Team Ninja Shark #1 - Taking Out the Dead
Thoughts on my first comic book.
Hello, Substack.
My name is P.J. Curling, and I write comic books. That’s a weird sentence to say, because most people who make comics can draw to varying degrees of quality. But as it turns out, I am not gifted when it comes to making lines on paper look like things other than words.
That makes it pretty difficult to actually make a comic book. Which makes sense. What sells comics? The art. Dur. But when I decided to finally write this comic of mine, I didn’t really take the marketing of the book into consideration. At least not to any serious degree. This story, “Taking Out the Dead”, has been with me for over two decades. And when I wrote the first draft, many grey hairs ago, I decided to write it in a comic book format because I figured comic book versus movie, I had a much better chance of making it as a comic book than as a movie.
Now, a significantly increased bald spot later, and I have the first 8 pages of this comic drawn and lettered. I am genuinely thrilled to have gotten this far. For almost half my life this story has been literally a figment of my imagination. I’ve been sitting with one of these scenes for over two decades. I even have print copies of these 8 pages in the mail, thanks to Ka-blam!
Why now? What’s different in 2024 from 2004? Maybe eight or nine months ago I was talking to my friend and collaborator, Christopher Stevenson. I was trying very hard to avoid processing my mom’s death, and Chris - who my mom loved like a son - was going through a similar process over the loss of his dad. We were talking one night, and I said, “You know that zombie story? I started writing it again”.
Without even asking to look at pages, he said “What do you need to make it happen?” It came very much from a place of mourning. It came from that introspective space where you consider the fact that your time on this planet is finite, and to the best of our worldly knowledge, you can’t take it with you. And I was proud of the pages I had written. Not just proud, but I also didn’t (and still kind of don’t) care how the story is received by the world. I satisfied with just having the opportunity to express the story. To finally be able to say “this story is finished, and out in the world”. That’s really what a lot of this process has been about.
Not exorcising, not really. But more completing the thought.
When Chris said “what do you need”, it did motivate me, though. I did a few more passes on the script. And eventually did a total rewrite. We found an artist (Eliseu Gouveia) and a letterer (Marco Della Verde). And after a few more months of back and forth, Eliseu and Marco turned in the completed pages for an issue 0.
Soon, I’ll have a physical copy of those pages in my hands. And, now, I’ve done a lot of writing over the last twenty or thirty years. All of it under other pennames. All of it very disposable. Most of it about sports, and everything digital. It’s been since college since I saw something of mine in legitimate print. So imagine my emotions when I see Taking Out the Dead #0 on paper and in my fat little fingers.
Coming Up Next…
May 1st - Taking Out the Dead Kickstarter Campaign Goes Live
May 19th - Team Ninja Shark scheduled to appear at Fall River Comic & Toy Palooza