I’m in the middle (literally I’m at page 50 of a planned 90 pages) of my new graphic novel House on Fire. I figured I’d finally start using this Substack to give people a glimpse into the creation of the book, some of my primary inspirations, maybe some techniques, and possibly do some reviews/reflections on comics/movies/music that I'm taking in.
House on Fire: Version 1.0
The book has gone through a few iterations, the first page I made riffing on the concept was (according to my computer’s file timestamp) done in May of 2020. This iteration was outlined somewhere in a sketchbook (I’ll dig it up for a future post) and was set primarily in a city. This page also featured some early attempts of mine at hand lettering (it’s pretty rough!), I really believe that keeping everything on the same board make the page feel more ‘of a piece’, whereas I find digital lettering always has a way of sticking out and feeling other-ly. I’m still trying to learn how to do better lettering, and House on Fire may end up being digitally lettered with a font based on my hand lettering, I will still put all the balloons in traditionally though, as I’ve found that the balloons tend to be the thing that stand out the most when they’re done digitally.
Nowadays I pencil everything digitally since it’s a lot easier for me to make edits, move things around, etc. I also tend to batch process things, so I’ll do the layouts/pencils for the whole book, then ink the whole book, then letter (lettering last because I hate writing dialogue, I rough in the basic concept then leave it for last to finalize).
And here are the inks for the first prototype page. House on Fire has ditched the narration motif, as I haven’t been able to write it where it doesn’t feel super heavy handed. I like to think the the two years since, I’ve gotten a lot better, I’ve likely done close to a hundred pages of comics since this one.
The story has significantly changed from this prototype page, there are different things weighing on my mind since I did this page, but the spirit was here on this page, and it sparked the ideas that have led to the final iteration of House on Fire.
As a friendly reminder, you can order a copy of my previous Graphic Novella Ghosts of the Carousel at Dauntless Stories.
I have exciting news to share: You can now read mattjbatt comics in the new Substack app for iPhone.
With the app, you’ll have a dedicated Inbox for my Substack and any others you subscribe to. New posts will never get lost in your email filters, or stuck in spam. Longer posts will never cut-off by your email app. Comments and rich media will all work seamlessly. Overall, it’s a big upgrade to the reading experience.
The Substack app is currently available for iOS. If you don’t have an Apple device, you can join the Android waitlist here.