“Striking Sparks” — Page Thirty-Three
Scene change!
And an introspective moment, broken by a knock at the door.
By the way, just in case your eyes are like mine, here is an enlarged version of the page.
More below!
Bobservations
A History of Violence
You may be aware that 3 Minute Max isn’t the first action-oriented project I’ve ever worked on. Latest and greatest, sure, but I worked for years in the animation industry writing “Boy’s Action” shows (which is the Industry Code Word for “violent toy-pimpage”) and even directed a few.
I also do explosions on the side, and I occasionally make my own knives. A psychologist would say it’s probably all compensation for something.
But before all that, back when when I was actually young and tough and working as a bouncer at Madame Wong’s punk-rock nightclub in Chinatown — there was The Owl.
A novel about a private detective who doesn’t sleep and roams the streets of Los Angeles during the wild 1980s, scattering bodies and bullet casings with considerable abandon. The Owl was brutal good fun and although I got lured away by the better (well, easier) money to be made in animation, I have always loved the gritty toughness of the main character of my first novel. As with 3 Minute Max, it had a bit of a supernatural element mixed in; and despite the fact that it went out of print for years, I kept getting letters about it from people who found it in used bookstores.
The Owl has also been optioned by a number of studios in Hollywood, basically from day one. There was one attempt to produce it as a TV series, which was dreadful; they wouldn’t let me write it, and the director ignored the original work. Pretend it never happened — everyone else does. The book itself was immediately optioned again, by Sony, as I recall. It is still under option by a British production company to this day. For an out-of-print book, it has been amazingly popular.
But the out-of-print part? That’s about to change.
Brash Books has decided to re-release The Owl, and I’ve been impressed by how much time and money they’ve thrown into it. The cover alone is far better than the original ever was, and I’ve gone over the galleys, correcting the few errors that made it past their proofreaders. The text is clean and the prose is brutal. It’s a journey back to 1980’s “LA Noir” — the Owl was very much a product of his time — and it is quite a ride. Brash Books have me doing some promotional material for it, and they encourage me to plug it whenever possible — so of course I am.
Available Now!
Because I can guarantee you one thing — if you like 3 Minute Max, you’ll find The Owl to be right up your dark and gritty alley.
With a smokin’ .45 caliber Peacemaker. Oh yeah.
— Bob out
By the way, just in case your eyes are like mine (see TV tropes: Male Gaze), they are really big now, trying so hard to look into the future …
Seriously, guys: Blablabla, cliffhangers, blablabla, make the reader want to turn the page, blablabla, keep them at the edge of their seats, blablabla …
But: “Love the outfit. What’s the occasion?” ???
I’m not sure I ever read that one. And somehow I think I would remember.
It’s very obviously Marissa. She’s attracted to Max, and she enjoys cosplay. I anticipate she’s going to try to seduce him, but they’ll be interrupted by the crisis from the previous pages.
Oh, wait, should I post “spoiler alert” before declaring my anticipations?
Oh, I think that’s indeed obvious. But I want to see who she’s cosplaying. Should be interesting … ahem … most common superpower … cough
well, there are simply too many options, even if she isn’t cosplaying.
If she is, I’d hope for one of the gals from RWBY,,, especially Pyrrah.
Need…upvote button.
I like how Max is piecing together his experiences in death together like this. The way he’s attempting to formulate patterns makes me wonder if, in the context of the story, the afterlife is different for men than it is for women.
And “The Owl” sounds pretty hot. If I decide to pick it up I’ll likely read it while listening to the Hotline Miami Soundtrack: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oKD-MVfC9Ag
Hm, you probably don’t have time for video games, do you Bob? I’d recommend at least checking out some trailers or gameplay of Hotline Miami. I think you might enjoy it. If you ever find time to play it, heads up: it gets quite trippy.
The trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2o9SUPgyZRY
My younger bro John was showing me Hotline Miami a while back- looks like an awesome homage to old school grand theft auto. Very cool.
Haha, always great to see an obscure book getting recognition. I’ll have to check it out when I have the chance.
Also good to know we can examine Max’s light stubble in HD.
And that nostril. OH BABY.
Unusually, the text in the bubbles was less readable than normal – blurry.
The “an enlarged version of the page.” was actually smaller than the comic page. Ironically, the text on that page was totally clear, though the characters were smaller.
Still loving the strip AND the blog.
Ian
The comic pages on the site are 600×900 pixels. They are also web-optimized (compressed) to save bandwidth and reduce load times. Depending on your machine, monitor, browser, and settings, the larger version (which has more pixels) may actually display smaller but clearer – on a Retina display, for instance.
You know how you swear when something is sufficiently surprising – OMG! or whatever your personal equivalent? So I\’m reading this random \”web comic\” and I discover that the author\’s father is THAT Bob Forward. I get some dozens of pages in and I find out that the author wrote The Owl. I am over-astonished, I am.
Well, just in case anybody else gets this far into the comments, let me recommend that book. It\’s one of a kind in the good sense, which doesn\’t happen often with novels.