!!!CONTEST!!!

Our next full issue of Hatman & Indigo has a parody cover that parodies something somewhat obscure. Next week, the first few pages of Hatman & Indigo: Shocking Science Fiction Stories will go live online featuring the new cover (Drawn by S. LaDon Ware, and colored by Andy Kuder and Michael Lude), but I thought I'd give you a glimpse of it here.

This issue was originally titled Hatman & Indigo: Back to the Beginning Part 4, but we decided to use the parody cover as inspiration for the title of this individual issue (like we did with Back to the Beginning Part 3 being titled Hatman & Indigo's Excellent Adventure).

If you can figure out what this cover is parodying, post your answers here. The first correct answer will get a special prize. It's something cool we've been working on for the next Indy Comic-con, August 30th.

So, who will be the first fan with this new "prize"?

It could be you!

Andy

The woes of writing

As I've previously blogged, I am currently in the process of writing a couple of Hatman scripts in addition to editing a couple other Hatman scripts and doing layouts for upcoming Hatman comics. But sometimes I get stuck. I believe this is traditionally called writers block, but I don't really think of it as a block per say. I know that if I were to sit down to work on one of those scripts I could write, it just wouldn't be as good as if I were to sit down when I'm feeling "it".

What do I mean by "it" you may ask? Well, I'm not even sure how to articulate what the "it" is that I'm referring to, but when you are feeling "it" the words flow like... well if I was feeling "it" I'd have a beautiful analogy here, but because I'm not, you'll just have to fill in something that flows well.

I know many writers and artists of various forms fall into this place of stuck-ed-ness (for lack of a better term). But I think sometimes it isn't more that I'm stuck but that the words or the finished work itself are incubating, or gestating in my subconscious and once they are ready to be "hatched" they will produce themselves.

I know this might sound like a bunch of artsy fartsy nonsense, but I honestly can't articulate it any better than that. Especially at this moment.

The thing that I hate the most about these bouts of "incubation" (if you will) are that I fear missing my deadlines or holding up the whole process. However, I do tend to work six months out or more, so I haven't held us back yet!

If you watch a 3 or 4 issue story that I wrote, you may be able to see that I wrote one part at a different time than another because even though they are still one overarching story, the "feel" is a little different. You'll get what I mean with this years Halloween special. I wrote the first part in one setting and really liked it; it sets up a new villain and tells a story in and of itself that is somewhat inspired by a popular Spider-Man story. Then I was "stuck" for a couple of months on where to go with the second issue, but I finally felt "it" again and quickly wrote the second issue out alongside the third in nearly a weeks time.

Other times I will be "stuck" prior to writing anything at all, as I've previously mentioned that was partly the case with "Back to the Beginning" we had all taken a crack at the story and had missed the mark a bit and then one day I was alone in the house and I sat down at my computer and refined the notes we had taken of what we wanted to happen and I wrote all 4 parts in that day. It was exhausting but satisfying as well. I really do hope that you are enjoying it. The last installments should be out in the next few weeks and hopefully you can watch them all back to back and see the whole story in one setting somewhat how I saw it unfold through my fingertips when I wrote it.

I apologize for the long somewhat ADD post, but hopefully this sort of thing will help me recapture that magic "it".

Jason

What's Your Thoughts?

The last several pages of "Hatman & Indigo: Back to the Beginning" went on line today. This issue ends with a cliffhanger. I don't want to spoil it for you, but I thought it may be nice to see what you, our viewers, think is going to happen next. Go ahead and watch the entire issue (it doesn't take that long), and then post your ideas on where you think the story is going.
We already have the rest of the story finished, so don't think your going to sway the issue. It would be nice to see how predictable (or not) our stories are.

Thanks for your feedback,

~Andy

PART 2: Parody Covers

Previously, I briefly wrote about the process of choosing a cover to parody for a specific Hatman issue. I will go into more detail on that now.

Many times we have to really work on what covers would fit best with what stories. Granted, we could just arbitrarily pick something recognizable and go with that. However, I have tried to implement a few rules into our parody covers.

My first rule is that only characters that appear in that story can appear on the cover. For instance if its not a story featuring the Terrible Trio, you won't see Zapman on the cover. Now I say in the "story" meaning that if for instance the cover is for part 3 of a story and Leppy appeared in part 2 but isn't in part 3 its okay to have him on that cover. Because we look at each story as a whole and the parts just help break them up into manageable pieces.

My second rule is that it has to make sense somehow in relation to the source material we are parodying. Take "The Terrible Trio part 2" for example, we wanted to parody "The Avengers issue #4". It was an obvious choice to put Super Cold Frozen Man in the place of Captain America, because he has a shield (which was originally designed to feel some what like an icy version of Cap's shield). And then, because Indigo and Glomo can both fly we put them in the spots for Wasp and Iron Man, Indigo in the Wasp position because he has wings. Then looking at what was left, we decided since Hatman has a cape, he should be where Thor is and why not have him swinging a hammer as well. Finally, Zapman was put in the place of Giant Man.

My third rule is that any text that appears on the source material should be closely parodied if at all possible. Again, if we look at the above covers, you'll see "Captain America Lives Again!" and in the story previous to this, we had led our audience to believe that Hatman & Indigo had killed Super Cold Frozen Man, so we put "Super Cold Frozen Man Lives Again!" Also, a good reason this cover worked so well with this particular story was that the part 3 was the very first Ion Bunny so putting Ion Bunny in the box where Sub-Mariner is on the original was also a no brainer. Then we looked at the text for "Avengers" and decided to make ours say "Adventures" and we squeezed our Hatman & Indigo logo in after that.

I still have a lot to say about parody covers, so we'll continue this another time.

-Jason

Parody Covers

Many of our comics have parody covers (to understand what this is, just compare the images to the left and right). In fact, we actually have more parody covers than original covers. The pattern usually is that issue one of a multi-issue story is an original cover and the subsequent issues have parody covers. We have broken this pattern a couple of times, (technically only once on the one part Christmas Carol issue, but the following issues "Omniscient" weren't parody covers, however, the part 2 cover could arguably be a parody of the part 1 cover, and at this point your probably saying "who cares") but we try to have that be the pattern.

Anyhow, a lot of thought is put into the parody covers that we do. I spend a lot of time searching cover databases (coverbrowser is a great one) looking for covers to possibly parody. We are usually working about six months to a year ahead, so I am constantly jumping around the different stories and issues thinking of what would best portray the comic issue at the time. Some comics lend themselves to a specific cover naturally. Like "Back to the Beginning", as I mentioned in a previous post, the part 2 cover is going to be a parody of the "Back To The Future part 1" box cover (refer to that post for the reference image). However, some comics don't so easily lend themselves to a parody cover, so we have to put a little thought into it.

Our first few parody covers were specifically parodying "first" issues. Like Action Comics #1 (shown on the above left), which is the first appearance of Superman, Incredible Hulk #1 (you can guess who that featured) and so on. We still have a few "first" issues in mind for future covers, but we have expanded to include other interesting covers as well as ones you might recognize right off the bat and some that may be a little more obscure.

I will continue more on this topic later.

-Jason

Hatman & Indigo's Excellent Adventure!?

The first few pages of Hatman & Indigo: Back to the Beginning (part 1) went live on our site today. But, as Jason mentioned in an earlier blog it went through quite a large change from concept to final script.

As you can probably tell by the title, this story parodies Back to the Future. But originally I wrote it to be more of a parody of Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure.

It opened with The Narrator giving us a tour of Hatman’s house, as Indigo wakes up. Indigo then sees Hatman & Indigo (from the immediate future) has a conversation with them, and they leave. The story unfolds similarly to what happens in part 1 of Back to the Beginning, so I won’t reveal much more. However it ended with the same scene it opened with only from the future Hatman & Indigo’s perspective of seeing Indigo that same morning (just like Bill and Ted). You can read more about how the script evolved into what it is today, by reading Jason’s earlier posts.

Enjoy!

~Andy

"PART 2" Hatman goes Back To The Beginning!

This coming week will be the release of the first few pages of "Hatman & Indigo: Back To The Beginning". Which as I stated earlier is a loose parody on "Back To The Future", but what I had not mentioned was that it was a very long and arduous process arriving at the final script. Originally Andy had written a script titled "Time Portal" where Hatman and Indigo follow the Terrible Trio back in time to stop them from preventing his (Hatman's) creation. It was somewhat a loose parody of "Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure" (Andy can elaborate on it a little more). As we try to do with all of our scripts, we went into editing it for content and humor and I thought that it ended kind of too smoothly, so I added onto the end of it some more stuff and made it more like "Back To The Future" and suggested the title be changed to "Back to the Beginning" instead of "Time Portal". Andy and Steve liked that but thought it needed a bit more, so they each added some stuff to the story and then we went back to editing it and we all kept feeling that something was missing so we went into another round of edits and additions. The last draft of this story ended up being a parody of all three of the "Back To The Future" movies and even though it was a very exciting group of adventures, they didn't seem to really feel like one story. So, we shelved the thing for a few months and would just bring it up in discussions every once in a while. What we realized was that because we all loved "Back To The Future" so much when we were kids that we wanted to make sure we did it justice in our parody. So, I sat down and took some notes on what things we all agreed needed to happen in the story and then created an outline which I shared with Andy and Steve and after we were all in agreement, I began to write. I kid you not, one Sunday I sat at my computer and from scratch re-wrote "Back To The Beginning" in one long setting. It was as if my muse was with me that day and the words just flowed from my fingertips and aside from a few minor spelling and grammar edits we are going with the draft I wrote in that day. Even though I'm getting the writing credit on the cover, its really a 3Twins story that we all had a hand in. I hope you enjoy it over the next several weeks as it unfolds.

-Jason

Hatman goes Back To The Beginning!

I've been hard at work with one of our all star artists, Michael Lude, on the next exciting Hatman story, "Back To The Beginning". I don't want to give too much away; but, as you may be able to glean from the title, our characters travel back in time to revisit the events of the Origin of Hatman. This is a loose parody of "Back To The Future" (check out bttf.com its a really cool site devoted to everything "Back To The Future") and like my previous parody story, Hatman Clause, it is more a parody of the concept than a plot for plot parody. So, you'll notice some references to "Back To The Future", but it is also going to be a fresh story with its own twists and turns. A riveting story coupled with Michael's stellar art (you can view his most recent feats on Hatman Clause part 3) this is gearing up to be the best Hatman story yet! This will also be the debut of our first story to span 4 issues! We've got some great parody covers planned for parts 2-4 as well, including a fairly large group of variant covers for part 2 which will be direct parodies of the first "Back To The Future" movie box/poster (see image attached to this post) featuring pretty much all of the cast each on their own in the "Marty" pose. (To get an idea of what I mean by "variant" covers, visit Hatman Clause part 2 and once the comic loads refresh it several times to see the cover change, hint there are 3 versions of that cover). As we start to post parts of this story on 3twins.net I will continue to give updates.

-Jason