What if Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and Frank Miller's Sin City had a baby? It would be something in the vein of Frankie. Every Halloween for the past 5 years I've been itching to want to make a story about the hard-boiled life of Frankie, a tough-as-nails mob hand who's on the quest towards redemption. Here's a synopsis I wrote:
In the underbelly of Dead City, Frankie’s the top dog mobhand for the Count. If anyone looks and breathes the wrong way at his employer, Frankie’s the go-to guy to take care of the problem. All his years of loyalty and service to the mob boss has paid him well. Frankie has it all: the beautiful and lethal Bride loves him, the monster underworld is afraid of him, and the streets of Dead City won’t dare to disrespect him and the Count. But one night when the troubled Mina Harker comes into his life, everything he’s worked hard to build comes falling down.
It would be awesome to have a graphic novel ready for a Halloween release. While Joan's being reviewed by my editor, Robert Romeo, I've been using the time off to work on side projects, like these concept sketches for Frankie.
And speaking of time off, I finally mustered up the strength to quit Instagram. I hate feeling like I was obligated to post stuff on there. I mean, I feel obligated to share my works, but not like the way it was with Instagram. I can't put my whole entire blame on social media, because it sounds really ridiculous to blame an app, but there is a weird combination of my own addictive personality, FOMO, and the strange peer pressure created by the algorithm that made me feel as if I had to post everyday. And I knew a lot of what I was writing in the captions and sharing wasn't really being seen by a new audience, because the algorithm was not picking up any of my works. I'm sure there's a positive spin to all of that, but none of that applies to me.
I do worry though about what it means when I crowdfund Joan: Vol 2 next year. (Sigh) I might have to climb back onto IG again just so I can reach out to people about my project. Oye...
-S