VODKA O’CLOCK 1513
WES LOCHER

AMBER LOVE 23-MAR-2015 Now you can sponsor Vodka O’Clock and AmberUnmasked.com through PATREON. Just go to Patreon.com/amberunmasked to pledge as little as $1.00 per creation which could mean per Vodka O’Clock episode or through written content.

Returning to Vodka O’Clock is comic book writer WES LOCHER. He’s been on episodes 1404 and 1427.

Download on iTunes, Stitcher or listen here.

Wes has experience making printed and web comics. He’s successfully funded UNIT 44 through Kickstarter. In this episode we spent the first half focusing on UNIT 44 because there’s some news for it. Alterna Comics is publishing the book and it’s coming out as issues through Comixology starting March 25, 2015.

The artist on UNIT 44 is Eduardo Jimenez who went back through issue one and redrew the entire thing. He also updated the colors. After 88 pages, he felt that he had a better handle on the characters and the world and redid the first chapter.

It’s about inept Area 51 employees who failed to keep up with payments on the government’s storage unit so all of the contents were auctioned off like in Storage Wars. Agents Gibson and Hatch have a the same buddy cop feel that Tommy Lee Jones and Will Smith had in Men in Black.

“It was really me taking all the things that I like, the very basics of science fiction and kind of mashing them together with a bunch of really silly gags. I think for me… ya know at the end of the day, I wrote a book that I wanted to read.” ~WL

Wes shared his thoughts on his writing influences and process. He has a desire for things to be well organized so it’s common for him to include government agencies that move a story along. Real life bureaucracy is not nearly as exciting as it is in fiction which is something we discuss.

“PLANET GIGANTIC is probably one of the best comic books I’ve read this year. I’ve been pushing it on everyone I know.” ~WL

What happens when someone else has beat you to the shelf with a similar project? Wes said he doesn’t let him stop him from making the stories he wants to tell.

We also talked about using fan fiction to build portfolios or as practice exercises. The key is that you still create your own stories. Mentioned in this portion, Mike Maihack’s Supergirl & Batgirl strips and Gerardo Preciado and Daniel Bayliss who created “Batman: The Deal”.

Recently, there was some Twitter chatter between creators about the having agents because some comic writers are also book authors who have literary agents. In this conversation, there were a couple writers who said they got into comics through their agents. Personally, I’m terrified if comics becomes as inaccessible as book publishing, but there’s definitely crossover already.

“I’m a writer by day and a writer by hobby, so I don’t have all the money in the world, so if I’m gonna take my weekly budget and spend it on comics, I’m gonna try to get the biggest bang for my bucks. So, unfortunately that means I’m not current on a lot of series.” ~WL

READING RECOMMENDATIONS FROM AMBER & WES:

• LETTER 44
• COPPERHEAD
• BLACK SCIENCE
• PLANET GIGANTIC
• HERO CATS
• PENNY DORA & THE WISHING BOX
• ODDLY NORMAL
• PART-TIME PRINCESSES
• HAWKEYE
• MORNING GLORIES
• MANHATTAN PROJECTS
• BRAVEST WARRIORS
• THE STRANGE TALENT OF LUTHER STRODE
• GOD HATES ASTRONAUTS

CONS:

Wes will be at Mega Con in Orlando, FL

LINKS:

@weslocher

Founder and Editor-in-Chief of AmberUnmasked.com and Vodka O'Clock Podcast. Author of The Farrah Wethers Mysteries, comic book short stories, prose, and non-fiction. Cosplayer and figure model.