a child and doctors circling the woman who is now unconscious.) Though I never knew her I miss her….
(Third set of frames/Flashback 2: Frames now show an older woman crying and holding a young child at a funeral. There are several people at the funeral, and they comfort her. The child is seen but is sleeping. The child is exceptionally pale, and while the other attendees are trying to comfort the old woman, they shy away from the baby.)
Gabriel Messenger (Narration Continues): I guess my grandmother could have blamed me for my mother’s death, but she never did, nor did she allow me to blame myself. She missed her as much as I did, though they did not talk for the last two years of my mother’s life. I think that hurt my grandmother most…that and the world’s aversion to me.
(Fourth set of frames/procession of flashback’s in single frame progression: First frame should depict a child about age three sitting on a stoop with an old woman watching over him. The child should be very disconnected from the world, while focusing on a small leather bound book.)
Gabriel Messenger (Narration Continues): I guess your wondering about my father…well so am I. My grandmother has no idea who he was. My mother lived in an apartment and my grandmother collected all of her things, but there was no mention of anyone who could be my father. She did have a journal she kept, but her last entries never seem to make sense to anyone.
(Second frame/Possibly third as well: The reader is looking over the shoulder of a ten year old boy, while he is at the play ground. All the other children can be seen playing but he is under a tree by himself, clearly avoided. If possible one of the pages should be seen with a woman’s writing on it; otherwise, entry could be depicted through narration.)
Gabriel Messenger (Narration Continues): I learned to read when I was three because of that journal. I had to know what my mother felt and thought so I could be close to her.
“June 7, 1991 Today I went to the park and watched the children play. He will be here soon and I will have no answers for him when he asks about his father. How do I tell a child about someone I never met? Maybe I will just tell him I was raped and that the man was never caught, or I could tell him that his father was someone I met one night and had a one night stand. Neither would give justice to who Gabriel will be, or answer the countless other questions he will have…but can I tell my little angel the truth, and if so when?”
(Next frame: Reader sees a young teen, approximately thirteen, reading the journal with a fast food bag beside him in the bed of a beat up pickup truck. He is shirtless and there are tattoos of angel wings on his back. A girl is in the truck with him. She is pretty, but it is hidden behind her hair and a pair of glasses. She has long black hair and bright blue eyes. There is a confidence about her, but her face should be intent on the back of the boy. She should be about a year older than he.)
Gabriel Messenger (Narration Continues): Every time she wrote about me she would call me her angel. Then when I hit puberty my skin suddenly began to change and I received the wings on my back. The doctors call it some sort of darkening of a birthmark already there, but my grandmother says it is a gift from god. The girl sitting next to me is my only friend, Shekina Femet. She is beautiful, isn’t she? Too beautiful as a matter of fact, when we were kids the girls would make fun of her and the boys were too scared to talk to her. Eventually we became friends because no one else would be our friend.
(Next frame: The boy and girl are now sitting together in the boy’s bedroom. It is late at night and the room is lit by a single lamp. The boy is holding the girl who is crying into his shoulder. The boy appears to glow with a light. Shekina has bruises on her face and grab marks on her arms. Gabriel’s mother’s journal is lying on the bed.)
Gabriel Messenger (Narration Continues): Too beautiful… her stepfather thought she was beautiful and more than one night she ended up spending with me to avoid being near him. It is amazing that she is as loving as she is. Her life has been worse than mine. Having no parents can’t be worse than having abusive ones.
Conversation bubbles in the frame:
Gabriel: I will kill him. I swear.
Shekina: No you won’t. You’re too good for that.
Gabriel: I love you.
Shekina: And I you.
(Next frame: Gabriel and Shekina are in a car driving together. They are laughing and listening to music. They are about sixteen or seventeen years old. There is a picture quality about it. It is clear that Gabriel is remembering this as a fond moment, but with a sense of finality.)
Gabriel Messenger (Narration Continues): No we never dated. I think that would have been too much for either one of us. And no we aren’t “like brother and sister” that is just a ridiculous statement. We are soul mates, but my soul does not belong to me, and therefore I cannot give it to her.
(New set of frames: Reader is now taken back to the ledge in present time. Gabriel is now fingering the staff that was previously lying next to him. He is staring at it intently. There is writing on it, Hebrew in nature and a six pointed star on the top of it.)
Gabriel Messenger (Narration Continues): And now due to this (Gabriel raises his hand and reveals a scythe seven feet long with a blade five feet long. The blade is made of orichalcum giving it a bronze hue on an almost shining white metallic base. The handle is an Ashe wood excellently carved with writing inscribed on the handle of an unknown language.), she and I will never share those moments again. How can we with all that is changing? I know you have no idea what I am talking about. Well, it is hard to explain but let me first give you a bit of a history lesson.
Okay so feel free to comment on my writing, but please be kind. There are some religious undertones to this character, but no I am not going to focus all of our characters on that and it will not be the main focus of this company. I treat religion like any other folklore, abundant with excellent character building pieces.
Feel free to comment on what you think, particularly you comic book fans that would like to see something like this. For you collector type fans, if this takes off and my characters become popular I would then look to start printing special edition books in limited supply. This would both allow for collectors and non-collectors to have a chance to read the book in hand as we all grew up doing, but it would also be limited, so unlike where there are hundreds of thousands of copies printed of our favorite books now these would actually be worth something. (Though I make no assertions that I or my books will ever be that popular.)
This is also my first blog, so I ask that you be patient with me as I get used to using this. I will also probably use this to put some of my personal notes out there, and feel free to comment on those as well.
So thanks for reading and I hope you return,
JP
My name is Jason Padua and I am an odd fellow with a lot of ideas but rarely any follow through. My latest adventures are this blog and the company I would like to eventually grow from it.
I would like to start a comic book business that could possibly be a model for the industry going forward. I want to build a comic book company that is almost solely online. Readers would subscribe to the comic book cite and have access to online versions of the books. The books would still be hand drawn but rather than looking at reprinted versions of the artists rendering, you would see the actual drawings digitally scanned and posted. Instead of having to search comic book shops to find the issue that everyone else says is the corner stone of a character, this would be easily accessible with just a simple search.
Now this is only the very beginning of the process. The name is only a working model right now and is based on my children's names: Raven and Talon. I am what I think to be a decent writer but, I am definitely no artist, so I will soon be developing a web page and linking this blog to it. When I do I will be looking for artists to submit samples of their work and maybe become the first of my new venture. I have already started the first issue of the first character and would like to introduce you all to Gabriel Messenger:
Angel of War #1
Origins
(Opening frames: it is night time in an unknown city. The landscape is dark, but potted with lights from buildings all around. Flashes of lightning give the reader a glimpse at a very large and dark Gothic cathedral. There is a boy, seventeen years of age sitting on the edge of the building. The boy is scarred down the left of his face and has what appears to be a tattoo of angel wings on his shirtless back. He has long, curly, jet black hair, bright green eyes, and his skin is very pale. He is very muscular but still very thin and awkward. Lying nest to him is what appears to be some sort of weapon but the reader cannot see it fully.)
Gabriel Messenger (yellow narration): “You know it becomes apparent in every person’s life that they must analyze the events that have led them to where they are. When I stop to consider where I was a week ago to where I am now, it is amazing how much has changed in seven days versus the last seventeen years of my life. I guess to really understand though I have to go back farther than all of that…to the very day I was born.
(Second set of frames/Flashback: Inside of a hospital we see a woman giving birth. It is clear that she is in a lot of pain and having trouble. There are multiple people in the room, but no family or friends apparent. The woman is very young, approximately 18 years of age. As the frames progress the doctors are running in and out and she is giving birth. There is an extensive amount of blood as the woman appears to be hemorrhaging.)
Gabriel Messenger (Narration Continues): My mother was only a child herself. She was no one special from what I know. Years of my asking questions of my grandmother have led me to understand that she was a beautiful girl who never felt understood. I guess no teenager feels understood, but that’s life. My mother had me when she was only 18 but died at the time of my birth. (Final frame shows a nurse holding a child and doctors circling the woman who is now unconscious.) Though I never knew her I miss her….
(Third set of frames/Flashback 2: Frames now show an older woman crying and holding a young child at a funeral. There are several people at the funeral, and they comfort her. The child is seen but is sleeping. The child is exceptionally pale, and while the other attendees are trying to comfort the old woman, they shy away from the baby.)
Gabriel Messenger (Narration Continues): I guess my grandmother could have blamed me for my mother’s death, but she never did, nor did she allow me to blame myself. She missed her as much as I did, though they did not talk for the last two years of my mother’s life. I think that hurt my grandmother most…that and the world’s aversion to me.
(Fourth set of frames/procession of flashback’s in single frame progression: First frame should depict a child about age three sitting on a stoop with an old woman watching over him. The child should be very disconnected from the world, while focusing on a small leather bound book.)
Gabriel Messenger (Narration Continues): I guess your wondering about my father…well so am I. My grandmother has no idea who he was. My mother lived in an apartment and my grandmother collected all of her things, but there was no mention of anyone who could be my father. She did have a journal she kept, but her last entries never seem to make sense to anyone.
(Second frame/Possibly third as well: The reader is looking over the shoulder of a ten year old boy, while he is at the play ground. All the other children can be seen playing but he is under a tree by himself, clearly avoided. If possible one of the pages should be seen with a woman’s writing on it; otherwise, entry could be depicted through narration.)
Gabriel Messenger (Narration Continues): I learned to read when I was three because of that journal. I had to know what my mother felt and thought so I could be close to her.
“June 7, 1991 Today I went to the park and watched the children play. He will be here soon and I will have no answers for him when he asks about his father. How do I tell a child about someone I never met? Maybe I will just tell him I was raped and that the man was never caught, or I could tell him that his father was someone I met one night and had a one night stand. Neither would give justice to who Gabriel will be, or answer the countless other questions he will have…but can I tell my little angel the truth, and if so when?”
(Next frame: Reader sees a young teen, approximately thirteen, reading the journal with a fast food bag beside him in the bed of a beat up pickup truck. He is shirtless and there are tattoos of angel wings on his back. A girl is in the truck with him. She is pretty, but it is hidden behind her hair and a pair of glasses. She has long black hair and bright blue eyes. There is a confidence about her, but her face should be intent on the back of the boy. She should be about a year older than he.)
Gabriel Messenger (Narration Continues): Every time she wrote about me she would call me her angel. Then when I hit puberty my skin suddenly began to change and I received the wings on my back. The doctors call it some sort of darkening of a birthmark already there, but my grandmother says it is a gift from god. The girl sitting next to me is my only friend, Shekina Femet. She is beautiful, isn’t she? Too beautiful as a matter of fact, when we were kids the girls would make fun of her and the boys were too scared to talk to her. Eventually we became friends because no one else would be our friend.
(Next frame: The boy and girl are now sitting together in the boy’s bedroom. It is late at night and the room is lit by a single lamp. The boy is holding the girl who is crying into his shoulder. The boy appears to glow with a light. Shekina has bruises on her face and grab marks on her arms. Gabriel’s mother’s journal is lying on the bed.)
Gabriel Messenger (Narration Continues): Too beautiful… her stepfather thought she was beautiful and more than one night she ended up spending with me to avoid being near him. It is amazing that she is as loving as she is. Her life has been worse than mine. Having no parents can’t be worse than having abusive ones.
Conversation bubbles in the frame:
Gabriel: I will kill him. I swear.
Shekina: No you won’t. You’re too good for that.
Gabriel: I love you.
Shekina: And I you.
(Next frame: Gabriel and Shekina are in a car driving together. They are laughing and listening to music. They are about sixteen or seventeen years old. There is a picture quality about it. It is clear that Gabriel is remembering this as a fond moment, but with a sense of finality.)
Gabriel Messenger (Narration Continues): No we never dated. I think that would have been too much for either one of us. And no we aren’t “like brother and sister” that is just a ridiculous statement. We are soul mates, but my soul does not belong to me, and therefore I cannot give it to her.
(New set of frames: Reader is now taken back to the ledge in present time. Gabriel is now fingering the staff that was previously lying next to him. He is staring at it intently. There is writing on it, Hebrew in nature and a six pointed star on the top of it.)
Gabriel Messenger (Narration Continues): And now due to this (Gabriel raises his hand and reveals a scythe seven feet long with a blade five feet long. The blade is made of orichalcum giving it a bronze hue on an almost shining white metallic base. The handle is an Ashe wood excellently carved with writing inscribed on the handle of an unknown language.), she and I will never share those moments again. How can we with all that is changing? I know you have no idea what I am talking about. Well, it is hard to explain but let me first give you a bit of a history lesson.
Okay so feel free to comment on my writing, but please be kind. There are some religious undertones to this character, but no I am not going to focus all of our characters on that and it will not be the main focus of this company. I treat religion like any other folklore, abundant with excellent character building pieces.
Feel free to comment on what you think, particularly you comic book fans that would like to see something like this. For you collector type fans, if this takes off and my characters become popular I would then look to start printing special edition books in limited supply. This would both allow for collectors and non-collectors to have a chance to read the book in hand as we all grew up doing, but it would also be limited, so unlike where there are hundreds of thousands of copies printed of our favorite books now these would actually be worth something. (Though I make no assertions that I or my books will ever be that popular.)
This is also my first blog, so I ask that you be patient with me as I get used to using this. I will also probably use this to put some of my personal notes out there, and feel free to comment on those as well.
So thanks for reading and I hope you return,
JP
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