I've been trying to start up a webcomic for a little while now, trying as hard as I can to find an artist to cover the visual side of the tracks so that I don't end up with an amazingly written tale done entirely in poorly-drawn MS Paint stick figure art. My art is crap. It's a full sentence; there, right there, right before this one in fact. I'm not really an artist in any sense of the word though, at least not in the visual sense of the term. I am a writer. I am a very fine writer. I just happen to be a very fine writer who, deep down, loves comic books and wants to write a webcomic.

What follows is my attempt at showing off what I can do, as I'm getting a bit miffed at being rolled up in the Sturgeon's Law snowball. This comes in the form of seven pages from one of the titles I've been attempting to get launched, Tazmania Rex. It is an odd concept, aiming to follow the trail blazed by quirky, strange, and fun comics like Dr. McNinja and Atomic Robo. In a sense it's a comic with a narrative, but that narrative plays second-fiddle to the wacky story that is native to that particular issue.

In any event, I hope that you enjoy the read.

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Page 1
Splash Panel
Heroic shot of the hero of our story, Tasmania Rex, standing atop a grassy hill. He is a tall person, due in no small part to the fact that his head is nearly as large as the rest of him and is shaped precisely like that of a tyrannosaurus rex. He wears a brown longcoat over a white button-front shirt, and brown riding pants with a pair of revolvers holstered on his hips. In the background sits a comfortably parked, bright red WWI-era biplane. A series of captions are stacked along the left side of the panel, with the credits seated snugly at the bottom.

Caption

Caption

Caption

Caption [He is known far and wide by the name…

Caption

Caption




Page 2
Panel 1
An establishing shot of a seaside town, battered, a few buildings damaged and a few more still on fire. The townspeople are frantically trying to put out the flames, using hoses, buckets, and one fellow is actually relieving himself on the side of a burning building that is labeled ‘Shoppe of Extremely Flammable Things’.

Panel 2
Tasmania Rex approaches from down a long path leading into the town from the distant hill where his plane still sits. Rex’s head dwarfing his body as always and making it clear that it is, indeed, him approaching from a good distance. A tumbleweed rolls by. The tumbleweed is slightly on fire.

Panel 3
Tasmania Rex stops upon entering the town, looking over to see that another building, plainly labeled “Injena Home For Wayward Orphans & Puppies”, is also on fire. People are carting frightened children and doggies away from the building, while another townsperson tries to wrench open a near-by fire hydrant.

Townsperson: “It won’t budge…”

Panel 4
Rex knocks the top clear off of the fire hydrant with one swift, powerful kick. The townsperson with the wrench is shocked at this display of hydrant-kicking prowess.

Panel 5
Rex uses his foot to direct the gushing stream of water toward the burning orphanage, to the utter amazement of the townsfolk.


Page 3
Panel 1
The Mayor, helpfully labeled with a white and red sash over one shoulder that reads as much, approaches. He also has a top hat and a monocle and a pair of extremely large clown shoes, because every good mayor does. Rex is busy looking down at his damp boot.

The Mayor: “Tasmania Rex, thank goodness you’re here. We have an emergency situation and we require your assistance to keep it from getting worse.”

Rex: “Mah boot is soggy.”

Rex: “Wait, wuzzat?”

Panel 2
The Mayor has put one arm around the back of Tasmania Rex, and is directing him onward.

The Mayor: “Look, it’s all very difficult to explain. We should discuss it privately.”

Panel 3
The pair are walking away from the now fairly soggy scene and toward a distant, somewhat out of focus building. There is a small puppy, a golden retriever probably, shaking itself off in the bottom left-hand corner of the panel.

Rex: “O’er breakfast?”

The Mayor: “Sure. How do bacon and eggs sound?”

Rex: “Yummy.”


Page 4
Panel 1
Overhead shot of two plates of bacon and eggs, both are aligned so that the two eggs and the curved bacon are forming smiley faces. An orange also sits upon the table, slightly more toward the left.

The Mayor: “It’s pirates, you see.”

Rex: “Pirates? We talkin’ peg-leg, ‘shiver mah timbers’ pirates here?”

The Mayor: “Not exactly.”

Panel 2
The Mayor sits on the right side of the panel, having scarcely touched his food, while Rex, on the left side, has his fork still in his gaping maw, has his cheeks puffed a bit, and generally appears to be quite enjoying the meal.

The Mayor: “They are also penguins.”

Rex: “Pengin Pirates?”

The Mayor: “The famed Penguin Pirates of Pawkanaw Plateau. A cruel and vile lot with a captain that is as cruel and vile as the rest of them, if not more.”

Rex: “These eggs er good. What kinda pepper is that?”

The Mayor: “Store-bought.”

Panel 3
A close-up shot of The Mayor, looking distraught, defeated, hands upturned. Rex’s head poking up out of the next panel cuts his dialogue off.

The Mayor: “We are a peaceful town here, and we have no way of battling such a”

Panel 4
Rex is looking away, in the foreground, while The Mayor sits in the background and is almost entirely obscured by Rex’s extremely large noggin. Rex is holding the orange in his hand.

Rex: “You got a juicer?”

The Mayor: “I don’t believe so.”


Page 5
Panel 1
With a surprisingly calm expression on his lizardy face, Rex smashes the orange in his hand.

Panel 2
The juice from the crushed orange pours into a glass.

The Mayor (off panel): “Was that really necessary?”

Rex (also off panel): “Yes. Very. Now what ‘bout them pengins?”

Panel 3
The Mayor continues to look less then thrilled with the current state of affairs, but now is also cleaning some stray bits of exploded orange off of his sleeve with a cloth napkin.

The Mayor: “Well, these penguins have a fearsome weapon. You saw the destruction they caused out there.”

Rex: “I seen worse.”

The Mayor: “Oh, that’s not the half of it. The burning buildings and the stealing of our very nice things are not nearly as important to me as the toll taken upon the people of this fair city.”

Panel 4
The Mayor stands as Rex pours the orange juice into his wide-open mouth.

The Mayor: “I told you that it was difficult to explain. Perhaps it would be better if I just showed you. Come, we’re going to the hospital.”

Panel 5
Rex stands, heading along with The Mayor quietly. He actually topples his chair over in the process.

Panel 6
Rex comes back, picking up his plate of bacon and eggs.

Rex: “You’re comin’ too, tasty breakfast.”


Page 6
Panel 1
The Hospital, interior, where a patient wrapped to near the point of mummification is writhing in agony. A nurse tries to tend to him, but is unable to quell his shrieks of misery and assorted other unpleasant feelings. In the background, The Mayor is gesturing toward the man, while Rex chews on some bacon.

Bandaged Guy: “Oh the pain! THE PAAAAAAAIIIIINNNN!”

The Mayor: “Many of our civilians were caught unaware by this aggressive strike, and were struck down by the most powerful weapon that we have ever seen.”

Panel 2
Rex looks toward the man who is still yelling from off-panel.

Bandaged Man: “AGONY! WOE!”

Rex: “So what we looking at? Chemicals? Gasses? Stabby things?”

The Mayor: “No.”

Panel 3
The Mayor, darkly shadowed and in black and white with a bit of light blue for his monocle, is given an extreme close up.

The Mayor: “They attacked… with insults.”

Panel 4
A black and white panel in which both Rex and The Mayor stand, with the large sound effect word DOOM! is written in the background.

Panel 5
Rex and The Mayor both look up at where the word was, though it is no longer there and the art style has taken a step away from the Frank Millar-esque.


Page 7
Panel 1
The Mayor walks along the aisle between beds of bandaged townspeople, with Rex following.

The Mayor: “It’s a well known fact that a person’s feelings are horribly susceptible to injury. Hurt someone’s feelings enough, and they’ll be broken for a long, long time.”

Rex: “This sounds real silly.”

The Mayor: “I’d agree if I wasn’t conversing with a robot cowboy with a dinosaur head.”

Rex: “Touché.”

Panel 2
The Mayor stops at the end of the room, Rex slightly in the background, and the rows of beds behind them.

The Mayor: “I know it’s asking a lot, but we need you to take on the Pirate Penguins, get our very nice things back, and, if you can, try to get them to stop attacking us.”

Rex: “Fine. But I’m gonna finish mah breakfast first.”

Panel 3
A shot of the Rex & The Mayor with the door in the background. Rex dumps the remaining eggs and bacon into his mouth.

Panel 4
Similar prospective to the last panel. Rex hands the plate to The Mayor.

Panel 5
Again, similar to the last panel. Rex walks out the door.

-

As always when I send things through the series of tubes known as the intra-nets, I'm entirely open to critiques. Also love letters, high-fives, ballistic produce, and suggestions for taco joints to visit on future trips to Nampa, Idaho.

do you really want his head to be the same size as the rest of him??

Kristen Gudsnuk
do you really want his head to be the same size as the rest of him??

If not exactly, then nearly. Although I would not be adverse to it being bigger then the rest of him.

it sounds like you are trying really hard to be random and funny .
i can't tell if the jokes are inside jokes or referances to something i'm not familiar with or just an attempt to be random , or a combonation of the three. it actually reminds me of the endless spiral notebooks i filled with similar musings , things i thought were genius at the time but in retrospect im glad i had no internet at the time .
also that is way to many panels per page , unless you're going with an infinite canvas type setup , in wich case it would prolly work just fine .

lothar
it sounds like you are trying really hard to be random and funny .
i can't tell if the jokes are inside jokes or referances to something i'm not familiar with or just an attempt to be random , or a combonation of the three. it actually reminds me of the endless spiral notebooks i filled with similar musings , things i thought were genius at the time but in retrospect im glad i had no internet at the time .
also that is way to many panels per page , unless you're going with an infinite canvas type setup , in wich case it would prolly work just fine .

So my first two paragraphs sounded that conceited then? I was worried that I would come across as a bit egotistical and that I would receive only vague bile in return. Hard to temper that sort of thing in type sometimes, you know. Still, I'll try to answer some of the criticisms raised.

This script is not funny to me, quite frankly. I didn't write it to be funny. There are a couple of small references to Sin City and Johnny The Homicidal Maniac squished in there that the reader can catch if they are familiar with those comics, but everything else is pretty straight-forward. The idea with these pages was not to create comedy, so much as to create a unique normalcy. A situation where a dinosaur-headed robot cowboy isn't out of the ordinary in the least. Any laughs that result are a bonus.

As far as the number of panels go, I tend to write with a traditional comic-style page in mind, instead of the four-panel horizontal layout that many web comics use. It's not better, just different. I prefer it because it allows for some more vertical storytelling, as well as a larger area for an artist to play around with if they feel inclined to do so. Writing scripts with 'let the artist show off their skills' as a high priority is something I've been striving for as of late.