The Pretty Vacant Stand-Alone Conundrum

I always wonder if my latest published story will be my last. I was fortunate to do four issues of Codename: Jezebel and five issues of the New G.A.R.D.E., but there is currently only the one issue of Pretty Vacant…

… for now! Mike at Bare Bones Studios has an eight page mini-story for his Pocket Book Heroes comic that I hope will introduce Pretty Vacant to his readers and I have agreed to write another full-sized issue. The sales for issue one (despite not yet having a distribution deal) has been decent, warranting a second issue green light. For that I thank comic shows and the people who attend them!

Even though I wanted Pretty Vacant to continue, I made issue one a stand-alone issue. I didn’t want to walk away from it in the middle of a multi-part story. Too many comics creators do that, and it’s so frustrating. Even Jack Kirby, considered the most influential superhero artist ever, had problems finishing his highly personal, multi-issue Fourth World saga. So Pretty Vacant’s first issue was a complete story, with an ending I liked if it did not sell, yet giving me an opportunity to expand upon what I had already done if sales were good.

I’m now adopting a serialized story format made up of stand-alone stories, a format made popular by such television shows like Buffy: The Vampire Slayer and Doctor Who. Each successive issue of Pretty Vacant will be a complete story (with a beginning, middle and end), but feeding into a bigger storyline.

Where does that leave things now? Gigi barely escaped from the exploding Still Life plastination facility, but vowing to rescue Mindy from her frozen fate and to bring the Still Life Corporation down. If anyone is to try and top that, it might as well be me!