Page 10, the wind up and the pitch

Tomb of the Undead
here's an update on the 10th page of the Tomb of the Undead story. One more page in this scene before we get into the next.


Writing a graphic novel has been done by many enthusiasts - including this guy. He dug an old copy of a short story he wrote, and decided to make an illustrated novella out of it. Check it out.


Eric Drooker: Graphic novel of Ginsberg's 'Howl'
Ari Messer
This article appeared on page G - 17 of the San Francisco Chronicle

Eric Drooker came to create the artwork for his new graphic-novel version of "Howl" - based on his animation design for the new movie, which also shares its title with Allen Ginsberg's classic long poem - through a number of paths at once.

Ginsberg and Drooker met in the contentious Lower Manhattan of the 1980s. Drooker showed Ginsberg his protest art, but there was no need: "He'd already been collecting my posters," Drooker said in his Berkeley studio.

Drooker felt honored by the new friendship, and Ginsberg would later write in their 1996 collaboration "Illuminated Poems" that he was "flattered that so radical an artist of later generations found the body of my poetry still relevant, even inspiring. Our paths crossed often, we took part in various political rallies and poetical-musical entertainments."

"Illuminated Poems" does contain "Howl," but Drooker says he was excited when directors Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman asked him to provide artwork for the long series of animation in the film (now playing in the Bay Area).

"Ginsberg and I were on a similar wavelength when we were both trying to describe what he called the 'Megalopolis,' an endless corporate cityscape and factory-scape," Drooker said. "Right away, he had suggested that I try illustrating something from the 'Moloch' section of 'Howl.' He recognized that my style, my vision of the metropolis, would lend itself particularly strongly to that section."

The smooth, three-dimensional quality of the artwork might surprise fans of Drooker's previous, etching-like graphic novels, "Flood!" and "Blood Song." The art in the new graphic novel has traveled from Drooker's pen, through the animation studio and back onto the page.

"Animation is a very slow, meticulous process," he says. "I fed the animators concept art, characters and storyboards, and then the studio made everything move using the same type of software that Pixar uses."

When Nick Hornby called Drooker's work "mythopoeic," he wasn't kidding. "I decided to stretch out a nine-page poem over 200 pages," Drooker said. "Each stanza of the poem has its own page, its own spread. I tried to make it more like a religious text, more liturgical.

"I made Moloch, the God of War, look more or less like a Greek minotaur," he says. "It has the head of a bull and the body of Schwarzenegger. It's a terrifying character. We send our firstborn to war, in ancient times as well as in modern times."

Tonight's event will be a chance to get Drooker's signature on your own copy of the graphic novel, as well as a chance to observe the process behind the artwork.

"I'm going to show slides illuminating the whole process of animating the poem and working on the movie and storyboards," he said.

Hope you're having a great time following along with the story.