KICKSTARTER UPDATE #48
Walter White and Jesse Pinkman are in the desert. Mr. White has lost his pants and he’s explaining how he used his science magic powers to kill drug dealers in a Winnabago. I’m rewatching Breaking Bad.
When it came out ten years ago Walt was an old man to me. I am now nearly his age. Jesse was a young man. The actor who plays him is now about my age working on the show Westworld. Breaking Bad has all kinds of story techniques I love and try to use. It’s dramatic and compositionally beautiful. MONUMENT doesn’t quite turn up the pulp volume up like my first book FULL COLOR did, but I try to make the chapters dense with pathos. (Man, now Jesse and Walter have a brown guy locked to a post in the basement. The racial politics in Breaking Bad are pretty rough. Mr. White indeed.) I’m reading Alan Sepinwall’s great analysis of the series as I go.
I finished 4 more pages and the color story is nearly done on MONUMENT 02. My son and I watched Peter Pan earlier which featured a lot of Mary Blair color palettes. I put some of her concept art below here. She’s quite amazing and responsible for early Disney films looking acidic, dangerous while still child-like. I still don’t like the colors on my work for this issue. I love MONUMENT 01’s palettes. I still have the “rendering” phase so hopefully I can save it with some reflection and tweaks.
The world is either going crazy or growing up. I rewatched Peter Pan with my son and the racism and gender issues are pretty prevalent. I suspect Breaking Bad would work if Walter was Latinx. Peter Pan would need to become something else entirely. There’s a lot to learn from both. I fear there’s problematic work baked into MONUMENT. I do my best but I fear in ten years it’ll be comically out of date. Actually mostly I’m afraid in ten years no one will care at all. Regardless I’m going to keep moving forward.