Ralf the Destroyer

I’m finishing up a side project tentatively called “Ralf the Destroyer: Chronicles of Xyo” Issue #1, it’s a black and white, ashcan comic book (about 8″x 5″) with (hopefully) a color cover.

When I started developing the story of Ralf I wanted to make sure I had enough material to keep up with daily syndication for about 11 years, a daunting task. The reason for this was from Lee Nordling’s book Your Career in Comics where there was a quote saying that comics didn’t become profitable until this point. That was many moons ago and it seems now a days a five year contract is the norm with syndicates and 10 years is more like the life span of many newer comics rather than their jump off point.

Suffice to say I may have OVER planned for my story content, so what to do? Well I am a fan of Jeff Smith’s work ( Bone & Shazam! ) and other black and white pulp comics like TMNT (yes, when I read it, it was black and white on newsprint).

I started thinking maybe I could split the story up a bit as there where two portions of the story; Ralf’s plight with humanity on Earth and The back story of Ralf, his planet and how his decision affects the bigger picture. Ralf’s trials and struggles with humanity (his own and other’s) is a great set up for a daily strip but the back story seemed to need a bit more room to stretch its legs, so I suspect the comic book form would be better suited this part (though there is plenty of over-lap to tie them tightly together). I’ve been working on the comic book form of the story (issue #1) on the side. Posted to the left is the first page, there are a couple of other pages that can be seen on my DeviantART page.

Hey, let me know what you think!