Broken Frontier

Richard Pulfer recently started his own webcomic, Blue Yonder, together with Luke Perks and Diego Diaz. In this Inside Look, Pulfer talks about what makes the story tick.

“Blue Yonder” is the first full-fledged superhero project I’ve published in any capacity, which is frankly a little weird. I’ve been reading superheroes since the seventh grade and writing comic books since I graduated high school, but it was only five years after I graduated college that the two paths even crossed.  I’ve done everything from pot-bellied vampires and balding werewolves to ancient gods and race cars. For some reason, I had to go through all of that before I told one full story about superheroes.

Was it worth it? You be the judge.

“Blue Yonder” is a webcomic about growing up – something I’m still learning. Mostly, it’s about big guys dressed as frogs and how cool it would be to fly at the speed of sound. Its fun kid stuff mixed in with emotional angst and oft-overlooked moments of responsibility, which in my experience, sums up adolescence in a nutshell.

Page One

What they tell you in Writing 101 is to Keep It Simple, Stupid. Keeping it simple gives the readers time to bite into the story while also letting the emotions of the piece speak for themselves. That’s what we tried to do with Page One and the rest of the Prologue. The basic premise is the sibling superhero duo Maiden Flight and Blue Yonder on the run. We’ll fill in the details as we go.

Unfortunately, what they don’t tell you in Writing 101 is that Keeping It Simple isn’t always easy. For instance, Page One, along with the rest of the first fifteen pages, underwent at least three major revisions – and probably more. Originally, the storyline began with these two heroes turning up on the doorstep of the Claremont apartment complex, but we added this scene to create a better connection with our main character, Blue Yonder.

On artistic note, I was blown away by the skyline Diego Diaz created in the first and last panel. I had seen Diego’s work before this page, and I was quite impressed by it, but I never knew how much depth he could create until this first page. From the moon to the skyscrapers, he really succeeded in reinforcing the unique setting of the storyline.

Page Two

The bulk of the re-writes in this section were devoted to this particular scene, which I described as “Jaws with tights.” In addition to the rewrites, however, the format also changed a great deal. When we originally wrote this section, we were anticipating a very large format, inspired by DC’s “Wednesday Comics.” But the logistics of such a large format were mind-boggling, especially if we ever tried to print it, so we decided such ambition was best left to the professionals. As a result, we had to condense this page while still retaining the action and the narration.

My best friend/co-writer/editor Luke Perks added the last line of the page during the production stage, as Maiden Flight mutters, “Ohhhh, crab apples!” I thought this was a great line, because it reinforced the Silver Age feel of the character in a very subtle way.

Page Three

This is one of my favorite pages ever. Once we sent the details to him, Diego Diaz knocked this page out of the park. But as with the previous pages, the planning stages have undergone revision after revision.

As I said before, the story originally had the two heroes appearing on the doorstep of the rundown Claremont apartment, where they would be attacked by vague enemies in the shadows. We could only see bits and pieces of these attackers as they tried to breach the Claremont – a cybernetic hand here, a grenade launcher there, but alas I had to remember – Keep it Simple, Stupid.

Luke suggested a chase scene involving the heroes fleeing helicopters. While I liked this idea, I doubted even a military-grade attack helicopter like the AH-64 Apache could really catch these two in the air. So having grown up an hour or two away from the National Museum of the USAF in Dayton, Ohio, I plunged back into my childhood interest in aerospace. I ultimately chose the F-16 because it’s a very nimble dogfighter. In addition, the back fin really reinforced the “Jaws in tights” tagline I was envisioning for the first couple of pages.

Page Four

This page was another favorite of mine. The crisp detail of the fighter plane as it fires upon the fleeing Maiden Flight is easily my favorite part of the panel. I also liked how Diego emphasizes the size of the fighter compared to the heroes, creating a fast-approaching sense of dread.

Despite being the main character, Blue Yonder doesn’t have many lines in the prologue. Because of this, his actions are the main source of his characterization. Here, we see he’s very powerful and very quick to act – he gets too close to the exploding fighter, and he’s going to be paying for that mistake throughout the rest of the prologue (at least, he will when he’s conscious again.)

Of course, the biggest advantage of using a fighter jet of any kind is it gave Luke a chance to replay “Top Gun” scenes where he wrote. I have no idea if this is how pilots would talk in their radio if they chased down two superheroes.

I only know it was a lot fun to write. Hopefully, it will make for a lot of fun to read.

Page Five

Coming full circle, this was originally Page One in the very first script. You can tell because both the first panel of Page One and Page Five begin with establishing shots of Venture City. Luke went to great lengths to figure out the landscape of Venture City, and we set up “Borderlands Districts” to be just that. If there’s a wrong end of the tracks in Venture City, the Borderlands are the tracks.

Here again, we’re trying to keep it simple. As with before, we’re starting in media res, as another hero returns home to his apartment in the Borderland District, pulls a bullet out of his suit, washes up and then has a knock at his door. During the production stage, Diego consciously kept the hero in the shadows so he could build up the reader’s expectations until the next page.

Page Six

And with the pop of a salsa dip can, we’re introduced to a third hero – the Frog. The Frog is one of the first heroes I created for this story, and honestly, one of my favorites. His inspiration came from reading stories with a lot of joke/parody heroes. I like “Mystery Men” as much as the next guy, but in the wrong hands, they come off as shallow and sarcastic jabs at the comic book industry. The Frog is a B-list hero intended to be more “working class hero” than “superhero” – to turn a phrase from John Lennon – more “salt of the earth” than “not of this Earth.”

Here, we’re also introduced to another character – Rosie. Like most the inhabitants of this apartment, she’s a former superhero, with particular ties to the Golden Age (as should be evident with her name). My family always has taco night where we all get together, and well, eat tacos. That’s where the can of taco salsa comes from.

Page Seven

Even though this is the seventh page, this is again one of the first I wrote originally. As I mentioned before, we originally only saw vague hints of the attackers in the first draft. We see this here with the heavy footsteps coming presumably from the roof.

I think I was probably influenced by effective horror movies like “Drag Me to Hell” and Robert Wise’s original “Haunting”, which both use sound effects to imply a presence where than directly show it. Unfortunately, I’m still not every comfortable using the SFX caption, so this would have to do.

I believe in the original we also see a robot hand with a built-in grenade launcher stick through the ceiling. Thankfully, Luke convinced me to keep it simple in the following page, which I did.

Page Eight

As with Blue Yonder, actions speak louder than words as far as characterization goes. Maiden Flight trying to hold off the attackers to save her brother demonstrates her bond with her brother – and vice versa. Though the line was lost in rewrites, Maiden Flight and the Frog do know each other personally, and she has an indirect connection to the Claremont which will be explored later.

This page exists a way to get Maiden Flight out of the immediate action without getting her out of the story altogether. In the editing and production stage, Luke and Deigo furthered this by keeping the reader in suspense about her fate for the next three panels. First, we see her silhouette lit up by the incoming attack. Second, we see Blue Yonder and Frog reacting to the attack – and finally, we get a spectacular long-range shot of the explosion seen from miles away, once again showing off the Venture City backdrop.

Page Nine

This page does a lot of things in only four panels. First, we see that Maiden Flight did in fact survive the explosion, but her situation hasn’t improved much beyond that. Secondly, we finally see the attackers. These are the Devil Hounds, minions of the mercenary Black Dog, one of Luke’s fantastically fun creations. Originally, the middle Devil Hound was armed with a slightly futuristic-looking rocket launcher, but we opted to keep their weapons strictly conventional, since we had already seen them use an F-16. It was immensely fun to watch the launcher turn into a standard RPG with the click of a refresh button a few days later (though it took considerably more effort on Diego’s part.)

The code names “Chicken Little” and “Golden Goose” for Blue Yonder and Maiden Flight are something of a foreshadow. Once again delving back into my childhood aerospace fantasies, every member of Blue Yonder’s family is a flyer, and named accordingly. We’ll see more of this later, but as you can tell from Blue Yonder’s nickname “Chicken Little”, even the minions don’t think too highly of him.

Page Ten

Originally on this page, Frog was going to kick a door into the soldier’s face. It was going to be an awesome action sequence, but we ran into trouble with some logistics. After all, not even a superhero would leave their door unlocked in the wrong end of town. In addition, we hadn’t had time to draw the interior of the Claremont by this point, so we opted to once again keep in simple – and show off Frog’s poison dart wrist launcher instead (I still think the door in the face would have been cooler).

On the positive side, this page’s conclusion also builds up suspense for what’s happening with our friend with the RPG in his hands. The forthcoming page contains the resolution of the attack, and also introduces another major inhabitant of the Claremont Apartment – and one of Luke’s favorites.

Well, with page ten we are officially two-thirds through the prologue. The next four pages will show the final confrontation with the Yonder’s pursuers, as well as set-up the status quo for webcomic’s foreseeable future. In short, we get to see who makes it out and who makes it in.

I hope this prologue has done enough to hook you to check back every Wednesday to see where Blue Yonder and company are heading. Hopefully, I’ve also managed to Keep it Simple, Stupid, but as this article almost breaches 2000 words, I’m starting to have my doubts. I’m going to start writing another page now, so keep watching the skies at www.blueyondercomic.net!