POSTSCRIPT

       Before truly throwing my hat in any sort of ring as a comic book writer, I had of course had a few comic strips that had been published in magazines & local newspapers. However, my first short form comic was entitled "LONG BLACK TRAIN" it was a 10 page comic that I submitted to an anthology that had open submissions. For those of you who're green or unlearned, the term "Open Submissions" is death. What it means is that the people who have the publication are likely to be drowned in submissions, meaning that you're in the running with an absurd amount of others. Before continuing on with my ator, as I'm sure you're wondering – this was not selected to be in the horror comic anthology. Still, in a round about way, this is what got me in the gear of writing comics.

        A couple of months prior, I met a manga artist online; someone wanting to break into the industry. The thing was that they were charging an outrageously low rate as a means to get some work for their portfolio. The price was so low that I determined that I needed to find a reason to work with this person on something. I will tell you that the artist charged $10 per page (i.e., $100). If this comic was selected to go into the anthology, they would have paid $200. It just didn't seem like that bad of a gamble. Moreover, after the small publisher (who will go unnamed) declined to publish this story, I put it in the back of my novelette/serial ABRHAM LINCOLN BURNS IN HELL #2 as bonus content.

         In closing, I would like to state that tragically there are an unreasonably high number of "professional" comic book writers who clearly display an inability to write short form comics; sometimes long-form too. Writing serialized stories instead of episodic ones runs through comics like a cancer & it's sad. Even in my upcoming HELLFIRE comic series, they're flipbooks, featuring one long-form (22-24pg) story & one short form (4-6pg) story on the reverse/flip-side. Nevertheless, this is me letting you read this 10 page story for free. As you can tell, my conception was that (1) boy sees monster (2) boy is chased by monster (3) boy gets away from monster. It's a simple story with a beginning, middle, & end. That's about as elementary as you're going to get. ...Anyway, I hope that you enjoyed it.

B. L. Blankenship