Getting Away with Murder: A Comic Book Kickstarter

I can’t say I had it tough growing up. At least, not in an outward way that would make sense of the heroin cravings and passionate strangulation of “Getting Away with Murder: A Lowlife Story”.

For me, the mental maelstrom and cynicism I experience daily is what shapes my characters. This inner struggle reacting to an outside force is where my stories start. The chaos and constant fight of addiction and the overwhelming corrosive force of guilt are the internal struggles of the nameless main character in, “Getting Away with Murder: A Lowlife Story”.

Back when I was more of a musician, playing shows all around New York, my band had played a show at this lounge in Brooklyn. The lounge has since closed down and at the time it was not thriving with activity. But when you walked in there was a huge empty floor with a couple pillars disrupting the view across the lounge. There was a stage that was painted the same matte black that coated the whole interior of the building and just past it was a hallway to a couple dressing rooms. There were three acts playing that night and only two dressing rooms. We were first to arrive so we put some of our equipment in one of the dressing rooms thinking ourselves grand that we had as large a room to occupy before going on.

However, as the other acts showed, we were relegated to the hallway, letting the “bigger” acts have the preparatory space. I remember having forgotten a piece of equipment in our former dressing room. I opened the door while knocking, not expecting anyone to be naked but instead seeing the 12-piece band, the headliner that night, all turn to look at me, aghast that someone should walk in. The lead singer was hunched over in front of the makeup mirror, the kind with the clear bauble bulbs so bright you don’t see a crevice in your skin, with a line of coke just below his nose. Their brief look of fear quickly changed to anger. Who the hell was I and all that nonsense.

But really, who the hell were they? We were, all of us, nobodies.

Our story, “Getting Away with Murder: A Lowlife Story” came somehow and somewhere from that idea. The main character, a rocker who had a brush with money and fame, now forced to live a middle class life not only addicted to heroin but addicted to the thrill of playing. He thirsts for the old days of people cheering for him, of having “rock star privileges”, and the parties where he’s the focal point. He’s on the downslide of stardom, plummeting toward being a nobody and it’s the most painful thing. Also, he just killed his ex-groupie.

Two MoCCAs ago, I was walking the floor when I met MJ Steele (MJ's Site). He had an 11” x 14” inked drawing of Kurt Cobain mid-air playing his lefty fender strat in a warehouse to a silhouetted crowd, the Seattle Space Needle seen through one of the warehouse windows. No doubt about it, I had found the artist to help me tell this story. 

MJ’s style could be compared to more known talents like Sean Murphy or Rafael Albuquerque. Could be. If I were forced to make the comparison. The reality is, he draws inspiration from those artists while still maintaining his own unique style. He’s a balance of precision and broad strokes. Sharp black lines meeting swooping water colors. MJ studies illustration and cartooning at the School of Visual Arts.

Once MJ started churning out fully inked and beautiful pages, we need a letterer. We were lucky my brother, Thomas Griffin (Tom's Art), who can do any part of comic work artfully and skillfully, stepped in. He lettered the pages without the black outlines typically seen on word bubbles and captions. This let the bubbles fit MJs artwork without the obvious outside source that can sometimes disconnect the words from the pictures.

Currently, we’ve started a Kickstarter campaign to help us raise the funds and some buzz for this one-shot comic. Check it out at this link:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/583569168/getting-away-with-murder-a-lowlife-story

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Article by Sean Griffin. Sean is a writer and co-founder of Gryphon Knights Comics. He currently writes the comic book "Hero" for GK and is studying Creative Writing for his MFA at Manhattanville College.

SASB: Death of the Superfan: Part 1

You haven't been back home in a while. You moved out to the city for work and have gotten used to the Thai food, the busyness, and a new local comic shop where you make regular visits for the latest "Saga" and "Resident Alien." But now because your little sister graduated, you're in your hometown, and decided to check out the comic store that's near your parents' house. You stand outside and you recall what your first time here was like...

You had the hawkish owner/ manager (you're still not clear) who greeted you at the door. He wore glasses, a tucked-in, checkered, collar shirt and seemed like he wouldn't want to answer you're stupid questions. Scattered throughout the store  are isolated men, with the exception of the two engaged in a conversation over Warren Ellis's Planetary and a young couple, perhaps just really close friends, pawing and laughing over the latest X-men.

 And then there was Paul.

You mustered up the courage, and asked the manager where you can find the Doom Patrol comics. You were right; the manager didn't feel like answering you question, especially since he doesn't know what you are talking about. You started to describe it explaining that they were a team like the X-Men with a guy in wheelchair, similar to Professor X. 

"Actually, the Doom Patrol came before the X-Men, So really Professor X is like Niles Caulder, your "wheelchair guy." says Paul glancing up at you intently. His angry eyes above his hair filled cheeks, daring you to challenge his knowledge,

"Doom Patrol started in My Greatest Adventure #80, in June 1963, and X-Men started in September 1963," he continued unsolicited. "You shouldn't be reading it if you don't know about it..."

...

You enter the old, disheveled shop from that memory and you trip over something. You turn around and to your horror, it's the body of Paul, the former resident expert, with blood and  self-significance pouring out of an open wound.

Who? Who could have done this, you think, your mind quickly races towards the list of suspects.

To be continued... 

POOR PAUL!

Dimitrios Fragiskatos is an irate Greek who enjoys prodding speculators. You can read his work on titles like Greasers in Greece or Greasers in Geese, and his new series he has a bunch of artists locked in a room working on called Frankenstein vs. Dracula.