Posted by Joe Kelly on February 1, 2007

A little lesson in how comics are produced…

Say you’re doing a cooky retro/sci-fi book set in Victorian England, and you decide to get one of the most dynamic letterers in the biz to give life to your almost wholly new language. And say the artist on said endeavor is an extremely talented visionary in high demand. And one day, the three of you say something like, “Wouldn’t it be fun to do a book with a hippo as a pirate in a touching morality tale about the dangers of anger and stubbornness?” Probably you didn’t say that. It was probably more like, “You got hippo in my pirate story! You got Pirates in my Hippo book!” but either way, the three of you agree to work on a book “when you can” and a side project is born…

The Tale of Captain Stoneheart and the Truth Fairy, the book I wrote for Richard Starkings, drawn by Chris Bachalo, and colored by Aron Lusen has been “on the side” for years. YEARS. But that’s how it goes sometimes, so you sit and you stew and you wait and forget and remember and wait and pray that when the book is done it looks a little like the book in your mind when you sat down to script. A few months ago, Captain Stoneheart sailed back into my life, and I couldn’t be happier. The story will appear in Richard’s stunning Elephantmen series this month (#7) and you can read all about it in this CBR article. I think it’s a special little story, and fans of Steampunk should get a kick out of seeing Chris and I together again. But when you pick the book up, please, be careful…

It took a long time to make.