B O N D P H O N E.
Words and pictures by Chris Lamb.

"The boat needs to look like a boat. The bow does not." --David Mamet

Thinking in pieces today. Thinking around the stupid kid logic that's taken over my day job dance routine. Stupid kid logic is fine when it doesn't matter - it's just a job, just something that can be replaced. RAIN DOGS, though. Something with a chance at being more than just a Word file on my hard drive demands a whole different set of thought patterns. Or at least something mature enough to admit I really don't know what the hell I'm doing.

So lots of reading. Lots of writing that's more rehersal than progress. Lines and lines of work that might give up a usable line or two but is really just getting to know my characters, getting to know how they think and know and feel and bleed and cry and wake up in the morning. Lots of looking at page after page and telling myself I need this and it isn't just dicking around. Lots of muttering Not the first time, not the first time.

So stupid kid logic says burn through the thing and shoot it off to exhuasted Drew Gill to draw and to hell with the rest. Everything else says, try and you'll be stomped on, the story will rise up and beat you into the ground before fading back into ideaspeace like so much vapor trail. So I'm listening to the still small voice and taking my time. Focusing on all the little bits that make up the story instead of the story itself, drawing each tree instead of a green blob for a forest. And running out of metaphors in the meantime, but, y'know. Selah.

Trees, not forest. Bow, not boat.

GARRETT MAKES HIS MOVE.

RAIN DOGS opens with Garrett, our lead, standing under a lamp post and staring down to the end of the street. The scene comes from the end of the story, after a host of unplesantries have smashed most of the innocence and child out of him. He's a little drunk and a lot scared, trying to put off what now feels pretty inevitable. The last guy to wear his suit is dead and the pistol stuck in his belt came too cheap. He's almost out of cigarettes and the engine roar overhead is his last chance to walk away reaching flight altitude. So what's the point of the scene? Why does all this matter, what does it contribute to the story?

Think in pieces. Each scene is a story in itself, the final product just a collection of moments in a certain order. Tell the story that needs to be told now, worry how it fits later. Have a throughline that contributes to the overall picture but can be adjusted if need be. The scenes cut from films are those too static to bend with plot evolution. Everything else files under Alternate Take. So what's our Througline? The point? To show tension. To imply anxiety and secondthoughts and inner turmoil and all those good things. Now isn't the time to worry about the dialog running beside the pictures, now is the time to decide what the pictures are saying so I'm not repeating myself later. So there we go. The point of GARRETT MAKES HIS MOVE is to establish something is about to happen that our boy doesn't want to do but feels he has to. All scenes subject to change, all throughlines at risk of complete abandonment.

PANEL ONE
Establishing setting is job one. I want to play with decompression some, sort of stretch things out and give more room for establishing mood, scope, and all the other things happening in the reader's head. We'll start on a shot on the lamp post's light as scene from the ground up. Orange glow diffusing into the fog/pollution blend that is nighttime in a city on the West Coast. I don't know enough about big cities or the west coast to write a specific city well enough, so I'm not. Drew and I settled on a mash of LA and San Francisco - he's lived in both, so - with a little of Gotham or Frank Miller's SIN CITY thrown in for good measure. Something big and menacing, wearing its tourist magnets like a mask over the shit nobody wants to see.

PANEL TWO
Drop down to just behind and to the left of Garrett, focusing away from us. Draw attention to the fresh scar on his cheek. The advantage of comics over film is how much of the story happens in the reader's head. We don't have to do a slow pan down from the light to Garrett, the reader does it for us.

Two shots right now. The bright light is a curiousity, then we move down to show the light is a lamp post, and our character's standing under it. So we have an established setting (a city, somewhere urban) and an established character. Yay for us.

PANEL THREE
Pull back, we're directly behind him now, enough to get him from the belt line up. His suit is rumpled, frayed, maybe a size two big. the but of a revolver sticks out of the back of his pants. Still building tension, giving the impression that many, many things aren't right here.

PANEL FOUR
Pull back all the way. We're down the street, behind Garrett. We can see a little down the street through the haze. This isn't a nice neighborhood.

New page here. Just so you know.

PANEL ONE
Close in on Garrett's face this time. He's lighting a cigarette, eyes closed. He needs to shave, needs to brush his hair, needs to get some sleep.

PANEL TWO
From behind again, he turns, leans back into the lamp post. Exhales. He's having second thoughts. Little black spots dot the pool of light he's standing in.

PANEL THREE
Close in on Garrett's hands, shaking, the cigarette falling from his fingers.

PANEL FOUR
From Garrett's POV, watching the cigarette fall away. Cigarette buts litter the ground. He's been here for a while.

New page.

PANEL ONE
Pull back again, Garrett diggin through his pockets, lost in his own clothes.

PANEL TWO
Holding a cigarette pack up to the light, squinting at it.

PANEL THREE
From Garrett's POV, looking into the packet. There's only two left.

PANEL FOUR
Dropping the pack into his jacket pocket. Looking like it's one more thing when he doesn't need one more thing.

PANEL FIVE
Looking off down the street. It's time to go.

So that's that. Three pages, thirteen panels. Nothing carved in stone yet, but I have a skeleton to hang words on and an idea of what I'm doing out the gate. A scene that tells a story all on its own. That's good enough for tonight.