Love Everlasting #1 the Script
Waiting for the Everlasting to begin
It’s hard to begin. Actually, that’s not entirely true. It’s fairly easy to begin. The first issue of any series is probably the easiest (for me) to write. This is simply because (again, for me) the first issue is the pitch come to life. It’s the set up in the first third, the status quo in the second, and then the twist in the last.
No, the hard part about beginning isn’t writing the first script, it’s waiting to write it. It’s the months before you get it, when you’re pitching it to first yourself, then your family, then your friends, then the professional people who will partner with you to turn this potential insanity into an actual story.
All that time, you’re itching to get started, you need to get this idea out into the world, but you know you can’t unless all the pieces are all lined up or else you won’t write it right: you have to know your artist and your audience in order to execute any vision. So day after day, month after month you force yourself not to write what you want to write. Which is not fun.
Until finally, the day comes and you get the final go…and then…then it’s all very fun. Until issue 2. Then it gets tough again.
This was never more true than writing Love Everlasting #1. I had this story in my head for like nine months before I started writing it. I knew exactly what it had to be: three stories, one played straight, the next starting to crumble, the final falling apart completely until a whole secret, flawed world underneath the clean, perfect one came into view. And all of it told in this odd, old, forgotten Romance Comics voice.
By the time Elsa and I had worked all the angles and lined up all the publishers and coworkers, it was a joy to just sit down and put together my first creator owned script. I found that the Romance voice was shockingly exciting to put together (a great break from the growls of Batman comics), and the character of Joan seemed like a friend who had been waiting impatiently with me all this time for her chance to tell her story.
Below I’ve posted that first script so you to see how it works, how it worked, and how Elsa made an amazing comic from my frantic scribblings.
Important! If you want to read this issue in physical comic book form, it will be available in shops on August 8th! You have until July 16th to preorder it with you store…meaning let your store somehow know you want a copy: tell them at the register, call them, tweet at them, DM send them a telegram, shout at them from across the street…whatever your thing is! It makes it possible for us to keep doing this thing that we love, and we are so grateful if you do.
—Tom
Tom,
Amazon lists you as the author of a photo book called Busty. (One reader describes it as "a bit over the top.") From the blurb it's just someone using the same name, but they do use your picture and bio, so I have to ask, is it fair to grab the credit this way? Send back the Pulitzer, admit to your wife that you didn't actually write it, and this can all be over. Yeah, it'll be tough for a while, and you may end up shuffling your feet and mumbling that you really did write some stuff of your own, but you'll live it down.