Independent Propaganda

Courtesy of Jim Giar

Read The Making of SOULDRIVER Part 1

THE MAKING OF SOULDRIVER is a series of articles documenting the trials and tribulations of self publishing ones own comic/graphic novel..or…whatever you want to call it. Available in both widescreen and full screen and told in vivid color and excruciating detail by writer/artist and creator of his own self-publishing venture, Jim Giar. From gathering ideas to choices in publishing methods, he shall attempt to cover everything and anything. All while maintaining a strict, professional air of decorum. (Well….within reason.) And if he doesn’t have the answers… he can probably at least point you in the right direction. So jump on board and let’s watch the tragedy unfold. Come on! It’ll be fun. (Thanks to Wesley and Independent Propaganda. They’re the only folks that would have me.)

Where do you get ideas?

This is a question that has probably been asked a hundred if not thousands of times. Over at Digital Webbing it gets asked at least once a month. What do you do to get out of writer’s block? Is the hokey- pokey what it’s really all about? How many licks does it take to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop? Hey!…one question at a time.

So as I was saying. Where do you get ideas? This question never appeared more astral, more mystical until I started thinking about where the idea for SOULDRIVER came from. Would you like me to tell you? Well guess what? It’s my article so I’m going to anyway. So either sit back and listen or I’ll break out the family vacation photos.

And I’ll do it to!

Ideas come from all over and can be from the smallest influences. My writing is heavily influenced by three things, music, literature and film. I’m kind of finicky when it comes to music, mostly because my moods change and along with it my musical tastes. SOULDRIVER was born from my penchant for industrial and metal music. Call it the violent side of my personality. I literally have the entire novel’s soundtrack in my mind. Need to put that on disc someday. My film and TV influences started early. I was born in the early 60’s and grew up in the 70’s, brought up on Batman and The Green Hornet. All the 70’s sci-fi, fantasy based t.v. shows, The Time Tunnel, The Invaders, obviously Star Trek. We were in the early days of hardboiled detectives and martial arts masters. Swashbuckling Errol Flynn as Captain Blood, comedies with Martin and Lewis, (That’s Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis for those to young..Are you still with me?) Danny Kaye..Red Skeleton. They made me laugh when I needed to. But really, I was mostly drawn to horror flicks. Almost obsessively, I still am to this day. From black and white silent classics to any and all B-rated, cheap horror flicks you can think of. I’ve seen it. Along with all of this I was an avid reader. Robert E Howard, Mark Twain, Louise Cooper, Stephen King..and many others. I read these long ago..to long for this feeble mind to remember. Throw into this mix a serious addiction to comics and Famous Monsters of Filmland, and you have a child with a very active imagination.

So how does this have anything to do with ideas you ask? Get on with it Giar!

Give me a minute and you’ll see where I’m going with this.

Relax!

Want me to get you a pillow? Cold beverage?

Better now? Good!

In the 70’s and 80’s film makers, and what they were willing to show, changed. They began to up the plateau of violence. It started very quietly, like a pot of boiling water on the stove. And once I saw it, life for me would never be the same. Kind of like when I saw Julie Newmar as Catwoman for the first time. But even more life altering than that, it was two films that started it all for me. They were Arthur Penn’s Bonnie and Clyde and Sam Peckinpah’s The Wild Bunch. These two films single handedly ushered in an entirely new era in not only filmmaking but morbidly so…entertainment. Sergio Leone’s Once Upon a Time in the West, Peckinpah’s The Getaway and years later John Woo’s The Killer and Hardboiled. Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction and Kill Bill, as well as Robert Rodriquez’s El Mariachi trilogy added to my mental library of influences. There are many others and I’m not going to go on.

So where did SOULDRIVER come from?

See above!

I borrowed a little bit from everything. The thought of an imaginary world and a person stuck in it and how he interacts with those he comes in contact with. It’s about people and relationships more than anything. See Alice or The Connecticut Yankee! And I kind of went from there. Characters are based on folks I’ve met over the years. Some are an amalgamation of different personalities and characteristics. Idiosyncrasies.

Now add a coma patient, a hired killer and his friends, a villainous doctor, a giggling re-animated corpse, 42 demon masked killers, a midget prone to violent outburst and a talking, foul mouthed cat and you have a nice family oriented motion picture.

Don’t get me wrong, SOULDRIVER is not a life altering, stoic piece of fiction. It may seem incredibly violent to some. Good. It’s meant to be, see the films above. But along with that will be some humor, however dark it may be. It was written with one thing in mind. Entertainment! That’s what it should be about, right? Isn’t that why you’re reading this and any other piece of fiction, graphic novel or comic? You want to be entertained?

Good! So do I.

Keep that in mind as you write.

SOULDRIVER…was written for me as well. I kept one thing in mind as I created it. If I saw it on the stands and picked it up, would I want to find a place to sit and read it?

I hope so!

So, my point to all of this? Ideas come from all over and there are a ton of them floating around you right now even as I speak…uhh…type.
And if you would just look away from the monitor for one second you just might see it.

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