POPPREVIEW: CRAZY PAPERS
By Jim Dougan

CRAZY PAPERS (ISBN 0-9777878-0-X) is a 52-page, B&W perfect-bound graphic novella written by Jim Dougan, drawn by Danielle Corsetto, and published by Chatterbox Comix, with a cover price of $6.50. The book appears on page 246 of the July issue of PREVIEWS, with a Diamond order code of JUL063013 F CRAZY PAPERS GN. Ask your retailer to reserve you a copy or you can order from Amazon.com or Marsimport.com.

The book debuted at the premiere of the New York ComicCon and if you know anyone who attended the show, chances are they picked it up as it seemed to be the One, Hot book everyone was grabbing a copy of. CRAZY PAPERS tells the story of Melanie, an admissions officer for Georgetown University, pushing 30 and feeling stuck in both her career and her love life. Along comes her impulsive friend Amanda on a visit to town, shaking up things for Melanie and finding love with an amusing chap carrying a mysterious briefcase. Amanda's impulsive romance pulls friends Melanie and Violet into a whirlwind weekend of wannnabe gangstas, bar brawls, Bon Jovi, jealous husbands and jail time. In just a few short days their friendship will be put to the test, but will it be just the sort of thing to get Melanie out of her rut? And just what's in the mysterious briefcase anyway?

Dean Haspiel describes the book as being "...like the lost rawkus episode of SEX IN THE CITY. A snappy mad-cap modern tale of a day gone bananas between three best girlfriends." While Michael Lark compares the book to Kyle Baker's WHY I HATE SATURN, describing it as "...one of those comics that reads more like a nice, funny, low-budget indie film."

As a debut Jim Dougan does well in painting a picture of his characters and their setting, and drives the reader through a mad night out that ends up having more effect on those involved then they could have expected. As for Danielle... well, we're biased. We love her AND she's an awesome artist already. Though the art is uniquely 'Danielle-esque' it's not necessarily what you may be used to seeing in RAMBLERS or GIRLS WITH SLINGSHOTS, there's a little something extra that stands out in the details. Whether this was a conscious decision or merely a result of creating the art for print instead of the web or tailoring the art with this specific story in mind, it is none-the-less filled the same exuberance that we're used to seeing from Danielle.

As far as collaborations go - the two chose well to work with each other, which brings us to our following article written by Jim Dougan who has graciously taken the time to give us a behind the scenes look at the creation of CRAZY PAPERS and the collaborative nature of his work together with Danielle.

Jim also humoured me in allowing us to add a few more preview pages [seen below] for you all by including one of my favourite scenes from the book. Why is it one of my faves? Fucking Rock and Roll, that's why.

Enjoy.
Jonathan Ellis
Co-Editor in Chief - PopImage.com

CRAZY PAPERS: A PopImage Article authored by Jim Dougan

OK, hotshot - Pop(Image) quiz: Which of the following is true?

a) Comics are inherently a collaborative medium.

b) Great comics can only be produced by a single creator.

c) None of the above.

Put me down for (c). I'm always suspicious of any school of thought that's too dogmatic, particularly as regards the creative process. While many of comics' finest works have indeed been produced by a single creator (the "auteur" method), many others have been produced as collaborations with multiple creators (writers, artists, etc.). Some critics deride this model as "assembly-line" method of making comics, as if these works were assembled along some imaginary conveyor belt in The Great Comics Factory in the sky. This may be true in some cases, perhaps at some of the bigger comics companies, but lots of comics are produced as a result of genuine collaboration, actual give-and-take, and chemistry between the creators. In these cases, the work at the end is more than the sum of its parts. Danielle Corsetto and I believe that this is the case with our graphic novella, the slice-of-life comedy CRAZY PAPERS. (Diamond Order Code: JUL063013 F CRAZY PAPERS GN)

If I were expressing our collaboration as an equation, it wouldn't be simply:

Jim's script + Danielle's art = CRAZY PAPERS

But rather:

Jim's script + Danielle's art - Jim's weaker ideas + Jim's stronger ideas + Danielle's stronger ideas - Danielle's weaker ideas + "chemistry" = CRAZY PAPERS

During the process of creating the book, there were many, many instances of back-and-forth discussion between Danielle and me, from dialogue to page layout to panel composition, and so on. Most of these involved minor tweaks to either script or art, (though they were no less important to the end quality of the book). The single best example of our collaborative process can be found in the "credit sequence," the opening two-page spread that introduces the characters of Melanie and Amanda.

In the original script, this introductory scene didn't exist. After the "disclaimer" on page 1, our opening image was the establishing shot on what is now page 4. After some time working together on the book, however, we realized that the story started kind of slowly, and the characters didn't truly establish themselves until well along into the plot. We agreed that a short introductory sequence could contrast Melanie and Amanda's personalities, and pull us into the story more quickly.

After our discussion, I scratched out some preliminary layouts and script notes. I don't usually sketch layouts for artists, and only describe panel size or configuration when I feel it's critical to the pacing. For the intro, though, these notes were as much for myself as for Danielle. You can see these lovely chicken-scratches at Figure 1.



(This is basically how all of my scripts start out. Classy, eh?)

The notes helped me fashion the actual script pages that I sent to Danielle, at Figure 2.



Danielle agreed that the sequence accomplished exactly what we were after, and would work with some minor tweaks. She apparently forgot to open my chicken-scratch attachment, and went ahead and laid out the pages on her own, which to no one's surprise ended up being an improvement on my suggestions anyway. See Figure 3:



Danielle also came up with other suggestions for the script, some of which made it into the final version in place of mine, some of which didn't. We even ended up using one of her jokes later in the book, when Melanie goes back to work Monday morning. Overall, though, we both think that the strongest version survived - the best script, layout, and art that we could come up with. See Figure 4.



Most important, the creation of the sequence itself arose from our discussions about the book and how to make it stronger.

And that is what collaboration is all about.

 

Jim Dougan is the author of the CRAZY PAPERS graphic novel and the new webcomic VULTURE GULCH, part of the comics collective THE CHEMISTRY SET appearing at Chemset Comics.com.


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