Lost And Found: Bully Wars Demo
A look at my original Bully Wars pages from 2010
Hopefully most of you have heard of and read the comic series Bully Wars, created by me and Aaron Conley. What some of you might not know is that I wrote the first version of this book in 2010.
Yup. I had a few friends getting some book deals at Scholastic’s Graphix line after the success of Jeff Smith’s Bone. Raina Telgemeier, Kazu Kibuishi, Jake Parker and others were all making graphic novels for Scholastic, and I wanted in! I had been adapting the OZ novels at Marvel with Eric Shanower for a few years and had my work day schedule down to a science. I usually had several pages of OZ done by lunch or early afternoon, so there the was plenty of time the rest of the day to work on something of my own. After I kicked around a few ideas, I landed on Bully Wars. Telling the classic “Kid Gets Bullied” story, but from the bully’s POV.
This is one of the projects where the name came first. “Bully Wars” just seemed like a slam dunk. I pulled my index cards and started plotting, then I dove right into thumbnails instead of scripting. This is an animation thing. Stories are usually written in storyboard form and then scripted to that. So I plotted and laid out a 200+ page graphic novel. After that, I added dialogue to the whole thing, and there it was: a fully prepared graphic novel to pitch to Scholastic.
I was a few years into using a Wacom Cintiq to draw my pages, but still printed them out to ink on paper with a brush. I wanted to try and harness the speed of doing everything digitally, so I decided to use a more deadline pen style that would look good fully digital. I was a big fan of that Trencher era of Keith Giffen’s work, and thought I’d play around with a version of that.
I forgot how many pages of the book I actually inked before I walked away. I realized I didn’t have the bully angle down yet. Art, yes, but story, nope. My version felt way too pro-bully and came off as mean. There were a lot of funny gags, and even quite a few that made it into the version by me and Aaron. But I wasn’t ready as a writer yet. I will say that I LOVE these pages. I didn’t remember how much I pushed the shape and energy of everything. Here’s a look at what I’m calling the Bully Wars Demo. I added a few pages below, but put all 20 pages into a PDF for you to check out.
Aaron Conley joined me 8 years later to co-create the version that made it to the world. His talent and energy brought so much life to my raw project. Working with him on this book was a delight. Every time he turned pages my mind was blown. He helped make this book so much more than I could’ve done on my own. I’ll always be grateful that he decided to join me.
I hope you enjoyed this look back at the origins of one of my books. See ya next time.
Love this comic! One of the things that makes it work so well is Aaron Conley’s kinetic art which gives you so much to look at and which brings the story to life in entertaining and occasionally unexpected ways. It’s fascinating to look at those pages after seeing your early inks.
So interesting too how you can have the idea and not yet have as complete a story as you would like. Very glad you reached the point you had a story you wanted to tell and that you had, barring yourself, the perfect artist to partner with. Thanks for giving us a glimpse into the process.
Wow! Thanks! Great and funny!