If Shawn Wrote Comics: The Origin of Wonder Girl

The cast I'd use in a WW run! Great art
by Bill Walko! 

A couple of years ago I proposed ideas for a hypothetical Wonder Woman run of comics I wanted to write. And currently I’m using many of those concepts I proposed in the Isis series of paperbacks and eBooks. However, one of the proposed Ideas for my Wonder Woman run was revamping Donna Troy. If anyone needed a simplified origin it’s Donna Troy.

Donna Troy has one of the most jumbled and confusing origins in all of comics. One writer says she’s young Wonder Woman. Another says she’s the reflection of Wonder Woman in a mirror, And another says she’s a baby that was saved and brought back to Paradise Island. It’s a mess. Throw in a few decades of Teen Titans, New Teen Titans, New Titans, Team Titans Byrne’s run on Wonder Woman with Dark Angel, and most of the FUBAR mess of Graduation Day and the 21^st Century and her history becomes a bigger mess. Sadly the more people try to fix Donna Troy, the WORSE she becomes.

It’s sad because Donna Troy is a GREAT character. She’s DC’s superheroine next door, the best friend everyone can count on in a crisis or have a good time with. She’s the character every girl and boy can relate to. I believe I believe she deserves an origin that’s as easy to follow as her teammates Robin, Speedy, Aqualad and Kid Flash, something every kid can remember right off the top of their heads.  

In my proposed simpler origin for Donna Troy she’s Diana Prince’s 13-year old next-door neighbor, the daughter of a Photographer and an artist. A precocious kid who Diana and her crew (I want bring in both Artemis and Nubia, because most real women travel in groups) meets and takes a shine to. Donna relates to the ladies and soon becomes a fan of her alter ego Wonder Woman and a mascot to the Paradise Island crew when they’re in the city. In a few story arcs we see her taking heroic action without powers against school bullies, and being helpful around the neighborhood. She even saves Diana Prince out of a jam of two! Donna imagines herself as a sidekick to Wonder Woman, but Diana tells her to focus on school, and leave the superhero adventures to Wonder Woman.

Over time Dr.Cyber’s spies notice the relationship between Donna and Diana and target her in the hopes of sending a message to Diana Prince. Donna’s Dad gets some pictures of some Cyber wrongdoings by accident and to destroy the evidence, Cyber in her usual over-the-top fashion has the Troy’s apartment firebombed. In the flames Donna’s still a hero, trying to save her parents, but succumbs to the flames and smoke and a series of burns on her body. Wonder Woman saves Donna but the girl has been badly burned over most of her body. With her injuries far beyond mortal science and , Diana has two choices: Let her friend die or take her to Paradise Island. With the blessing of the doctors, Diana takes Donna to Paradise Island.    

Back on the Island Queen Hippoloytia is hesitant to help Donna fearing that she could be compromising Paradise Island’s secrets by allowing a mortal to use their technology. But seeing how much Diana loves Donna she grants her blessing to help the dying girl. Using Nubia’s Purple Ray, and clay from Paradise Island to soothe Donna’s burns the girl is healed.

A few days later Donna wakes up and learns the tragic news: Her parents have been killed in the bomb attack by Dr. Cyber. Reacting to the tragic news, Donna breaks a steel bed rail with her newfound super strength and gives the ladies more of a struggle as they try to console her. Diana, Artemis, and Nubia are surprised by this turn of events. As Donna is sedated she swears to get revenge on Dr. Cyber.

After Donna is sedated, the three women ponder what to do with Donna Troy now that she has powers like theirs. Artemis fears that her human nature may make her a threat to everyone, while Nubia fears that she has created a Frankenstein monster that may harm people. Diana tries to convince the ladies that Donna is a good kid and has been a great friend to them, and wouldn’t do anything to hurt anyone. If anything she’d use her newfound powers to help people. But the ladies aren’t convinced. The debate over Donna ends in a stalemate as the ladies go back to their quarters for some much needed sleep.

While the ladies sleep, Donna wakes up. Driven to get even with Dr.Cyber, she slips out of the Paradise Island infirmary and into Diana’s dorm room for some clothes. Rifling through the closets, she finds Diana’s old bracelets, (short blue version) an old “eagle” tank top similar to her oldschool shirt, star spangled trunks some blue jeans (she’s American and jeans are the most American thing out there, plus the idea of a preteen flying around in panties always creeped me out) and a pair of black red and white striped trainers. I’d put the gold =W= on her belt buckle and some stars down the legs of the pants to modernize things a bit, but I’d want all the classic elements to remain there so she’s instantly identifiable as Wonder Girl.

With the costume complete, Donna and goes to the hangar to “borrow” Diana’s invisible Jet. Unfortunately, the plane is not tuned to her brainwaves. On the trip down, Donna accidentally trips and falls out but stops herself in midair. In addition to the super strength, the Purple Ray gives Donna the ability of flight.

Donna flies around the world and returns to Washington D.C, New York or wherever Diana and her Royal Guard live and have their adventures. After getting a bite to eat from a fast food place after flying 8000 miles from Paradise Island to America, she stops a stick up at a neighborhood store blocking bullets with her bracelets and getting a kick out of it. Spectators watching her stop the robbery call her Wonder Girl as she flies away.

Donna soon returns to her burned out apartment for clues to the whereabouts of Dr.Cyber. She’s soon attacked by a Cyber Squad looking for Wonder Woman. Donna makes light work of the armored ladies and gets a clue to where Cyber is. Cyber watching from the helmet cam of her CyberSquad realizes that it isn’t Wonder Woman.

The ladies on Paradise Island wake up and plan to visit Donna. When they see her missing from her hospital bed, they wonder where she went to. Nubia tells them to look at the six o’clock news in their city on the TV. On seeing Donna in action, the ladies gear up, get in the invisible jet and head for the city. Diana worries that Donna’s desire for revenge could prove Artemis and Nubia’s fears right and ponders if it was in their right for them to give a human so much power.

Donna looking for clues to Cyber’s wherabouts is surprised by a hologram that emits from the damaged helmet of one of the fallen CyberSquad members. She tells her if she wants to get her revenge to come to her office tower in the city. Donna flies out of the window and makes a beeline for Cyber’s office tower. On the way cross-town she spots another fire and is reminded of the one that killed her parents. When she hears the wails of a crying baby she realizes that she has the power to help others and stops to save the child. As she flies down, cell phone cameras capture her. More people call her Wonder Girl as she hands the child to her parents. Donna likes the sound of that name as she flies away and starts thinking of using it as her codename.  

Donna soon arrives at Cyber’s tower and walks in unchallenged. The guard tells her to go to the top floor. Donna being naïve heads upstairs on the elevator. When she gets off she finds herself trapped in a holographic simulator not unlike the X-men’s Danger room. Cyber in her usual over-the top style introduces herself in a hologram and mocks her calling her a little Wonder Girl, and sends another CyberSquad to attack her. Donna easily defeats the CyberSquad and then is forced to take on some holographic menaces as Diana and crew make their way to the burnt out remains of the former Troy home. There, Nubia finds the holographic message and the ladies race over to the CyberTower (think Apple) where they see Donna taking on the holograms. An observant girl, she spots Cyber at the controls and breaks through a two way mirror and confronts her as Diana, Artemis and Nubia break through the glass of the windows of the top floor the simulator. While Artemis is eager to engage Diana holds her back anticipating What Donna will do to the defenseless Cyber. Donna realizing that she has a responsibility to do what’s right with the great power she’s been given by her friends decides that vengeance is not justice, and she’d be betraying the people she loves by killing Cyber in revenge. As Donna’s walking away to rejoin her friends, Cyber in usual Diva fashion gets the last word in saying that she can’t pin anything on her. Like Corporate Lex in Superman, Cyber is a Teflon Tech queen.

The debate over what to do with Donna Troy continues as the ladies return to Paradise Island. Queen Hippolotya seeing how the arguing is effecting the girl takes action. She decides to let Donna stay with Princess Diana and her royal guard. Dubbing her the Pledge of Paradise Island (want to fit some sorority stuff in there), she’s given her own magic lasso, and is put under the authority of Diana, Artemis and Nubia and will be trained and mentored by all three women as they return to their journeys in America. If she proves herself worthy she’ll earn the title and privilege of a full sister in the Amazon fraternal order.

It’s a rough synopsis (wrote this in three hours), But in my proposed script I wanted to clarify some things about Donna Troy. The way I’d plan things readers would know Who Donna Troy is from day one. The girl next door. The friend who helps the helpless. A girl looking to learn from a group of strong intelligent women. The kid whose unfortunate tragedy is turned into triumph. Given power she shows how responsible she can be with it and has the potential to be as great a hero as the women mentoring her.

Moreover, the origin I’d propose is consistent with those of Wally West, Dick Grayson, and Roy Harper. So she has something a bit more solid to connect them with her as a Teen Titan when they form the team. It’s an origin that’s easy to follow, fits in parts of Donna’s previous history seamlessly within an easy-to-follow sequence and is so easy to remember a child could figure it out.

The reason why I wanted to use Dr.Cyber in Donna’s origin is because she was poised to become one of Diana’s big bads. I always felt Dr. Cyber could have become an A-list villain with Lex Luthor and the Joker with the right stories. Oldschool non-disfigured Dr. Cyber has an over-the-top BITCH personality that makes you just HATE her, and I wanted add Donna’s origin to part of Diana’s ongoing feud with Cyber, as another reason why she dislikes her so much. The Cyber/Diana feud never got PERSONAL and I believe if it did, it might have been one of the top feuds in comics, right up there with Green Goblin/Spiderman in the 70’s and Batman/Joker in the 1980’s. Cyber was the only woman who can push Diana’s buttons the way Lex pushes Clark’s. Readers need to see that kind of heat in a Wonder Woman comic to see what really makes her great as a heroine.

Inspired by the Dr.Cyber/Wonder Woman feud from the Diana Prince Era I used a few story points in Isis: The Beauty Myth and Isis: Wrath of the Cybergoddess. In those two books I worked hard to get the chemistry right between Isis and Raheema so readers could feel the heat between the characters in their feud. I want to bring that kind of intense chemistry to Diana to make the relationships between her and her rogues gallery a bit more intense. After reading a lot of Wonder Woman comics I find while she’s got a decent rogues gallery, she hasn’t had that one big defining feud, the one where things got personal and readers got themselves emotionally invested in the story. I believe Cyber is the right villain to give her that kind of emotional involvement so they can get emotionally invested in Wonder Woman.    

 

Spinsterella Chapter 1

We call him the quiet man. And the only way you know he’s here is by the scent of his lunch.

The aroma of Italian spices wafts through the air as the husky toast colored man darts past the door of my office carrying a pizza box. I wonder what he’s having today.  Pizza? Calzone? Or maybe lasagna.

If I could only get a chance to talk to him. Maybe I could get him to share his lunch with me. Or maybe even just tell me his name. Nearly a year on the job and he hasn’t said a word to anyone. All anyone knows about Amalgamated Consolidated’s enigmatic new Claims Associate is that he comes in at around eight-forty, leaves his desk around eleven-forty-five for lunch, comes back around noon with a pizza box and at five on the dot he goes home. I don’t see how anyone could just come and go to work without talking to anyone. It’d make me go insane being by myself in a big place like this.

I have to wonder if dude is crazy. You’d have to be to stay to yourself like that all the time. Like that guy in Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment. Or Edgar Allen Poe’s The Tell-Tale Heart. I just can’t see how someone can go and come to work and not say a single word to anyone unless there was something wrong with them.

I’m pondering the mystery of the silent stranger who stalks the halls of Amalgamated Consolidated when Nancy, my best friend from the Claims Department strolls into my office. The tall thin blonde woman dressed in a red cardigan sweater, navy gabardine skirt, and black heels flashes a smile at me as she checks her watch. “Hey Matilda, you ready for lunch?”

“Is it that time? I say springing up out of my office chair.

“The Quiet Man passed by me in the hall. So I’d say it’s about that time.”

I give her a look. “You set your watch to him?”

“Hey, he’s more accurate than most of the clocks around here-”

“I wonder what he does all day in that cubicle of his-”

“Probably plotting the deaths of us all in a shooting rampage-”

The thought of him going psycho and killing all my friends sends a chill down my spine. “Come on Nance, don’t joke like that-”

“Hey, he probably does what the rest of us do all day in The Pit. Process these damn claims forms. Lunch is probably the high point of the day for him-”

It’s the high point of the day for any of us. The archaic offices of Amalgamated Consolidated are like being stuck in a timewarp that never ends. Everything from the White Formica topped steel desks, off-white painted walls, lite elevator music, and overly bright florescent lighting are like something out of the 1950’s. It’s like nothing in this company has changed since my Mom worked here thirty-five years ago. These offices are so stifling when I’m not working I’m counting down the hours to the time when I can get out of here.   

 “I wonder what’s eating him.”

“What do you mean?”

“Junk food every day? Clearly dude has issues-”

“Says the woman dressed in all black-”

I give my best friend a look on the jab. “This is a fashion statement.” I say pointing to myself.

“Yeah right Spinsterella, Halloween ended two months ago-”

“Hey, I’m gonna get festive for the Christmas party tonight-”

“What? You gonna put your Santa hat on to add a little color to your dead wardrobe?”

Damn. She knows me too well. “Hey, I bought a little red dress just for the party-”

“Wow, you’re gonna be wearing a color other than black? I definitely need to capture that moment in pixels-”

“Everything at the Christmas party usually stays at the Christmas party. So I can get away with being a little daring-”

“You know that’s a great opportunity to talk to Mr. Mysterious.”

I don’t think I’m that bold. “With him being a newbie, I doubt he even knows about our annual Christmas bash-”

Well, Ms. Events Manager I doubt anyone knows about the Christmas party with all the invitations still next to your outbox-”

I look over at the box of invitations on my desk next to my outbox and my eyes grow wide. “Shit, these were supposed to go out in the inter-office mail last week!

Nancy smiles at me as she heads towards the door. “Well, it looks like you’re gonna be working through lunch.”

“Come on Nancy, help me get these out and I’ll buy you a sandwich-”

“Sorry Mattie, but it’s not my department.”

“I can’t believe you’re gonna go all official company policy on me-”

“Hey, I only get one hour out of this shithole and I’m not giving that up for anyone.”

 “Come on, I don’t want to be alone in the office with him-”

“Think of it this way. Hand-delivered invitations from our hardworking Events Manager adds a nice personal touch.”

“Nancy-”

“Tell the Quiet Man I said Hi.” Nancy says darting out of my office.

Spinsterella will be coming out this Halloween on KindleUnlimited and in Paperback! 

Todd West, Dylan Roof and Negro Hypocrisy

We’ve all heard about Dylan Roof and the mass murders he committed at the AME Church in South Carolina. However, we haven’t heard much about Todd West and the mass murders he participated in Pennsylvania and New Jersey.

Most people don’t know a thing about Todd West the 22-year-old Black man who murdered seven people in two states including his own cousin. Why? Because the murders were Black-on-Black crimes.

And because they were mostly Black-on-Black murders, they don’t fit the narrative of the Negro. Because the Negro can’t make himself into a victim of White Supremacy and racism in the case of Todd West most of the usual suspects in the Black community have become as silent as a rat pissin on cotton.

Notice in the case of Todd West has been no calls of outrage from the usual suspects in the Black community. Where’s Al Sharpton and the National Inaction Network? Where’s Louis Farrakhan and the Nation of Islost? Where’s the NAACP? Where are the Black fraternities and sororities? Where’s are all the Negro Pastors? Where are all the Pro-Black AFROSIMPTRICK Shines who were ready to declare war on Dylan Roof a week ago?

We saw all these people calling for justice on social media and in the streets protesting when Dylan Roof murdered all those people in the AME Church in South Carolina. But we have NOT heard a PEEP out of any of this assortment of mixed nuts in the case of Todd West.

President Obama came to the AME Church and sang for one of the victims of the AME Church shooting. But I doubt he even cares about any of Todd West’s victims to even send them a condolence card.

And we haven’t seen Scores of Negro protestors haven’t taking to the streets with signs telling us that Black lives matter in New Jersey and Pennsylvania after Todd West’s murder spree. We haven’t seen Negroes marching and protesting in those two states. 

Nor have we seen Negroes going into gang territory to take down gang signs. Nor have we seen Negroes scrawling BLACK LIVES MATTER on gang territory the same way they defaced Civil War statues and monuments. And we haven’t seen any of these Pro-Black Back to Africa Red, Black and Green AFROSIMPTRICKS going to declare war on thugs, gangs or the thug culture Todd West participated in.

All we’ve gotten from most of the mixed nuts in the Negro community regarding Todd West’s mass murders is….

*CRICKETS*

I’ve got a question for all the Negroes who protested so hard over Dylan Roof: Don’t Todd West’s victims deserve the same outrage that Dylan Roof’s victims got? Don’t they deserve the same calls for justice that Dylan Roof’s victims got?

How about a visit to the church where Todd West’s victims reside Mr. President? How about singing Amazing grace for them? Shouldn’t their Black lives have the same value to everyone that Dylan Roof’s victims had? After all, both were killed in mass murders. Only in one case the perpetrator was white and the other was Black.

But the one that seems to have the value to the Negro is the one where the perpetrator was White. It truly shows you the only time a Black person’s life truly matters to the masses in the Negro community is when it’s taken by a White Cop or a White person. 

The Negro’s actions in the case of Todd West clearly show their hypocrisy regarding Black lives matter campaign. When a White Cop or a White person kills a Black person, The Negro is ready to be outraged. But when a Black person participates in the same type of brutal violence against Black people not a single one of these Negroes from the White House to the Outhouse can be found to express any sort of anger or righteous indignation.  

Now I’m not condoning anything that coward Dylan Roof did in that AME Church. But I’m asking Black people to have the same anger and outrage they had in South Carolina towards Todd West’s murder spree in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Black people can’t say that a Black life matters when they don’t hold Black people to the same standard that they do Whites when they take the lives of their own people.  

Why Some Comic Fans are Usually BAD Comic book Writers

Many comic writers these days say that they’re fans of superhero characters they work with. And that’s one of the problems within the industry today. Thanks to fans writing the comics readers are getting books that read like glorified fanfiction pieces, not well-written stories from a professional publisher.

In many cases a comic fan who becomes a comic book writer at a place like Marvel or DC often approaches a character from a very emotional perspective, not an objective one like a professional writer does. Yes a comic fan is passionate about the character they’re writing but they’re often so biased towards one or two characters that they don’t see how their love of their favorite character shows how little professionalism they have in their craft. Because they’re so emotionally attached to a character fan writers often make emotional decisions that do more harm to a character and their history long term than good.

When a comic fan writes stories from their emotions they often focus on singular aspects of a character and don’t approach character in a way where they get a balanced picture of them. Yes, they’ve read a series of issues or even a creator’s entire run. And from those issues they have some semblance of a character’s story and a mission, but oftentimes their vision of a character is often flat and one-dimensional.

Because some fans approach their favorite characters with their emotions and they don’t have a balanced picture of them, it often leads to them writing stories that are usually unbalanced and uneven. Readers get action presented from a slanted and biased perspective that always makes the hero out to be either virtually infallible and unbeatable like Batman has been in recent years or some poor put upon victim who life just beats up on for absolutely no reason like Spider-Man or Daredevil have been in some runs over the years. In some cases like Wonder Woman the character literally gets lost because a writer is so busy projecting their idea of who they are onto them instead of letting them be who they are.

In many cases when fans become writers, comic book heroes go from characters with their own personality and “voice” to Mary Sues and Gary Stus, manifestations of the fan in comic form and a soapbox to present their own views and opinions. And instead of having their own adventures, the hero starts living the life of the writer, not having a life of their own. 

Thanks to this biased perspective characters that get developed in that distort them. And as the picture of who they are gets distorted, their message and their mission get lost. For example instead of Batman taking his oath to protect to Gotham City objectively, we get Batman prepping to take on bad guys 24/7.

That’s not what the character was meant to be. Yes, Batman is driven to fight crime and will push himself beyond human limits to escape perilous situations and stop the bad guys or protect people. But he has time for a life outside of the Dark Knight to be Bruce Wayne and run Wayne Enterprises or spend time with Dick Grayson or mentoring Tim Drake.

But in comics today, the Batman character has become as obsessed as his rogues gallery. And this obsession with crime is turning him into a caricature of himself. These days Batman practically eats and sleeps in the Batcave, and has no time to be Bruce Wayne or even do work at Wayne Enterprises or spend time with Dick Grayson, Tim Drake or anyone else outside of the costume. Everything is about him being Batman all the time. While that model may work in a fanfiction piece, but it sure doesn’t make for great comic storytelling in a well-crafted comic where stories need to be balanced.  

Thanks to this kind of singular focus on a favorite character, supporting characters who were essential to a character’s history and their story paradigm oftentimes get lost in the shuffle.

Worse, they often get discarded and replaced with other characters who the writer feels more comfortable working with like Damian Wayne. Because previous supporting characters like Tim Drake have things like “personalities” and “voices” the writer hasn’t figure out what to do with, they often discard them like trash for their new so-called “better” ones they prefer working with.

And in most cases when these new supporting characters are put into a character’s story they aren’t a good fit. Because they aren’t grown organically from the roots of a characters’ history, and because the writer has no idea on how to write an effective backstory for them, they just feel forced. Usually they’re just shoehorned in through some convoluted retroactive continuity or some dysfunctional plot. Yes, the writer likes them, but readers are split on them because they haven’t been introduced to readers in an organic manner.  And because they haven’t been introduced organically readers have a hard time connecting with them and relating to them.

Because many comic fans who become writers see the character from the lens of a fan and not a creator’s objective viewpoint they don’t see how everything in a characters’ world works together comprehensively. In the bigger picture of the characters’ world are the mechanics behind the story and all those elements work together to help a writer tell a well-crafted story. A hero not only needs his rogues, but a strong supporting cast for the main character to make his or her story paradigm work effectively. 

To truly understand a character one has to do more than read some of the comics from a creative team’s run or a few creative team’s runs. They have to read the interviews with the creators, and study the history of the time the character was created. In some cases if possible a creator has to sit down with the creator and find out what motivated them to create that character. From these points and counterpoints can a creator get a balanced picture of the character their mission, their supporting cast, and their “voice” before they start putting down ideas for their run of stories on said character.

When a writer like myself does the research on the creators and their motivations they start to see that the original creators just don’t make characters into unbeatable infallible characters or perpetual victims. They understand story models established initially by the creators and use them to make them and the mission established in the first issue of their comic relatable to readers today just like it was relatable to readers of previous generations yesterday.

A professional writer has to approach any character they write with passion and heart. But they also have to remain professional and objective when they tell stories with them. An objective writer will work with a characther’s strengths and weaknesses to give readers the best possible reading experience. And they’ll give the reader a lesson in that story that not only makes the character grow, but gives the reader something to grow from.

Could Shawn Write a Graphic Novel?

I’ve written a lot of things in my twenty plus year career. Novels, Novelettes, short stories, screenplays, articles and blogs. But the one thing I’ve always wanted to write since I was a kid was a comic book.

I was talking to my friend Mike Williams, artist of the Deak Sledge comic strip on Twitter and he suggested I try to write a graphic novel. Now I believe I could write a graphic novel; I’ve been told the Isis series books like Amari’s Revenge, Isis: The Beauty Myth, and the first Isis book read just like comic books.

Writing a comic or a graphic novel has always been something I’ve always wanted to do since I was 13. In fact, one of my life goals is to publish an Isis graphic novel or series of graphic novels. But there have always been two issues:

While I’m good at designing costumes and characters that most people find visually attractive and translate well from artist to artist, I can’t draw panels for shit,

And,

I don’t know how to write in the format for comics.

Now the drawing I can possibly get around the art issue, by working with an artist like Mike Williams, Terry Beatty, Josh Howard, or a Bill Walko, but the writing well in the format is the challenge. I’ve always been a pretty solid storyteller when it comes to novels and screenplays, but writing comics is different from those mediums. Comics are a different storytelling medium from what I’ve previously worked with and making my style of storytelling fit within the medium would be the challenge.

From what I’ve gleamed from Mark Waid’s script pages in the Kingdom Come trade the comic medium is a uses some elements screenwriting when it comes to dialogue, and the descriptions of scenes are quite similar to the short prose style I use in my stories such as those in the Isis series. I believe my writing style would be a good fit for comics, because I use a high visual style that allows the reader to imagine a scene in their heads, but with a minimal economy of words.  

The big challenge for myself working with an artist is translating the images in my head words that can be described as pictures. Comics tell stories in panels, and I kind of see things like a movie in my head. And each chapter in a story I write is like a scene in a film. There are some chapters in my novels that I know would make for some powerful scenes in a movie such as when E’steem reveals her demon form to John Haynes in The Temptation of John Haynes. The way I imagined that scene was her standing near the balcony with the moonlight cascading down on her as she changed from human to demon with her face filled with anguish and guilt. As she looks over at him to gauge his reaction to her monstrous form, I imagined John’s impassive expression as he sat on the sofa. It’s powerful sequence filled with lots of emotion; the irony of the demon changing to tell the truth about herself showing readers how human she truly was.

While I could easily write that same scene where an actress like a Salli Richardson-Whitfield (Inspiration for E’steem) could easily understand the emotions that would be needed to be conveyed if it were written as a screenplay for film, translating that same scene into a series of comic panels would be the challenge. It’d take a lot of skill for me to write that scene so it would convey the right emotions for the artist to translate into a series of pictures. That climatic scene in The Temptation of John Haynes is very dark in tone and mood, and it’d take the right type of panel setup to tell that part of the story for an artist to translate it into pictures.

In contrast there are action sequences I write like those In Isis: Wrath of the Cybergoddess. Those would be a bit easier to translate into comic panels because the sequences are a little simpler for me to describe as single images that fit into panels. There are chapters in the story I can easily see as comic panels in that story such as Isis’ flight from the South Pacific to New York and her teleporting to get back to the city. And I can easily see the selfie she takes to taunt Raheema in the reflection of the glass of the Freedom Tower and Raheema’s reaction sitting on a bench in New York’s 40^th Street Public Library in her disguise as she tells the compubitch to upload hers. And I can easily see the final confrontation between the battle damaged Cybergoddess and Isis in the rain as comic pages; it’s a powerful sequence of panels filled with emotion.

The second challenge of putting together a graphic novel besides the writing is finding the right artist to tell the story. Writing a novel or the first draft of a screenplay is a solitary process that’s done in solitude. However, writing a graphic novel requires a writer to transition from being a solitary individual to being part of a team. On a Graphic novel project, a writer isn’t just working alone, they’re working with an artist too.

 To tell the story effectively to readers have to find the right artist to work with to tell the story with, one that has a style that fits the characters and one that can tell a story with pictures in the same way I do with words. Creatively we both have to be on the same page. Because now this isn’t just my story, but theirs as well, and they have a right to have some input on the final product. I’m sure I could work well on a team with an artist, but again, it’d be a learning curve to make things flow smoothly.

The third challenge after writing the graphic novel would be publishing it. Publishing a novel like The Temptation of John Haynes or an Isis series novelette like Isis: Night of the Vampires is fairly cheap with CreateSpace, Microsoft Word and Adobe Photoshop Elements, but putting together a graphic novel requires a completely different set of skills. After writing the script and creating the panels, there’s fitting the dialogue into the panels so it flows with the ar. That’d mean I’d definitely need to buy Adobe CS4, 5, or whatever it is or PageMaker to create the .PDFs to create the novel. Lots of long nights as I figure out the learning curve for laying out that kind of book and publishing it.

The final challenge would be financing the whole project. Artists don’t work for free, and their time is money. It’d be a lot of hours for us both turning a 64 page story like a Isis: Wrath of the Cybergoddess into a 96 page graphic novel or an even greater challenge turning a 400 page novel like The Temptation of John Haynes into a 200 page Graphic novel. That kind of project requires a minimum of $15,000 to $20,000 finance if I’m paying $120 or so per page. Yeah, there’s Kickstarter, but there’s no guarantees I could raise that kind of money. Or even if the book would sell if I got the project off the ground. No one spends that kind of money to lose, and I wouldn’t want to come that far to fail when it came to sales.

I definitely would love to write a graphic novel. It’d make me proud to see Shawn James on the credits on the splash page and credited as one of the names on the front cover. I may even try to take a hand at translating one of my old Isis stories into a comic for fun; years ago after I published Isis and while I was writing The Cassandra Cookbook, my sister gave me a copy of Syd Field’s Screenplay. Learning how to write screenplays on my own I wrote All About Marilyn, the critically acclaimed screenplay that’s loved and praised by readers all over the world. I think I could produce a graphic novel of that level of quality if I learned the format for storytelling used in comics.

Readers, would you buy a Shawn James Graphic novel on the SJS DIRECT imprint? Let me know; because it’s a project I’d love to bring to you.

July 4th Kindle Freebies and eBay action figure SALE!

For the July 4^th Weekend I’m offering up one of my most critically acclaimed novels The Temptation of John Haynes for FREE on Kindle! For July  4^th and 5^th you’ll be able to download The Temptation of John Haynes for FREE!

This book is essential reading if you are starting the Isis series or the E’steem series as it’s the cornerstone of the SJS DIRECT Universe!

In addition, I’ll also be offering Isis: All About the Goddess for FREE on Kindle!

I’m also having an action figure and toy sale on eBay throughout the summer. As a toy collector for the last 25 years I’ve amassed a lot of stuff (Birthday gifts, Christmas gifts, and some I bought myself back in the day) and I just don’t have the space to store it anymore. With me being out of work I really could use the money from these sales to buy things I need like soap, a or a haircut. If I can raise enough money from these sales maybe I possibly buy another book cover from another artist or replace the motherboard in my Dell Latitude D830 which died last month.

I’m looking to give these collector edition action figures a good home. Most these action figure have only been displayed and never been played with, and many will have ALL of their original accessories. So head over to my eBay page, there may be something you’re looking for!