Highly Disproportional Assets
Along with countless other people, I will be happy to see 2009 go. Yet despite everything that went wrong this year, I can’t say 2009 was all bad for me, because I accomplished two things I really wanted to do this year: start a blog and publish Pretty Vacant. I surprised a lot of people (including myself) with its publication. My last comic book, The New GARDE, was a take on superheroes: people from the past showing today’s world what it takes to be true heroes. It was a severe change in direction when Pretty Vacant’s high-tech damsel-in-distress story debuted. The New GARDE was a successful, distributed book. Why take the chance with Pretty Vacant?
It was probably equal parts ambition, anger and arrogance that made me create Pretty Vacant. I wanted to make a leap of creativity from standard super heroes to a story never before seen in comics before, using the Beatles growth from their Cavern days to Psychedelia as my model. I was angry that some people thought Pretty Vacant would be too expensive to make as a film, so I crafted it as an inexpensive three dollar comic book. And I was arrogant enough to try pulling it off.
I figured if I was going to fail, I may as well fail big! And it could have backfired on me big time: my fans could have rejected the new focus, women could have called it sexist, fetishists could have said it was too tame, and my more conservative friends could have labeled it degenerative. I am grateful they did not.
First and foremost, Pretty Vacant is a good story. As much as I would like to take credit for that as the creator and writer, I would also like to credit one of the comic’s characters. Pretty Vacant is a good story made better by an individual the readers can root for to the end. Gigi is capable, resilient and beautiful…
… and completely easy for me to write for tomorrow.Happy 2010 everyone!
posted by John Villalino @ 8:37 AM
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